ALBANY — A jury was selected in U.S. District Court in Albany on Monday to hear the trial of a Schenectady businessman, his son and a Mafia-linked New Jersey man charged with conspiring to traffic an estimated $600,000 worth of cocaine between Schenectady and New York City.
Jeffrey Civitello, 51, and his 23-year-old son, Jeffrey Civitello Jr., are standing trial with Richard Sinde, 58, of Fort Lee, N.J., a reputed associate of the Bonanno crime family, in a case before U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino. The jury and three alternates were sworn in late Monday afternoon in a packed first-floor courtroom.
Opening statements are set to begin on Tuesday at 9 a.m.
Federal prosecutors allege the elder Civitello, who owns Focus Construction in Schenectady, conspired with his son as well as Sinde and two others to move the cocaine starting on March 31, 2021, when they allegedly met on Albany Street in Schenectady to discuss transporting the drugs downstate from Schenectady in the younger Civitello’s blue Jeep Grand Cherokee. Sinde and the other the two men allegedly went downstate in three separate cars, with Sinde in the Jeep.
Investigators with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had placed a GPS tracking device on that vehicle. It recorded the Jeep traveling from Schenectady, staying in Fort Lee that night, then traveling over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan and eventually a location in the Breezy Point section of Queens. The vehicle then went back to Fort Lee, prosecutors said.
On April 2, 2021, State Police acting at the direction of the DEA stopped the Jeep on the Thruway in Greene County. Investigators seized 9 kilograms of cocaine that was in a hidden compartment in the SUV. Neither of the Civitellos were in the car at the time. But a man driving the vehicle, 76-year-old Robert Ingrao from Lodi, N.J., was…
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