Feds drop request to revoke bail of powerful Gambino captain
Officials on Thursday decided to drop a request to revoke the bond of an alleged captain of the Gambino crime family who prosecutors say organized a “clandestine meeting” on Staten Island to investigate the death of boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali, court records show.
On
Feb. 10, an FBI agent observed Andrew Campos, 50, of Scarsdale, N.Y,
while taking his daughter to a doctor’s appointment in Connecticut,
“with his head down using a cellular phone" -- something Campos was not
supposed to do as part of his bond conditions, wrote Richard P.
Donoghue, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a
memo asking a federal judge to revoke the bond.
Three
days later Donoghue notified federal Judge Rachel Kovner that the
government decided “to withdraw its motion to revoke the defendant
Andrew Campos’s bond pending further investigation.”
The decision was based upon new information, court records show.
“A
person’s liberty should not be the subject of the government’s whim,”
attorney Henry E. Mazurek, who represents Campos, said in a written
statement to the Advance. “The government’s motion to detain Mr. Campos
was a scary overreach that could have put an innocent person in jail for
taking his daughter to a doctor’s visit.”
A
federal judge had granted Campos permission to take his daughter to the
doctor’s appointment in Connecticut, court records indicate.
“Next time rather than moving to revoke bail, they should actually investigate first,” Mazurek said.
Campos
was arrested on Dec. 5, 2019, along with nine other alleged members and
associates of the Gambino family, and was charged with, among other
crimes, racketeering conspiracy, including predicate acts of
extortionate collection of credit, wire fraud and obstruction of
justice.
He
was released on Dec. 23 on a $4.5 million bond, home detention and is
“subject to electronic monitoring of his cellular telephone and other
Internet-enabled devices by Pretrial Services," according to court
records.
Shortly after his arrest, federal prosecutors unsealed a detention memo that alleged Campos
met with multiple other high-level crime family members to discuss the
then-unclear circumstances surrounding Cali’s death, the Advance previously reported.
The detention memo does not detail where exactly on Staten Island the group met.
In
the days following Cali’s death, Campos and Vincent Fiore, 57, an
alleged Gambino soldier, actively helped the Gambino family investigate
the murder, the memo alleged.
The
day after the meeting, on March 18, Fiore talked to his ex-wife about
the session and his investigation, telling her that he and Campos met
with “a half dozen” people, prosecutors wrote in the memo.
Fiore
also told her that he had seen the surveillance video of Cali’s slaying
and speculated on a possible motive “relating to a woman” who had been
at the Hilltop Terrace home on the day of the slaying, the memo says.
Prosecutors do not specifically say who that woman could have been.
Cali, the reputed boss of the Gambino family, was shot in front of his house on March 13, 2019. On March 16, Anthony Comello, 25, of Eltingville, was arrested in connection with the slaying.
Comello has been in custody since and made several inconsistent statements to investigators when he detailed what happened that night in March. Prosecutors have not made any statements linking the slaying to the Mafia.
Last week Comello appeared in court and, during
bizarre and rambling 20-second monologue, said his phone had contained
information on human sex-trafficking and drug smuggling.
Then,
in quick succession, Comello referenced Australia, Russia and Ukraine,
as well as “Operation Mockingbird,” without further details.
https://www.silive.com/crime/2020/02/good-news-for-now-for-alleged-mobster-who-feds-say-probed-calis-murder.html
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