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Pasquale "Pat" Stiso, 55, of New Rochelle, was previously convicted during a bench trial in U.S. District Court in Newark after co-defendant Paul Mancuso, 49, took a plea deal in the case.
Mancuso testified that and Stiso were up to their necks in hock with bookies — including a $500,000 debt that the government said Mancuso never paid.
Among a variety of scams that Mancuso said he and Stiso pulled were claiming that they could buy tickets to New York Giants football games, New York Yankees playoff games, the Super Bowl, and other sporting events and concerts, at a lower or wholesale rate and then resell them at an inflated rate -- creating profits for their investors.
They didn't buy the tickets, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said.
In another scam, "Stiso and Mancuso falsely represented to victims that they were investors in a real estate development project in Valley Cottage...and that investor money would be used to purchase an interest in real property," Fishman said. "The real property interest would then be resold at an increased price, creating profits for their investors.
"In reality, Stiso and Mancuso did not invest in any such real estate project with their victims’ money. Instead, they engaged in monetary transactions designed to funnel, and in many instances launder, the victims’ investments for their own benefit, including paying illegal gambling debts and money owed to loan sharks."
Mancuso reputedly has ties to Genovese captain Joseph “The Eagle” Gatto of Paterson, who died in April 2010. Authorities said Mancuso participated in a gambling ring headed by Gatto that took $300,000 a week in illegal wagers from tens of thousands of customers nationwide.
Gatto’s father and brother, legendary North Jersey Genovese gangster Louis “Streaky” Gatto and Louis Gatto Jr., both died while serving federal prison sentences.
In addition to the prison term, Stiso was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of $460,000.
Sentencing now can be set for Mancuso, authorities said.
Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, the IRS-Criminal Investigation, and criminal investigators from his office with the making the case, handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Francisco J. Navarro and Anthony J. Mahajan of his Criminal Division in Newark.
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