A son of late former Mafia underboss Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo on Monday pleaded guilty to federal charges alleging he defrauded the government of more than $3.3 million in a payroll tax scheme at his Revere towing company, authorities said.
In a statement Tuesday, US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling’s office said the defendant, Gennaro Angiulo, 49, of Nahant and Saugus, pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to charges of willful failure to collect and pay over taxes and evading cash transaction reporting requirements.
Angiulo’s lawyer didn’t immediately return an e-mail seeking comment Tuesday afternoon. Sentencing is scheduled for Mar. 2.
Court records indicate that under terms of a plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend Angiulo serve “home confinement for a period of 18 months and incarceration for a period of 27 months," plus two years of supervised release.
The government will also recommend Angiulo pay forfeiture in the amount of $430,000 and another $1.7 million in restitution, records show.
Prosecutors have said that between the tax years of 2014 through at least 2017, Angiulo paid his GJ Towing employees a portion of their wages in cash under the table.
“In doing so, Angiulo did not collect, account for or pay over to the IRS required withholding and FICA taxes,” prosecutors have said. “The cash payments to employees were funded, at least in part, by cashing checks from clients of GJ Towing and other third parties in groups totaling not more than $10,000 in a single day.”
Banks must report transactions of more than $10,000 to federal treasury officials.
Max Stern, a lawyer for Angiulo, previously told the Globe his client is “not his father.”
“His problems with the government arise solely out of the completely legitimate business he started when he was 15 years old with a single tow truck and then built up through dint of hard work, along the way providing honest employment to hundreds of people and earning a reputation as a solid contributor to the community,” Stern said in a recent statement.
For decades, Gennaro Angiulo’s father, Jerry Angiulo and Jerry’s brothers were among Boston’s most infamous sons, a band of siblings who ran the Mafia from a tiny office in the North End from the 1960s to the 1980s and were as much a part of the neighborhood’s fabric as the cafes and pastry shops.
Jerry Angiulo died in 2009 at age 90. He had served 24 years in prison for racketeering before he was released in 2007. Frank, the last surviving brother, died of heart failure in 2015 at the age of 94.
In a letter filed Oct. 26 with the court, a Revere woman named Assunta M. Esposito pleaded for leniency for Gennaro Angiulo when he’s sentenced in the tax case on March 2.
Esposito wrote that GJ Towing and Angiulo’s other businesses “provide earnings for many employees and their families. At this time of COVID-19 it seems that dismantling these businesses as a result of incarceration would be disastrous to these families.”
Angiulo, Esposito continued, is an “extremely generous” man who “has always been forthcoming for organizations in the community. Funding Little League and other sports and donating generously to community fundraising throughout the Metro Boston area, Revere, Lynn and Nahant.”
Esposito said she hopes a "fine will be the end result of this indictment, the best result for his family, his employees and himself.”
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.