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During his two decades with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Joseph Bongiovanni was often the “chief spoiler,” meaning he was the first one in the room.
On Wednesday, he felt a familiar sense of uncertainty as he awaited sentencing. DEA The badge was to protect a childhood friend who became a prolific drug dealer in Buffalo, New York.
“I never knew what was on the other side of the door — that fear is how I feel today,” Bongiovanni, 61, told a federal judge, his face red with emotion as he pounded on the defense table.
“I was always naive. I loved that job.”
U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo sentenced the disgraced law enforcement officer to five years in federal prison on a series of corruption charges.
Even if a jury acquitted Bongiovanni of the most serious charges he faced, including paying a $250,000 bribe to the Mafia, the penalty would still be far less than the 15 years prosecutors had sought.
The judge said the sentence reflected the complexity of the mixed verdicts following two lengthy trials, as well as the near-incarnate nature of Bongiovanni’s career, a enforcer with enough headline-grabbing accolades to fill a trophy case.
Bongiovanni once rushed into a burning apartment building, crawling through billowing smoke to evacuate residents. He jailed drug dealers, including the first in the region to be prosecuted for an overdose. Before going to work, he would call his mother and tell her he loved her.
“There are two completely opposite versions of the facts and there are two completely opposite versions of the defendant’s circumstances,” said Verardo, who assured prosecutors that five years in prison would be a considerable hardship for a man who has never been in prison.
In 2024, a jury convicted Bongiovanni of four counts of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to defraud. USAconspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and making false statements to law enforcement.
Prosecutors said Bongiovanni’s “dark little secret” caused immeasurable damage over 11 years. They compared him to Jose Irizarry, a disgraced former DEA agent who was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to laundering money for Colombian drug cartels.
They believe Bongiovanni swore not to the DEA but to organized crime elements in the tight-knit Italian-American community of North Buffalo where he grew up.
He was accused of writing false DEA reports, stealing sensitive documents, dumping colleagues, exposing confidential informants, providing cover for a sex-trafficking strip club and helping a high school English teacher continue a side business growing marijuana. Prosecutors said he brazenly urged colleagues to spend less time investigating Italians and focus on blacks and Hispanics.
“His actions shook law enforcement and this community to its foundations,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Trippi told the judge. “This is betrayal.”
In the front row of a packed courtroom in downtown Buffalo, Bongiovanni’s family members broke down in tears, cursing the retired agent’s attorney for claiming the case was built on prosecutors’ “blind hatred.”
The case is part of a sex trafficking prosecution that has taken sensational turns, including a judge involved committing suicide after an FBI raid on his home, law enforcement officials dragging a pond looking for overdose victims, and the placement of dead rats outside the home of a government witness who prosecutors say was later killed by a fatal dose of fentanyl.
It also involves Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club outside of Buffalo. Bongiovanni was a childhood friend of strip club owner Peter Gerace Jr., who authorities said had close ties to the Buffalo Mafia and the violent Outlaw Motorcycle Club. Another jury convicted Geras of a sex trafficking conspiracy and bribery of Bongiovanni.
Prosecutors have also been harshly critical of the DEA, which has been embroiled in a series of corruption scandals over the past decade and at least 17 agents have been charged with federal charges. Last month, prosecutors charged another former agent with conspiring to launder millions of dollars and obtain military-grade guns and explosives for Mexican drug cartels.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration did not respond to a request for comment on Bongiovanni’s sentencing.