They’re going to try it again.
Anthony Persiano is scheduled to be sentenced next month on mail and wire fraud charges. The street hustler and con man is looking at a 20-year sentence, but no one expects that to happen.
Persiano is a cooperator. Wore a body wire and recorded dozens of conversations that helped the feds nail several key mob figures and a drug kingpin. Capped his cooperation by wearing a wire to his own mob initiation ceremony.
Not the Philadelphia crime family’s finest hour.
The making ceremony took place back in 2015. Persiano entered guilty pleas to the fraud charges about four years later. He was originally scheduled to be sentenced on June 6, 2019.
But it never happened.
His sentencing in federal court in Camden has been scheduled, postponed and rescheduled thirteen times. Justice is never swift, but this seems to be a little excessive. His sentencing is now set for Nov. 6.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Askin said that, barring any unforeseen developments, the sentencing will take place next month as scheduled.
“We’d like to get this done,” said Askin who declined to discuss specifics in the Persiano case and his role as a cooperator but said the most recent delays have been caused by retirements. Several FBI agents involved in the various investigations, Persiano’s original court-appointed attorney and even the judge originally assigned have retired over the past three years.
A few wiseguys who have been following the case roll their eyes at the delays and are taking bets that it will be put off again. It is one of the benefits, they say, of being a government informant.
Or, from their perspective, a rat.
Victims of Persiano’s scams are also following the proceedings. Several have said the government gave Persiano “a license to steal” and contend that authorities are reluctant to lay out the case against him and give potential victims a chance to be heard in open court.
Most recently Persiano, who is living in another part of the country, was designated “rat of the month” by one-time Philadelphia mob boss Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino.
Merlino, who has exchanged the role of Philadelphia godfather for that of a gadfly podfather, does a weekly podcast called “The Skinny.” Rat of the month is a recurring segment.
Persiano became a government informant after getting jammed up in a couple of insurance fraud schemes back in 2014…
In Union County, he was part of a phony jewelry store robbery in which the store owner submitted insurance claims for substantially more than was taken during a “staged armed robbery” carried out by Persiano and an associate, according to a court document detailing the charges to which Persiano has pleaded guilty.
In Camden County he was accused of using his company – Code Red Fire Water Restoration – to “enrich himself by diverting a portion of insurance payments, due and owing to homeowners who were his customers…to pay his own personal and business expenses.”
There is also a civil case in which Persiano is accused of defrauding investors of $150,000. His criminal record includes a murder conviction from the 1990s that was overturned on appeal.
He also worked for a company tied to First Plus Financial, a Texas-based mortgage company that was at the heart of a multi-million-dollar fraud investigation. Persiano was never charged with any crime but two hidden principals of that company, Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. and Salvatore Pelullo, were each sentenced to thirty years following their convictions.
Persiano was released on a $100,000 unsecured bond after pleading guilty to the mail and wire fraud charges in 2018. He is now living and working in another part of the country, according to court records. While details are sketchy at best, it appears he is engaged in the same kind of insurance-financed restoration work.
And that has former customers shaking their heads.
“Every time I complained about him, I was told there was nothing they could do,” said a South Jersey homeowner who went to law enforcement when Persiano skipped out on restoration work after pocketing some of the insurance money. “He had a license to steal.”
That was nearly ten years ago.
Nothing has changed and the homeowner wonders about accountability.
From a wiseguy’s perspective, this is the way the feds work, the way the system is stacked against them. That’s certainly the take coming from Skinny Joey. But the reality is more complicated. Merlino and associates would put Persiano in the same bag as anyone else who cooperated. But there are degrees. Persiano has pleaded guilty to fraud charges, and it is legitimate to wonder why he has yet to be sentenced.
But the tapes he made speak for themselves. He has never gotten up on the witness stand to testify. Didn’t need to. The conversations he recorded were that strong, that incriminating. So, when wiseguys complain about his deal they largely ignore what really went down.
How and why Persiano became a cooperator is certainly open to examination.
But he didn’t put words in anyone’s mouth.
So here was drug kingpin Joseph “Joey Electric” Servidio discussing how he couldn’t stop dealing drugs. “I’m a criminal,” he said. “Everything I do is criminal… It’s the money. I like to spend money.”
Or here was mob capo Domenic Grande discussing the economy of organized crime, explaining how all mobsters had to kick up to the wiseguy above them, and telling Persiano, during a discussion about drug dealing, to “do what you gotta do.”
Most damaging, there was mob underboss Steven Mazzone railing about the loss of opportunities in Atlantic City and urging his crew to “plant the flag” there again.
“We’re still street guys…we’re gangsters,” Mazzone said on a tape Persiano made at his own making ceremony and at a celebratory restaurant dinner that followed.
Persiano’s tapes were devastating. And the government has clearly benefitted from the work he did. That should be part of any sentencing hearing and could mitigate against a substantial jail sentence.
But that same hearing should include an examination of Persiano’s role as an expediter and insurance claim magnate before, after and DURING the time he was working for the feds. That, many critics believe, is why his sentencing has been put off thirteen times.
Persiano made dozens of tapes while working for the FBI. Since none of the targets of those investigations ever went to trial, we’ve only gotten snippets of those conversations, pieces of dialogue that have shown up in affidavits and court documents. And we’ve never seen Persiano on the witness stand.
We may never hear all of those tapes.
But nine years after he was formally “made” and six years after he pled guilty to wire and mail fraud charges, it’s time for Persiano to be held accountable for the crimes he committed before and, perhaps while, he was working for the FBI.
