Bonanno associate found guilty of forcible touching and harassment

Bonanno associate found guilty of forcible touching and harassment

  June 28, 2018    Dapper_Don

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Queens jurors convicted an alleged mob associate of forcible touching Wednesday for stuffing an employee’s hand down his pants.

Prosecutors said Robert Pisani stuck the worker’s hand into his pants while she was counting money at his Broad Channel deli in April 2017.

Jurors deliberated for about a day and a half before finding Pisani guilty of forcible touching and harassment in the misdemeanor case.

It’s another conviction for Pisani, 45, who’s already admitted to a role in a Brooklyn loansharking case. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to collect an illegal gambling debt in that federal case.

The feds say Pisani is an associate of the Bonanno crime family, but his lawyer disputes that characterization.

The deli owner’s accuser testified in the Queens trial.

Pisani’s pervy proposition occurred while he was out on bail in the federal case, authorities said. Police arrested him right outside Brooklyn Federal Court.

Despite convicting him on two counts, including the top charge, jurors acquitted Pisani of third-degree sexual abuse.

A day before the verdict, a Queens community newspaper publisher pleaded guilty in a related case.

Brooklyn federal prosecutors said Patricia Adams, publisher of “The Forum,” tried to get the accuser’s father to talk her out of cooperating with law enforcement. Adams pleaded guilty to a charge that she knew someone else was trying to dissuade the woman — though the identity of that person wasn’t mentioned.

Pisani is scheduled to be sentenced in July on the federal case and in August on the Queens case. Writers sent the court a raft of letters vouching for him and seeking leniency in the federal case, including one from City Councilman Eric Ulrich.

“My client continues to maintain his innocence and we are considering our options going forward,” said Pisani’s lawyer, Seth Ginsberg.

As for Adams’ recent plea, Ginsberg added, “Any suggestion (Pisani) was involved in any witness tampering or obstruction of justice is absolutely false.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-metro-forcible-touching-guilty-verdict-mob-associate-20180627-story.html