A former police detective was convicted Wednesday of lying to the FBI in order to protect a Mafia family’s illegal gambling operations in the New York City suburbs.
Hector Rosario, a former detective for the Nassau County police on Long Island, was also acquitted of obstruction of justice, the top charge he had faced. The jury in the case had been deliberating since Tuesday following a seven-day trial in Brooklyn federal court.
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York John Durham, whose office prosecuted the case, called the 15-year police veteran a “corrupt detective” who chose loyalty to the mob “over the public he was sworn to protect.”
“Hector Rosario cared more about lining his pockets with Bonanno family money and protecting his own interests than his fidelity to the law,” added Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly. “He disgracefully compromised the investigative work of his fellow detectives by tipping off a target and lied to federal agents as the walls were closing in on him.”
For years, prosecutors said the 51-year-old Mineola resident accepted thousands of dollars in payments from Bonanno crime family members.
In exchange, they said, he tipped off a mobster that he was under investigation and looked up the home address of a witness he believed was cooperating with authorities.
Rosario even steered law enforcement raids toward competing gambling parlors and conducted his own fake police bust on a shoe repair shop that served as a front for a rival Genovese crime family operation.
Prosecutors said Rosario was interviewed by FBI agents in 2020 as they investigated Bonanno and Genovese criminal activity in the suburbs east of New York City. But they said he falsely stated he had no information about the Mafia or illegal gambling spots.
Rosario “allowed himself to be bought by the mob to blatantly lie during a federal investigation into the Bonanno family’s illegal gambling operations,” said Leslie Backschies, acting FBI assistant director in charge of the bureau’s New York field office.
Rosario, who was fired from the department in 2022, faces up to five years in prison.
The charge of obstruction of justice carried a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, but Rosario was acquitted after his lawyers argued he wasn’t trying to interfere with the federal investigation because he wasn’t aware they were looking into his criminal associates, Newsday reported.
Lawyers for Rosario, who remains out on bail, didn’t immediately respond to an email from the Associated Press seeking comment Wednesday. Outside court, they said they planned to appeal the conviction, the New York Times reported.
During the trial, Rosario’s lawyers argued the case hinged on the unreliable testimony of mobsters now cooperating with prosecutors as they faced their own criminal charges.
Rosario was among nine people charged when federal authorities busted what they described as a lucrative racket and throwback to the Mafia’s heyday in New York.
9 with links to organized crime families facing federal charges https://t.co/MiiOKR9uQ5
— CBS New York (@CBSNewYork) August 17, 2022
Prosecutors said the other defendants had colorful nicknames like “Joe Fish,” “Sal the Shoemaker” and “Joe Box,” and ran backroom gambling dens from fronts including a coffee bar, a soccer club and the shoe repair shop.
Besides illegal gambling, the mobsters faced racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy charges.
After the nine were indicted, then-U.S. Attorney Breon Peace singled out Rosario for his misconduct.
“Even more disturbing is the shameful conduct of a detective who betrayed his oath of office and the honest men and women of the Nassau County Police Department when he allegedly aligned himself with criminals,” Peace said.
Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno Sr., the former head of the Bonanno crime family, died in 2002 at the age of 97.
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