BUFFALO, N.Y. — The retrial of Joseph Bongiovanni continued on Wednesday as prosecutors once again try and convict the former DEA agent of charges he accepted bribes from drug dealers to shield them from investigations.
A jury at his first trail held earlier this year was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on most of the serious charges against Bongiovanni.
Thus far, prosecution witnesses have included several retired members of law enforcement through whose testimony the government hopes to convict jurors that Bongiovanni tried to suppress drug trafficking investigations of his co-defendant Peter Gerace as well as another big time dealer whose eventual arrest led to Bongiovanni being charged.
On Wednesday, jurors heard testimony from Amy Petrzebowski, a former dancer at the Pharaoh's Gentlemen's Club, who described the sale, distribution, and use of narcotics within the club as being pervasive from when she started working there at age 22 in 2007 until she left for the last time in 2013.
According to Petrzebowski, she dated club owner Peter Gerace on and off during the course of her six-year employment. She said Gerace introduced her to Bongiovanni at the club one night and handed her Bongiovanni's business card telling her that if she ever got into trouble, she should call him.
Other former law enforcers, including retired agents from the DEA and FBI, have testified that when they began targeting Gerace in drug investigations, Bongiovanni would intervene, claiming that Gerace was his confidential informant. They testified that Bongiovanni described Gerace as more or less an acquaintance who he had grown up with "in the neighborhood" and never let on that — as prosecutors contend — the two were friends who socialized and even went on vacations together.
Prosecutors are expected to introduce the contents of text messages from Gerace's phone to try and bolster their claim.
Retired Amherst police detective Robert Cottrell testified that in 2013 a burglary suspect named Robert Kaiser offered information that Ronald Serio was operating a major drug ring from his palatial Le Brun Avenue mansion.
The case seemed so big that it was decided that Kaiser would be turned over to the DEA so that it might use him as a confidential informant in the case.
However, prosecutors allege that once that was done, Bongiovanni shelved Kaiser as an informant because the Serio drug ring was paying Bongiovanni up to $4,000 per month to protect it.
Ronald Serio is expected to testify, as he did in the first trial, that he funded the payments to Bongiovanni. But Kaiser will not testify this time around, as he died three months ago of a suspected drug overdose.
Prosecutors hope to be able to read his testimony into evidence at this second trial.
Some of the events witnesses have testified to occurred 15 years ago and Bongiovanni's lawyers have taken opportunities to note the imprecision of their recollections.
To give you an idea of how far back it was, some agents have testified to sharing intelligence reports via fax machines and phone numbers retrieved from their rolodexes.