Philadelphia mob boss fraud case ends in mistrial

NEW YORK • A mistrial was declared on Tuesday in the New York City racketeering trial of a notorious Philadelphia mob boss who had insisted he quit his life of crime after a lengthy prison term.

Jurors at the trial of Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino told U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan that they were hopelessly deadlocked after five days of deliberations.

Prosecutors alleged that instead of retiring, Merlino muscled his way into gambling and health insurance schemes run by crime families in the east. He used his standing in the Mafia to demand protection payments from bookies and other underlings running a scheme to collect thousands of dollars of insurance claims by bribing doctors to write phoney pain prescriptions for people who had no ailments, prosecutors said.

“Being with Merlino did not come for free,” assistant U.S. attorney Lauren Schorr said during closing arguments. “You pay tribute.”

Defence lawyer Edwin Jacob countered by telling jurors that they were being misled by “compromised” turncoat mobsters who testified against Merlino, including one who made hundreds of hours of secret recordings of him.

“Have you heard anybody say Joseph Merlino is the boss of the Philadelphia mob?” Jacobs asked, referring to tapes played for the jury. “The answer is obvious — not a peep that he’s the boss of (the) Philadelphia mob.”

But prosecutors argued the tapes showed Merlino had full knowledge of the frauds. In one conversation about bribing doctors, he is heard saying, “We do the right thing, make 20,000.”

Merlino, 55, once controlled the remnants of a Philadelphia organized crime family that was decimated by a bloody civil war in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2001, a jury acquitted Merlino and six co-defendants of three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. He was convicted of lesser racketeering charges and served 12 years in prison.