Colombo mobster gets 41 mos. in Qns. union extortion scheme
A Colombo crime family soldier who once opined that “sometimes people only respect violence” was sentenced to 41 months behind bars Monday for his role in shaking down a Queens construction union.
Michael Uvino, 58, a longtime inducted member of the Mafia crime family, played a central role in demanding one of the union’s senior officials continue to surrender $2,600 of his salary to the mob every month, federal prosecutors said.
The Colombos first started shaking down the union, which represents construction workers in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, in 2001.
The feds’ investigation into the plot led to the arrest of the entire Colombo leadership in 2021. Earlier this year, all 14 suspects in the case pleaded guilty except for family head Andrew “Mush” Russo, who died in April 2022 at age 87. Uvino was sentenced in Brooklyn Federal Court after making a statement apologizing to the victims and his family.
Uvino, who had recently finished a 10year federal prison term, went to the union leader’s house one night in January 2020, accompanied by another Colombo gangster, Vincent “Vinnie Unions” Ricciardo. They demanded the labor boss stay under their thumb and give them access to other employee salary and benefit information, according to the feds.
“I have no one to blame but myself,” Uvino said Monday of the visit. “I involved myself in something that I had nothing to do with.”
They ordered that the official continue to pay up even during the COVID-19 pandemic when he wasn’t getting a regular salary. They showed up at the union’s Queens office that August, banging on the locked door and demanding to be let inside as workers called 911, according to the feds.
The mob duo told the responding officers they were simply trying to collect a check. Afterward, Uvino bragged to Ricciardo that the union’s workers “don’t feel an air of invincibility anymore,” the feds said.
He was also caught on a wiretap offering to force a union worker unfriendly to the mob to resign.
In another wiretapped conversation, Uvino told a woman, “Violence doesn’t solve everything, but sometimes you have to use it. Sometimes people only respect violence,” according to the feds.
Uvino has already served about 25 months in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest. He was asking for a 31-month term, and said he planned to leave the state for good to avoid the lures of organized crime.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Reich pointed out that Uvino has shown contrition before, as when he asked the late Judge Jack Weinstein for a “second chance” at his sentencing in 2009 for brutally beating two men who robbed his Long Island social club. Weinstein gave him 10 years behind bars despite the testimony of a Catholic nun asking for leniency.
“The defendant is simply not willing, Your Honor, to live a law-abiding life,” said Reich, who asked for a 51-month sentence.
After his release, Uvino was caught on wiretap talking about his appearance before Weinstein: “You have to sound some kind of uh, contrition. … I used other things. I apologized to my daughter, my family, my, you know, I wasn’t gonna apologize for what I did.”
Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez asked the mobster what steps he’s taken to show he means to stay out of trouble.
“What’s changed? I want to believe your statement,” the jurist said. “Just help me. I’m looking for something from you that gives me some sense of confidence.”
Uvino replied, “I’m not looking to spend my life on an installment plan, coming in and out of prison.”
He said he hoped to move to Arizona or Florida after his sentence ends, and that even after his earlier release, he steered clear of going back into the illegal sports gambling business that defined his earlier mob career.
“I plan to disassociate myself with everybody,” he said. “All I can do is try my best to have a nice, normal lifestyle.”