More than a decade ago, a Nassau County detective burst into a nondescript shoe repair store on Long Island, flanked by colleagues intent on shutting down a backroom gambling operation controlled by the Genovese crime family.
Federal prosecutors say the detective, Hector Rosario, 51, was not on police business when he raided Sal’s Shoe Repair in Merrick, N.Y. Nor were the men who joined him officers — prosecutors called them “associates.” The detective, prosecutors say, was secretly on the payroll of the rival Bonanno crime family, and the raid was intended to make his second boss happy.
Mr. Rosario, 51, was indicted in 2022 along with eight other defendants after a yearslong investigation into the Genovese and Bonanno families’ illegal gambling businesses. The eight other defendants have all pleaded guilty to charges that include racketeering and running illegal gambling businesses.
Mr. Rosario is charged with obstruction of justice and lying to F.B.I. agents who were investigating the illicit businesses, including the one prosecutors say he raided. He has pleaded not guilty. On Tuesday, opening statements began in his criminal trial before Judge Eric N. Vitaliano of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
Anna Karamigios, a federal prosecutor, said Mr. Rosario was on the Bonanno family payroll while he was a Nassau County detective. “He chose the crime family over the public he swore to protect,” she said. “When F.B.I. agents asked him what he knew, he lied. Again and again.”
Organized crime families like the Bonanno and Genovese once exerted considerable power over unions and industries such as construction in the Northeast. But starting in the 1980s, aggressive prosecutions sapped their power, and the Bonanno family saw members convicted or cooperate with the government. Even the family’s longtime boss, Joseph C. Massino, defected: In 2011, he became the first boss of an organized crime family to cooperate with federal authorities.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have continued their crackdown. In 2017, four associates of the Bonanno and Gambino crime families were charged with selling cocaine out of a Manhattan gelato store. In 2022, prosecutors indicted Mr. Rosario and eight others associated with the crime families.
The Genovese and Bonanno gambling operations were lucrative, prosecutors say, and were nestled in the back of businesses such as the shoe repair store, a cafe and a soccer club. Gambling revenue from the cafe alone totaled more than $10,000 per week, with proceeds coming from electronic gambling machines and card games out of sight of the stores’ legal customers.
Mr. Rosario cracked down on the competition, prosecutors said, by visiting rival gambling dens in his capacity as a detective and conducting at least one fake raid, at the shoe repair store, prosecutors said.
Federal agents interviewed Mr. Rosario in January 2020. According to investigators, Mr. Rosario falsely said that he had never visited any gambling locations and that had not known Salvatore Rubino, also known as “Sal the Shoemaker” — the owner of the raided store who ran the gambling operation for the Genovese crime family.
Lou Freeman, an attorney for Mr. Rosario, said during his opening statement that the government’s case rested on the word of cooperating witnesses who were providing information in exchange for lighter sentences.
“Each of these witnesses were in organized crime,” Mr. Freeman said.
Two of them were swept up in the 2017 indictment involving the gelato store. Damiano Zummo, a former soldier for the Bonanno crime family, testified on Tuesday that he, along with Sal Russo, a Bonanno family associate, directed Mr. Rosario to carry out the raid on Mr. Rubino’s store.
According to Mr. Zummo, the Bonanno family’s proceeds from the operation had been hampered by competition, as well as an agreement they entered with the Genovese family to divide gambling proceeds from the Gran Caffe in Lynbrook, N.Y. So Mr. Rosario was enlisted to intimidate competing businesses, earning $1,500 per month for “several months,” Mr. Zummo testified.
Mr. Freeman questioned Mr. Zummo’s credibility, noting that he faced decades in prison on cocaine charges and stood to receive a lighter sentence for his cooperation with the authorities.
In April, Mr. Rubino pleaded guilty to operating an illegal gambling business, and four other people associated with the Genovese crime family pleaded guilty to other felony charges. The next month, three other defendants with the Bonanno family pleaded guilty to charges, leaving Mr. Rosario as the last defendant in the case.
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