When four men were charged this week in brazen armed robberies at two Manhattan jewelry stores, their ages suggested it might not be their first exposure to the criminal justice system.
It wasn’t.
According to officials and court documents, the men among them have ties to the Genovese, Lucchese, and Kansas City, Missouri crime families; a tale of bank robberies, extortion and murders; and a jailbreak reminiscent of a Hollywood movie.
The defendants are Vincent Cerchio, 69; Michael Sellick, 67; Frank DiPietro, 65; and Vincent Spagnuolo, 65. If convicted on the most serious charges, each faces a return to prison for up to 20 years for failing to do what many people their age have done: retire go.
The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged the four with stealing $2 million worth of diamonds and other gems at gunpoint while disguised as construction workers to make themselves invisible on busy streets . A fifth man, Samuel Sorce, 25, of Florham Park, New Jersey, is accused of being a getaway driver in one of the robberies.
“The professional planning and execution of the robberies” reflects the older men’s “long history of serious violent crimes,” prosecutors said in a court filing. Surveillance footage, call recordings, license plate readers, eyewitnesses and cell phone transmission data are cited as evidence in the file.
Mr. DiPietro’s attorney, Mathew J. Mari, said his client was not guilty. Mr. DiPietro has worked in construction, Mr. Mari said, has lived an “exemplary life” in recent years and believes he and the others were arrested for their resumes.
“He said, ‘They’re just trying to blame us because we’re career criminals,'” said Mr. Mari.
Organized crime has long been the preserve of older men. And as some activities that were traditional gang crime, such as sports betting, have become legal, young would-be gangsters may have fewer opportunities to commit the entry-level crimes that could give them a reputation.
Elie Honig, a former top organized crime prosecutor in Manhattan, gave several reasons for what he called the mafia’s “permanent graying.” On the one hand, it takes years to climb the rankings; Rarely is a member admitted or “appointed” before the age of 50. On the other hand, Mr. Honig said: “There is no such thing as withdrawing from the mafia. They don’t have a retirement plan.”
The advanced age of many gangsters often plays a role in sentencing hearings, when pleas for clemency tend to rely heavily on litanies about drugs, disabilities, illnesses, and other wasters of time.
When Mr. Honig sued his first organized crime case – alleged Genovese boss Matthew Ianniello and a number of other defendants – in the early 2000s, the average age of the defendants was well over 70. The crime scene at their booking was seen with walkers, wheelchairs and oxygen machines, he said.
Mr. DiPietro – born when “Gunsmoke” was the most popular TV show – and his co-defendants made their first appearance in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, where a judge ordered their incarceration. They are scheduled to return to court next month.
The first robbery occurred on Madison Avenue, in a building where a jeweler operating out of the penthouse stocks a street-level case with expensive items every day, according to a criminal complaint.
On Jan. 3, Mr. Cerchio, Mr. DiPietro, Mr. Sellick and Mr. Spagnuolo traveled to the area of the building, the complaint said; Several of them had explored the site the day before.
Just before 10:30 a.m., the complaint states, Mr. DiPietro and Mr. Sellick, dressed in masks, hats, jeans, sneakers and brightly colored construction-style jackets, entered the lobby and confronted a worker who had just opened a safe.
“Give it to me,” Mr. DiPietro ordered, brandishing a gun before grabbing a 73-karat necklace, a 17-karat pair of earrings and a six-karat ring and running off, the complaint said. Mr Sellick told the worker to “go into the closet” and fled as well.
The second robbery, on May 20, was at a jewelry store on Elizabeth Street in Chinatown, according to a second complaint.
Mr. DiPietro and Mr. Sellick, wearing similar outfits, stormed into the store shortly after it opened, prosecutors say. This time, Mr. Sellick had the gun and ordered workers to throw themselves to the ground while Mr. DiPietro grabbed jewelry, prosecutors say.
The two fled first in a vehicle driven by the relatively fresh Mr. Sorce, then in one driven by Mr. Spagnuolo, who prosecutors say was also the getaway driver in the first robbery.
Mr. Spagnuolo, of Monmouth Beach, New Jersey, is the only one of the four older men with no state convictions, according to prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in a state court in 1979 and was sentenced to ten years in prison, according to the files. There were later two convictions for robbery.
Mr. DiPietro of Red Bank, New Jersey is also a known killer. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to the shooting death of a grand jury witness who testified about a Lucchese-related drug conspiracy, court filings show. The victim was found in a car in a remote area of Staten Island after being shot four times in the head. Mr. DiPietro was sentenced to 19 years in federal prison and was released in 2016.
According to prosecutors, Mr. Cerchio’s federal file contains a 1997 indictment relating to the murder of a fashion designer at his Upper West Side apartment in a “failed armed robbery in Lucchese.” He pleaded guilty to the charge of theft and was sentenced to 27 months in prison.
In a sweeping 1999 series of federal indictments against the DeCavalcante crime family of New Jersey, Mr. Cerchio was named as an associate of Lucchese. The following year, according to prosecutors, he was sentenced to 51 months in prison after pleading guilty to a count of racketeering DeCavalcante mobsters. He later pleaded guilty in 2014 to involvement in a plot to rob trucks carrying counterfeit cigarettes. After being sentenced to 27 months, he was released in 2016, records show.
An attorney for Mr Cerchio, of Howard Beach, Queens, declined to comment on the latest allegations, as did an attorney for Mr Spagnuolo.
Mr. Sellick, of Franklin Square, NY, was first sentenced to federal prison in 1980 after pleading guilty to a bank robbery, prosecutors say. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to five counts of armed bank robbery and, according to the files, was sentenced to an additional 19 years in prison. He was released in 2015.
Since then, his attorney Gerald J. McMahon said, Mr. Sellick has worked regularly for a union as a painter bridge and now earns $55 an hour. Mr McMahon said Mr Sellick was not guilty and the case against him involved a “mistaken identity”.
Mr. Sellick has a history of demonstrating a flair for drama: twice during a stint in state prison between his federal sentences, he escaped from an upstate prison.
The first jailbreak, in 1979, resembled the plot of the just-released film Escape From Alcatraz, which was based on actual events at the famous island prison in San Francisco Bay.
In Mr. Sellick’s version, he and several others ripped a light fixture out of a cell wall, enlarged the resulting hole, crawled onto a catwalk, ripped open a floor grid, and slipped through 300 feet of plumbing and electrical lines to a gap in a wall left by construction has stayed.
The Alcatraz fugitives were not found dead or alive. It was obvious to Mr. Sellick.
Chelsia Rose Marcius and William K. Rashbaum contributed coverage. Kitty Bennett contributed to the research.
