Former DEA informant in Bongiovanni case dies

The informant, Robert Kaiser, said there was no limit to the amount of cocaine or marijuana he could buy from Serio, an Amherst drug dealer who distributed thousands of pounds of marijuana and ultimately cocaine and fentanyl pills in Western New York. Kaiser gave jurors a simple reason not to provide incriminating information against Serio to Bongiovanni or others at the DEA.

“They didn’t ask me to call him or anything,” Kaiser said on the witness stand Feb. 20.

This testimony would prove to be his last in the Bongiovanni affair.

Kaiser died last month. A passerby found her body on a bike path off Grant Street near the Scajaquada Park Pavilion, across from the Tops gas pumps, Buffalo police said. Police are investigating and are now awaiting a report from the Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Federal prosecutors, who view Kaiser’s testimony as bolstering their claim that Bongiovanni faked an investigation against Serio, have asked U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo to allow them to introduce Kaiser’s sworn testimony as evidence in the retrial of the former federal agent who starts July 29.

Prosecutors did not comment on the circumstances of Kaiser’s death in a court filing or during court proceedings last week.

“Our understanding is that Kaiser overdosed,” said defense attorney Robert Singer, who represents Bongiovanni with attorney Parker MacKay. “Obviously he’s been a big drug addict his whole life.”

Kaiser, 50, during his testimony in February, admitted that he abused alcohol and took heroin, crack and pills “any time I could get my hands on them.”

As for the government’s proposal to read Kaiser’s previous testimony at the upcoming trial, “we will accommodate that request if/when the government decides to admit its transcript at Trial No. 2,” Singer said. “We can’t really offer more than that at the moment because we don’t know their theory of eligibility.”

Prosecutors say Bongiovanni’s lawyers cross-examined Kaiser during the first trial, which allowed them to challenge his testimony.

Indeed, Kaiser’s cross-examination made up two-thirds of the transcript of Kaiser’s testimony in the first trial, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Tripi, Casey Chalbeck and Nicholas Cooper said in a court filing.

In Bongiovanni’s first trial, the jury returned a partial verdict on the bribery and corruption charges. On April 12, the jury in the eight-week trial found him guilty of one count of obstructing justice and one count of lying to federal agents, both counts of accusation involving a file kept at his home after his retirement. Jurors acquitted Bongiovanni, 59, of deleting data on his DEA-issued cellphone when he retired. They failed to reach a verdict on 12 other charges, including protecting members of the Serio drug trafficking organization from arrest and alerting them to informants, in exchange for at least less $250,000, as well as other charges involving Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club near the airport. Vilado declared a mistrial on those charges.

Testifying at the first trial, Kaiser said he was able to get the type of drugs he wanted in 2013 from Serio, who lived in a 9,000-square-foot French provincial mansion on 2.4 acres in Amherst, with a shed, swimming pool and tennis court. . Kaiser said he entered Serio’s mansion about five times and once bought about 5 pounds of marijuana from him for $3,000 a pound.

The fact that Serio was able to purchase one of Amherst’s largest mansions, at 697 Lebrun Road, shows how his drug trafficking organization fared under Bongiovanni’s protective eye, Tripi testified at Bongiovanni’s trial.

When Amherst police arrested Kaiser for burglary in 2013, the police department referred him to the DEA because of what he said he knew about Serio. But his cooperation ended just weeks after signing a one-year confidential source agreement with the DEA. Bongiovanni, his manager at the time at the DEA, released him from the deal and no longer contacted him, Kaiser said.

Initially, the DEA wanted Kaiser to befriend another Amherst drug dealer who was linked to Serio and find out where his warehouse was.

The other drug dealer “did a lot of things,” Kaiser said, so if police helped “catch him, I would get help with my case.”

By “doing things,” Kaiser meant selling marijuana and cocaine – “a lot of it.”

When he first met Bongiovanni and a few other DEA agents, “I mentioned that I was in a room where, you know, I see Ron Serio and someone else doing business. “

During Bongiovanni’s trial, Tripi questioned Kaiser about his instructions of Bongiovanni.

“As a handler for you as a DEA confidential source, did the defendant ever ask you to purchase marijuana or cocaine from Ron Serio?” Tripi asked Kaiser.

“No, no,” Kaiser replied.

Tripi asked if Bongiovanni told him to buy cocaine or marijuana from the other drug dealer linked to Serio.

“He told me, you know, to just gain his trust, try to get an ounce out of him first, and then go from there,” Kaiser responded.

Kaiser could not find out when or where the drug shipments were arriving in town.

“Have you ever been asked to wear a wire and talk to Mr. Serio about it?” » asked Tripi during the first trial.

“According to your agreement (with the DEA), if you had been asked to do this, would you have tried to do it?” » asked Tripi.

In prosecutors’ eyes, Kaiser’s testimony showed how Bongiovanni dissuaded Kaiser from saying or doing anything to develop an investigation into Serio.

“Amherst (police) knew, had a good idea of ​​what (Serio) was doing, and they had found an informant who was going to provide information and could help infiltrate this organization,” Tripi testified during the first trial. “And who did they call? The DEA agent. They gave him an informant. And what he did was record the informant, chase the police out of Amherst and immediately use this informant for further investigations and then shut down the informant without ever touching the Serio drug trafficking organization – intentionally protecting them and putting the informant away so they can persist and continue.

Bongiovanni’s defense team framed Kaiser’s relationship with the DEA differently.

Kaiser unsuccessfully attempted to buy drugs from the other dealer, who seemed suspicious of Kaiser.

But Kaiser’s cooperation with the DEA led to the conviction of Peter N. Militello, a Tonawanda town drug dealer who became the first Western New York defendant to go to prison for selling heroin laced with fentanyl that killed someone.

The overdose death of Kaiser’s friend Robert Runfola hit Kaiser hard. And something Kaiser said to Bongiovanni sparked an investigation into Militello.

Runfola was found dead in his Buffalo home, bags of heroin near his body.

Kaiser testified that he was with Runfola the day Runfola picked up Militello’s heroin from Militello’s car in front of the Buffalo Municipal Court building.

At the time, Kaiser was a confidential informant for the DEA. Yet Kaiser said he used heroin with Runfola before Runfola’s court proceedings, a violation of Kaiser’s agreement with the DEA.

Kaiser said he alerted Bongiovanni after learning of his friend’s death.

“I let him know that my friend was dead and how he died, and I was in the car,” Kaiser testified during Singer’s cross-examination at Bongiovanni’s trial. “And then the light bulbs went off in all of them, and they gave up on everything, and now Mr. Militello has.”

It wasn’t Ron Serio that federal agents were focusing on.

“So that’s when the DEA asked you to engage in secret shopping with Peter Militello, correct?” » asked the singer. “And you finally made a purchase from Mr. Militello, didn’t you?”

Militello was arrested shortly after Kaiser bought six to eight bags of heroin from him. This led to Militello’s conviction and 30-year prison sentence for selling heroin laced with fentanyl.

But after the Militello prosecution, Kaiser was no longer comfortable being a confidential DEA source because he claimed Bongiovanni had blown his cover.

“By telling Mr. Militello that I was wearing a microphone, the neighborhood learned that I was wearing a microphone,” Kaiser testified. “So everywhere I went – ​​drug court, on the street – I’m fighting for my life. People were trying to stab me, everything. Because he told them I was wearing a microphone.”

“So it’s safe to say that at that point you were burned as a confidential informant?” » Singer asked, giving jurors an alternative explanation for why Bongiovanni did not ask Kaiser to try to obtain evidence against Serio.

“Yeah, because I thought the C (in confidential informant) stood for confidential – you don’t tell everything and you just put the person out on the street to die. But you see, I’m still here, I’m still walking in the streets.”