Feds bust alleged gambling ring in Rochester
Federal agents have charged seven local men with running a gambling operation that took bets on sporting events and hosted illegal poker games in an office suite in the city of Rochester.
According to a criminal complaint, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies launched an investigation in October 2020 which revealed that the defendants were conspiring to operate illegal poker games in a suite at 565 Blossom Road and to run an illegal sports betting operation through a website.
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.
In-person sports wagering at licensed casinos has been legal in New York since 2019, and in 2022, mobile sports wagering through certain licensed platforms became legal in the state. However, unlicensed bookmaking, whether in person or online, has been and remains illegal in the State of New York.
Poker games and sports gambling
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.
Gambling proceeds laundered through business
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.
Police raid interrupted poker game in progress
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.
The criminal complaint was filed last week before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pedersen.
Contact reporter Sean Lahman at slahman@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @seanlahman.
