Sanitation Supervisor Canned for Year in Lotto Jackpot

By REUVEN BLAU

A former Sanitation Supervisor was sentenced to one year in prison Dec. 20 for operating an illegal Lotto-type gambling ring out of his Bronx garage.

According to authorities, Joseph M. Davoli was the principal organizer of the ring, which was tied to the numbers chosen by the New York State Lotto drawings, and paid out thousands of dollars in awards each month.

5 Other Sanmen Caught

Mr. Davoli, who pleaded guilty, said he used runners who collected a $20 entry fee from each of the hundreds of participants in the lottery from at least January 2005 through August 2006.

The runners included five other DSNY employees who were secretly recorded via a court-ordered wiretap placing multiple calls to the hotline, according to the FBI. They are: Anthony T. Amore Jr., Keith Kaplan, Joseph M. Iocovello, Daniel J. Kane, and John A. Macchiaroli.

They all previously pleaded guilty to participating in the gambling ring, and each was sentenced to three years' probation, six months of home confinement, 300 hours of community service, and a $5,000 fine.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, which has jurisdiction over The Bronx, Mr. Davoli used coded phone messages on his cellular phone that were filled with inane, coarse language urging the runners to bring in more money for each lottery.

The runner who sold the winning ticket would get 10 percent of the prize money. According to investigators, Mr. Davoli earned approximately $35,000 from the ring, which he agreed to forfeit to the government as part of his guilty plea.

In imposing the sentence, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said that Mr. Davoli not only organized the gambling ring, but ran it with an "iron fist." In addition to the prison sentence, Judge Hellerstein ordered him to pay a fine of $5,000.