Prison sentence for mob bookie
FAMILY SECRETS CASE | He pleaded guilty but didn't testify about Outfit
Nick Ferriola's late father, Joseph, was a mob leader.
His mentor, Frank Calabrese Sr., was a mob hit man.
His onetime partner in bookmaking, the late Ronald Jarrett, killed people for the Outfit, too.
On Tuesday, Nick Ferriola got another mark of being part of the Outfit -- a prison sentence.
Ferriola, 33, was sentenced to three years behind bars for his mid-level role in the Family Secrets case, near the maximum of the suggested sentencing range.
U.S. District Judge James Zagel noted that Ferriola had a rare commodity in the world of the Outfit.
Other mobsters felt they could trust him.
While Ferriola pleaded guilty last year in the case, he did not testify against his fellow mobsters.
He had nothing to say to the judge Tuesday after his attorney, Ed Wanderling, noted that Ferriola was uncomfortable speaking in public.
Ferriola collected money for Frank Calabrese Sr. while the mob killer was in prison on a loan-sharking case and ran a bookmaking operation with Calabrese Sr.'s friend, Jarrett, who was gunned down in a mob hit outside his Bridgeport home in 1999.
Federal prosecutor Markus Funk noted that bookmaking proved lucrative for Ferriola. When he was stopped by police for driving drunk in 1999, Ferriola had nearly $16,000 in cash on him.
Ferriola would often visit Calabrese Sr. in prison. Calabrese Sr. would speak about religion and the Bible and whether his brother, Nick, was cooperating against him. Nick Calabrese would turn out to be the star witness against his brother in the Family Secrets case, helping secure Calabrese Sr.'s conviction with his testimony.
In one 1999 conversation, secretly recorded by the feds, Calabrese Sr. told Ferriola what the Bible said about one brother betraying another.
"Brother. Brother who tells on brother. Brother, brother who betrays brother should be killed," Calabrese Sr. said.
"Wow," Ferriola replied.