Thursday, March 01, 2007

Chris Colombo's lawyer made no bones about it right from Day One: Colombo is
your basic gambler from Blooming Grove who only dresses like a gangster -
and a TV gangster at that. Yesterday, a federal jury agreed. But convicting
Colombo of gambling charges was about the only agreement that the jury
reached after three weeks of deliberations. The jury deadlocked on most of
the charges in a 16-count indictment, including a racketeering charge
against Chris Colombo. The jury also acquitted his older brother, Anthony,
62, of racketeering, and deadlocked on extortion charges. Chris Colombo last
night described himself as a former gambler. He's now directing his energy
to other pursuits. The Orange County native talked about designing clothes
and doing some writing. "I just want to enjoy being with my kids," he said
from home last night. "It's been a long, hard road. The jury spoke - it is
what it is." A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia wouldn't say
yesterday whether he'll seek new trials for the Colombos, who could have
been imprisoned for decades if convicted of racketeering. Chris Colombo, 45,
is the youngest of the four sons of Joe Colombo, who was the boss of New
York's Colombo crime family until 1971. He died in 1978. During opening
statements last month, Chris Colombo's lawyer, Jeremy Schneider, got some
chuckles out of the jury when he gestured toward his own
dressed-to-the-nines client and said, "He looks like he just walked off the
set of 'The Sopranos.'" But Schneider argued that Colombo was merely a
bookie, not the main man in a whole criminal conspiracy. And Louis Fasulo,
the lawyer for Anthony Colombo, argued that the feds built their case
against the brothers largely upon the sins of their famous father. That
argument swayed the jury, Fasulo said after court yesterday. He spoke with
the jurors after they were discharged by Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald. "They
didn't like the branding, and I think that the jurors just felt that the
case didn't have a lot of meat," Fasulo said. Chris Colombo's due back in
court in April. The maximum sentence is five years for each gambling charge.
In addition to the Colombo brothers, a handful of other locals were among
the 30 people named in the March 2004 indictment, including Montgomery
accountant Paul Siepman, John "Lollipop" Dillenbeck of Goshen, and Louis
"Chi Chi" DeStefano of Middletown, whose son was the mayor of Middletown at
the time. They, and most of the others named in the indictment, took plea
deals.