Genovese Crime Family Capo Pasquale “Patsy” Parrello is finally a free man.
Federal Bureau of Prisons records indicate that the 77 year old gangster walked out of the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Facility on Wednesday, a few months ahead of his scheduled July 2022 release date.
Parrello was chastised at sentencing four years ago by the judge in his case for not learning his lesson from a previous 88-month prison sentence.
“There’s a long history of capos who have died in prison,” Judge Richard Sullivan told Parrello before a packed courtroom. “You must have understood this. You had 88 months to think about it before”
Parrello has been locked up for six years after being swept up in the infamous East Coast LCN racketeering case out of New York. He got the longest sentence, 7 years, of all the 46 defendants in the highly publicized Mob case that frankly fizzled when all of the defendants except Philly Mob Boss Joey Merlino opted to plead out.
It was billed as one of the most wide sweeping Mob takedowns in years. The FBI’s so called East Coast LCN operation in 2016 snagged 46 wise guys and associates from several different LCN families, including Joey Merlino, Parrello and another high ranking mobster.
Merlino went to trial, but after a mistrial in his first trial on health care fraud and other charges, Merlino ended up reluctantly deciding to plead guilty to a single gambling charge, that got him a 2-year sentence at a Florida federal lock up not too far from his Boca Raton home.
It was the first time Merlino has ever plead guilty to a crime.
Two years ago Merlino and ranking Genovese Crime Family Capo, Eugene “Rooster” Onofrio, 78, were let out of federal prison and sent home after sources told Mobtalksitdown.com authorities decided to release them early because of medical reasons and Covid19 precautions.
Merlino was released from a halfway house in West Palm Beach, Onofrio from a Federal Bureau of Prisons medical center in Massachusetts.
This translated into two of the top three gangsters charged in the multi-year investigation being free, with some restrictions
Merlino was due to be released from his halfway house confinement in July 2021. Onofrio was scheduled for “compassionate release” on May 7, 2020, but that was moved up at the urging of a federal judge due to COVID19 concerns. The 59 year old Merlino, who suffered some heart problems four years ago, still had to serve out a year of supervised release.
Parrello sought compassionate release, but was not released.
The three top ranking LCN figures, it turns out, only came together one time during the lengthy East Coast LCN probe. That was during a December 2014 Christmas party at Pasquale’s Rigoletto on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The three mobsters were unwittingly brought there by party organizer and FBI informant JR Rubeo with some bigtime assistance from the FBI.
The feds put up $25,000, a $1,000 a head, to bring the mobsters all together for the Christmas gathering. Merlino even brought some of his top lieutenants to the party, including, the FBI says, then acting Street Boss Michael “Mikey Lance” Lancellotti and “rising star” Capo Domenic Grande, who was later indicted in 2021 in a Philadelphia racketeering and drug case.
FBI surveillance cameras captured the three top wise guys in pictures outside the restaurant.
There was no word on Parrello’s plans for the future.
Merlino has been off supervised release since last July and has made repeated trips to Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore over the past six months.
He continues to draw the attention of federal and state investigators in Philadelphia and beyond, according to top ranking sources. He insists he’s not involved in any criminal activity and is not facing any charges,
