A Dobbs Ferry man who has admitted he extorted a White Plains con man testified yesterday that two NCAA Division I basketball programs made illegal payments to him to steer prize players to the universities.
His testimony was dismissed by officials from two schools.
Maurizio "Mo" Sanginiti, 39, made the statements at the federal trial of five Westchester men accused of extorting con man John Perazzo in 2001. The men — Angelo DiPietro, who until recently lived in Mount Vernon; Angelo Capalbo of White Plains; Michael Pizzuti of Eastchester; Harold Bringman of New Rochelle; and Joseph Genua of Mount Vernon — are charged with extortion, conspiracy and carrying a firearm in committing a crime. Some of the men are also charged with robbery, obstruction of justice, burglary and loan-sharking.
Perazzo, who is not expected to testify at the trial, pleaded guilty in state Supreme Court in White Plains to grand larceny charges stemming from a Ponzi scheme he ran. He was sentenced in 2003 to three to nine years in prison and ordered to pay more than $850,000 in restitution.
Some of the men accused of extorting Perazzo had invested with him.
Sanginiti, who worked in construction, invested with Perazzo and said he took part in the extortion after Perazzo fell behind in payments promised from bogus Iraqi oil investments.
Sanginiti became a cooperating witness shortly after he was arrested in February 2004. He pleaded guilty last year to extortion and other crimes stemming from the case. He admitted yesterday that in addition to those crimes, he also had assaulted his former wife, violated an order of protection, failed to file tax returns for most of the past 20 years, regularly used cocaine for a decade and committed perjury.
He also was the director of a basketball camp owned by former New York Knick Charles Smith and coached a traveling amateur team of Westchester County high school basketball players called the Bulls in the early 1990s.
He said he received payoffs from NCAA Division I schools "to steer one of my players to a big university."
He named the University of Louisville and the University of Cincinnati, as well as the Ohio school's coach, Bob Huggins, among those who allegedly made the illegal payments.
Sanginiti said one unnamed school left $20,000 in a hotel room for him. In all, he said, he
received about $150,000 in payments from schools and sneaker companies.
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