Gimme A Break.
The ongoing saga of Philly Mob Boss Joey Merlino and federal authorities took a new twist over the past few weeks when his legal team asked federal authorities to return the passport he surrender upon his arrest in 2016 in a New York Organized Crime case.
Gangland News’ Jerry Capeci first reported Merlino’s passport problems Thursday in his weekly column.
Court records obtained by Mobtalksitdown.com from the Southern District of New York detailed the case of the missing passport over the past few weeks.
To date, it has not been returned to the 59 year old Mobster, but it’s not for a lack of effort by his lawyers.
It all started in August when Merlino got off supervised release after pleading guilty to gambling charges in 2018 following a mistrial on New York healthcare fraud charges. When his lawyers asked federal authorities to return Merlino’s passport, the response was they couldn’t find it.
Here’s where it gets interesting and almost comical.
First federal authorities said the passport wasn’t in the possession of the court and couldn’t be found by pretrial services or the clerk of the court.
After some digging and investigating, the feds figured out the passport was actually sent to the State Department for some reason. While records showed the passport had been mailed to the State Department in the Spring by probation officials, there was no record at the State Department that it ever arrived there.
Finally after some leg work and numerous phones calls to State Department officials by one of Merlino’s lawyers, the passport was located and the State Department told federal authorities they would mail it to Merlino or his attorneys within 30 days.
But the case of the missing passport wasn’t quite over yet.
For days, Merlino waited patiently for his passport to come through the mail, but as of October 15th, it had still not arrived. That sparked trial judge Richard Sullivan to pen a new order, Telling the government he wanted to know by Nov. 19th the status of the return of Merlino’s passport.
There’s no word if Merlino, who’s made trips to the Jersey Shore, Las Vegas, New York and Philadelphia this summer, even plans to use the passport to travel outside the country in the near future.
Stay tuned.
