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Sentenced

U.S. Eastern District Court of New York. Photo from Facebook

A Huntington resident will be spending time in prison after admitting to racketeering while in charge of Long Island’s most infamous crime family.

John “Johnny Boy” Ambrosio, 75, the acting captain in the organized crime family La Cosa Nostra was sentenced Dec. 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York to 51 months in jail for taking part in a racketeering conspiracy. He previously pled guilty in May.

Ambrosio was among the last of seven associates of La Cosa Nostra to be sentenced in connection for the racketeering conspiracy, which included acts of drug trafficking, loan sharking, gambling and obstruction of justice.

There should be no doubt that putting a stop to the criminal activities of La Cosa Nostra continues to be a priority of this office and our law enforcement partners,.”

— Richard Donoghue

“There should be no doubt that putting a stop to the criminal activities of La Cosa Nostra continues to be a priority of this office and our law enforcement partners,” Richard Donoghue, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said.

Ambrosio and his co-conspirators —including Anthony Rodolico, 46, of Huntington — were arrested by federal law enforcement officials Dec. 12, 2017 after federal officers executed search warrants at various locations, including a storage facility in Nassau County, where they found gambling and loan sharking records, electronic gaming machines, narcotics and drug paraphernalia and numerous firearms, including two AR-15 rifles, a .38 caliber revolver and a sawed-off shotgun, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Law enforcement officials also found letters addressed to Ambrosio from the Bonanno family boss Michael “The Nose” Mancuso and former Gambino family boss John Gotti.

“Organized crime continues to plague our communities with violence, coercion, and intimidation,” William Sweeney Jr, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said. “The mobsters grow richer while their victims live in fear as they struggle to make payments while dealing with daily threats.”

Prosecutors said they believe Ambrosio and his associates engaged in a racketeering conspiracy from January 2014 to December 2017. In entering his guilty plea, Ambrosio admitted to participating in the Gambino family’s activities by extorting a loan from one victim and supervising a gambling business that involved poker games, electronic gaming machines and sports betting, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Under the terms of his plea deal, he will forfeit $100,000, including $66,116 in cash that was seized from his Huntington home at the time of his arrest.

His associate Rodolico was also sentenced Nov. 5 to one year in prison.

Francis Barrios mugshot from SCPD

A rapist was recently sentenced to 24 years in prison for an assault on a taxi driver this past winter.

Francis Barrios, 34, already a registered sex offender, pleaded guilty in March to raping the female driver after she picked him up one evening at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson.

During the Dec. 1 ride, authorities said, he beat and strangled her, causing the cab to crash into a fence on Mount Sinai-Coram Road in Mount Sinai. Then he sexually assaulted her, pulling her into the back seat and raping her.

Officers responded to the scene after a passing motorist called 911.

The Suffolk County Police Department has not identified the taxi company that the victim worked for, to protect her identity.

Police first identified Barrios as homeless, but the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office has since said he is from Middle Island. He has also been identified by the names Francis Berrios and Francisco Barrios.

The offender pleaded guilty to first-degree rape in late March, and was then sentenced in late April to 24 years incarceration, as well as 20 years of post-release supervision.

Barrios was previously convicted as a violent offender in Suffolk County, for first-degree attempted rape. According to the New York State sex offender registry, where he is listed as a Level 3 sexually violent offender, Barrios was convicted in November 2004 for sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl, who was described as a “non-stranger” to him. He was sentenced to 42 months in state prison for that crime.

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Glenn Jorgensen poses with a tree stump at the Montclair Avenue highway yard. File photo by Rachel Shapiro

Smithtown’s former Highway Superintendent Glenn Jorgensen was sentenced to 560 hours of community service and three years’ probation in state Supreme Court on Friday after pleading guilty to charges accusing him of falsifying public documents, records showed.

Back in October, Jorgensen, 64, pleaded guilty to the felony charge of offering a false instrument for filing and the misdemeanor charge of official misconduct relating back to a construction project he headed in November 2014, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office said. He appeared in front of Supreme Court Justice Mark Cohen in Riverhead on Friday, where he avoided four months of jail time and received a plea deal that included his community service sentencing as well as a surcharge of $375 to be paid over the next 90 days.

Anthony La Pinta, Jorgensen’s Hauppauge-based criminal defense attorney, could not be reached from comment.

According to the criminal complaint against Jorgensen, the former highway superintendent instructed an employee of Smithtown to alter road construction reports to hide his approval of Medford contractor Suffolk Asphalt Corp. paving as many as eight Smithtown streets in below-freezing temperatures throughout November 2014.

“This disposition compels the defendant to resign from his elected position and his admission of guilt before the court confirms the facts uncovered during the investigation,” Robert Clifford, spokesman for the DA’s office, said in a statement earlier this year. “As the superintendent of highways, Mr. Jorgensen knowingly had false information about the paving of town roads filed as an official town record, and he knowingly directed that inaccurate information be filed to make it appear as though the roadwork met state mandatory specifications.”

Jorgensen resigned from his position Oct. 16.

“It is a sad occurrence and I will have no comment other than I have sympathy for Mr. Jorgensen and his family,” Smithtown Supervisor Pat Vecchio (R) said in an October statement.

In April, Jorgensen was charged with tampering with public records, falsifying business records, filing false records, official misconduct and grand larceny, Suffolk County District Attorney Tom Spota said. Initially, Jorgensen pleaded not guilty to the charges.

At the time, Jorgensen, of St. James, was accused of altering road construction reports and stealing a public work order for an improper repaving. He tried to conceal his approval of paving at least eight Smithtown streets in freezing temperatures last November and then directed a highway foreman to alter the record of the weather conditions done during the repaving work.

Jorgensen had also been accused of sexual harassment involving his former secretary. The town was issued a notice of claim alleging he sexually harassed her in December. The claim also alleged he had taken her out to job sites, out to eat and eventually fired her after finding out she was dating an employee of the highway department.

District attorney detectives found work orders for the improper repaving jobs hidden under Jorgensen’s bed at his Hope Place residence in St. James.

Jorgensen worked for the Smithtown Highway Department for 37 years, and won election for highway superintendent in 2009 and 2013.