Ex-DEA agent, strip club owner should be tried together, judge says
May 5, 2023



Retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent Joseph Bongiovanni drives a vintage car he restored. Bongiovanni was arrested in 2019 on felony charges that accuse him of accepting $250,000 in bribes and using his position in the DEA to help Buffalo drug dealers, including some connected to organized crime, avoid arrest. His attorney says the feds have no evidence that Bongiovanni took bribes and that the classic car is Bongiovanni's "only uniquely prized possession."

A former federal agent accused of protecting drug dealers with ties to the local mob fears he can't get a fair trial if he has to stand trial together with a strip club owner facing a sex-trafficking count. And the strip club owner worries he can't get a fair trial if jurors hear about the former agent's alleged ties to Italian organized crime.

The defense teams for Joseph Bongiovanni, the retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent and Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga, each sought separate trials. But U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. declined to sever the case, so the two men are scheduled to be tried together next month in U.S. District Court in Buffalo. The prosecution anticipates its case will take six to eight weeks and involve 100 witnesses or more.

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