Crooked pizza man gets 20 years in family-run international cocaine bust
A Brooklyn Federal Judge sentenced a Queens man to 20 years in prison yesterday — after his parents were already sentenced — for taking part in a large-scale, family-run cocaine distribution ring operated out of a pizza shop.
Angelo Gigliotti walked out into Judge Raymond Dearie’s courtroom at Brooklyn Federal Court and smiled at his family and friends who filled three rows in the audience. Gigliotti’s wife Brooke was audibly sobbing as she saw her husband about to be sentenced.
Gigliotti, 36, was convicted in a two-week trial in January 2016 with his father Gregorio Gigliotti for smuggling two shipments containing more than $1 million worth of cocaine from Costa Rica to their Corona, Queens pizzeria, hidden in the flaps of shipments of cassava, a plant similar to yucca.
Federal wiretaps showed the family, which included Angelo Gigliotti’s mother Eleonora, transported 120 kilos (265 pounds) of cocaine through their pizza shop Cucino a Modo Mio since 2012.