‘Skinny Joey’ Merlino gets 2 years in prison
Joey Merlino back to prison.
“Skinny Joey,” the reputed boss of the Philadelphia mob who has a home in Boca Raton, was sentenced Wednesday to serve two years in federal prison for a gambling-related count to which he pleaded guilty in April.
The sentence, imposed by a federal judge in Manhattan, marks just the latest stint of incarceration for the mouthy celebrity gangster, who has survived assassination attempts, beaten murder charges in court, and spent at least a decade locked up for prior convictions on counts of racketeering, conspiracy, assault or related offenses.
It was the stiffest possible penalty for Merlino, who had opted to plead guilty to a single count instead of facing a retrial on a litany of is headed other charges. Still, in imposing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan said that Merlino needed to move on from his prolific criminal past.
“Mr. Merlino, enough,” Sullivan said. “Let’s move on.”
Merlino, for his part, said afterward that he planned to use the time behind bars to get into shape. And, in an apparent reference to witnesses who cooperated with the government against him, he quipped: “President Trump is right — they’ve got to outlaw the flippers.”
Merlino has long insisted that he has left his criminal past behind — relocating to Boca Raton in 2011 and serving as maitre d’ at an eponymous restaurant he opened there. But his most recent brush with the law resulted from his indictment in 2016 in a sweeping East Coast mob crackdown.
Manhattan-based prosecutors accused Merlino and 45 other alleged mobsters of operating illegal gambling rings and bribing doctors to write unnecessary prescriptions for topical skin creams, among other alleged schemes.
Nearly every defendant pleaded guilty before trial, but Merlino opted to take his case before a jury — even though he faced a lengthy potential prison term if convicted. Earlier this year, a judge declared a mistrial after jurors reported being hopelessly deadlocked.
Just two months later, in a surprising twist, Merlino decided to plead guilty to a single gambling count instead of facing a retrial. It was the first time the brash mobster had admitted to criminal conduct in court.
Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., Merlino’s lawyer, said in April that the plea was prudent because Merlino — a longtime gambling addict — would be exposed to a much longer prison sentence convicted at a retrial.
In court documents, prosecutors had asked Sullivan to impose the full twoyear prison term against Merlino, citing his extensive criminal history and what they viewed as a continuing indifference to obeying the law. In sentencing memos, they wrote that “the experience of standing trial twice for murder did not sufficiently discourage him from engaging in illegal activity.”
Jacobs, meanwhile, asked Sullivan to impose a sentence of house arrest. And he requested that any prison sentence be reduced by four months to account for the time Merlino spent behind bars in 2014, when a federal judge in Philadelphia ordered Merlino jailed for violating his probation by socializing with a purported mob associate at a Boca Raton cigar bar. An appellate court eventually overturned that ruling, freeing if Merlino just 10 days before his jail term was to have ended.
Sullivan declined to do so, saying he felt two years of incarceration was a good deal for Merlino given the evidence presented at trial. LLimimititeeddTTimimeeOOfffeerr--EExxppiriraattioionnDDaattee::180//3311//1188 SunSentinel.com/obituaries | ssobits@SunSentinel.com | 954-425-1010 To purchase an obituary: placeanad.sunsentinel.com/obituary