Officials: Ex-con ran from drug associates

A major figure in U.S. drug smuggling history, who served 18 years in federal prison and then was deported to his native Italy, turned up in Great Neck three years ago because he was on the run from associates in the drug-dealing businesses, Italian authorities said Thursday.

The circumstances of Vincenzo Roccisano's return to the United States were disclosed Thursday by Italian officials in a news conference in the southern Italian province of Reggio Calabria in announcing charges against him and 44 others allegedly involved in large-scale international drug smuggling.

Roccisano was arrested in 2008 at the Oevo restaurant in Great Neck and sentenced in federal court in Central Islip to 46 months in prison for re-entering the United States. He remains in federal prison.

Officials never publicly disclosed why they thought he would risk returning to the United States.

Italian officials revealed Thursday that Roccisano had been a key figure in obtaining cocaine from South American and Mexico to be smuggled into Italy for the 'Ndrangheta criminal cartel. The 'Ndrangheta, based in Reggio Calabria, is much less well known than the Sicilian-based Mafia but is considered as powerful, if not more so, officials said.

Italian police had seized six shipments of cocaine in 2009 and 2010, totaling almost a half a ton, that Roccisano was in charge of smuggling into Europe, Italian authorities said.

"Fearing for his safety" from higher-ups in the crime syndicate because of the loss of the drugs, Roccisano first fled to Canada and then back to the United States, the officials said.

The charges against Roccisano and the others were the latest in several hundred cases against international drug dealers based in Italy since 2008 that have resulted from a joint investigation by Italian, European and federal prosecutors on Long Island, according to officials. Federal prosecutor James Miskiewicz, who heads the local probe, declined to comment yesterday.

Italian officials said that they were seeking the extradition of Roccisano to Italy to face charges of conspiracy to traffic cocaine. Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the Eastern District, said his office would cooperate with the request.

Roccisano's attorney, Benedict Gullo of Mineola, said yesterday, "I would anticipate that Mr. Roccisano would vigorously oppose extradition and the charges."

Roccisano went to federal prison in the 1980s after he was convicted of being a key dealer who helped develop the so-called "barter system" in which cocaine from Colombia would be traded in Europe for heroin from Afghanistan that was then smuggled into the United States.