BUFFALO, N.Y. — The first full day of testimony at the re-trial of former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Joseph Bongiovanni may have sounded familiar to courtroom observers, but not to the new set of jurors who will eventually decide his guilt or innocence.
Three months after a hung jury could not agree on nearly a dozen charges against him federal prosecutors are once again aiming to convict him on a host of charges centered on allegations that he accepted bribes from drug dealers to shield them from police and prosecutors.
Bongiovanni is accused of receiving close to $250,000 over the course of a decade in such fashion but has staunchly maintained his innocence ever since his arrest more than five years ago.
Bongiovanni's former boss at the DEA took the stand on Tuesday, as much of the questioning by prosecutors centered on building their case in which they accuse Bongiovanni of orchestrating a scheme whereby he would purposely list drug dealers as confidential informants, with no intent of using them as such, so that he would be alerted if they or their associates were being investigation by any other law enforcement agency.
It is alleged he would then tip them off to investigations in exchange for cash payments.
His lawyers have contended that the government has no proof of Bongiovanni receiving bribe money, and will produce no witnesses that can testify to that.
Dale Kasprzyk, who retired from the DEA in 2013 and who is now a fraud investigator for M&T Bank, was the Resident Agent in Charge of the DEA's Buffalo office for two of the roughly ten years that Bongiovanni was allegedly on the take.
He testified that in 2009 Bongiovanni told him that Pharaoh's strip club owner Peter Gerace, a co-defendant who will be tried separately, offered to become an informant if he could get a break on the charge of violating his probation after failing a drug test.
Kasprzyk testified that Bongiovanni described Gerace only as an acquaintance "from the neighborhood" whom he'd grown up with.
But prosecutors say Bongiovanni failed to tell his boss that the two were friends who socialized and even went on vacations together.
When asked by prosecutors: "Would you have permitted Bongiovanni to handle cases involving Peter Gerace if you knew that? Kasprzyk replied, "No sir, I would not."
When asked if the DEA had a policy against agents associating with known felons, Kasprzyk answered, "It is prohibited"
When asked, Would you have approved him (Gerace) as (Bongiovanni's) confidential informant? Kasprzyk answered, "No, I would not have".
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Prosecutors have described Bongiovanni as having an affinity for members of Italian Organized Crime, something else his lawyers have denied.
Also taking the stand on Tuesday was retired FBI agent Thomas Herbst.
Currently living in Florida, Herbst testified that the FBI was interested in Gerace as part of an investigation into cold case homicides from the 1980s which the government believed were committed by members of the Buffalo mafia.
In 2009, according to Herbst, the feds were looking to cultivate a relationship with Gerace because his grandfather and uncle, Joseph Todaro Sr. and Joseph Todaro Jr. were believed by the government to have been the boss and underboss of the Buffalo mob.
Despite years of investigations the Todaro's, who operated the highly successful LaNova Pizzeria on Buffalo's west side, were never convicted of anything associated with organized crime.
However, as Gerace is a blood relative of the Todaro's, Herbst explained that he was interested in speaking with him.
Shortly after a 2009 raid at Pharaoh's which resulted in Gerace being charged with violating his probation Herbst said he got a call from Bongiovanni, saying Gerace had information he'd exchange if the government would give him leniency regarding the probation violation charges he faced.
He also said he was told by Bongiovanni not to bring his partner on a safe streets task force, Amherst police detective Robert Cottrell, to the meeting.
Herbst says he went to the Electric Tower where the DEA offices were located and found it odd that Bongiovanni insisted they meet outside the office and on the mezzanine level of the building instead.
Herbst said Gerace also attended the meeting but offered nothing of substance.
According to Herbst, when he later told Bongiovanni he had enough evidence to make a drug case against Gerace, Bongiovanni tried to dissuade him by telling him it "wasn't a good case", and that prosecutors would never take it, while also leading him to believe Gerace was a confidential informant working for the DEA.