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February 2008 was not a good month for Nicky Corozzo. He was one of 26 people indicted in Queens County, resulting from a multi-year investigation called Operation Touch-back. The 29 counts in the indictment focused primarily on illegal gambling. At the same time, the feds announced that Nicky was also named in the indictment arising from their Operation Old Bridge investigation. Old Bridge was massive in scope, involving the FBI and police in Italy. The federal allegations included myriad racketeering charges, the murders of Robert Arena and Thomas Maranga among them.
The February 7th Queens County indictment was particularly interesting, because it detailed the Gambino gambling setup, much of which involved online betting. It appeared Nicky and his boys had gone high-tech.
The indictment was on charges of operating highly sophisticated illegal-gambling enterprises in Queens County and elsewhere that booked nearly $10 million in wagers over a two-year period on professional and college basketball and football, professional baseball and hockey, and other sporting events. Twenty of the defendants were in custody and six were being sought. Nicky Corozzo was one of the latter six.
The defendants were alleged to have gone online, supplementing traditional wire-room and street-corner bookie operations with offshore-based Internet websites designed for sports betting and casino-style gambling. Toll-free telephone numbers were established, through which numerous gambling accounts were managed and out of which criminal proceeds were collected and distributed throughout the New York City metropolitan area. The computerized wire rooms operated around the clock and handled a large volume of bettors at any one time, allowing the defendants to increase their illicit profits without having to bother with the time-consuming record-keeping aspects of a more traditional paper-based bookmaking operation. The Gambino crime family allegedly took in millions of dollars each year through the illegal gambling scheme.
The defendants were charged with enterprise corruption—a violation of New York State’s Organized Crime Control Act—as well as promoting gambling, criminal usury, grand larceny, and conspiracy. They faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
The specifics of the indictment filed in Queens County Supreme Court alleged that the gambling ring promoted illegal sports betting in Queens County and elsewhere and that the defendants were involved in traditional gambling wire rooms located at 85-50 Forest Parkway in Woodhaven, as well as nontraditional computerized wire rooms in Costa Rica.
Six of the defendants were also being sued civilly and named as respondents in a $9.8 million civil-forfeiture action filed in Queens Supreme Court by the District Attorney’s Special Proceedings Bureau, which alleged that they engaged in a criminal enterprise that promoted illegal-gambling activities and generated illegal wages.
The criminal enterprise was generally known as the “Nicky Corozzo Crew of the Gambino Crime Family” and allegedly handled thousands of wagers each month that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly gross revenue, or approximately $9.8 million between November 6, 2005, and January 8, 2008.
Authorities believed the operation relied on modern technology, including toll-free telephone numbers and four known gambling websites, BETMSG.com; BETALLSPORTS.com; BETWSI.com; and BETOFFSHORE.net, which served as computerized wire rooms through which the enterprise conducted much of its illegal gambling activity. Account information was typically stored on computer servers outside the United States—often in such Central American countries as Costa Rica—which “bounced” their data through a series of server nodes in efforts to evade law-enforcement detection through traditional methods.
According to the indictment, Nicholas Corozzo was the boss of the enterprise. He controlled and oversaw the entire operation and profited from each criminal pursuit by the other members. Corozzo was also alleged to have benefited from a prostitution ring to the tune of $500 per week.
Nick was in big trouble. When his daughter tipped him off that the law was scooping up his co-defendants, he did what Andrew had done 12 years earlier. He went on the lam.
On May 17, just over three months after Nicky went on the run, “America’s Most Wanted” profiled him on its TV show. Its report recapped his criminal history and the pending charges. The heat was on Nick big time.
And “AMW” cameras were on hand 12 days later when, with his lawyer by his side, an exhausted-looking Nicky Corozzo surrendered to authorities on a street corner outside the FBI’s office in lower Manhattan. At his arraignment, Nicky pled guilty to all charges and was ordered held without bail.
On August 14, 2008, Nick Corozzo avoided a jury trial by pleading guilty to ordering the January 26, 1996, murder of Robert Arena, which also resulted in the death of Thomas Maranga. Andrew was on an airplane on the way to testify against Nick when the deal was made.
“It happened while I was in flight,” Andrew remembers. “When I landed, I was told that Nicky’s defense team had worked out a deal with the U.S. Attorney. Nicky pled guilty to being part of the conspiracy to murder Robert and Thomas. Hearing that was music to my ears. After so many years of being called a liar and all the denials by Nicky and his attorneys, I was finally vindicated. And he had been exposed for the liar he is.”
On April 17, 2009, Nicky Corozzo was sentenced to 13½ years in federal prison for his role in the Arena and Maranga murders.
In July 2008, he had pled guilty to the state enterprise corruption charges. On April 28, 2009, he was sentenced to a prison term of 4½ to 13½ years on those charges.
Corozzo is serving the sentences concurrently at a federal correctional facility. His projected release date is March 2, 2020, two weeks before his 80th birthday.