Walkthrough of witnesses made case against Joseph Bongiovanni with varying levels of success

“Because I’m innocent,” the retired Drug Enforcement Administration special agent told a Buffalo News reporter. “That's why you don't see me do that. One day I hope you’re going to write a good story about me.”

That day seems more elusive following his convictions Thursday on seven of the 11 counts he faced in U.S. District Court, making him the first DEA agent in Western New York to be convicted of public corruption charges.

Like he has over the five years since his indictment, Bongiovanni again walked out of the Robert H. Jackson U.S. Courthouse on Thursday with poise, although appearing subdued as he held his wife’s hand.

For his assertions of innocence to be accepted beyond his family members and friends, he’ll need the trial judge or federal appellate court to set aside his felony convictions.

Jurors convicted Bongiovanni, 60, of four counts related to a marijuana trafficking organization that prosecutors alleged he thought was associated with Italian organized crime: conspiracy to defraud the U.S, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and two counts of obstruction of justice.

Bongiovanni’s three convictions related to Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club owner Peter Gerace Jr. – two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of false statement to a U.S. agency – were for internal DEA memos he wrote and for what he told investigators about his past contact with the Cheektowaga strip club owner.

Gerace’s trial on bribery, sex- and drug-trafficking charges is scheduled to begin Oct. 28.

Jurors found Bongiovanni not guilty of accepting a bribe from the drug-trafficking organization. They also acquitted Bongiovanni of two corruption charges and a drug count related to allegations he protected Gerace and his Cheektowaga strip club from narcotics investigations.

The jury returned the verdict on its fifth day of deliberations, after sorting through 28 days of testimony from 65 witnesses – 62 called by the prosecution.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi acknowledged the jury’s challenge, given what he called “the sprawling nature of the charged conspiracies.”

One way to grasp the prosecution’s case is by categorizing witnesses into groups: the former Pharaoh’s dancers and employees; a slew of drug dealers; Bongiovanni’s DEA colleagues; the outside law enforcement agents who turned over informants and investigations to the DEA; and the handful of federal investigators who investigated Bongiovanni.

The drug dealers

Of the 11 witnesses who either admitted to selling drugs or were suspected of doing so, none loomed larger than Ron Serio and Lou Selva. A grand jury indicted Bongiovanni of taking cash payments totaling at least $250,000 from Serio, with the money funneled through Michael Masecchia, under an alleged scheme Selva said he broached and finalized with Bongiovanni. Masecchia did not testify. Bongiovanni, Selva and Masecchia have known each other since childhood. Selva was best man at Bongiovanni’s wedding, and Bongiovanni once helped organize a benefit on Selva’s behalf when Selva had a health crisis and was struggling financially.

Serio testified he distributed about 10,000 pounds of marijuana and 5 kilos of cocaine until his arrest in 2017. He made enough money to buy a Lebrun Road mansion in Amherst for $715,000 and then added $700,000 in improvements.

Defense lawyers say it’s not the Serio drug proceeds that paid for that mansion that has Bongiovanni facing prison – it’s the marijuana-grow setup in Selva’s basement.

“The jury’s verdict resoundingly rejected the idea that Bongiovanni took bribes,” said defense lawyer Parker MacKay.

For their guilty finding on the narcotics conspiracy count, the jurors said the weight of marijuana that was “reasonably foreseeable” for Bongiovanni to know about was less than 110 pounds.

“Had the jury believed Mr. Bongiovanni was somehow liable for the Serio marijuana that was being shipped into Western New York, and to which Masecchia pleaded to, they would have found that a much greater weight was proven in the conspiracy,” MacKay said.

“In essence, we believe this means the jury settled on a story that Mr. Bongiovanni was not involved in the larger Serio/Masecchia conspiracy, but, instead, was looking out for his best friend in some way, likely by failing to investigate Lou Selva after learning of a purported grow operation in Selva’s house.”

Prosecutors showed jurors the powerful marijuana grow light that agents found in Selva’s home, weeks after agents had already raided Bongiovanni’s home, which should have tipped off Selva his home would be searched next.

“I completely forgot I had it,” Selva said of the lamp. “I would have gotten rid of it had I remembered.”

The Pharaoh’s dancers

Eight women – former dancers or bartenders, including several who once dated or were married to Gerace – provided salacious testimony about Pharaoh’s, describing widespread cocaine use, overdoses and sex acts in the private second-floor quarters at the strip club reserved for high-end clientele and Gerace’s friends.

None of it hurt Bongiovanni.

The ex-dancers were called to prove prosecution claims that Pharaoh’s was a drug-involved premises, and that Bongiovanni furthered that by helping his longtime friend Gerace.

But the dancers did not see Bongiovanni use drugs or associate with others who did. One dancer recalled seeing him at the strip club only a couple of times.

Another dancer who testified she used cocaine with Bongiovanni at a Sunset Bay Beach cottage was so fuzzy about details that his defense lawyers called into question whether she knew who was around her and where the alleged drug use even happened.

Katrina Nigro, the ex-wife of Gerace, was the only witness who testified handing Bongiovanni money at Gerace’s direction. She testified she gave him two envelopes but did not know why Gerace wanted her to hand over the envelopes.

“You could feel it,” she replied when Tripi asked her how she knew the envelopes contained cash. “I knew what was in it. The envelopes all had cash.”

The DEA colleagues

A dozen DEA employees testified, including colleagues who answered questions about reported forgeries on internal documents, curtailed surveillance and suspicious handling of confidential informants that prosecutors pointed to as evidence of bribery and corruption.

Dale Kasprzyk, the former resident agent in charge of the DEA’s Buffalo office, testified Bongiovanni never told him he had been a childhood friend of Gerace’s.

Tripi referred to Kasprzyk as being “duped” by Bongiovanni.

Cory Higgins, a detective with the Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office assigned to the DEA’s Buffalo office as a task force officer since 2002, testified Bongiovanni offered him no helpful information about Masecchia in 2009 when Higgins was investigating Masecchia’s involvement in outdoor marijuana grows in the Southern Tier.

“I was approached by Mr. Bongiovanni within our office and he stated that he was unable to help me on that case because he grew up with these guys and he knows them and he’s close to them,” Higgins testified.

Higgins closed the case in 2010 because sources of information dried up.

The other law enforcement officers

Prosecutors called eight witnesses from other law enforcement agencies – the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, State Police and town police departments in Amherst and Tonawanda – to elicit testimony showing Bongiovanni worked to keep the other agencies from investigating drug trafficking that could implicate Serio.

Michael O’Rourke, a retired New York State Police senior investigator, said State Police let the DEA take over a narcotics bust that netted 200 pounds of marijuana and involved a suspect believed to be tied to Serio’s drug operation.

“He said that this case may be tied to organized crime and they’d like to take it to a new level and possibly adopt it federally,” O’Rourke said.

After their meeting, O’Rourke never heard again from Bongiovanni again about the suspect, whose case was dismissed.

The investigators

Four federal agents who investigated Bongiovanni testified. So did the the Erie County Sheriff’s Office chief whose narcotics unit arrested Serio on drug charges after only a couple of weeks of investigating him, after the DEA’s Serio efforts floundered for years.

Curtis Ryan, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, interviewed Bongiovanni when agents searched Bongiovanni’s Town of Tonawanda home. Ryan testified about the internal memos Bongiovanni wrote downplaying his contacts with Gerace and photographs and text messages between the two that seemed to show a closer relationship.

Three of the obstruction of justice counts Bongiovanni faced were for three memos he wrote to his DEA bosses that prosecutors said included misleading statements about his relationship with Gerace. Jurors convicted him on two of the counts.

In one memo, dated Nov. 1, 2018, Bongiovanni wrote he had “minimal in-person contact” with Gerace and “random telephonic communications based on the fact that we were childhood friends.”

Ryan testified about Bongiovanni’s June 30, 2018, text message to Gerace that read, “Miss ya bro. I’m going to Sunset today,” a reference to Sunset Bay on Lake Erie.

Gerace’s reply text read, “There’s a girl from Las Vegas staying with me with some other chick that works for me. Let me see what they want to do.”

“I’ll be cool for a happy hour anytime,” Bongiovanni replied.

In other texts, Bongiovanni said he had plans to see a show and the area would be busy. “We usually go to Cabana Sam,” he wrote, referring to a restaurant in Irving. But Bongiovanni added he didn’t think the performer “could pack em in to Route 5.”

“Hahahhahahahaha,” Gerace texted back. “Only Joe Bong could do that”

“I’m like the old David Cassidy,” Bongiovanni replied.

Tripi asked Ryan about the text exchange. “Does that appear to be a random telephonic communication or chance encounter?”

“No,” Ryan replied.

MacKay said talk of Italian organized crime “was always a strange obsession in this case” but left unproven.

Several agents opined on whether some individuals, most of them now dead, had a reputation for being connected to organized crime, MacKay said. Selva said Masecchia acknowledged to him of being a “made guy.”

“To say this proves the existence of IOC in Buffalo is just a flat-out misinterpretation,” MacKay said.