LI CRIME BRIEFS

NESCONSET / Ex-Friendly's manager jailed in theft

A former Friendly's manager was sentenced Thursday to 6 months in jail for stealing more than $100,000 from the company that operates the restaurant chain's Long Island franchises.

John Bencivenga, 46, of Nesconset, apologized in court before he was sentenced by Suffolk County Court Judge James F.X. Doyle. Bencivenga pleaded guilty last year to second-degree grand larceny.

In addition to jail time, Doyle sentenced Bencivenga to 5 years' probation and ordered him to pay $104,653 in restitution to Ronkonkoma-based J&B Restaurant Partners.

Bencivenga, who had managed a Friendly's store in Stony Brook, stole the money from 2005 to 2008 in a convoluted scheme in which he convinced the managers of other Friendly's stores to cash rebate checks given to Bencivenga's franchise by food suppliers. Bencivenga took the cash for his personal use, prosecutors said.

Bencivenga's sentence was part of a plea bargain arranged by his attorney and Doyle to avoid a trial. - CARL MACGOWAN

BROOKLYN / Famed soccer ref pleads guilty in heroin bust

A well-known onetime World Cup soccer referee pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn to attempting to bring 6 kilograms of heroin into the United States through Kennedy Airport in September.

Ecuadorean referee Byron Moreno Ruales, 41, was known in international soccer circles for his no-nonsense approach. He is remembered for a series of controversial calls that paved the way for South Korea's victory over Italy in a 2002 World Cup match.

He faces a statutory maximum of 20 years, and federal guidelines call for a sentence of 51 to 63 months in prison, prosecutors said. No date for sentencing has been set.

BROOKLYN / Pizza operator gets 5 years in kiddie porn case

A Brooklyn pizzeria operator was sentenced to 5 years in prison Thursday for using child pornography after a big-name federal judge got in a final slap in his feud with the government over mandatory sentences for kiddie porn.

Defendant Pietro Polouizzi, 57, claimed in testimony at his 2007 trial that he had been raped as a child and that abuse drove him to seek out porn as an adult - claims he repeated Thursday in an agonized lament as his wife and two sons watched.

Polouizzi has stayed out of jail because of legal maneuvers by U.S. District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein, who views the 5-year minimum as an intrusion on judicial discretion, and too harsh. He was twice slapped down by the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for trying to give Polouizzi a shorter sentence or a new trial.

Thursday, Weinstein said he finally had to impose the 5-year sentence, but he refused to jail Polouizzi immediately, telling the prosecutor that a statute requiring immediate imprisonment was "cruel and unusual" punishment and giving Polouizzi until March to surrender himself.