MACK IS BACK
Convicted former mayor returns to society, though likely won’t come back to Trenton
TRENTON » Just in time for next month’s runoff election, former Trenton Mayor Tony Mack has been released from jail.
But don’t worry, the convict is forbidden from running for office as a condition of his sentence.
Mack, now 52, is currently assigned to a residential reentry management field office in Butner, N.C., according to records on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) website. After starting to serve his sentence at a federal prison in West Virginia in June 2014, Mack was eventually transferred to a Memphis jail.
Only recently on the BOP website did it show that Mack was released from the Memphis federal prison.
“I knew he was getting out sometime in the beginning on this year,” his attorney, Mark Davis, said Wednesday in a phone interview, noting it was the first time he’s heard the news. “He called me when he was still at the (Memphis) camp so I haven’t talked to him since he’s been released.”
Davis, whose law office is based in Hamilton, said he hasn’t talked to the former city mayor in a couple of months.
“He was doing great, looking forward to coming home,” Davis said. “I’m glad that he was finally discharged. Good for him.”
The location where the field office that Mack is assigned to is close to where his family settled in Smithfield, N.C. shortly before the mayor’s corruption trial began.
Davis thinks Mack intends to stay down South.
“Based on my conversation with him, he had no intent of coming back to Trenton,” Davis said.
Many times when BOP lists an inmate is at a field office, it means they are home with some reporting conditions. That was the case with former convicted Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo.
In February 2014, Mack was convicted with his brother, Ralphiel, for participating in a corruption scheme to accept $119,000 in bribes in exchange for the mayor’s influence to sell land cheaply for the development of a parking garage on city-owned land.
Mack was sentenced to 58 months in prison for his role, indicating he is getting released early for good behavior.
An official from the Federal Correctional Institution Memphis, where Mack was housed, would only say that Mack will be released from federal custody on Sept. 9. The officials said he couldn’t “give out” when Mack was released from the Memphis jail.
It appears most of Mack’s family still lives in North Carolina.
His son, Tony Mack Jr., is listed as a freshman on the roster for the North Carolina A&T State University baseball team. The former mayor’s wife, Kara, is a contracts and grants manager at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
With Mack out of prison, the only remaining cohort left in the slammer is Joseph Giorgianni.
The man who likened himself to Boss Tweed is serving a 78-month sentence at Devens, a federal prison in Massachusetts, for his role as a bagman to collect bribes for Mack and his involvement in an oxycodone drug ring based out of his sandwich shop, JoJo’s Steakhouse. Giorgianni, who claimed he would die if he was sent to prison and suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder, is expected to be released on Aug. 31, 2020.
Mack’s buddy, Charles Hall III, was released from custody earlier this month on May 7. The former city recreation department employee, who is now 54, served his 48-month sentence at Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey.
Hall, the first co-conspirator in the corruption scheme to flip and cooperate with the feds, admitted to selling pills in the drug ring and operating as a buffer to receive bribes for Mack.
Mack’s brother, Ralphiel, was the first accomplice in the bribery scheme to be released from jail in February 2016. During an FBI raid at the Trenton Central High School head football coach’s home in July 2012, the feds found $2,500 in marked bills, cementing the 45-year-old’s guilt in the case as a buffer and bagman.
Giorgianni’s longtime girlfriend, Mary Manfredo, was also released from jail last May. The key witness in the Mack trial testified she witnessed her boyfriend hand the then-mayor an envelope of cash in the back area of JoJo’s Steakhouse. Manfredo, 70, did time for her role in the drug ring.
Adding to his notoriety, Mack held onto power for 19 days after his conviction before being removed from office by a judge.
Mack’s tenure can still be felt in the city.
The mayoral election earlier this month only had a voter turnout of 22 percent. The city has also never fully recovered from the damage that was done when Mack was in office.