Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The prosecutor was used as a reference in the businessman’s application for a slots license.
HARRISBURG (AP) — A federal prosecutor was listed as a reference on a slot-machine application filed by a businessman who is a target of an organized crime investigation.
U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Marino has since removed himself from the investigation, according to The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, which first reported that Marino had appeared as a reference.
The northeastern Pennsylvania businessman, Louis A. DeNaples, also has emerged as a focus of a separate grand jury investigation in Dauphin County.
Marino did not immediately respond to a telephone message left at his office Tuesday. Marino, the former Lycoming County district attorney, has served as the top federal prosecutor for Pennsylvania’s Middle District since 2002.
DeNaples won a slot-machine license in December for the Pocono Mountain resort he is building. A spokesman for DeNaples has said he has no connection to organized crime.
Confirms reference
The spokesman, Kevin Feeley, confirmed that Marino was one of DeNaples’ references on the slots application. The two men have been friends since when Marino was in private practice, Feeley said.
“It’s a social relationship,” Feeley said Tuesday. “They’re friends, and have been for 10 or 15 years.”
DeNaples bought the shuttered Mount Airy Lodge in the Pocono Mountains in late 2004 and applied for a lucrative slots license for the property a year later. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board awarded him a license Dec. 20. Mount Airy Casino Resort is expected to open for gambling in October.
The Dauphin County grand jury is looking into information on DeNaples that grew out of a long state and federal investigation into alleged Scranton-area mobster William D’Elia, according to a person familiar with the investigation. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.
Indictment
A federal grand jury indicted D’Elia last year on charges of money laundering and conspiring to kill a prosecution witness.
One aspect of the Dauphin County investigation is whether DeNaples lied when he told the gaming board that he had no connections to organized crime, the person said. D’Elia appeared before that grand jury last month.
DeNaples, who has businesses ranging from garbage disposal to auto parts, pleaded no contest in 1978 to a felony charge of conspiracy to defraud the federal government in a case involving government payments to clean up damage from Tropical Storm Agnes. He was fined $10,000 and placed on probation for three years.
The federal prosecutor in that case, Sal Cognetti Jr., also appeared as a reference on DeNaples’ application, Feeley said.
The gaming board said an applicant’s references are confidential, and declined a request to release the documents.