by Cris Italia
Fasulo allegedly served as the operations manager of the criminal enterprise. He supervised the illegal carting company's truck drivers, the servicing of the drivers' garbage collection routes and their waste transfer station dumps, or drop-offs. In addition, he collected payments from customers for services, including high-end accounts, and transported the customers' payments directly to accused ring leader Anthony "Tony" Piccolo, who has previous ties to a mob-linked trade-waste cartel.
With his links to a known Brooklyn-based mob, Piccolo was prohibited from doing business as a private, unlicensed carter in New York City. He allegedly used Fasulo and even his own daughter, Toni-Lynn Piccolo, to run his operation.
"Anthony Piccolo secretly obtained the use of the trade-waste licenses of two other companies," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. "He directed his subordinates, including his daughter, to collect illicit proceeds of extortion, coercion, restraint of trade and grand larceny schemes, orchestrated the commercial bribery of his customers' employees and secreted monetary proceeds made through his unlicensed carting company into various bank accounts."
At a press conference last Wednesday, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the investigation took about a year. "The individuals who ran this illegal waste-collection scheme intimidated, bribed and extorted business from honest members of the city's carting industry," Kelly said.
The two carting companies in question were J.B. & Sons Carting Corporation and Rags Contracting Corporations. Rags was formerly owned by Island Park resident Bennett Ragusa. According to Brown, Ragusa secretly sold his business and acted as a front, and on Nov. 13, 2002, Ragusa was told to lie in a deposition before the Business Integrity Commission concerning the ownership of the company by stating that he did not know Piccolo.
District Attorney Brown said that the investigation leading to last week's arrests -- Operation Hidden Interest -- began in March 2002 and was based on information developed by detectives of the NYPD Organized Crime Investigation Division/Business Integrity Commission squad involving allegations that the criminal enterprise was threatening and extorting other carters.
The indictment states that Piccolo, his daughter, Fasulo and Jack Leone and Enrique Aponte, who worked for Fasulo, threatened, coerced and extorted competing trade-waste industry carting companies by demanding payment to allow those carters to have the "right" to collect the trade waste of certain customers in Brooklyn. The indictment also charges that the illegal company, which collected waste in Queens and Brooklyn from hundreds of retailers, supermarkets and restaurants and three hospitals, unlawfully earned revenues of $2.3 million in less than a year. It also allegedly cheated the hospitals out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by bribing key hospital employees with payoffs of up to a $1,000 a month to sign off on waste pickup overcharges. The overcharges amounted to over $100,000 at Brooklyn Hospital alone.
"This indictment demonstrates the need for continued regulation of the private carting industry in New York City," said Business Integrity Commission Chairman Jose Maldonado. "It is an industry that by its very nature is attractive to criminal elements, who continually try to worm their way into the business. While there are many honest carters in the city, and the industry as a whole is immeasurably cleaner than it was a decade ago, the only way to prevent its subversion by criminals is through vigorous and diligent regulation."
Thirteen additional arrests were made in connection with the scheme. The defendants have been variously charged with enterprise corruption -- a violation of New York State's Organized Crime Control Act -- coercion, commercial bribing, conspiracy, grand larceny, falsifying business records, insurance fraud, money laundering, offering false instruments for filing, perjury and restraint of trade as well as city administrative code violations. The principal defendants -- the Piccolos, Fasulo, Leone and Aponte -- face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
