https://nypost.com/2023/04/14/antho...sentenced-to-life/?utm_source=reddit.comAnthony Zottola sentenced to life for having NYC mobster dad killed in murder-for-hire plot
The son of a Bronx mobster who ordered his dad rubbed out in a heartless bid to seize his $45 million real estate empire was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Brooklyn federal court Friday.
United States District Judge Hector Gonzalez handed down two life sentences to Anthony Zottola, 45, for a greedy murder-for-hire and conspiracy plot that killed 71-year-old Sylvester “Sally Daz” Zottola in a hail of bullets in October 2018.
Zottola was also hit with an additional 112 years behind bars for weapons charges.
“My father was not only murdered on October 4, 2018 but he was hunted down starting on September 8, 2017,” Sally Daz’s heartbroken daughter, Debbie Zottola, told the court before the sentencing. “He turned 70 that year and had to live in fear… The last year of his life was pure torture.”
Zottola hired hitman Himen Ross, 36, to gun down his father in a Bronx McDonald’s drive-through in a scheme to take control of his more than 90 properties, according to prosecutors.
Anthony Zottola was handed down two life sentences for a murder-for-hire and conspiracy plot that killed 71-year-old Sylvester “Sally Daz” Zottola.
Sylvester Zottola was killed in gunned down at a Bronx McDonald’s drive-through in October 2018.
Ross was also sentenced Friday to mandatory life in prison as devastated family members of the dead mobster packed the courtroom.
“You were the man that shot my father, my lifeline, and murdered him in cold blood in his car,” Debbie Zottola told Ross in court before the sentencing.
“You killed me, you killed his grandchildren, especially my two sons who were old enough to understand every single thing that was happening.”
She said her dad “had to live in fear” as he was hunted down by assassins and that “the last year of his life was pure torture.”
During Zottola’s six-week trial, prosecutors said he hatched the assassination plan with the help of bumbling Bloods gang leader Bushawn Shelton, with whom he exchanged hundreds of coded text messages about the slaying.
Zottola hired hitman Himen Ross, 36, to gun down his father in a scheme to take control of his more than 90 properties, according to prosecutors.
Christopher Sadowski
The hit came after six failed attempts to take out the mobster over nearly a year, along with his elder son, Salvatore, who escaped alive.
Sally Daz was an associate of the Bonanno crime family, one of the so-called “Five Families” that control organized crime in New York City.
His work for the mob included collecting money from illegal “Joker Poker” gambling machines at bars and “number holes” in the Bronx — and paying Bonanno boss Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano and Lucchese family mobster protection money, Salvatore Zottola testified during the trial.
Over decades, he invested the cash he made running the gambling machines into building a lucrative real estate fortune that his son desperately wanted, according to prosecutors.
“Over the course of more than a year, the elderly victim, Sylvester Zottola, was stalked, beaten, and stabbed, never knowing who orchestrated the attacks. It was his own son, who was so determined to control the family’s lucrative real estate business, that he hired a gang of hit men to murder his father,” Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Friday.
“For sentencing his father to a violent death, Anthony Zottola and his co-defendant will spend the rest of their lives in prison.”Zottola and Ross were both convicted of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and firearms offenses.
Shelton pleaded guilty before the trial.
