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Andrew Merola, also known as Andrew Knapik, will have to spend at least a decade behind bars, under the term imposed Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Stanley R. Chesler in Newark.
That’s the way federal sentencing works.
Chesler — who has sent nearly two dozen of Merola’s associates to prison — also ordered him to forfeit $100,000 and pay $161,481 in restitution.
Despite the enormity of the crimes, the judge was very low-key, telling Merola: “The record you have compiled to date is not anything anyone would be proud of,” and calling his behavior “totally unacceptable.”
Merola, 43, headed a crew whose operations ran the gamut of mobster-related crimes — from gambling to loan-sharking to a scam in which the group pasted lower-value barcode labels on items at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Circuit City, Best Buy and Walmart, bought the goods, then removed the labels and brought the items back for original-cost refunds.
In one instance, prosecutors said, someone pasted a $50 bar code onto a $550 vacuum at Lowe’s.
But the labor rackets were where Merola made the big money. During a January plea that led to today’s sentencing, he admitted teaming with Martin Taccetta, the reputed former underboss of the Lucchese crime family’s New Jersey faction, to pull kickbacks from construction firms in exchange for allowing them to use non-union workers.
Merola specifically copped to a federal racketeering offense — an umbrella-like charge that combines minor offenses into a major pattern — for activity that lasted six years, beginning in 2002, in New Jersey and New York.
That included having an underling steal credit card applications from the Lowe’s in Paterson to produce bogus plastic, and forcing lunch truck vendors to pay $250 a week to work near busy construction projects, including the Prudential Center in Newark.
Several crew members worked directly for him in the illegal gambling operation, Merola told Chesler during the January plea hearing.
“Bets on sporting events and casino-style games were placed over an Internet website that operated overseas and by telephone calls placed to a toll-free telephone number,” a recap issued today by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark says. “Gambling agents who were delinquent in making their payments to Merola and his co-conspirators faced threats of violence to ensure collection of their gambling debts to the enterprise.”
In the bar code scheme, it says: “Merola and his co-conspirators went to stores to find and record the bar code numbers of items with significantly lower prices than similar items in the same store. They then created a bar code label with the bar code number of the lower priced item.
“Later, Merola and his co-conspirators would return to the stores, place the fake bar code label over the original label on the more expensive merchandise, and then purchase the item at the reduced price.”
Then they’d “remove the phony bar code and return the merchandise for a refund or in-store credit based on the item’s true price.”
Merola’s term follows the sentencings of various crew members and associates — all by Chesler. They include:
Ralph Cicalese, 57, of West Orange;
Gennaro Forte, 36, of Caldwell;
Charles Russo, 77, of Mahwah;
Edward Deak, 66, of Secaucus;
Justin Cerrato, 31, Anthony Marra, 27, Vincent Derogatis, 46, and Christopher Doscher, 31, all of East Hanover;
India Fugate, 31, of Irvington;
Jonathan Lanza, 27, of Florham Park;
Paul Lanza, 56, of Kenilworth;
Vincent Fichera, 50, of Toms River;
Joseph Schepisi, 41, of Scarsdale, N.Y.;
and Carmine Maione, 66, of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Although some accused him of being a rat, Merola insisted he did nothing to help the government bring down any of his associates — which could account for the severe sentence nine months after his plea.
U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman credited special agents with the FBI, the New York Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Office of Inspector General, and the IRS, as well as troopers from the New Jersey State Police and investigators from Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow‘s office, for making the case — and making it stick.
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