http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/10/03/1003artuso.htmlBy SUSAN SPENCER-WENDEL
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 03, 2008
WEST PALM BEACH — After six days of deliberations, a federal jury returned resounding guilty verdicts Friday in a sweeping racketeering conspiracy, mail and wire fraud and money laundering case against four men prosecutors argued were associated with organized crime.
Jurors convicted Vincent Artuso, his son John Vincent Artuso, and Gregory Orr on all the charges they faced. The panel convicted as well Philip E. Forgione on racketeering and fraud charges, but acquitted him of more than a dozen individual money laundering charges.
All the men face potential lengthy prison terms when sentenced by U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks Dec. 15. Each charge alone carries a maximum possible penalty of 20 years in prison.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys William Shockley and J. Brian McCormick presented evidence the men conspired in the sale and leasing of four office buildings own by ADT Security Services to defraud the company of at least $11 million over five years, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. They depicted Vincent Artuso as the leader of the South Florida crew of the Gambino crime family who directed the enterprise. The other men were depicted as associates but non-members of the crime family.
A defense attorney for John Vincent Artuso said outside court that the guilty verdicts stunned all those on the defense team. Miami attorney Mike Pasano said he told jurors the notion that there is a branch of the Gambino family operating in South Florida is "ludicrous."
"I'll continue to say it's ludicrous - until or unless someone can show me some real evidence, I'll never agree it's anything but ludicrous."
Attorney David Markus, who defended Gregory Orr, said there are good issues that will definitely be appealed. "It's a shame that the jury obviously struggled. They were deliberating over a week," Markus said.
A coterie of ladies who accompanied the men in court over the course of the trial began crying as the verdicts were read, their sobbing getting louder at growing number of guilties.
"Oh my God! What's wrong with them?" one blurted out about the jurors.
The men remained stone faced, Artuso looking up at the ceiling, his son looking back toward his fiancee and mother.
A fifth defendant, Robert Gannon, was earlier acquitted by the judge of the charges against him.
Called by prosecutors at trial to give a glimpse of mob operations was Lewis Kasman, the self-proclaimed adopted son of John Gotti, now residing in Boca Raton.
According to a media release issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office after the verdict, Artuso supervised and directed members of an enterprise, including his son, Orr, Forgione and William Larry Horton, in the commission of various frauds against numerous victims throughout the United States and against ADT, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tyco International Ltd.
