Prosecutor: DEA agent Bongiovanni became 'a double agent' for drug traffickers in WNY

As law enforcement officers uncovered pounds upon pounds of marijuana during their searches of Ronald Serio‘s properties in Amherst, Buffalo and Tonawanda on April 18, 2017, Serio asked if he could speak to Bongiovanni, at the time a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

When asked how he knew Bongiovanni, Serio let it drop.

Bongiovanni didn’t know about the searches because it was Erie County Sheriff’s Office deputies and FBI agents conducting the raids – not the DEA. What the agents at Serio’s properties did not know that day was that Bongiovanni had been shielding Serio and others in his drug-trafficking organization from investigation and tipping them off to informants, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi said Thursday in his opening statement at Bongiovanni’s corruption trial.

“They caught the big fish,” Tripi said of Serio’s arrest.

By July 2018, facing serious charges, Serio was telling authorities how he had paid money to Bongiovanni, through Michael Masecchia, to avoid being targeted by law enforcement. Serio said Bongiovanni provided information about federal informants and investigations to protect his drug trafficking efforts with Masecchia and Louis Selva. But on that April 2017 day, Serio had not received the protection he expected. And he was angry, Tripi said.

Federal agents raided Selva’s North Buffalo house and Masecchia’s Williamsville home on Aug. 23, 2019 – 11 weeks after federal agents raided Bongiovanni’s home in the Town of Tonawanda.

Masecchia, who has since been sentenced to prison on felony drug charges, admitted getting law enforcement sensitive information from Bongiovanni.

Serio pleaded guilty in 2020 to felony drug and weapons charges. His original November 2020 sentencing date has been postponed eight times, and he’s now scheduled to be sentenced in April.

Bongiovanni’s path to a verdict is just getting started. The opening statements Thursday started a federal trial that is projected to last six to eight weeks.

In all, Bongiovanni, 59, faces 15 charges, many related to his dealings with Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga, and Masecchia, the former schoolteacher who trafficked more than a ton of marijuana into Buffalo and its suburbs over 20 years.

The case against Bongiovanni is essentially a bribery case, said defense lawyer Parker MacKay, who with Robert Singer, represents the ex-DEA agent.

“Make no mistake: Joseph Bongiovanni took no bribes,” MacKay told jurors in his opening statement.

“He didn’t do the things the government said he did,” MacKay told jurors. “It’s as simple as that.”

MacKay called it a government case “built on liars” and statements made by witnesses who were “deep in the throes of drug addiction” or seeking leniency for their criminal conduct.

Serio is on the list of those who will testify. So is Selva, who resigned as an Erie County Sheriff’s Office jail deputy hours after federal agents executed a search warrant at his home.

As for the drug trafficking, Selva and Serio will provide “inside and intimate knowledge of how the conspiracy worked,” Tripi said.

“This is a simple case about a dishonest and corrupt special agent who violated his oath and duty to enforce the drug laws of this nation in exchange for up to a quarter of a million dollars in bribes,” Tripi said.

“He literally shut down investigations,” Tripi said of Bongiovanni, calling him “a double agent” who deceived and misdirected federal agents in his agency and other agencies and also manipulated informants so they wouldn’t reveal incriminating information about the drug traffickers he protected. Bongiovanni opened and managed cases so that he would be in a position to learn what other agents and agencies were looking into, allowing him to mislead them away from those he was protecting.

“He created the ultimate trip wire by creating a file,” Tripi said.

When local police departments learned about or suspected narcotics operations, based on tips, they would turn over their information and informants to the DEA. Bongiovanni would sign up the tipster as a confidential source, and then make sure none of the information was used against those paying him bribes, Tripi said.

The Amherst Police Department had suspicions about Serio.

In Amherst, Serio lived in a 9,000-square-foot French Provincial mansion on 2.4 acres, with a carriage house, a tennis court and seven bedrooms.

“It’s like a castle,” Tripi said of the mansion, proof of how successful his drug trafficking had become.

“Amherst police knew it. Who did they call? The DEA agent. They fed him an informant,” Tripi said.

Then Bongiovanni launched a “pretend investigation,” Tripi said, exploiting gaps in the DEA’s operating procedures to allow him to “manipulate everyone.”

While the prosecution characterized Bongiovanni’s prosecution as a simple case, MacKay said a lot of the evidence will be technical and require jurors to understand procedures not just at the DEA but at other agencies involved in drug investigations as well.

“To do Mr. Bongiovanni justice, you’ll have to become familiar with the way the DEA works,” MacKay said.

Given all the federal agents and suspects, MacKay questioned how this alleged “trip-wire scheme” could have swept so wide to as include all the people involved in drug-trafficking activities or those investigating the crimes over a decade.

The case is going to be long, MacKay said, telling jurors that prosecutors will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt if “Mr. Bongiovanni is the criminal mastermind to orchestrate all of this.”

Tripi characterized Selva as the negotiator of the first bribery scheme Bongiovanni is charged with. Selva, a childhood friend of Bongiovanni’s, had been part of a marijuana-grow operation, and he convinced Bongiovanni to take the bribes, Tripi said.

Masecchia, who attended high school and college with Bongiovanni, was the person who arranged the cash drops with Bongiovanni.

“Masecchia was the muscle and money man,” Tripi said.

Masecchia and Bongiovanni were the only ones who knew where Bongiovanni was receiving the bribes, Tripi said.

“He did it out of warped sense of loyalty to childhood friends who grew up to be drug traffickers,” Tripi said.

MacKay described Selva as “sort of the scrub from the old neighborhood, the failure-to-launch kid who never got things together.”

But Bongiovanni liked him and helped him get a job as a jail deputy. And he somehow had money, MacKay said.

“You’ll learn a lot about Selva that will make you question everything he says,” MacKay said.

Serio was the “financier” of the operation, Tripi said.

Serio never met Bongiovanni, MacKay said.

The second bribery scheme involved Peter Gerace Jr., another childhood friend of Bongiovanni’s, according to Tripi.

Tripi said Gerace’s ex-wife, Katrina Nigro, will testify that Bongiovanni would enter a side entrance of the Gerace-owned Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club, the one without cameras, to collect envelopes of cash.

MacKay said she is “so wrapped up in hatred of Peter,” that her “fanciful” accounts about Pharaoh’s “don’t just strain credibility but tear it apart.”

Bongiovanni has been charged with accepting cash bribes from Gerace in exchange for protection from arrest and prosecution, shutting down an investigation, and also of falsely portraying Gerace as a DEA confidential source in order to dissuade an FBI agent from investigating Gerace.

Bongiovanni frequented Pharaoh’s and reconnected with Gerace after returning from a DEA stint in Florida, Tripi said.

Bongiovanni passed along to Gerace sensitive investigative information, used to protect Pharaoh’s, a place Tripi called “a bastion of alcohol, women and drug use.”

Bongiovanni, indicted by a grand jury in October 2019, faces charges he accepted at least $250,000 in bribes from drug dealers whom he thought were associated with Italian organized crime and shielded them from arrest, as well as provided them with information about investigations and cooperating sources. The ex-DEA special agent is the first from the agency in Western New York to be charged with bribery and corruption.

In addition to the counts of obstruction of justice and making false statements to a federal agency, Bongiovanni faces two counts of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances for his alleged involvement with Masecchia and Gerace. The first count alleges Bongiovanni conspired with Masecchia and others to distribute marijuana and cocaine. The second count alleges he conspired with Gerace and others to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, Adderall and marijuana.