Scarsdale man charged with bribing union officials By TIMOTHY O'CONNOR THE JOURNAL NEWS
NEW YORK - A Westchester-based construction firm raked in tens of millions of dollars while paying off union officials to avoid using union workers, a federal prosecutor said yesterday.
John Amicucci, 54, of Scarsdale, the president of the firm, DeFoe Corp., is on trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, charged with bribery, fraud and conspiracy. He is accused of paying off officials from Local 14 of the International Union of Operating Engineers.
Union members operate the heavy machinery, excavators, earthmovers and cranes on large construction projects throughout the five boroughs.
Locals 14 and 15 of the union have been the targets of federal investigations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, with more than 40 contractors, union officials and reputed members of the Genovese and Colombo crime families indicted.
Several union officials have pleaded guilty and cut deals to testify against others. Five former officials are expected to testify against Amicucci.
Prosecutors said Amicucci bribed union officials so he could violate the collective bargaining agreements he signed when he won the bids on highway construction jobs.
"Ordinary hard-working members of the union did not get the jobs, wages and benefits that they should have gotten from John Amicucci and his company, DeFoe," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Kolodner said yesterday in opening arguments.
Amicucci even hired himself as a compressor operator at a $240 million renovation of part of the Bruckner Expressway in the Bronx, to avoid having to hire a union worker, Kolodner said.
Amicucci's lawyer, Gerald Shargel, said the only criminals in the case were the union officials who would take the stand against Amicucci. Shargel said Amicucci refused to pay what the lawyer called "mob wannabes" who talked up their willingness to beat any members who raised their voices against them.
"These same men who ... protest they didn't want to be involved, when these Mafia men and the junior Mafia men, the union officials in their fancy suits and pinky rings went walking into the union hall and boasted and bragged," Shargel said.
He described Amicucci as a hard-working son of immigrants who toiled his way up through the ranks of Mount Vernon-based DeFoe. He said Amicucci started out as an operating engineer, even though he married the daughter of Dario Cioti, who owned DeFoe.