A Queens father and son charged with smuggling more than $1 million worth of cocaine into the US in yucca shipments kept their “lucrative” international drug operation all in the family, prosecutors said Wednesday during opening statements of their criminal trial.
Gregorio Gigliotti relied heavily on son Angelo and wife Eleonora to ensure that the 55 kilos of coke from Costa Rica were delivered in two separate shipments to the family’s Bronx produce warehouse in 2014, prosecutors said.
Gregorio, a reputed associate of Genovese capo Anthony Federicci, also turned his Corona pizzeria Cucino a Modo Mio into a front to store an arsenal of guns, ammunition and $100,000 in cash in basement safes, jurors were told.
“The defendants were running a highly profitable cocaine trafficking operation and they were prepared to defend it,” Assistant US Attorney Margaret Gandy said in opening the Brooklyn federal court trial.
She said the “very strong-willed” pizza patriarch enlisted Eleonora and his cousin to deliver cash to connections in Costa Rica, where the drugs originated, and Angelo kept him apprised of business matters while he spent time in his native Italy.
Eleonora is charged with traveling to Costa Rica to deliver nearly $400,000 in cash to a drug dealer in August 2014. She is not currently on trial after being previously found unfit.
Gandy told jurors that they’ll hear the father and son allegedly discussing the drug operation in wiretapped conversations – some of which is in the Calabrian dialect of Italian – stemming from simultaneous probes by Italian and US authorities.
Also presented as evidence will be the sheets of cocaine – which were hidden inside the flaps of the cardboard boxes containing cassava or yucca – as well as guns that were recovered by authorities.
Alan Futerfas, who represents Angelo, told jurors to consider the father and son’s cases separately.
“They are two different people, they have two different cases,” the lawyer said during opening statements. “I think the evidence will show that Angelo and his father are very different individuals.”
Futerfas also said jurors will get a taste of Italy from trial evidence.
“You’ll hear about wine, olive oil, Italian tile,” he said, without elaborating.
Gregorio’s attorney Elizabeth Macedonio urged the panel to “keep an open mind.”
Earlier Wednesday, Judge Raymond Dearie ruled that the defense attorneys engaged in a “pattern of attempts” to exclude male jurors during the selection process Monday.
He shuffled jurors around to seat four men and eight women on the panel, with five alternates.