Feds: Merlino's claims are 'laughable'
Skinny Joey is due in federal court tomorrow to answer government allegations that he violated his probation.
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FEDERAL prosecutors yesterday called it "laughable" that Joey Merlino would suggest that his run-in this year with three convicted felons - including a co-defendant in his 2001 racketeering trial - was just a "chance encounter."
Such an idea is "belied by evidence," Assistant U.S. Attorney David Troyer wrote in a court filing.
"Skinny Joey," 52, the former Philly mob boss - or current boss-in-exile, some law-enforcement officials say - is due in federal court in Philly tomorrow to answer the government's allegations that he knowingly associated with mobster John Ciancaglini and two guys with fraud convictions at Havana Nights Cigar Bar & Lounge in Boca Raton, Fla.
The government also says that Merlino, who now lives in Boca Raton, has not fully paid $337,943 in court-ordered restitution and failed to comply with a request for information during a May financial deposition.
Merlino, who served 12 years in prison for his 2001 convictions on racketeering, RICO conspiracy and related charges, was released from federal custody in 2011. He was then serving three years of supervised release, which was due to end Sept. 6.
But on Sept. 2, the U.S. Probation Office filed a petition alleging that Merlino had violated his supervised release by associating with convicted felons and by failing to provide information regarding a business transaction.
On June 18, two Florida detectives saw Merlino in a VIP area of the Havana Nights bar interacting with Ciancaglini and two other convicted felons, Brad Sirkin and Frank Fiori, according to the probation officer's petition. Ciancaglini, a member of Philadelphia's La Cosa Nostra, was convicted alongside Merlino in 2001.
The petition also says that during a May financial deposition, a federal prosecutor asked Merlino about a person named Carmine Gallo, and that Merlino refused to say how he knew Gallo.
Merlino's attorneys, Edwin Jacobs Jr. and Michael F. Myers, wrote in a legal memo filed Monday that Merlino has "scrupulously abided" by the terms of his supervised release while in Florida.
They wrote that the June run-in with Ciancaglini was a "chance encounter," and that there was no evidence that Merlino knew that the fraudsters were convicted felons.