Drug dealer gets 46 months for illegal entry

Originally published: December 10, 2010 6:55 PM
Updated: December 10, 2010 11:39 PM
By ROBERT E. KESSLER

A major narcotics dealer of the 1980s broke down in tears Friday as he pleaded for a lenient sentence, saying he illegally re-entered the United States after being deported because he needed to take a seriously ill daughter back to Italy.

"I came back for my daughter . . . me and my wife did everything possible," Vincenzo Roccisano told U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert before he was unable to continue speaking.

Despite Roccisano's plea, Seybert sentenced him to 46 months in prison, the term recommended by federal probation officers.

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Roccisano's attorney, Benedict Gullo of Mineola, had asked that his client be sentenced to the time he recently has served - the months since his February arrest in Great Neck.

Roccisano, 58, was deported to his native Italy in 2002 after serving 18 years in federal prison for being one of the developers of a new narcotics-trafficking scheme, known as "the barter system," according to federal officials. At his arrest in the 1980s, prosecutors said he was a member of 'Ndrangheta, the powerful Sicilian-Mafia-like organization in Calabria.

In the trafficking scheme, large quantities of Colombian cocaine were swapped in Europe for heroin from Afghanistan, with the cocaine then sold in Europe and the heroin smuggled into the United States. That type of arrangement avoided the use of money and a money-laundering trail, officials said.

The condition of Roccisano's daughter, who is in her 20s, was not in dispute Friday. Gullo, federal prosecutor James Miskiewicz and Seybert all acknowledged that she has bipolar disorder and is seriously ill.

But Miskiewicz scoffed at the idea that Roccisano had returned to the United States only to take his daughter to Italy, saying Roccisano had not presented "a single fact" to support that claim.

"I take great objection to the notion that the defendant came into this country with no intention of committing a crime," he said in court, calling Roccisano "one of the most significant drug traffickers."

After Roccisano's arrest, Miskiewicz said in court that the defendant recently "traveled extensively through Europe and South America" and that authorities had "no idea where his actual home is."

Family members eventually took Roccisano's daughter to Italy, according to court testimony.

In imposing the 46-month sentence, Seybert said she doubted "that he came here exclusively to take care of his daughter."

After the sentencing, Gullo said his client was not sentenced because of his illegal entry into the country. "He got sentenced again for his first conviction," Gullo said.

Prosecutors originally asked that Roccisano be sentenced to the maximum of 20 years for entering the country illegally, but later declined to provide documentation for their request. They said they did not want to compromise an ongoing investigation

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