'The other Joey Merlino' gets casino service license

ATLANTIC CITY - His father, the late Lawrence "Yogi" Merlino, was a notorious mob capo and hit man who became a government witness.

His cousin Joseph S. "Skinny Joey" Merlino was a South Philadelphia celebrity mob boss, now serving a 14-year federal prison sentence.

And for the last 20 years, Joseph N. Merlino has been trying to convince casino gambling regulators here that those bloodlines don't define him, that despite the gossip, rumor, and innuendo he is neither a mobster nor a mob associate.

On Wednesday, in a decision that capped a regulatory fight dating to the 1980s, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission finally gave "the other Joey Merlino" what he wanted.

Denied a casino service industry license in 1989 and 1997 because of suspected mob ties, Merlino, his mother, Phyllis, and the company they own, Bayshore Rebar of Pleasantville, got the commission's OK to work in casino construction.

The 5-0 vote endorsed the findings of a hearing examiner and rejected a string of objections by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, which had strenuously opposed a Bayshore license.

"I'm relieved, happy," Phyllis Merlino, 60, said at the conclusion of the hearing. "It's finally over."

"I'm very pleased," added her 43-year-old son, who was flanked by a sister, Kim, and his younger brothers, Marco and Nicholas, who also work for the construction company.

Marco and Nicholas were sporting Bayshore Rebar T-shirts. Their brother wore a tailored business suit, white shirt, and tie.

"We're a hardworking family," he said, clearly no pun intended.

Family ties to reputed mobsters have long plagued the Merlinos, who have built Bayshore Rebar into a highly regarded company in the reinforced concrete field, but who have been denied the opportunity to work on any casino projects.

Wednesday's vote came over the objections of Deputy Attorney General Louis S. Rogacki, who repeated several of the arguments the Division of Gaming Enforcement had made during a contentious licensing process that began nearly eight years ago and included a bitterly contested hearing that ended late last year.

Rogacki said the commission would set a "dangerous precedent" if it ignored what investigators alleged were on-again, off-again relationships between the Merlinos and reputed organized-crime figures.

But the commission ratified the recommendation of William Sommeling, a member who served as the hearing examiner in the case.

Commissioner Michael C. Epps said the division's case was built on "evidence that was stale and credibly refuted," and that the division's arguments often "disregarded the fundamental principles of justice."

Commission Chairwoman Linda M. Kassekert said the division had "failed to meet its burden of proof" and chided it for what she perceived as personal attacks on the hearing examiner.

"The division has taken the unprecedented step of attacking not just the findings of fact and conclusions of law, but the character and integrity of nearly anyone who appeared to reject the division's posturing," she said.

The prosecutors who presented the division's case, Deputy Attorney General Wendy A. Way and Assistant Attorney General Anthony Zarrillo Jr., did not attend Wednesday's hearing.

Josh Lichtblau, director of the Division of Gaming Enforcement, sat through the hearing, but declined to comment on the commission's decision.

He also would not comment on whether Way and Zarrillo had been moved from the licensing unit because of their harshly worded response to Sommeling's report, as law enforcement and casino industry sources have said.

With the economy in the tank and little construction going on, the licensing of Bayshore and the Merlinos may be of little immediate value.

But the Merlinos say that's OK.

Their lawyer, John Donnelly, said during Wednesday's hearing that the Merlinos "wanted their reputations back."

Donnelly argued throughout the hearing process that the Merlinos had been targeted not for anything they had done, but simply because of who they were.

He argued in his opening statement before Sommeling that if the Merlinos had been named Johnson, there would not have been a case.

And in an impassioned plea Wednesday, he told the commission that the Merlinos "want the world to know that [they] are not now, or ever have been, part of the mob."

Conversely, he said, the Division of Gaming Enforcement and its prosecutors seemed to be driven not by the facts or the evidence, but by a philosophy built around a simple concept: "No one with the name Merlino would ever get licensed."

In voting for licensing, the commission endorsed a 67-page report filed by Sommeling on March 24. His findings came after 14 days of testimony that stretched over two months.

A former Ocean County undersheriff, Sommeling ruled the division's objections were, for the most part, without merit. In a pointed critique of the case, he said the division had offered evidence that was "unreliable, uncorroborated, and, in some instances, demonstrably false."

A week later, Way and Zarrillo filed a list of exceptions that many saw as a personal attack on the hearing examiner.

Often vitriolic and at times querulous, the division filing said in part that Sommeling's findings were "so distorted as to lead to what can only be viewed as a predetermined result." It went on to challenge Sommeling's integrity and implied he had deliberately favored the Merlinos in rulings before and during the hearing.

Before calling for the vote Wednesday, Kassekert said she had been "shocked" by the tone in the division's filing, calling it "unwarranted and unprofessional."

"Clearly, the division is so focused on attempting to conjure up a demonstration of prejudice against itself that it fails to recognize that its own proofs are woefully lacking," she said.