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Craig Caffro, 48, pleaded guilty Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas P. Smith in Hartford, Acting U.S. Attorney for Connecticut Deirdre M. Daly announced. As part of his guilty plea, Caffro has agreed to forfeit $50,000. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on Feb. 26.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Caffro and 19 others were charged with various offenses related to their involvement in multiple illegal gambling businesses in southern Connecticut controlled by the Gambino organized crime family, including the Stamford operation. (Read about their arrests here in The Daily Voice.)
The investigation, which included the use of court-authorized wiretaps, revealed that Dean DePreta led the operation in which gamblers placed bets with offshore sports-gambling websites.
Caffro served as the point person for the website and received regular payments from DePreta and co-defendant Richard Uva, both of Stamford, for its use. At Caffro’s direction, one of these payments was laundered through the bank account of the elderly mother of one of his associates living in New Jersey.
DePreta and Uva each pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy. On Oct. 9, DePreta was sentenced to 71 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $300,000. On Oct. 24, Uva was sentenced to 46 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $250,000.
FBI analysis determined that the total gross revenue of the Stamford-based gambling operation were nearly $1.7 million from October 2010 to June 2011. As of this date, 19 defendants have agreed to forfeit $1.5 million in illegal proceeds.
This matter was investigated by the FBI's Fairfield County Organized Crime Task Force, the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation, the Stamford Police Department, the Bridgeport Police Department and the Connecticut State Police. This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Hal Chen and Peter Jongbloed.
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