One last job? Over-60s with mafia ties charged in jewelery robbery
When four men were charged this week in the brutal armed robberies of two Manhattan jewelry stores, their ages suggested it might not be their first encounter with the criminal justice system.
It wasn’t.
Among them, according to officials and court documents, the men have ties to the Genovese, Lucchese, and Kansas City, Mo. crime families; a history of bank robberies, extortion and murders; and a jailbreak reminiscent of a Hollywood movie.
The defendants are Vincent Cerchio, 69; Michael Sellick, 67; Frank Di Pietro, 65; and Vincent Spagnuolo, 65. If convicted of the most serious charge, they could each face 20 years in prison for failing to do what many people their age have done: retire.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York charged the four with stealing $2 million in diamonds and other gems at gunpoint while dressing as construction workers to blend in on busy streets. A fifth man, Samuel Sorce, 25, of Florham Park, NJ, is accused of being a getaway driver in one of the robberies.
“The professional planning and execution of the robberies” reflects the older men’s “long history of serious violent crimes,” prosecutors said in a statement. As evidence, the filing cites surveillance footage, call records, license plate readers, eyewitnesses and cell phone transmission records.
Mr. DiPietro’s attorney, Mathew J. Mari, said his client was not guilty. Mr DiPietro worked in construction, Mr Mari said, had lived an “exemplary life” in recent years and believed he and the others had been arrested for their resumes.
“He said, ‘They’re just trying to put it on us because we’re career criminals,'” said Mr. Mari.
Organized crime has long been the domain of older men. And with some activities that were traditional mafia rackets, such as sports betting, becoming legal, there may be fewer opportunities for young, would-be mobsters to commit the entry-level crimes that could make their reputations.
Elie Honig, a former top organized crime prosecutor in Manhattan, cited several reasons for what he called the “perpetual aging” of the mob. For starters, it takes years to get up the ranks; rarely is a member initiated or “made” before he is in his fifties. For another, Mr. Honig said, “There is no such thing as saying goodbye to the Mafia. They don’t have a pension plan.”
The advanced age of many gangsters often plays a role in sentencing hearings, when petitions for leniency rely heavily on litanies of drugs, disabilities, illnesses and other ravages of time.
When Mr. Honig prosecuted his first organized crime case — famed Genovese boss Matthew Ianniello and a dozen other defendants — in the early 2000s, the average age of the defendants was well over 70. The scene at their booking featured walkers, wheelchairs and oxygen devices, he said.
Mr. DiPietro – born when Gunsmoke was the most popular program on television – and his co-defendants made their first appearance in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, where a judge ordered they be detained. They will appear in court next month.
The first robbery took place on Madison Avenue, in a building where a jeweler operating out of the penthouse stocks a street-level display case with expensive items every day, according to an indictment.
On Jan. 3, Mr. Cerchio, Mr. DiPietro, Mr. Sellick, and Mr. Spagnuolo traveled to the area of the building, the complaint says; several of them had scouted the site the day before.
Just before 10:30 a.m., the complaint says, Mr. DiPietro and Mr. Sellick, wearing masks, hats, jeans, trainers, and brightly colored architectural-style jackets, entered the lobby and confronted an employee who had just opened a safe.
“Give it to me,” Mr. DiPietro ordered, brandishing a gun, before grabbing a 73-carat necklace, a pair of 17-carat earrings and a six-carat ring and running off, the indictment says. Mr. Sellick told the worker to “get in the closet” and also fled.
The second robbery, on May 20, involved a jewelry store on Elizabeth Street in Chinatown, according to a second complaint.
Mr. DiPietro and Mr. Sellick, wearing similar outfits, stormed into the store shortly after it opened, prosecutors say. This time Mr. Sellick the gun and ordered the workers to the ground while Mr. DiPietro picked up jewelry, prosecutors say.
The two first fled in a vehicle driven by the relatively fresh Mr. Sorce, then in a vehicle driven by Mr. Spagnuolo, who prosecutors also believe was a getaway driver in the first robbery.
Mr. Spagnuolo, of Monmouth Beach, NJ, is the only one of four elderly men without a federal conviction, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in state court in 1979 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, records show. Two convictions followed on robbery charges.
Mr. DiPietro, of Red Bank, NJ, is also a known killer. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to fatally shooting a grand jury witness who had testified about a Lucchese-related drug conspiracy, court documents show. The victim was found in a car in a remote area of Staten Island after being shot four times in the head. Mr. DiPietro was sentenced to 19 years in prison and was released in 2016.
Mr. Cerchio’s federal file, prosecutors say, includes a 1997 indictment stemming from the murder of a fashion designer in his Upper West Side apartment in a “turned-out armed robbery in Lucchese.” He pleaded guilty to a charge of robbery and was sentenced to 27 months.
An extensive series of federal indictments against the DeCavalcante crime family in New Jersey in 1999 named Mr. Cerchio as a Lucchese associate. The following year, he was sentenced to 51 months in prison after pleading guilty in a racketeering case involving DeCavalcante mobsters, prosecutors say. Later, in 2014, he pleaded guilty to a scheme to rob trucks of counterfeit cigarettes. Sentenced to 27 months, he was released in 2016, records show.
An attorney for Mr. Cerchio, of Howard Beach, Queens, declined to comment on the latest allegations, as did an attorney for Mr. Spagnuolo.
Mr. Sellick, of Franklin Square, NY, was first sentenced to a federal prison in 1980 after pleading guilty to bank robberies, prosecutors say. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to five counts of armed bank robbery and was sentenced to an additional 19 years, records show. He was released in 2015.
Since then, his attorney, Gerald J. McMahon said, Mr. Sellick had worked steadily at a union job painting bridges and now earns $55 an hour. Mr McMahon said Mr Sellick was not guilty and the case against him was a “mistaken identity”.
Mr. Sellick has shown a flair for drama in the past: Twice during a state prison stint between his federal sentences, he escaped from a state prison.
The first jailbreak, in 1979, resembled the plot of the movie “Escape From Alcatraz”, which had just been released and was based on actual events in the famous island prison in San Francisco Bay.
In Mr. Sellick’s version, he and several others ripped a lamp out of a cell wall, enlarged the resulting hole, crawled onto a catwalk, ripped up a floor grate, and slithered through 300 feet of plumbing and power lines to a gap in a wall left by construction work.
The fugitives from Alcatraz have never been found, dead or alive. Mr. Sellick was clear about that.
Chelsia Rose Marcius and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.