By Bill Parry
The mobster who owns a Corona pizzeria was sentenced Tuesday to 18 years in prison for narcotics-trafficking and firearms-related offenses. Following a two-week trial in Brooklyn in July, Gregorio Gigliotti, 61, a resident of the Malba section of Whitestone, and his son Angelo, were convicted by a federal jury of crimes including conspiracy to import cocaine.
U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Dearie sentenced Gigliotti in Brooklyn federal court, according to Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde.
The pair were arrested in March 2015 after a long-term investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI, in coordination with law enforcement authorities in Italy, into a transnational cocaine trafficking operation. Between October and December 2014, federal law enforcement officers intercepted and seized nearly 1,110 pounds of cocaine that had been hidden inside cardboard boxes that contained cassava and were sent from co-conspirators in Costa Rica to the defendants in Queens. To facilitate their operation, the two Genovese crime family associates used their family-run Italian restaurant Cucino Amodo Mio, located at 51-01 108th St. in Corona, to facilitate their operation.
When the Gigliotti defendants were arrested on March 11, 2015, law enforcement searched the restaurant as well as the Malba residence, seizing one 12-gauge shotgun, one loaded .357 magnum Trooper revolver, one loaded .22 caliber Colt pistol, one .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver, one 9mm Keltec pistol, one .762 Czech pistol, one .38 caliber Derringer, loose ammunition. holsters, brass knuckles and more than $100,000 in cash, and a drug ledger detailing the disbursement of more than $350,000 made on the sale of narcotics.
The defendant’s wife, Eleonora Gigliotti, also participated in the family-run drug-trafficking operation, and in January 2017, pleaded guilty to conspiring to import cocaine. Angelo Gigliotti and Eleonora Gigliotti are awaiting sentencing, and face mandatory minimum sentences of 20 years and five years, respectively.
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
