Theft ring defendant sentenced to 4 years

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David Thistlewaite

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Bobby Mock

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Brian Bleggi

By Ed Runyan

Another defendant in the theft ring is having a trial on 10 counts of receiving stolen property.

YOUNGSTOWN — A former pizza shop owner received a four-year prison term, while another man went on trial Monday — both accused of being part of a Mahoning Valley burglary ring.

Brian Bleggi, 41, of Black Oak Lane, Austintown, founder of several pizza shops and other businesses in the Youngstown area, told Judge Thomas P. Curran, a visiting judge in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, that he turned to crime after his business ventures and investments went sour several years ago.

“I was a very well-respected businessman,” Bleggi said. “I’ve owned a couple of pizza shops, bars, drive-throughs. The economy has been bad, and I lost them,” he told the judge, who is from Cuyahoga County.

Bleggi, an Austintown native, started the Brier Hill Pizza and Wings chain in Youngstown, then moved to Las Vegas in 1997 to start a business called Youngstown Pizza.

In 2001, he came back to Youngstown, started the Original Aldo’s pizza chain and ran the Danny G’s Party Shop on Mahoning Avenue.

The Las Vegas venture cost him money, and so did bad investments in the stock market, Bleggi said. That, in turn, cost him his home in Canfield, where he lived with his wife and four sons, he said. Bleggi said he no longer owns any pizza shops.

“It was just a drastic change of life,” Bleggi explained to Judge Curran of why he turned to crime starting around 2006 and participated in break-ins with Bobbie J. Mock, 39, of Canfield Road, Austintown, and others.

Under an agreement reached between Bleggi’s attorney, Butch Kissinger, and Kasey Shidel, an assistant county prosecutor, Bleggi will be eligible for shock probation in two years.

Kissinger asked Judge Curran to consider letting Bleggi be eligible for probation after 18 months, citing the “great lengths” Bleggi went to when he helped investigators root out 14 others indicted as part of the ring.

About 30 local police agencies participated in the investigation, run by the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission that was started by former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann.

In all, authorities think the group participated in about 125 break-ins of businesses between January 2004 and May 2007, and that several workers at the General Motors plant in Lordstown helped sell the stolen goods to other GM workers.

Bleggi pleaded guilty to six counts of breaking and entering, seven of theft, two of receiving stolen property and one of participating in a pattern of corrupt activity.

Meanwhile, Mock gave a blow-by-blow description of stealing six motorcycles and four all-terrain vehicles from Gollan’s Honda on Market Street in Youngstown on Jan. 10, 2006, with three other people, driving to a Mahoning Avenue bar with his accomplices, calling David Thistlewaite, of Arthur Street, Canfield, and making a deal to sell them to him.

The trial testimony took place Monday in a third-floor courtroom Judge Curran has been using to handle the theft-ring cases.

Thistlewaite’s trial on 10 charges of receiving stolen property occurred just after Bleggi’s sentencing. The trial involves testimony before a judge only, not a jury.

Mock, who already has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for his role in several other thefts, said Thistlewaite, 36, bought the 10 items for $4,000 and had them delivered to the back room of his business, Bernard’s Auto Parts on Steel Street, that night.

Thistewaite’s attorney, Samuel Amendolara, cross-examined Mock, asking him if it was true that Mock hoped his testimony against co-defendants would result in his getting no additional jail time beyond the 10 years Judge Durkin gave him.

Mock acknowledged that his plea agreement involved a maximum of 10 years in prison as long as he testifies, but he said he hoped he would be allowed probation sometime before 10 years.

Thistlewaite’s trial resumes today with one more prosecution witness.

Also Monday, Judge Curran presided over a hearing for Anthony Petrello, 41, of Canfield Road, Youngstown, who pleaded guilty to four counts of breaking and entering and one count of theft in the same theft ring.

He will be sentenced at 10 a.m. Feb. 2 after the Adult Parole Authority conducts a presentence investigation. Shidel is recommending that he be sentenced to a treatment program at Community Corrections Association on Market Streeet. One of his charges was that he and two others broke into Home Depot in Warren.

runyan@vindy.com