A deteriorating Colombo crime family capo who terrorized and extorted a labor union leader for decades was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for racketeering.
Vincent “Vinnie Unions” Ricciardo, 78, was sentenced in Brooklyn Federal Court on Wednesday for his role in a union shakedown scheme that resulted in the takedown of the entire leadership of the Colombo crime family.
The withering wiseguy, who needs a wheelchair to get around and around-the-clock access to oxygen and who suffers from congestive heart failure, has already served 30 months behind bars awaiting prosecution. He was the last of the indicted Colombos to plead guilty last year.
His lawyer Elizabeth Macedonio stressed that his time in the Hudson County Correctional Facility in New Jersey has been brutal, punctuated by three bouts of COVID-19 and several emergency room and hospital visits — including a shock treatment, over his protests, when he had an irregular heartbeat episode.
She asked Judge Hector Gonzalez that Ricciardo be sentenced to time served and released to the care of his wife in North Carolina.
“When Vincent Ricciardo was arrested in 2021, he put his shoes on and he walked out of the house. He’s no longer able to do that,” Macedonio said, adding that his health has deteriorated so much that he needs a chair in the shower because it’s too painful to stand up.
Gonzalez settled on 51 months, along with an order he pay restitution and stay out of any union business for 13 years.
Ricciardo vowed he was through with his long involvement with organized crime. “Judge, I’m done. Nothing in my body is working,” he said. “I’m not going to last that long. … My body can’t take it anymore. My mind can’t take it. I just want to retire to North Carolina with family.”
Ricciardo played a central role in the mob’s attempt to seize control of a Queens labor union, and starting in 2001, he personally made sure that one senior labor official paid him a $2,600-a-month “pension.” The official complied for 20 years, missing only three payments, and was terrified that Ricciardo would hurt his family or kill him, prosecutors said.
And Ricciardo was overheard on a wiretap bragging about putting the screws to the official.
“[He] knows I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids, right in front of his f—–g house, you laugh all you want, Pal, I’m not afraid to go to jail, let me tell you something, to prove a point,” Ricciardo said in a 2021 conversation, according to court filings.
Gonzalez factored Ricciardo’s health into his decision, but he called it “troubling” that the mobster made no apologies and expressed no remorse during his statement to the court.
He also said he was grappling with the fact that Ricciardo had already been convicted twice before for similar crimes, and that he knew his health was deteriorating and that he had congestive heart failure while he committed his crimes.
“None of that mattered to him. He knew he was sick and he knew that if he got caught this is where he’d end up,” the judge said.
