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News and Features about Organized Crime, Mafia and La Cosa Nostra taken from National and Local News Sources. In an attempt to get you this type of coverage in a timely manner we can not be responsible for the content of the following material. |
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8-25-99 Mob Nephew Phone threats to cost inmate more jail time Published Wednesday, August 25, 1999, in the Miami Herald
By LARRY LEBOWITZ A former Broward man who stole and resold 262 Super Bowl tickets as a teenager parlayed a transatlantic phone card and an extreme case of homesickness into another criminal conviction Tuesday. Two months shy of his 22nd birthday, James Peter Sabatino pleaded guilty to telephoning death threats from a British prison to federal prosecutors who have pursued his uncle and other South Florida mob suspects for years. In return for his plea, federal prosecutors dropped the remaining charges, including his threats in May and June 1998 to kill President Clinton and his brother, Roger Clinton, decapitate a federal judge and two prosecutors, and blow up the federal courthouse in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Sabatino made no effort to disguise the threats: He regularly identified himself to FBI and Secret Service agents and White House switchboard operators while calling from Brixton prison in London, where he was serving a three-month sentence for hotel fraud. ``I've caused enough trouble, your honor,'' Sabatino told Chief U.S. District Judge Edward B. Davis in Miami. ``I just want to get this over with.'' Defense attorney Allen S. Kaufman said Sabatino thought he could get out of the British prison by forcing U.S. authorities to bring him back to face new charges at home. The idea backfired. Sabatino served the complete three-month term in Brixton before he was deported to face new charges in the United States. ``He knows what he did is really, really silly,'' Kaufman said. ``He just didn't think it through.'' Sabatino attacked federal authorities for ``harassing'' him and other Italian Americans, including family and friends with organized-crime ties. His father, Peter, manages the Bobby Rubino's restaurant in Pompano Beach, which is owned by the sons of Paul Castellano, the late Gambino crime family boss who was murdered by his eventual successor, John Gotti. In several taped statements to FBI and Secret Service agents as well as messages he left on prosecutors' voicemail, Sabatino threatened to ``cut the f------ heads off'' of Senior U.S. District Judge Jose A. Gonzalez and assistant U.S. attorneys Paul Schwartz and Jeffrey Kay. Sabatino was livid at longtime mob prosecutor Schwartz and former organized-crime prosecutor Kay for investigating Gerard F. Chilli, a captain in the Bonanno crime family serving more than nine years for a racketeering, loansharking and gambling conviction plus another year for orchestrating a credit-card fraud scheme from his prison cell. Schwartz also prosecuted Sabatino's uncle, Richard, who pleaded guilty to stealing $228,000 worth of expensive Italian shoes. His accomplices included members of a notoriously violent extortion ring headed by Steven Cavano. Gonzalez presided over Richard Sabatino's stolen-property trial as well as the cases against Chilli and Cavano. Richard Sabatino is expected to plead guilty Thursday at U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale for allegedly fraudulently hiding his ownership in two Palm Beach County barbecue restaurants and a 10,500-square-foot waterfront home in Ocean Ridge to avoid paying $213,000 in fines and restitution in the 1995 stolen-shoes case. James Sabatino is facing more than four years in prison when he is sentenced Nov. 22. But his legal woes are far from over. Sabatino, who tangled with jail guards at the Federal Detention Center in Miami within 24 hours of his return to the United States last August, is slated for trial Sept. 13 on assault charges stemming from that fracas. After he completes the federal sentences, Sabatino faces a probation violation hearing in Broward Circuit Court. In 1995, at age 19, Sabatino was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay more than $100,000 in restitution for two schemes that highlighted his aptitude for impersonation and fraud. Sabatino, who dropped out of school in ninth grade but completed a high-school equivalency degree in prison, posed as executives with Blockbuster Entertainment and the Miami Dolphins front office to steal 262 tickets for Super Bowl 29 that were resold for up to $1,000 apiece. Sabatino claimed he was the nephew of Sony Music Corp. chairman Tommy Mottola while fraudulently obtaining 55 digital pagers and more than $12,000 in services from a Boca Raton firm. In November 1997, Sabatino persuaded Broward Circuit Judge Paul Backman to transfer his 10-year probation to New York City. The next day, Sabatino was arrested on grand theft charges after police said he couldn't cover the $54,727 tab for the ``welcome back'' bash he threw for himself at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. Free on bond while awaiting trial on the New York hotel theft charges, Sabatino fled to England in early 1998 and was jailed on new hotel fraud charges in London that led to his imprisonment at Brixton. Authorities say Sabatino is also wanted in connection with an airline-ticket fraud case in Miami-Dade and on a failure-to-appear warrant in the hotel theft charge in New York. He is also wanted for questioning in Atlanta in a scam perpetrated on Coca-Cola executives.
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