New Westminster senior's guilty plea for drug smuggling
VANCOUVER - New Westminster senior Silvano Cicuto may have already spent a year behind bars in New York on drug smuggling charges, but the 72-year-old has no shortage of passionate defenders.
"Silvano Cicuto was a respected and hard-working business leader in his community, recognized for his honesty, integrity, industry and generosity," Vancouver lawyer Mark Cacchioni says in a letter of support. "It came as a complete shock that Silvano had been charged with a drug offence in the United States and that he had pleaded guilty to the same.
"From what I have learned, Silvano fell in with an unscrupulous crowd and they may have exploited his naive nature by bringing him in on their illegal activity."
Friends like Cacchioni - who once did legal work for Cicuto's business - neighbours, former employees and relatives have lined up to file reference letters in advance of Cicuto's sentencing in U.S. District Court Monday, after he pleaded guilty to smuggling hundreds of thousands of ecstasy pills into the New York market.
His U.S. lawyer, Stephanie Carvlin, says it is a tragic tale of failing fortunes and desperation; that Cicuto lost his construction business of 30 years after a Vancouver telecommunications company went belly up and didn't pay Cicuto the close to $1 million it owed him for laying cable.
But court documents paint a picture of a savvy and street-smart operator, intimately acquainted with the mechanics of drug dealing, who used sophisticated drug trafficking jargon and readily dispatched a cadre of drug couriers to complete his deals.
Carvlin argues that Cicuto's declining health and advanced age mean he should be able to return to B.C. and serve his sentence under house arrest.
He only got involved in the drug scheme after he "was confronted with an almost unimaginable amount of pressure," she said in sentencing documents.
"It was truly extraordinary personal and professional reversals that led this decent, industrious, community-minded man to become involved in the instant offence."
Carvlin lays out Cicuto's life story for Judge Paul Crotty like an historical novel. Born in Morsano, Italy in 1938, he went to work on the family's subsistence farm at 11, then followed older brothers Gino and Ennio to Canada at the age of 18, unable to speak English and with a grade five education. He worked in the gold mines for 92 cents an hour, where two co-workers were "killed before his eyes." He was injured himself when rocks came crashing down on him, partly severing his left foot. He spent six months in hospital.
After stints as a stone mason, and with a wife and three sons to support, Cicuto started a construction company, eventually working with Gino in Cicuto Brothers Contractors. When Gino retired, the business morphed into Cicuto & Sons, which had its offices in Burnaby.
At the peak, Cicuto had 150 employees, who became his extended family. He sent sick children to Disneyland. He bought a wheelchair for a disabled girl. He sponsored soccer teams. He helped in his church and community, Carvlin says.
And then he lost everything. And he started drinking too much.
What Carvlin doesn't explain is how Cicuto, his son Robert, and a Vancouver mortgage broker named Luciano Mannu ended up tangled in a sophisticated cross-border drug smuggling operation that ended with a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration undercover sting.
Robert has not been taken into custody despite the U.S. indictment, but both Cicuto and Mannu were nabbed in a Newark, New Jersey hotel on Jan. 22, 2010 and have been in custody ever since.
Cicuto has pleaded guilty, while Mannu is slated to go to trial in New York later this month.
According to U.S. prosecutors, Cicuto is a member "of a drug trafficking organization based in part in British Columbia," who, with co-conspirators, arranged for large quantities of ecstasy and a similar synthetic drug called BZP to be delivered to New York.According to court documents, the DEA first got wind of the drug ring when a confidential informant told agents in June 2009 that "he had met and spoken with a Canada-based individual named Shaun Sunduk who distributed large quantities of ecstasy pills." The informant passed along Sunduk's number and the DEA called for some sample pills.
They arrived on July 1, 2009 in a small package from New Westminster, where Cicuto was living.
Through Sunduk, the DEA's agent ordered 100,000 more pills from the B.C. drug gang. Sunduk referred to Cicuto as his "boss" in texts to the agent. Cicuto called the DEA plant directly several times, complaining in one call that his driver had been robbed of 100,000 pills.
Court documents say Cicuto, who the DEA agent called "the old man," used sophisticated drug trafficking jargon to describe the potential of his ecstasy and relayed messages as to when his couriers would be crossing the border.
After one driver was arrested in Minnesota, Cicuto complained to the undercover agent that "Sunduk's people had lost the shipment of 100,000 pills and that he was no longer working with Sunduk."
But Cicuto was determined to complete the deal with his New York buyers. He called the DEA agent on Sept. 21 to say his own son, "Rob," was in Los Angeles and that the father-son duo could deliver the ecstasy. The price would be between $225,000 to $235,000.
The DEA agent later called Rob Cicuto at the number his father had provided. Court documents say the son bragged that he was "sitting on one million ecstasy pills" of top-notch quality.
The DEA told the Cicuto crew to deliver the ecstasy to Manhattan Mini Storage at 541 West 29th Street in New York and to call the agent an hour before the couriers arrived.
At about 8 p.m., on Oct. 29, 2009, the shipment arrived. The couriers were arrested and 150,000 ecstasy pills seized.
Despite the interception, Cicuto demanded to be paid, the U.S. Attorney says. On Nov. 2, 2009, the agent got a text from a B.C. number saying "Hey bud, send the money to robert cicuto and silvano cicuto at 1922 edinburgh st new westminster british columbia canada send it through western union thanks let me know when done."
The Edinburgh address is Cicuto's house.
Several other text messages to the DEA followed with payment demands. Finally on Jan. 21, 2010 Cicuto's co-accused, Luciano Mannu, called the undercover agent. At the time, Mannu was a licensed mortgage broker running a Vancouver company called Rehab Capital Corp. though his licence has since been suspended by the B.C. Financial Institutions Commission.
Mannu told the agent he was in the region and he wanted a meeting to discuss the missing money. "You received some goods .... and we in Vancouver got f-cked," he is quoted in court documents as saying. They agreed to sit down together the next morning.While the B.C. men contemplated their payday, the DEA set up surveillance on Room 233 of the Newark Ramada Plaza, in New Jersey.
The cops moved in Jan. 22 and arrested both Metro Vancouver men.
Since then, home for Cicuto has been the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, a few blocks from city hall.
Last summer, he filed a motion to get the evidence that was seized at the Ramada thrown out. He lost.
At the end of September, he accepted his fate and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import ecstasy and BZP and conspiracy to distribute both illicit substances. Federal prosecutors have not revealed what jail term they are seeking for Cicuto, but the maximum is 10 years.
Prosecutors are seeking between four and six years for the two American couriers busted at the mini-storage. One of them told the DEA after his arrest that he had been contacted by a B.C. man named James Mitford to pick up the ecstasy and some marijuana in Boston and deliver it to New York. He dropped the pot off in Brooklyn and then headed into Manhattan, where he was arrested.
Neither Mitford nor Sunduk, both identified as Canadians in the U.S. court papers, are facing U.S. charges in the case. Neither have criminal records in B.C.
Robert Cicuto remains in Metro Vancouver, suffering from mental illness, court documents say.
Details about who is behind the North America-wide drug ring are sketchy. Insp. Murray Power, of the RCMP's Federal Drug Enforcement Branch, told The Vancouver Sun he is not familiar with Cicuto or the others charged and that there is no parallel Canadian investigation.
"We have no link or ties to that investigation," Power said.
New Westminster police continue to investigate the suspected arson fire that severely damaged Cicuto's New Westminster house last March, less than two months after his arrest in New York. The house had been up for sale until recently, but realtor Geoff Jarman said he had to de-list it until the insurance company completes its investigation of the fire.
In the meantime, dozens of letters have been written to Judge Crotty, asking for leniency for a man whose "life cascaded out of control.""For almost 70 of his 72 years, he led an exemplary life. Coming from very little, he acquired the components of an honourable and productive life: a strong family unit, a solid place in the community and legitimate employment," Carvlin says.
"He has been incarcerated in the United States thousands of miles from his family. No friend, family member or relative has been able to visit him. He has been separated from his wife while she again struggles with insurmountable financial problems."
Some friends recalled the good old days when the homemade wine flowed freely in the "cantina" in the basement of Cicuto & Sons' Burnaby offices.
"I often visited his offices late in the day and more often than not these business meetings were followed by an informal gathering of some of his employees in his 'cantina,'" accountant Perry Munton said in his letter to the judge.
"Early in 2010, I learned from the family that Silvano was in jail in New York City. I do not know much about the charges to which he has been convicted. I have not spoken directly to Silvano about his problems. However it is my guess that Silvano's actions and his trip to New York were an act of desperation to help resolve his serious financial situation."
Josephine Cicuto's hand-written letter to the judge about the man she married 45 years ago is one of the most poignant in the batch.
"I cannot believe my husband is in jail. My family and friends are shocked. This is not the man we all know," she wrote. "Your honour, I know my husband did a terrible crime. Could you please find it in your heart to send him home? If not for him, but for me and my family."
"Silvano Cicuto was a respected and hard-working business leader in his community, recognized for his honesty, integrity, industry and generosity," Vancouver lawyer Mark Cacchioni says in a letter of support. "It came as a complete shock that Silvano had been charged with a drug offence in the United States and that he had pleaded guilty to the same.
"From what I have learned, Silvano fell in with an unscrupulous crowd and they may have exploited his naive nature by bringing him in on their illegal activity."
Friends like Cacchioni - who once did legal work for Cicuto's business - neighbours, former employees and relatives have lined up to file reference letters in advance of Cicuto's sentencing in U.S. District Court Monday, after he pleaded guilty to smuggling hundreds of thousands of ecstasy pills into the New York market.
His U.S. lawyer, Stephanie Carvlin, says it is a tragic tale of failing fortunes and desperation; that Cicuto lost his construction business of 30 years after a Vancouver telecommunications company went belly up and didn't pay Cicuto the close to $1 million it owed him for laying cable.
But court documents paint a picture of a savvy and street-smart operator, intimately acquainted with the mechanics of drug dealing, who used sophisticated drug trafficking jargon and readily dispatched a cadre of drug couriers to complete his deals.
Carvlin argues that Cicuto's declining health and advanced age mean he should be able to return to B.C. and serve his sentence under house arrest.
He only got involved in the drug scheme after he "was confronted with an almost unimaginable amount of pressure," she said in sentencing documents.
"It was truly extraordinary personal and professional reversals that led this decent, industrious, community-minded man to become involved in the instant offence."
Carvlin lays out Cicuto's life story for Judge Paul Crotty like an historical novel. Born in Morsano, Italy in 1938, he went to work on the family's subsistence farm at 11, then followed older brothers Gino and Ennio to Canada at the age of 18, unable to speak English and with a grade five education. He worked in the gold mines for 92 cents an hour, where two co-workers were "killed before his eyes." He was injured himself when rocks came crashing down on him, partly severing his left foot. He spent six months in hospital.
After stints as a stone mason, and with a wife and three sons to support, Cicuto started a construction company, eventually working with Gino in Cicuto Brothers Contractors. When Gino retired, the business morphed into Cicuto & Sons, which had its offices in Burnaby.
At the peak, Cicuto had 150 employees, who became his extended family. He sent sick children to Disneyland. He bought a wheelchair for a disabled girl. He sponsored soccer teams. He helped in his church and community, Carvlin says.
And then he lost everything. And he started drinking too much.
What Carvlin doesn't explain is how Cicuto, his son Robert, and a Vancouver mortgage broker named Luciano Mannu ended up tangled in a sophisticated cross-border drug smuggling operation that ended with a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration undercover sting.
Robert has not been taken into custody despite the U.S. indictment, but both Cicuto and Mannu were nabbed in a Newark, New Jersey hotel on Jan. 22, 2010 and have been in custody ever since.
Cicuto has pleaded guilty, while Mannu is slated to go to trial in New York later this month.
According to U.S. prosecutors, Cicuto is a member "of a drug trafficking organization based in part in British Columbia," who, with co-conspirators, arranged for large quantities of ecstasy and a similar synthetic drug called BZP to be delivered to New York.According to court documents, the DEA first got wind of the drug ring when a confidential informant told agents in June 2009 that "he had met and spoken with a Canada-based individual named Shaun Sunduk who distributed large quantities of ecstasy pills." The informant passed along Sunduk's number and the DEA called for some sample pills.
They arrived on July 1, 2009 in a small package from New Westminster, where Cicuto was living.
Through Sunduk, the DEA's agent ordered 100,000 more pills from the B.C. drug gang. Sunduk referred to Cicuto as his "boss" in texts to the agent. Cicuto called the DEA plant directly several times, complaining in one call that his driver had been robbed of 100,000 pills.
Court documents say Cicuto, who the DEA agent called "the old man," used sophisticated drug trafficking jargon to describe the potential of his ecstasy and relayed messages as to when his couriers would be crossing the border.
After one driver was arrested in Minnesota, Cicuto complained to the undercover agent that "Sunduk's people had lost the shipment of 100,000 pills and that he was no longer working with Sunduk."
But Cicuto was determined to complete the deal with his New York buyers. He called the DEA agent on Sept. 21 to say his own son, "Rob," was in Los Angeles and that the father-son duo could deliver the ecstasy. The price would be between $225,000 to $235,000.
The DEA agent later called Rob Cicuto at the number his father had provided. Court documents say the son bragged that he was "sitting on one million ecstasy pills" of top-notch quality.
The DEA told the Cicuto crew to deliver the ecstasy to Manhattan Mini Storage at 541 West 29th Street in New York and to call the agent an hour before the couriers arrived.
At about 8 p.m., on Oct. 29, 2009, the shipment arrived. The couriers were arrested and 150,000 ecstasy pills seized.
Despite the interception, Cicuto demanded to be paid, the U.S. Attorney says. On Nov. 2, 2009, the agent got a text from a B.C. number saying "Hey bud, send the money to robert cicuto and silvano cicuto at 1922 edinburgh st new westminster british columbia canada send it through western union thanks let me know when done."
The Edinburgh address is Cicuto's house.
Several other text messages to the DEA followed with payment demands. Finally on Jan. 21, 2010 Cicuto's co-accused, Luciano Mannu, called the undercover agent. At the time, Mannu was a licensed mortgage broker running a Vancouver company called Rehab Capital Corp. though his licence has since been suspended by the B.C. Financial Institutions Commission.
Mannu told the agent he was in the region and he wanted a meeting to discuss the missing money. "You received some goods .... and we in Vancouver got f-cked," he is quoted in court documents as saying. They agreed to sit down together the next morning.While the B.C. men contemplated their payday, the DEA set up surveillance on Room 233 of the Newark Ramada Plaza, in New Jersey.
The cops moved in Jan. 22 and arrested both Metro Vancouver men.
Since then, home for Cicuto has been the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, a few blocks from city hall.
Last summer, he filed a motion to get the evidence that was seized at the Ramada thrown out. He lost.
At the end of September, he accepted his fate and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import ecstasy and BZP and conspiracy to distribute both illicit substances. Federal prosecutors have not revealed what jail term they are seeking for Cicuto, but the maximum is 10 years.
Prosecutors are seeking between four and six years for the two American couriers busted at the mini-storage. One of them told the DEA after his arrest that he had been contacted by a B.C. man named James Mitford to pick up the ecstasy and some marijuana in Boston and deliver it to New York. He dropped the pot off in Brooklyn and then headed into Manhattan, where he was arrested.
Neither Mitford nor Sunduk, both identified as Canadians in the U.S. court papers, are facing U.S. charges in the case. Neither have criminal records in B.C.
Robert Cicuto remains in Metro Vancouver, suffering from mental illness, court documents say.
Details about who is behind the North America-wide drug ring are sketchy. Insp. Murray Power, of the RCMP's Federal Drug Enforcement Branch, told The Vancouver Sun he is not familiar with Cicuto or the others charged and that there is no parallel Canadian investigation.
"We have no link or ties to that investigation," Power said.
New Westminster police continue to investigate the suspected arson fire that severely damaged Cicuto's New Westminster house last March, less than two months after his arrest in New York. The house had been up for sale until recently, but realtor Geoff Jarman said he had to de-list it until the insurance company completes its investigation of the fire.
In the meantime, dozens of letters have been written to Judge Crotty, asking for leniency for a man whose "life cascaded out of control.""For almost 70 of his 72 years, he led an exemplary life. Coming from very little, he acquired the components of an honourable and productive life: a strong family unit, a solid place in the community and legitimate employment," Carvlin says.
"He has been incarcerated in the United States thousands of miles from his family. No friend, family member or relative has been able to visit him. He has been separated from his wife while she again struggles with insurmountable financial problems."
Some friends recalled the good old days when the homemade wine flowed freely in the "cantina" in the basement of Cicuto & Sons' Burnaby offices.
"I often visited his offices late in the day and more often than not these business meetings were followed by an informal gathering of some of his employees in his 'cantina,'" accountant Perry Munton said in his letter to the judge.
"Early in 2010, I learned from the family that Silvano was in jail in New York City. I do not know much about the charges to which he has been convicted. I have not spoken directly to Silvano about his problems. However it is my guess that Silvano's actions and his trip to New York were an act of desperation to help resolve his serious financial situation."
Josephine Cicuto's hand-written letter to the judge about the man she married 45 years ago is one of the most poignant in the batch.
"I cannot believe my husband is in jail. My family and friends are shocked. This is not the man we all know," she wrote. "Your honour, I know my husband did a terrible crime. Could you please find it in your heart to send him home? If not for him, but for me and my family."
