A longtime fugitive who was recently nabbed for crimes linked to the notorious 20-year-old Pizza Connection has been set free after the feds admitted that key evidence had been destroyed and dropped the charges.
Enrico “Kiko” Frigerio was released after nearly three months behind bars when prosecutors disclosed they no longer had the original surveillance video and audiotapes from a three-year DEA undercover investigation dating from the mid-1980s.
Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin had also criticized authorities for making a surprise arrest Sept. 3 at JFK Airport as Frigerio returned to New York with a Swiss TV crew to work on a documentary about his life.
The 65-year-old accused heroin trafficker was released on Wednesday and allowed to return to Switzerland after prosecutors asked Scheindlin to nullify four counts of drug and conspiracy charges from a 1987 indictment.
Frigerio’s lawyers had been pushing for copies of the video and audiotapes in preparation for a Dec. 3 trial, where they hoped to present an entrapment defense.
Defense attorney Peter Ginsberg said the FBI learned the tapes had been destroyed on Oct. 1, but waited until approximately two weeks ago to inform Frigerio and Scheindlin.
“The FBI admitted it had been misrepresenting to the court and defense counsel that tape recordings were in existence and would be produced,” Ginsberg said. “During that time period, they were trying to force my client to take a plea.
“On Wednesday, they left him outside the courthouse in a T-shirt and prison slippers without a penny to his name and without calling us,” Ginsberg said, adding that the judge’s chambers notified his firm of the release.
“Lawyers from the firm went running down to the courthouse and found him literally huddled in a corner trying to stay warm.”
The Pizza Connection case got its name because pizza parlors across the country were used as fronts to move nearly $1.6 billion worth of narcotics.
Lawyers for Frigerio claim he did not know he’d been charged in the 1987 indictment, because the case was sealed and he has spent much of the past two decades in Switzerland, which does not have an extradition arrangement with the United States.