Gerace's ex-wife says she handed Bongiovanni envelopes full of cash at strip club
Patrick LaKamp | The Buffalo News
The ex-wife of Peter Gerace Jr. testified Tuesday that she twice gave onetime Drug Enforcement Administration agent Joseph Bongiovanni envelopes "thick" with cash at Pharaoh's Gentlemen's Club in Cheektowaga.
Katrina Nigro also said Gerace gave Bongiovanni a 50th birthday card containing $5,000 in cash.
Nigro, 41, called the birthday present "over the top."
"I never got a gift like that," she said.
"The evidence will show that those were rewards for a job well done," Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi told jurors earlier in Bongiovanni's bribery and corruption trial.
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Tripi has said Nigro "was intimately placed in that club."
"She knows who got brought upstairs to have sex with dancers," Tripi said. "She knows how many overdoses there were. She knows Gerace's cocaine distribution and who was involved.
"And one thing that she'll also know is that this defendant would come for his envelopes of cash every so often, he would come to a side door and enter where there were no cameras, and she would provide the envelopes of cash to the defendant," Tripi told jurors earlier in the trial. "And then she'll tell you about another time when she and Peter Gerace were at the defendant's birthday party at a restaurant on Hertel Avenue, and Gerace's gift to the defendant was a card stuffed with cash."
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She previously told The Buffalo News she had a ringside seat to Buffalo Mafia activities during her four years as Gerace’s wife. They divorced in 2018.
The News has previously reported Nigro has served as a witness for federal law enforcement authorities investigating suspected organized crime activities involving her ex-husband and others, but Tripi on Tuesday did not focus on Italian organized crime.
Tripi asked her about the Outlaws Motorcycle Club members at Pharaoh's.
The club's members were at Pharaoh's every Wednesday, she said.
"It was like their church day," she said.
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