NEW: Feds Bust $10M Gambling Ring In Rochester

Just announced today: 7 charged with running illegal gambling & money laundering operation in Rochester, NY including poker games and an online sports book. NYS Trooper also charged with obstruction for his involvement.

https://www.democratandchronicle.co...mbling-ring-in-rochester-ny/69936028007/

Louis P. Ferrari II and Dominic Sprague, both residents of the town of Greece, and Tommaso Sessa of Spencerport are charged with operating an illegal gambling operation.

Anthony Amato, Joseph Lomardo, Joseph Boscarino, and James Cilvetti are charged with transmission of wagering information, along with Ferrari and Sprague.

All seven of the defendants are charged with conspiracy for their participation in the operation. Ferrari is also charged with money laundering.

Also charged in a separate complaint in connection with the case is former New York State Trooper Thomas Loewke, according to a spokesperson for the United States Attorney's Office. Loewke was charged with obstruction after allegedly tipping off a target of the investigation. A criminal complaint alleges that Loewke was illegally gambling on sports through the sport700.com website.

The criminal complaint details a seven-month investigation that involved undercover officers posing as gamblers, wiretaps of phones, and subpoenas of financial records that showed how the operation worked.

The complaint alleges that Ferrari and Sprague co-owned the illegal gambling operation at 565 Blossom Road, which hosted poker games. Sessa is accused of managing the day-to-day operations at the location.

Ferrari also operated an illegal sports betting book through a website called sport700.com. Ferrari managed individual bettors and also oversaw sub-agents who had their own books of individual bettors. Lombardo and Boscarino are accused of being sub-agents under Ferrari through the website.

Amato was allegedly the administrator of the website and assisted Ferrari and others in creating accounts, usernames, and passwords. Amato also managed individual bettors and oversaw sub-agents, authorities say.

Investigators say that Sprague would collect cash payments of gambling losses from bettors and pay gambling winnings to bettors from his business, a pawn shop located on Stone Road in Greece.

Civiletti was an employee of the pawn shop. While working at the pawn shop, he collected payments of gambling losses from people on behalf of Ferrari and Sprague, the complaint alleges.

The complaint says that Ferrari collected cash payments of gambling losses from players at his excavating business on Steel Street in the City of Rochester and then laundered the illegal proceeds through the business.

"Banking records confirm that Ferrari Excavating did not generate a lot of cash as revenue," the complaint says. "Based on Ferrari Excavating’s payroll records and the information provided by the employees, it appears that $765,908 was paid to employees in cash, off-the-books from April 2019 through January 2021. Ferrari Excavating generated cash revenue of only $97,232.36 during that same time. "

Eavesdropping warrants captured calls and text messages between Ferrari and five of his co-defendants discussing details of the gambling operation. In one call, Ferrari tells Sprague he'd just gone to the home of a gambling client to collect money and physically assaulted him. According to a transcript of the call, Ferrari said he was concerned because the man's wife had called the police.

Investigators raided the Blossom Road location in April 2021 and interrupted an ongoing illegal card game. Among the documents discovered were gambling ledgers and timestamped website printouts of online gambling player account activities.

Investigators got a warrant to access the betting website and discovered that Amato first set up the account in April 2016. According to court records, Amato had 128 sub-agent accounts operating underneath his account. Collectively, these sub-agents managed 1,789 individual bettors. Throughout the lifetime of the account, from April 2016 to January 2021, Amato’s winnings totaled $8,945,629, authorities said.

Investigators said Ferrari generated winnings totaling $1,241,172.

The criminal complaint was filed last week before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pedersen.



Is anyone aware of these names or a LCN connection? My personal take is that this has Todaro written all over it. Could it be NYC or just remnants of the Rochester family too?

Amato, Boscarino, Lombardo are familiar surnames, but no idea if they are connected and to whom.

This is a REALLY great post FrankV. The first sign of life of a Rochester underworld still in existence in many, many years.

So I wanna thank you very much for posting this!!! It puts to sleep, once and for all, a lot of controversy regarding if the Upstate Families were still alive or not.

And to answer your question about whether or not this bust has any LCN affiliations. That answer would be a big yes! In fact, the surnames Boscarino and Amato ring a bell to me immediately. Dating all the way back to the 1930s-1950s era, there was an Alfio Boscarino who was a major player in Rochester. If memory serves me correctly, there were also several additional Boscarino relatives also active in Rochester's rackets though the years.

And at this stage of the game, I'd imagine whatever remnants are left in that city do indeed report to the Buffalo Family.

What about this has Todaro written all over it? How does this put to sleep the question on whether upstate New York Families are active? So far there is no mention of LCN connections. Familiar last names don't mean anything unless we can find that connection. I'm not saying these guys aren't somehow connected to LCN but both of you are jumping to conclusions way too soon.

It has Todaro written all over it some serious mental gymnastics going on to get to that.

I do understand what you're saying M101. But I would venture to say that it is, in fact, an "organized crime" bookmaking operation. Especially because of its size and breathe.

Just because the prosecutors and news releases didn't mention a "mob connection" doesn't mean there isn't one. In fact, often times the government will leave out those words not to prejudice the case, or give defendants and the mouthpieces the opportunity to cry "foul" and that the case has been tainted by mob inferences.

This is extremely common. Especially in case where some, or all, of the said defendants have never before been "labeled" as mobbed-up.

But let's see what develops over the coming weeks and see if the release more info about them, and any connection to the mob.

Organized crime doesn't mean Mafia and I understand that indictments don't always reveal the defendants' connections to the Mafia. But no ties have been established as of yet by anyone so to say it is Mafia is jumping to conclusions. We're seeing Italian names and gambling and automatically making these links that have no basis as it stands.

For what it's worth, I believe that they have Mafia ties. And NY Mafia is right, they do oftentimes leave out mentions of mob connections. For example, Tom Farese is a well-known Colombo bigshot, but when he was busted in that healthcare fraud caper there were quite a few articles that made zero reference to his mob affiliation.

No one is denying they Mafia connections are left out often. But the difference is we know Farese is a Colombo member he's been identified as one for years now. As I said twice already there's no known connections to the Mafia in this case that anyone can point out right now it's just Italians and gambling.

Fair enough. Lets see what other info develops over the coming weeks and months. I say there is a connection. Not necessarily formally" inducted members operating in Rochester, but at least a handful of associates connected to the old Buffalo Family. I'm sure something will come out in the wash.

Exactly Liggio, thats what I was trying to bring out.

Agreed, and Farese (as you stated) was/is a "documented" member of organized crime according to law enforcement records dating back decades. So imagine fellas who don't even have such a notorious reputation? Law enforcement officials often times become very skeptical and hesitant to include the words OC in any indictment.

But again, we'll see what shakes out down the road a bit.

I'm sure prosecutor handling the case will be providing additional background information in the "discovery" material he is required to release to the court (and the defense lawyers), in the coming weeks.

Well the reason I felt this could be linked to Todaro is that Buffalo had some incidents in recent years allegedly bribing law enforcement (was it Todaro’s nephew linked to a DEA Agent?) and in this Rochester bust the state trooper was arrested for tipping off Ferrari.

It remains to be seen.

You can read the entire criminal complaint here:
https://www.scribd.com/document/628332294/Illegal-Gambling-Ring-Complaint

I just skimmed it and it sounds like they were heavily surveilled. No direct mentions of an organized crime link. There are some redacted names of other associates mentioned in wiretapped conversations, but nothing jumps out at me as mob related yet. They could’ve been independent operators, I’ll admit. But with an operation this large, maybe not.

Also, here is a news report from the arraignment. You get a glimpse at each of the men charged. All Italian guys on the younger side. Ferrari looks to be early 40s.



Continuing to follow the case for now.

There's no way they were independent operators. Rochester is still around

Don't some Bonannos have operations in Rochester

Who said that Bonannos,Colombos and Buffalo are operating in Rochester have some proofs?

So much for all that talk about legalized gambling putting illegal gambling out of business.

No proof, but those three families have been operating all over for a very long time