This is what happens when you hire bargain-basement wiseguys.
The Nassau County cop who allegedly worked for the Bonanno crime family bungled a raid on a rival family’s gambling den so badly that it totally failed to fool the victimized gangsters — including a gambler named “Mario the Landscaper,” who quickly said, “These are not real police,” a court heard Wednesday.
“It wasn’t professionally done — you could see it was fake,” mobster Sal Russo testified Wednesday at ex-officer Hector Rosario’s trial for obstruction and serving as a soldier for the Bonannos in their struggles against the rival Genovese crime family.
“I just heard yelling and screaming, ‘This is the police! This is the police!’” Russo testified about the shocking raid. “They broke the screens on one of the machines, and they kept screaming, ‘This police! This police!’ before they left the store.”
But the fake sortie — which targeted Salvatore “Sal the Shoemaker” Rubino’s illegal casino inside his Merrick store, Sal’s Shoe Repair — was so shoddily done that none of the illicit gamblers thought Rosario and his small crew actually cops.
“These are not real police,” Mario the Landscaper, who Russo described as a “steady player at Sal’s,” allegedly told the others after the initial shock wore off.
“They don’t just come in breaking [things],” Russo said, quoting Mario.
Russo testified that the low budget raid by Rosario — who was only being paid $1,500-a-month by the Mafia — looked so fake he feared he might get clipped by the Genovese bosses in retaliation.
When asked what he thought might happen to him, Russo answered, “Hospital, cemetery … anything.”
The b-grade raid on the gambling den wasn’t the only bungling by the alleged dumb-fella.
At a later point, Rosario tried to play like a movie Mafioso and talk to Russo about a pot growing operation in a code that involved a movie he saw in Netflix.
“When I get the name of the movie, try to watch it. It’s good,” Rosario said in a recording of the phone call played in court.
Russo, however, said he had no idea what the cop was talking about and thought he was really just calling to talk about film.
“I thought he was talking about a movie,” he said.
Rosario, a 51-year-old former detective, conspired to target rival Genovese mafiosos in a feud that erupted after the Cosa Nostra families struck a rare agreement to split the profits of a gelato shop’s backroom gambling den, federal prosecutors said.
But the shaky peace deal didn’t last — and Rosario “sold himself” to the Bonnanos before staging the faux raid, Brooklyn prosecutors have said.
Rosario, who was first busted in 2022 and released on a $500,000 bond, was allegedly put on the payroll by two Bonanno family members and told to target Rubino’s betting parlor in 2013 or 2014.
Rosario has been charged with obstructing a grand jury probe into racketeering and lying to the FBI.
On the trial’s opening day, prosecutors introduced the jurors to a laundry list of alleged mobsters and mapped out a constellation of illegal gambling operations — which led to a sweeping 2022 bust that rounded up eight alleged mobsters and Rosario.
“He chose the crime family over the public he swore to protect,” Anna Karamigios, assistant US attorney for the Eastern District, told jurors in Brooklyn federal court.
Yet despite his criminal allegiance, Rosario doesn’t appear to have been a cunning ally.
Still, Rosario took home $2,500 after the second-rate raid, and launched three others aimed at different backroom casinos run by Genovese and Gambinos gangsters — including one at the Gran Caffe Gelateria in Lynbrook, Russo said.
But they didn’t work out.
Rosario would flash his badge at the camera, the mobster said from the stand. But they would never buzz him in to let him raid the joints.
Still, the Bonannos paid him about $8,000 in total for his escapades, which Russo hoped would prompt the closure of Gran Caffe and push the Bonannos to set up a gambling spot at his Soccer Club in Valley Stream.
“If Gran Caffe closed, I would put [Rosario] on the payroll at soccer club,” Russo said, adding Russo would have made about $1,500 weekly.
The plan never came to fruition, however.
The jury also heard a series of seven wiretapped conversations between Russo and Rosario — including one in which Russo told the crooked cop he wanted him to stage another fake raid to “rob Mexicans” who were dealing heroin.
Rosario agreed — and would have taken home $50,000 in payment.
But the raid never happened.
In another recording, Russo tried to get Rosario to move his weed stash to a buyer.
Rosario pushed back, however, and claimed the feds were watching him.
“They got you by the balls, bro,” Rosario said. “They’re watching you, they’re watching you. They’re just waiting for you to f–k up again.”
“You scratch your ass? They’re watching you,” he said. “They’re waiting for you to s–t.”
The two never ended up selling the marijuana.
