A Gambino Crime Family capo was sentenced to over three years in prison and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution on Thursday after pleading guilty to a racketeering conspiracy last month, officials announced.
Andrew Campos, 51, a captain in the Gambino crime family of La Cosa Nostra, was sentenced by US District Judge Ann M. Donnelly at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Thursday to 37 months in prison for several money laundering and wire fraud schemes.
Federal prosecutors said Campos and members of his crew skimmed more than $1 million dollars off the top of their carpentry company, CWC Contracting Corp., by paying employees in cash and avoiding payroll tax withholdings and payments.
Campos also built himself a home in ritzy Scarsdale with money he laundered by writing checks for other people to pay for work that was never actually done, according to the Department of Justice.
CWC also shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars of payoffs in the form of free labor and materials on real estate honcho John “Smiley” Simonlacaj’s Scarsdale home, feds said.
Campos also admitted to illegally obtaining safety cards from the US Department of Labor indicating completion of Occupational Safety and Health Administration training courses that were never completed.
In addition to the $1 million in restitution, he has also been ordered to pay a $15,000 fine.
“Andrew Campos led a scheme that lined his pockets and cheated taxpayers. He failed to pay more than $1 million in payroll taxes and laundered money to build his personal residence,” IRS-CI Special Agent-in-Charge Thomas Fattorusso said in statement. “Criminals, take note. Trying to cheat the system is not the way to do business.”
US Attorney Breon Peace said that as captain, Campos “maintained the corrosive influence of organized crime in the construction industry.”
A December 2019 round up of 13 Gambino members led feds to declare the family is “thriving” following the murder of family boss Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali in Staten Island earlier that year.
Campos – who played high-school football with future rap star Sean “P. Diddy” Combs at Mount St. Michael Academy in the Bronx — previously pleaded guilty in 2005 for his role in a massive, $500 million scam involving porn websites and 1-800 phone lines offering sex talk, horoscope readings and dating services.
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