A son of late former Mafia underboss Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo avoided prison time this week when he was sentenced to probation for engaging in a payroll scheme at his towing company that defrauded the government of more than $3.3 million, prosecutors said.
The deceased mafioso’s son, also named Gennaro Angiulo, 49, of Nahant and Saugus, was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Boston to 42 months of probation with 18 months of home confinement and was ordered to fork over restitution of $1,769,486 and forfeiture of $430,000, according to a statement from the office of Acting US Attorney Nathaniel R. Mendell’s.
Angiulo’s lawyer, Max D. Stern, did not return an e-mail seeking comment Friday.
Angiulo was also ordered to complete 40 hours per week of community service during the term of his home confinement and was barred from running his business, GJ Towing, during that time, according to the statement.
Federal authorities had requested 27 months behind bars for Angiulo, according to officials.
Mendell’s office said Angiulo pleaded guilty in November to one count each of willful failure to collect and pay taxes and evading cash transaction reporting requirements.
For the tax years 2014 through at least 2017, the statement said, Angiulo paid a portion of his employees’ wages in cash “under the table.” That subterfuge meant Angiulo didn’t collect, account for, or pay the IRS required withholding and FICA taxes, according to the statement.
“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,” the statement said.
Stern had previously told the Globe that Angiulo 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 previously.
The reputation of Angiulo’s father is well known.
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 in October with the court, a Revere woman named Assunta M. Esposito pleaded for leniency for Gennaro Angiulo, the son of the former underboss, in the tax case involving GJ Towing.
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.”
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.