'Gentleman' gangster gets 97 months in prison

Anthony "Ant" Staino Jr. once called himself the CFO of the Philadelphia mob and threatened to unleash "two gorillas" on a deadbeat debtor, but he didn't cut the typical image of a thuggish mobster.

With silver hair and dark-rim eyeglasses, the 56-year-old South Jersey native has stellar credit, files yearly tax returns, and has logged time in college but never in jail. He was his high school class president and captain of the football team, shares cooking and landscaping tips with his Swedesboro neighbors, and donned a SpongeBob costume to trick-or-treat with his daughter.

When the FBI swarmed his house for a search, an agent reported that Staino acted like "a gentleman, as always." And at his recent trial, Staino was perpetually upbeat and friendly, chatting up guards and courtroom observers.

The conflicting portraits - genteel family man and violent criminal - weren't lost Wednesday on the judge who sentenced Staino to 97 months in prison.

"Perhaps he's both," U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno said after a three-hour hearing in which Staino surprised even the judge by quoting Thomas Jefferson.

The sentencing was the fourth in a week - and the last - for men convicted in the city's first major mob trial in a decade. Though the case lacked the murders and brutality of past prosecutions, each defendant was convicted of racketeering - of essentially committing to a life of crime.

Still, Staino stood slightly apart.

Nearing AARP status, he was a first-time offender. After working as a bartender and union business agent, he waited until middle age to join the mob, prosecutors said, then climbed in a decade from an associate to captain and right-hand man to boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi.

"He didn't rise in the mob because he was a gentleman," Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank A. Labor told the judge. "He rose in the mob because he's an effective, brutish gangster."

According to evidence at trial, Staino oversaw loan-sharking and helped the mob strong-arm operators of a video-poker vending company into selling them the business.

Labor told the judge to rely less on the nice-guy accolades in 57 letters from Staino's friends and relatives, many of whom crammed the courtroom, than on the secret recordings jurors heard at the trial.

"Please, on my life, I like you. I don't want to have to [expletive] hurt you," Staino warned one man, adding that he had "two gorillas" at his call. That man was a wire-wearing undercover FBI agent.

Staino's lawyer, Gregory Pagano, insisted that Staino was drunk at the time, and that he has a reputation for alcohol-fueled braggadocio. It was during another drinking session that Staino called himself "the CFO" of the local crime family.

According to Pagano, Staino had been willing to plead guilty. But the lawyer claimed that the government refused to give Staino the same breaks it gave other defendants because it wanted to "squeeze" him into cooperating against others - an assertion Labor denied.

In February, a jury convicted Staino of extortion, acquitted him of 22 other counts, and deadlocked on three charges, including the overarching racketeering conspiracy. In April, he pleaded guilty to that charge and illegal gambling, this time without a government deal.

Staino told the judge his mob activities came at "a low point" in his life, when he was alone and had a drinking problem. Staino said he turned a corner after marrying his current wife and they had a daughter, now 5. "I wanted to be the kind of father a daughter could be proud of," Staino said, reading a single-spaced statement.

He recited from Jefferson - "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal" - and pledged that he had left the mob behind. "Even though my life of crime was short-lived, I will never go back to that life or any criminal involvement," Staino said.

Robreno gave him credit for pleading guilty, but not much more. He said "vivid" testimony showed Staino was an active leader in the mob, a group that thrives on violence.

The judge said the public often gets a glorified view of mobsters on television, instead of seeing them as he does, as dangerous criminals. "This sentence, of course, is intended to try to balance those scales," he said.