BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — In two decades of kicking around the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Joseph Bongiovanni often took the risk of being the “lead offender,” meaning he was the first person to walk into the room.
On Wednesday, he felt familiar uncertainty as he awaited sentencing for using his DEA badge to protect childhood friends who became prolific drug dealers in Buffalo, New York.
“I never knew what was on the other side of that door — that fear is what I feel today,” Bongiovanni, 61, told a federal judge, slapping the defense table as his face flushed with emotion. “I’ve always been innocent. I loved this job.”
U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo sentenced the disgraced lawman to five years in federal prison on a series of corruption charges. The sentence was significantly less than the 15 years prosecutors had sought, even after a jury acquitted Bongiovanni of the most serious charges he faced, including an allegation that he pocketed $250,000 in mob bribes.
The judge said the sentence reflected the complexity of mixed verdicts following two lengthy trials and the almost Jekyll and Hyde nature of Bongiovanni’s career, in which the lawman has amassed enough front-page plaudits to fill a trophy case.
Bongiovanni once rushed into a burning apartment building to evacuate residents through the billowing smoke. He jailed drug dealers, including the first ever prosecuted in the region for causing a fatal overdose.
“There are two diametrically opposed versions of the facts and polar opposite versions of the defendant,” Vilardo said, adding that prosecutors with five years behind bars would be a considerable hardship for someone who has never been in prison.
Defense attorney Parker MacKay noted that the judge recognized Bongiovanni as a “beacon” of the Buffalo community. The government’s request for a 15-year sentence, he added, was “completely unmoored by the nature of the convictions.”
“As Mr. Bongiovanni told the judge at sentencing, he is innocent, and we look forward to continuing to work with him to prove that,” MacKay told The Associated Press.
In 2024, a jury convicted Bongiovanni of four counts of obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, and making false statements to law enforcement.
Prosecutors said Bongiovanni’s “dark little secret” caused immeasurable damage over 11 years. They likened him to Jose Irizarry, a former DEA agent serving a 12-year federal sentence after pleading guilty to laundering money for Colombian drug cartels.
Bongiovanni swore an oath not to the DEA, they argued, but to organized crime figures in the Italian-American community drawn from his upbringing in North Buffalo. During the sentencing, Bongiovanni’s family broke down in tears in the front row of the packed courtroom in downtown Buffalo.
Prosecutors said Bongiovanni’s corruption involved as much inaction as calculated cover-up. They pointed to a turning point in 2008, when Bongiovanni may have acted on information about traffickers he knew whose operation would evolve into a large-scale organization with ties to California, Vancouver and New York City.
He was also accused of authoring false DEA reports, stealing sensitive files, dumping colleagues, outing confidential informants, covering up a strip club for sex trafficking and helping a high school English teacher keep his side hustle of growing marijuana. Prosecutors said he eagerly urged colleagues to spend less time investigating Italians and focus instead on black and Hispanic people.
“His conduct shook the foundation of law enforcement — and this community — to its core,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Judge Joseph Tripi. “This is treason.”
The former agent’s downfall came amid a sex-trafficking prosecution that took sensational turns, including a judge involved who killed himself after the FBI raided his home, law enforcement trawling a pond in search of an overdose victim and dead rats planted outside the home of a government witness who prosecutors allege was later killed by some means.
It also involved Pharoah’s Gentlemen’s Club outside of Buffalo. Bongiovanni was a childhood friend of strip club owner Peter Gerace Jr., who authorities say has close ties to both the Buffalo Mafia and the violent Outlaws Motorcycle Club. A separate jury convicted Gerace of a sex-trafficking conspiracy and of bribing Bongiovanni.
The prosecution also cast a harsh light on the DEA after a string of corruption scandals resulted in at least 17 agents being brought up on federal charges over the past decade. Last month, prosecutors charged another former agent with conspiring to launder millions of dollars and obtain military-grade firearms and explosives for a Mexican drug cartel.
The DEA did not respond to a request for comment on Bongiovanni’s sentence.