Feds fight to keep ailing Lucchese soldier from dying in Italy

Feds fight to keep ailing Lucchese soldier from dying in Italy

  March 19, 2018    Dapper_Don

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Can’t an old gangster just die in peace?
Brooklyn federal prosecutors have an answer: Not a chance.
There’s a brewing courtroom clash over the last days of a reputed Luchese soldier, the Daily News has learned.
Frank "Frankie Pearl" Federico, 90 and ailing, wants to end his supervised release early so he can die in Italy among family and friends.
But prosecutors have no interest in letting the Bronx nonagenarian live out la dolce vita in the country where he was born.
Now the dispute is up to a judge who once called Federico a “cold-blooded murderer” and hoped he’d never leave a prison cell.
Federico’s convictions stem from ’70s and ’80s, when the Luchese crime family controlled much of Long Island’s garbage carting business, prosecutors said.
The wiseguy-controlled haulers colluded to charge high prices for their services. But in 1980, carting business owners Jerome Kubecka and his son, Robert, were done with the mobbed-up monopoly game. They, and Robert’s brother-in-law, Donald Barstow, put in lower, competitive bids.
That unleashed the so-called “garbage wars” meant to force the Kubeckas to go along — or get out.
The Kubeckas began cooperating with the authorities, who launched criminal and civil cases to clean up the industry.
In August 1989, Robert Kubecka, 40, and Barstow, 35, were shot in the Kubecka’s Suffolk County office. Kubecka was heard gasping on his 16-minute 911 call, slipping out of consciousness, as he tried describing his killer. A day earlier, Kubecka got a telephone call vowing, “You’re going to get killed.”
Investigators found three blood types at the scene and served Federico with a 1992 grand jury subpoena to give blood and hair samples, court papers said.
Federico went on the lam — to Italy — for about 10 years before his 2003 bust at a Bronx doughnut shop. His blood and DNA samples matched the crime scene, according to court papers.
Just ahead of trial, Federico pleaded guilty in exchange for a 15-year prison term.
Since his 2016 release, Federico’s had no scrapes or new cases, according to his lawyer Murray Richman. Federico lives alone and has congestive heart failure, artery failure, high blood pressure and hip problems.
“He’s got it all,” Richman told The News.
But prosecutors said earlier this month that Federico’s poor health didn’t count as a “changed circumstance.” He shouldn’t get special treatment for staying out of trouble on supervised release, because that’s what he’s supposed to do, they said.
They stressed Federico was in supervised release because of his “extraordinarily serious crime” of murdering two cooperators.
“Early termination of the defendant’s term of supervised release for such a serious crime is not in the interest of justice,” prosecutors wrote.
Richman said Federico is “absolutely remorseful” and recognizes the “horror and terror” of his case.
“The man is literally on death’s door,” Richman said. “Is it our intent to continue with our vindictiveness, to cross the threshold of life itself to continue the punishment?”
Brooklyn federal prosecutors have been at odds with oldfellas before.
In 2016, they successfully fought against the “compassionate release” of John "Sonny" Franzese, a former Colombo underboss looking to leave prison ahead of his term.
Franzese was released from prison last June at age 100 after doing all his time.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/mobster-die-italy-da-fights-locked-article-1.3882981