Federal agents have indicted seven men from the area for operating an illegal gambling business that made betting on events in sports and played illegal poker in office space within the town of Rochester.
In an indictment that was filed, federal, state, as well as local police agencies began an investigation in October 2020, which found that the defendants had the plan to run illegal poker games inside the suite located at 565 Blossom Road and also to operate an unlicensed sports betting business via a website.
Louis P. Ferrari II and Dominic Sprague, both residents of the town of Greece and Tommaso Sessa from Spencerport, are accused of operating an illegal gambling business.
Anthony Amato, Joseph Lomardo, Joseph Boscarino, and James Cilvetti are charged with the transmission of information about wagering together with Ferrari as well as Sprague.
Seven defendants are accused of conspiracy in connection with their involvement in the scheme. Ferrari is also accused of laundering money.
Another complaint with the matter is the former New York State Trooper Thomas Lewke, According to a spokesperson from the United States Attorney’s Office. Loewke was arrested for obstruction for allegedly providing information to an investigation target. A criminal complaint claims that Loewke gambled illegally on sports via the sport700.com website.
In-person betting on sports at licensed casinos has been permitted throughout New York since 2019, and in 2022, mobile sports betting through licensed platforms became legally legal within the State of New York. However, bookmaking without a license, either in person or on the internet, is prohibited throughout New York. State of New York.
Sports gambling and poker
The criminal complaint outlines an investigation lasting seven months that included undercover officers acting in the role of gamblers. They also conducted wiretaps on phones and subpoenas for financial records that revealed how the operation performed.
The complaint states the fact that Ferrari and Sprague were co-owners of the illegal gambling establishment located at 565 Blossom Road, where they played poker games. Sessa has been accused of running the day-to-day operations of the site.
Ferrari also ran an illegal book of sports betting via an online site called sport700.com. Ferrari controlled individual bettors as well as sub-agents that owned the books they had of bettors who were individual. Lombardo Boscarino and Boscarino are alleged to be sub-agents of Ferrari via the website.
Amato was believed to be the administrator of the site and was allegedly assisting Ferrari and others in establishing usernames, accounts and passwords. Amato also was the person who managed bettors individually and oversaw agents, the authorities claim.
Investigators have found that Sprague was able to collect the cash payment of gambling losses from gamblers and then pay winnings from gambling to gamblers through his company, which was a pawn shop situated on Stone Road in Greece.
Civiletti was a worker at the Pawn Shop. While in the pawn shop, Civiletti collected gambling losses from customers for Ferrari and Sprague, as the complaint claims.
The proceeds from gambling are remitted through businesses
The complaint states that Ferrari took cash payments for losses from gamblers at his excavating company located on Steel Street in the City of Rochester and then re-laundered illicit profits through his company.
Eavesdropping warrants record calls and text messages exchanged between Ferrari and five co-defendants who discussed specifics of the gambling operation. In one of the calls, Ferrari tells Sprague he’d been to the home of a gambler client to take the money and physically attacked him. According to the transcript of the call, Ferrari claimed he was worried because the woman’s husband had called the police.
A police raid interrupted the game of poker that was taking place
Investigators searched the Blossom Road site in early April of 2021. They disrupted the ongoing illegal game. Some of the documents found were gambling ledgers, as well as timestamped website prints of online gambling account transactions.
Investigators obtained an access warrant for the website for betting and found that Amato first created his account back in the month of April of 2016. According to court documents, Amato had 128 sub-agent accounts that were operating under his account. In total, the sub-agents supervised 1 789 bettors. Over the course that the bank account was open, which spanned from April 2016 through January 2021, the winnings of Amato totalled $8,945,629, according to the authorities.
A criminal charge was filed this week in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pedersen.
