Stephen Corso will live the rest of his life with a target on his back

Accountant Stephen Corso was in deep trouble. His clients, including longtime friends, told federal authorities in Connecticut in 2002 that he had stolen more than $5 million.Then the Ridgefield man who loved to gamble took the biggest risk of his life: He decided to become an FBI informant in Las Vegas, known as an open city because the Mafia felt it could operate freely.Corso’s fateful decision came as federal agents in New York were struggling to build a case against two former police detectives long suspected of collaborating with the mob. Investigators were dealing with uncooperative witnesses and a statute of limitations.After a secret meeting with an FBI agent at a hotel, Corso was fitted with a wire and went to work taping conversations of suspected mobsters from around the country. He would spend years recording conversations on more than 900 tapes as he lived a transient life sleeping on the couches of friends, including what authorities called some unsavory characters.“We came across anything and everything,” said FBI agent Kevin Sheehan.
Soon Corso was introduced to Louis Eppolito, one of the detectives suspected of carrying out mob hits.“It was divine intervention,” Robert Henoch, a former New York prosecutor who handled the case, said at Corso’s sentencing Tuesday when he received a year in prison. Or maybe it was dumb luck, he added.Either way, Corso began to fill in the holes in the case. The former detective bragged about dunking someone’s head in acid and threatened to decapitate another person, Henoch said.At one point, Corso was threatened with execution if he turned out to be an informant, authorities said. He had no backup as he secretly recorded the conversations.
“I don’t think he would have lived too long in Las Vegas or anywhere,” Sheehan said.
Corso offered the detectives drug money to finance a film project at a 2004 meeting in Las Vegas. Eppolito, a decorated former detective and son of a mobster, was living in Las Vegas and trying to peddle screenplays and was unconcerned about the source of the cash.Eppolito and the other detective, Stephen Caracappa, were accused of participating in eight mob-related killings between 1986 and 1990 while working for the Luchese crime family in one of the worst cases of police corruption in New York history.A New York jury found the detectives guilty in 2006, but a judge dismissed their racketeering case after determining the statute of limitations had passed on the slayings. A federal appeals court later reinstated the verdict after prosecutors argued that the murders were part of a conspiracy that lasted through a drug deal in 2005 with Corso.“There never would have been justice without Mr. Corso’s cooperation,” Henoch said.Corso’s intelligence led to other prosecutions and saved investigators millions of dollars, authorities said.Authorities said they offered to put Corso in a witness protection program, but he declined because he would not be able to see his wife and three children.Corso, who faced the possibility of more than seven years in prison but won the reduced sentence for his extraordinary cooperation, is scheduled to surrender May 6.Susan Patrick, whose family lost more than $800,000 to Corso, said he was a family friend before the thefts. Corso has been ordered to pay restitution to the Patricks and other victims.
“This started a six-year nightmare,” she said at his sentencing. “We will never be whole for our losses. I don’t believe Mr. Corso is at all sorry.”Corso, who apologized to the victims and his family, said at the time that he ripped off millions from his clients to finance a life of “girlfriends, jewelry and going out.” Prosecutors say he also had significant gambling losses while living a second life in Las Vegas.Corso told the judge his parents were first-generation Italian immigrants who struggled so that he could have a better life. His family, who helped pay for his education at New York University, hated the mob, he said.“And I threw it all away,” Corso said. “I simply lost the way I was raised, how I was raised, but I know for the last six years I functioned and there was never a moment, never a second, that I ever considered doing anything wrong.”Authorities say Corso remains in danger because of his cooperation with them.“Mr. Corso will live the rest of his life with a target on his back,” said his attorney, J. Bruce Maffeo.

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Stacey Goss, 31, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 or more grams of crack cocaine.

Stacey Goss, 31, pleaded guilty June 18 to a charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 or more grams of crack cocaine. U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz sentenced her to 120 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release.According to the U.S. attorney's Connecticut office, Goss, also known as "Binky," was among 22 people named Feb. 14 in a 30-count indictment handed up by a grand jury charging them with offenses including drug trafficking and witness-tampering in connection with a drug distribution ring in southwest Connecticut.Goss, who has been detained since her arrest Feb. 20, was accused of distributing crack to customers and street-level dealers on behalf of her co-conspirators, acting U.S. Attorney for Connecticut Nora R. Dannehy said in a prepared statement.

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Duane Jennings

Duane Jennings: A federal judge sentenced Jennings to five years in prison, the lowest sentence allowed by law.
Jennings, 31, who formerly lived on Old Kennedy Road, was by all accounts the secondary participant in the attempt to buy cocaine from a dealer who turned out to be a government informant. The sham deal took place at a Meriden hotel on the evening of June 22.
Jarvis Terry, 36, formerly of Brewster Road in Windsor, had negotiated the purchase in previous telephone calls with the informant.
But prosecutor Geoffrey M. Stone told Judge Mark R. Kravitz in New Haven's U.S. District Court that when Terry and Jennings arrived at the hotel "they were almost equally involved in trying to consummate the transaction."
The two men arrived at the hotel with more than $23,000.
Like Jennings, Terry pleaded guilty in the case. Senior Judge Alan H. Nevas, who sits in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, sentenced Terry in November to 70 months, or almost six years, in federal prison.
Both men had reason to know better. Each has two prior felony narcotics convictions, court records show.
Federal sentencing guidelines prescribed identical sentence ranges for them, 70 to 87 months in prison.
Kravitz cited two reasons for giving Jennings a reduced sentence.
The first was that his sentence range under the guidelines was pushed up a notch by a disorderly-conduct conviction stemming from an incident that occurred when his father was being arrested a dozen years ago. Jennings was 19 at the time.
The judge said he wouldn't have given Jennings a break for a drug conviction when he was 19. But he said the disorderly conduct conviction was unrelated to drug activity.
The second reason was that Jennings played a smaller role in the cocaine deal than Terry, although the judge acknowledged that "on the day in question it was of the same dimension."
The 10-month break from the judge was the second - and the smaller - of the two breaks Jennings has received in the case.
Federal prosecutors gave him the first break by agreeing, as part of his plea bargain, not to file a formal notice of his prior narcotics convictions with the court. That would have raised his minimum sentence to 10 years in prison.
Jennings can earn more breaks in prison, where he will be eligible for a nine month, or 15 percent, reduction in his time behind bars for good behavior. Kravitz also recommended that the federal Bureau of Prisons consider him for a 500-hour drug treatment program that can reduce his sentence by up to an additional year.
And Jennings will be eligible for release to a halfway house when he has six months to go on his prison term.
But when he gets out of prison, Jennings will be on probation for four years, with three more years of possible prison time hanging over his head if he violates court-ordered conditions.
In light of Jennings' record, Kravitz acknowledged, there is a risk that he will commit more crimes when he is released.
The judge ended the hearing with words of almost fatherly advice.
If Jennings returns to drug dealing when he gets out of prison, Kravitz said, there will be two possibilities: He could end up dead because drug dealing is a dangerous business. Or he will be arrested again and receive a significantly longer prison sentence.
If the latter happens, the judge said, "You will never see your children grow up. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for them."

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