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Wiseguy Back Behind Bars After Surviving A Nine-Day Prison Furlough

Colombo capo Luca DiMatteo finished up an unusual nine-day jail furlough last week. He didn't have much fun. The veteran wiseguy, who has several convictions for violent crimes including extortion, returned to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn to resume his pre-trial detention as he awaits a racketeering trial in September that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.

The 71-year-old mobster's brief respite from the federal lockup is yet another telling illustration of how confinement in a federal prison can be dangerous to your health when you've got bladder cancer, diabetes or other ailments that require more than perfunctory medical care. Three weeks ago we reported that Genovese soldier Salvatore (Sally KO) Larca needed emergency surgery after receiving poor medical care for severe gastro-intestinal ailments at the federal prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey.

DiMatteo seems even worse off. Brooklyn Judge I. Leo Glasser, who detained DiMatteo a year ago as a danger to the community despite his cancer, was so vocal about the shoddy care he got over the past five months that the feds agreed to release him for seven days so he could undergo tests at a real hospital rather than contest the issue with testimony by prison doctors and officials at a full-blown hearing.

"I understand the MDC is not the Mayo Clinic," said Glasser. "But I also understand that even the MDC, or Bureau of Prisons has an obligation to see to it that a person in need of medical attention is receiving it appropriately and adequately."

The day before the hearing was slated to begin, prosecutors filed a notice agreeing to release DiMatteo for one week so he could "receive medical evaluations in a hospital" once he posted a $1.2 million bond. At the end of the week, they added, DiMatteo would be required to "self-surrender" to either the MDC or a prison hospital determined by the BOP.

"This is another instance of waiting too long to diagnose and treat, and now this man will suffer the consequences," said Linda Sheffield, an Atlanta-based attorney who represents many inmates. "He was locked up and nobody in authority seemed to care. They do it over and over. This is the norm, except most people don't get a week outside for proper care. Most of the seriously ill come out in a body bag."

"It is my experience that inmates wait months for a simple diagnostic test, after an outside doctor orders it, and by then the condition is critical," Sheffield said. "Test results from long delayed tests are sometimes not properly communicated and the result can be catastrophic. That is my ongoing experience with clients."

In one case in which her client has "a mental health issue," the lawyer added, "the BOP psychiatrist vindictively removed vital medications on two separate occasions because he questioned her and his care when they teleconferenced."

DiMatteo also suffers from thyroid cancer and a host of other medical problems including heart disease, hypertension and a type of adrenal cancer that "may or may not be in remission," according to a list of his medical problems his attorney listed in court papers. He also depends on a pacemaker and "is in chronic debilitating pain," says lawyer Flora Edwards.

DiMatteo is a dyed in the wool gangster. His last prison stretch was 57 months on a 2003 case, when he was indicted with family consigliere Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace and a dozen others for a 17-year-long racketeering spree that included the extortions of two Brooklyn yacht clubs — and ended with a guilty plea in which he admitted punching out a deadbeat debtor.

Despite his many ailments, as soon as he was released from prison in 2007 he quickly resumed his criminal activity, according to prosecutors Elizabeth Geddes and Allon Lifshitz.

According to the feds, DeMatteo went straight from his chemo therapy treatments to receiving extortion payments a year ago. In July, he and his nephew, Luca (Lukey) DiMatteo, 47, were arrested on racketeering charges including loansharking, gambling and shaking down a fearful Brooklyn businessman for $200 every two weeks for more than 10 years.

Since then, judges have rejected several get-out-of jail requests based on DiMatteo's proven medical ailments.

"An illness doesn't justify criminal behavior," Glasser said at one bail hearing, agreeing with prosecutors that DiMatteo's ailments were no excuse since they didn't curtail his criminal activities.

But the judge changed his tune after hearing Edwards detail how her client was mistreated, without much contradiction from the prosecutors.

In January, Edwards told Glasser, the MDC stopped giving DiMatteo his prescribed pain medication and substituted a "completely ineffective" drug. For the next three months, the lockup ignored six requests, including two letters the lawyer sent to the Warden, that DiMatteo be examined by a doctor.

After she complained to Geddes, said Edwards, the prosecutor got back to her quickly and reported that she'd been told that "DiMatteo had been seen by a doctor." But Geddes "was misinformed," said Edwards, stating that DiMatteo "was seen by a physician's assistant" whose advice was to "double the dosage" of the same useless medicine he'd been getting since January.

When prison officials finally transported the ailing gangster to a Brooklyn hospital, they neglected to send along his medical records.

"They turned around and took him back" to the MDC and he was "bedridden for another two days," said Edwards. "He can't be left to suffer at the MDC until his heart gives out."

By mid-May, DiMatteo was "unable to focus on anything but the constant pain he is experiencing," said Edwards. "DiMatteo urgently needs an overall evaluation to determine the cause of his constant pain and a program of pain management which will provide him with sufficient relief to participate meaningfully in his defense and to conduct day to day activities," she informed Glasser.

According to court papers, two days after his furlough began, DiMatteo was rushed to the emergency room of Winthrop Hospital in Mineola for undisclosed reasons, where he remained until last Thursday, when he reported back to the MDC, two days later than originally planned.

Neither Edwards nor the BOP would disclose the results of the tests that DiMatteo underwent or the reason why he was hospitalized.

In April, over the objections of prosecutors, Glasser granted a weekend furlough to DiMatteo's nephew Lukey. This also wasn't for a happy family gathering. It was a compassionate release on a Friday that Lukey's 17-month-old daughter underwent surgery for treatment of Stage 4 cancer.