People v. Cantarella
| Decision Date | 02 December 1993 |
| Citation | 606 N.Y.S.2d 942,160 Misc.2d 8 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of New York, v. Richard CANTARELLA, Frank Cantarella, Anthony Michele, Vincent DiSario, Corey Ellenthal, Michael Fago, Gerard Bilboa, Anthony Turzio, Defendants. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court |
Robert Morgenthau, Dist. Atty., New York County by Shawn Dwyer, for the People.
Paul Lemole, Staten Island, for defendant Richard Cantarella.
Joseph LaMattina, Staten Island, for defendant Frank Cantarella.
George Goltzer, New York City, for defendant Anthony Michele.
Phyllis Mingione, New York City, for defendant Vincent DiSario.
Michael Hammerman, Forest Hills, for defendant Corey Ellenthal.
Stanley Teitler, New York City, for defendant Michael Fago.
Mathew Mari, New York City, for defendant Gerard Bilboa.
Michael Ricci, Whitestone, for defendant Anthony Turzio.
These defendants are the remainder of a group of fourteen who were jointly indicted for enterprise corruption [Penal Law § 460.20(1)(a) ] and related crimes. Five of the original defendants, including a corporate defendant, pled guilty, and one of them, Robert Perrino, is a fugitive.
The indictment describes the criminal enterprise as the "Post Circulation Crew" [hereinafter identified as the Crew], which allegedly existed for the purpose of controlling the circulation department of the New York Post by means of extortion, coercion, the falsification of business records, larceny, bribery and other crimes for financial gain. The evidence before the grand jury established that the Bonnano crime organization employed the structure of the Post's delivery department to conduct a variety of unlawful schemes. The Crew included the superintendent of delivery of the Post, Robert Perrino, who is also an associate of the Bonnano crime organization. An eavesdropping device, installed inside Perrino's office at the Post, intercepted conversations which revealed the hierarchy within the criminal enterprise. Tapes show that Perrino received instructions from Salvatore Vitale, an unindicted coconspirator and the acting boss of the Bonnano crime organization. Perrino remitted portions of the proceeds of the Crew's illicit activities to Vitale. Perrino conducted various criminal schemes on the premises of the Post, using his position as superintendent of delivery to further these criminal schemes. Among the schemes was usury, which Perrino conducted in part by his control over checks issued to men who worked under him and who were the victims of his usury. The evidence also showed that the defendant John Vispisiano, the business agent at the Post for the News and Mail Deliverer's Union (NMDU), in concert with Perrino, accepted payment to influence his discretion in regard to the enforcement of union rules covering Post drivers. Additionally, Vispisiano and Perrino engaged in a larcenous scheme to cause the Post to repurchase as unsold newsstand newspapers (known in the industry as "returns"), papers distributed free as samples for home delivery. Perrino oversaw this and another larcenous returns scheme operated by Perrino with one Joe Torre through the corporate defendant, Citiwide News. Perrino used Post drivers to carry out these larcenous schemes by funneling nonredeemable papers back to the Post as legitimate "returns". Salvatore Vitale shared in the proceeds of these larcenies. Perrino also created and operated a payroll scam which involved placement on the Post payroll of a nonexistent person using the social security number of a deceased member of the Bonnano organization. In addition, Bonnano member Richard Cantarella was paid on the Post payroll for work he did not perform.
The indictment also alleges an agreement to commit a scheme to defraud Post advertisers by inflating Post circulation figures and thereby influencing the rate which advertisers paid for circulation. Members of the circulation department, including the defendant Michele, created fictitious delivery routes to support inflated circulation figures. Drivers were assigned at random to these nonexistent routes, and supporting documentation including bank accounts was created in these drivers' names without their knowledge. However two of these drivers, the defendants Turzio and Torre were chosen by the conspirators, at the direction of their superiors in the circulation department, to misrepresent to circulation auditors that these delivery routes existed. The defendant DiSario, also a Post driver, delivered 2,000 papers nightly to Citiwide drivers, who in turn delivered to vendors, substituting the 2,000 papers for earlier editions of the Post in an attempt to make it appear to auditors that papers were in fact being distributed to the vendors.
The indictment charges each of these defendants with committing enterprise corruption by engaging in certain criminal acts to further a criminal enterprise, which criminal acts are also separately charged in substantive counts as to that defendant. A person is guilty of enterprise corruption under Penal Law § 460.20(1)(a) when:
1. having knowledge of the existence of a criminal enterprise and the nature of its activities;
2. and being employed by or associated with such enterprise;
3. he intentionally conducts or participates in the affairs of an enterprise [either criminal or legitimate];
4. by participating in a pattern of criminal activity.
The defendants first argue that the statute is vague and the prosecution unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [U.S.Cons.Amdt. XIV]. In enacting the enterprise corruption statute, the Legislature sought to define the scope of enterprise corruption more rigorously than comparable federal statutes. [Penal Law § 460.00 p 4; People v. Capaldo, 151 Misc.2d 114, 572 N.Y.S.2d 989 (1991); People v. Moscatiello, 149 Misc.2d 752, 754-755, 566 N.Y.S.2d 823 (1990); cf., H.J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 492 U.S. 229, 239, 109 S.Ct. 2893, 2900, 106 L.Ed.2d 195 (1989).] The court rejects the defendants' argument in light of the definition sections of the statute, which render this statute significantly more definite in its scope than the comparable federal RICO statute (18 USC § 1961 et seq.) which has been upheld as constitutional [see, People v. Wakefield Financial Corp., 155 Misc.2d 775, 783-784, 590 N.Y.S.2d 382 (1992) ].
The defendants next argue that the statute requires proof that each of them participated in three separate criminal transactions, or in other words in three separate criminal conspiracies [See, e.g., People v. Ruiz, 130 Misc.2d 191, 195-196, 496 N.Y.S.2d 612 (1985) ]. This argument is based upon the statutory requirement that each defendant "intentionally * * * participate[ ] in the affairs of an enterprise by participating in a pattern of criminal activity" [Penal Law § 460.20(1)(a) ] and upon the statutory definition of a pattern of criminal activity, as "conduct engaged in by persons charged in an enterprise corruption count constituting three or more criminal acts that", inter alia, "are neither isolated incidents, nor so closely related and connected in point of time or circumstance of commission as to constitute a criminal offense or criminal transaction, as those terms are defined in section 40.10 of the criminal procedure law". [Penal Law § 460.10(4)(b) ]
The court finds that the defendants' proposed interpretation of the statute is too narrow and is not supported by the wording of the statute or by legislative history. The defendants' proposed interpretation reads the various statutory provisions out of context and without relation to their legislative purpose. The language of Penal Law § 460.10(4)(b) relied upon by the defendants, describes a necessary attribute of the pattern of criminal activity, and indirectly, of the criminal enterprise, but does not define an element of individual culpability.
In order to establish enterprise corruption, the prosecution must first establish the existence of a criminal enterprise. Penal Law § 460.10(3) defines criminal enterprise as a group of persons sharing a common purpose of engaging in criminal conduct, associated in an ascertainable structure distinct from a pattern of criminal activity, and with a continuity of existence, structure and criminal purpose beyond the scope of individual criminal incidents. By this definition, a pattern of criminal activity does not necessarily establish a criminal enterprise [see, People v. Moscatiello, supra 149 Misc.2d at p. 756, 566 N.Y.S.2d 823]. The enterprise refers to the "group of persons" whose "common purpose" is to engage in criminal conduct. The pattern of criminal activity defined in Penal Law § 460.10(4) is the "conduct engaged in by persons charged in an enterprise corruption count". In other words, the pattern is the criminal conduct engaged in by the group, not by the individual defendant.
Under the enterprise corruption statute, the criminal enterprise must be proven to exist apart from the pattern of its criminal activity. That is, the enterprise must have (1) an ascertainable structure distinct from an association entered into for the purpose of carrying out the pattern of criminal activity and (2) a continuity of existence, structure and criminal purpose "beyond the scope of individual criminal incidents". [P.L. § 460.10(3) ]. The quoted phrase apparently refers to the statutory definition of a criminal incident contained in Criminal Procedure Law § 40.10(2)(a), which consists of criminal acts "closely related and connected in point of time and circumstance of commission". Thus the enterprise must continue in existence beyond the time required to commit any individual criminal incident, and must be distinct from any ad hoc association entered into for the purpose of carrying out one or more of the criminal incidents relied upon to establish its existence. It is notable that the Legislature did not define...
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