7 years for pizza shop coke queen
A QUEENS woman got a sevenyear prison sentence Thursday for helping run an international cocaine trafficking operation out of the family’s pizzeria.
While the family’s patriarch might have been the ringleader, Brooklyn Federal Judge Raymond Dearie said Eleonora Gigliotti (photo), 56, was fully involved in a crime that was also a “family tragedy, to be sure.”
Gigliotti, her husband, Gregorio, and their son, Angelo, were charged in 2015, after authorities nabbed shipments of cassava with cocaine stashed inside.
Prosecutors said the operation had links in Italy and Costa Rica, importing at least 120 kilos of cocaine since 2012. When law enforcement raided the Gigliottis’ Corona restaurant, Cucino a Modo Mio, they found a stockpile of weapons, a drug deal ledger and more than $100,000 in cash, authorities said.
When the trio were first detained, prosecutors said the Gigliotti family had “close business ties” to the ’Ndrangheta, the notorious Calabria, Italy-based crime organization, and pointed to Italian authorities who said Gregorio was hashing out a drug sale with members of the organization.
Law enforcement officials also said Gregorio, 60, and Angelo, 36, were tied to the Genovese crime family.
Jurors convicted Gregorio and Angelo this past July. Gregorio received an 18-year term last month, while Angelo is awaiting sentence.