Nothing But Money (38 page)
Authors: Greg B. Smith
Plus, Prosecutor Sabot noted, Warrington had promised to contribute to the $1 million in restitution owed by multiple defendants who’d been convicted and now needed to reimburse some of the people they’d ripped off. It helped, perhaps, that Warrington’s customers had not been mom and pop investors from Weehawken, but were instead international banks and other institutional investors that had, in some cases, participated in the scheme. And he had agreed to pay a $75,000 fine, even though he was to be, for a time, barred from the securities industry and would have to come up with another means of paying that one off.
And then it was time for Warrington to speak. The judge said, “I’ll listen to you for anything that you wish to tell me in connection with sentence, any statements that you’d like to make on your own behalf, anything at all you’d like to tell me.”
No more hired guns, no more delay. Warrington stood up, arranging and rearranging papers on the table before him.
“Obviously I have a lot of thoughts on this,” he said. “My life has been through so much.”
He opened with remorse.
“I would like to apologize to those persons that suffered as a result of my bad choices and my greedy choices, and I would like to apologize to the victims of my schemes. I apologize to my family, my wife, my son. I apologize to the court. I apologize to the assistant U.S. attorneys who have worked with me for the last five years.”
He was just warming up.
“I’m in total embarrassment, disgrace, total humiliation. I could never have been beaten down lower as a human being. What a catastrophic lesson to learn. I’m shocked, and I had it coming.”
He veered back to shifting blame. He picked the usual target—his upbringing.
“I don’t know. It was probably something since childhood that had evolved. My parents were divorced when I was three, so I kind of grew up myself, sort of under the trappings that both of those persons provided for me with who they remarried, so I was always on this mission to acquire. They led a well-to-do lifestyle, but it wasn’t mine. But I just did what I could do to keep up, to win their approval. And the journey took me through life and I ended up being a stockbroker and it was the first time I started to make money.”
Here he was back with Cary Cimino on New Year’s Eve on St. Bart’s. It was a thousand years ago, a lifetime. His crossroads. His date with the devil.
“People looked at me like I was a good person. It led me into an engagement and then I was, I suppose, confronted with temptation and the temptation was ‘Here’s some money in front of you, do you want it?’ And it kills me that I said yes, and it nearly killed me. And if Jeffrey Pokross was not a cooperator for the government, I would have been killed.”
Now he brought up his child, Francis Warrington Gillet IV. It might seem a bit unseemly to bring up one’s offspring in an effort to escape punishment, but it would also be fair to say that Warrington appeared to be truly moved by the fact that he had a child to raise. The idea that he was supposed to be a role model for another human being had certainly changed him. Not completely, but enough.
“These greedy choices I made at the time I didn’t have a child, but this child would have grown up without a father. I mean, what a catastrophic lesson to be given to somebody.” And then he began to drift. “And I’ve had every day since I first came into this building to reflect on that and to try to put the pieces of my life back together.” He made a point to remind the judge of the “mercy of the court,” and ended by requesting “another chance to prove myself, you know? That I can be a good person and a good father.”
“Thank you,” he said, and he did not sit down. He just stood there, pushing the papers around in front of him, waiting.
In the federal system at this time, defendants faced a range of years in jail based on a complex mathematical formula known as “the guidelines” that took into account the offense they were convicted of, their prior criminal history and several other outstanding factors such as how much money you stole. If you stole a lot—as Warrington did—you could get extra time in prison. The best way to reduce that range of years was to cooperate with the prosecutors, who would then be inspired to ask the judge to reduce the sentence. But all they could do was ask. The judge had the final say, and in this case, the guidelines required that Warrington receive a sentence of fifty-one to sixty-three months. That could mean five years and three months inside a federal prison somewhere out there in America. That could mean an orange jumpsuit and mixing it up in the yard with the other nonviolent miscreants—the corrupt cops, the fallen CEOs, the drug mules, the tax cheats.
The judge asked the prosecutor if there was anything else he needed to say, and they went back and forth about the peculiarities of restitution and whether any of the trivial facts placed on the record in the probation department’s pre-sentence report were accurate and fair, and it was all excruciating for Warrington. He needed resolution. He needed a final word. He needed to know right away just how bad it was going to be.
Judge Koeltl, in methodic monotone, began his important monologue in this little bit of theater. Right away, Warrington heard the magic words he was hoping for—“substantial assistance.”
“It is plain that the defendant has provided substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of others,” Judge Koeltl said. “The cooperation helped in the return of two indictments against numerous defendants. The defendant in this case was prepared to testify and did provide extensive cooperation. His assistance was truthful, reliable and prompt.”
Judge Koeltl even took note of the threat to Warrington’s safety implied by Cary Cimino’s ultimately empty threats at Sparks Steakhouse.
“It is clear that the defendant’s cooperation brought with it a risk of significant personal danger, which raises the credit that should be given the defendant in this particular case.”
And then, more than five years after the FBI woke up Warrington from a deep sleep in his Central Park West apartment, Judge Koeltl cut Warrington the break of his life.
“It is the judgment of this court that the defendant, Francis Warrington Gillet III, is hereby placed on probation for a term of three years,” the judge said. “The defendant shall also comply with the conditions of home confinement for six months.”
This meant Warrington would have stay in his apartment on the Upper East Side of New York for six months except to look for or work at a job. His phone couldn’t have call-forwarding, caller ID or call-waiting. It had to be plugged into a wall. A cordless phone and a cell phone were out of the question. After that he could come and go as he pleased, as long as he remembered to follow the requirements of the U.S. Department of Probation for another two and a half years. Not a single day would he have to spend in a federal prison for the crimes he had committed during his time as Johnny Casablanca at DMN. Warrington had officially dodged the bullet.
Outside court he began making calls to let friends and family know how he’d fared. It was nothing but good news, as far as he could tell. Sure, he’d have to stay away from Wall Street for a while, which would make coughing up money for restitution and fines tough. Sure, he’d have to meet regularly with a probation officer and let him know all about how he was trying to earn money and contribute to society. Sure, he was a felon, but he would never be an inmate. Sure, he’d be barred from purchasing and owning a firearm for the rest of his life, but he could live with that. Sure, he’d have to put down this little matter on every job application he ever filled out until the day he died, but so what? His only prison would be his apartment, with cable and air-conditioning and fully stocked liquor cabinet.
Damn, Warrington thought. This is a great country.
There was only one problem. Warrington Gillet IV. Little Warry. He would have to explain it all to Little Warry. Explaining this to his fellow adults was relatively simple. Life is complicated. Sometimes you make bad decisions. Sometimes you get a little too selfish and forget your way. Adults understand these things. Kids really don’t. They see things on a much simpler level. Warrington would have to let Little Warry know that his father had made huge mistakes and then gotten lucky. He would have to find just the right words, and that—more than anything—would be the most difficult task of all. In the end, after all was said and done, it really came down to one thing.
“The biggest job with your kids is the biggest job with my kid,” he said, “and that is, you have to teach them the difference between right and wrong.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
2004
At 6 p.m. on a spring day in March, Robert from Avenue U found himself once again standing in a courtroom, wrangling over words with lawyers. It was after hours in the federal court in downtown Brooklyn and the issue was the organization to which Robert belonged. In the opinion of the United States attorney, Greg Andres, the organization was the Bonanno crime family and Robert Lino was a captain with supervisory responsibilities. The prosecutor was insisting that Robert from Avenue U say the actual words, “Bonanno crime family.” Robert from Avenue U was not pleased at this development. He’d agreed to plead guilty to several crimes and say he was a member of a group, but he was not about to say anything about any Bonanno crime family.
None of this had anything to do with Wall Street and pump and dump and corrupt brokers and stock promoters and DMN. This was all about everything going on behind the curtain, and the reason they were all assembled was because of Robert’s uncle and mentor, Frank Lino. Frank had gone and turned himself into a cooperator for the FBI and started talking about all his friends, including his nephew, the kid from Midwood he’d helped raise as a favor to his cousin, Bobby Lino Sr.
Frank had given up Robert from Avenue U in a heartbeat. He’d told the FBI all about the murder of Louis Tuzzio, the one in which Robert was the shooter. He’d also remembered the business about Robert Perrino, the guy from the
New York Post
Robert helped with. There were many other stories to recall, harkening all the way back to dark winter nights digging into the frozen ground of Staten Island to find a final resting place for Gabe Infanti, then trying again a few years later to find Gabe and not succeeding. Frank had a remarkable memory for detail, and as a result, Robert now faced the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.
New York Post
Robert helped with. There were many other stories to recall, harkening all the way back to dark winter nights digging into the frozen ground of Staten Island to find a final resting place for Gabe Infanti, then trying again a few years later to find Gabe and not succeeding. Frank had a remarkable memory for detail, and as a result, Robert now faced the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.
Robert had agreed to admit to certain activities at this particular court session. And at first, things had gone along as planned. His lawyer, Barry Levin, and the prosecutor, Greg Andres, did not seem to get along at all. The judge, Nicholas Garaufis, kept stepping in to smooth things over. The task at hand was fairly simple: Robert had to plead guilty to four counts related to a lengthy racketeering indictment brought against much of the Bonanno crime family, which Robert did not wish to acknowledge the existence of.
“The defendant needs to acknowledge that the enterprise charged in the indictment is the enterprise with which he associated,” said the prosecutor.
“But he need not allocute to the name of the enterprise?” the judge asked.
“Correct, Judge,” replied the prosecutor.
They came up with a plan to give Robert twenty-seven years in prison. He was thirty-seven, so that meant if he behaved in prison and got a little time off as a reward, he still wouldn’t be walking out on to the streets of America until he was sixty. A sobering thought for a man not yet forty.
Lino—who barely got out of elementary school—began to read a prepared statement describing his crimes.
“Your Honor, I am not such a good reader and I don’t have prescription glasses, so bear with me.”
“Take your time,” said the judge.
“I, Robert Lino, withdraw my previous plea of not guilty under case number 03 CR 0307 S20 and enter a plea of guilty to Count One of the superseding indictment . . . charging me with violation of Title 18 of United States Code Section 1962 D. That I joined an association of individuals and I conspired to commit the following criminal acts.”
“Go ahead,” said the judge.
“I was involved in illegal gambling and sports betting. Acts 15.” Lino stopped. He couldn’t read what was written. His lawyer, Levin, jumped in.
“Between January 1, 1989, and January 1, 2003. Your Honor, it is my chicken scratch, so I have to apologize to the court.”
Robert summed it up: “I was taking bets on sports and that is it.”
The judge asked, “Were you taking bets?”
“On sports,” Lino replied.
“Did this activity involve five or more people?”
“Five or more bets? Yes.”
And so on. Soon it got around to the murder of Louis Tuzzio, the same Louis Tuzzio that Robert Lino personally shot in the face. The judge said, “As to Racketeering Act 16, the conspiracy to murder and the murder of Louis Tuzzio.”
Robert Lino said, “I participated in the conspiracy to murder and the actual murder of Louis Tuzzio between December 1989 and January 3 of 1990.”
The prosecutor interjected: “The government would prove at trial that Mr. Lino was, in fact, the shooter on the Tuzzio murder.”
“All right,” said the court.
Next up was Robert Perrino, a man who died by another’s hand. Robert Lino merely helped clean up afterward, which in a murder conspiracy was more or less as bad as being the guy who pulled the trigger.
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