Saturday, February 24, 2001

By JOEL RUTCHICK
and JOHN CANIGLIA

Cleveland PLAIN DEALER REPORTERS

At his Warehouse District coffee shop named the Drip Stick, Tony Delmonti charmed custom ers from actor Robert DeNiro to Mafia members to dime-store hoods.

He often looked the part of a gangster, too, with his trade mark tinted glasses, velour warmup suit and gold chain dangling over his hairy chest. But while he was ostensibly in the business of serving cappuccino and talking up his organized crime connections, he was secretly working for the feds. And as an informant, Delmonti has few peers.

His work has helped federal agents arrest dozens of people coast to coast for drugs, money laundering and weapons violations. He helped bust a prominent lawyer in Rochester, N.Y., plug a huge cocaine pipeline into Cleveland from California and gather evidence that led to IRS and FBI searches of homes and businesses Thursday night in one of Cleveland's biggest gambling probes in decades.

Delmonti is under federal protection at an undisclosed location and eventually might join the Witness Protection Program, law enforcement sources said.

His career as a one-man dragnet could not have been predicted. His criminal past was undistinguished, with convictions including burglary, cocaine trafficking and receiving stolen property.

Friends and acquaintances describe him as a teddy bear of a man who had grand ideas but who met instead with almost slapstick failure. Once, they say, Delmonti tried to buy a Euclid bar by plunking down a shopping bag with $15,000 in food stamps as a down payment.

While federal authorities are happy with his work, Delmonti’s recent success as an informant hasn’t been sweet for him.

"He’s not real proud of this," said his niece, Deneen Tyler, of Lyndhurst. "He told me his back was against the wall and that there was no way out."

Delmonti’s decision to cooperate with the government might have stemmed from trouble with the law, but a clear motivation was money. He owed the federal government much of a $100,000 fine imposed on a 1988 conviction for cocaine distribution.

Records also show a string of court judgments against Delmonti over the last four years, including a September 1998 foreclosure on a house he owned near the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.

"He might have thought that this was the best way for him," said Eugene "The Animal" Ciasullo, a reputed mob enforcer and longtime friend of Delmonti’s. "But that doesn’t mean that I liked what he did. I wouldn’t do it. That’s not how I work. He was broke. They made him a deal that he probably couldn’t refuse. I feel bad for him."

Delmonti’s financial problems were such that he couldn’t afford to replace a tire on his Corvette and was driving around with an undersized, temporary spare, said David Rice, who has known Delmonti for 30 years. Rice said he tried to set Delmonti up with a dealer to get a loan for another car, but his friend’s credit was bad.

Rice met Delmonti on the softball diamond, where he was an excellent player.

"It didn’t take me long to find out he was a wild man," Rice said, recalling a game in which Delmonti challenged the entire opposing team of Teamsters to a fight.

"He threatened to burn their eyes out with a blowtorch."

Around the same time, Delmonti got into trouble with the law. In 1974, he was charged by Shaker Heights police with aggravated burglary and possession of criminal tools. He was convicted and served three years in prison. Two more convictions followed.

Then, in 1987, he was charged with receiving stolen property and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. But before he could begin serving his sentence, the FBI charged him and two organized crime associates with peddling large amounts of cocaine.

The FBI said Delmonti received the drugs from Carmen Zagaria, who was a drug kingpin-turned-snitch. While he was out on bond, Delmonti sold even more drugs, authorities said. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

He got out of prison in 1993 and tried to make a buck any way he could. In one scam, a friend gave Delmonti a $10,000 cashier’s check that he was to deliver to a business associate as partial payment of a debt. Instead, Delmonti cashed the check and spent the money, according to court records.

He got more creative. He and some associates ordered a chemical they thought would remove the ink on U.S. currency. The plan was to turn $1 bills into $50s and $100s.

"It didn’t work," Tyler said her uncle told her.

He had big ideas for the Drip Stick, too. He had blueprints drawn up for a spinoff venture, planning to dig a hole in the floor and install a spiral staircase to the basement, Rice said. There, a private club would offer a discreet setting for gambling and companionship.

Delmonti’s partner in the Drip Stick was Mike Stevens, who The Plain Dealer reported in November was under FBI investigation for weapons violations and an alleged multimillion-dollar scam of long-distance telephone companies. That probe is part of an FBI organized crime investigation dubbed "Capo Coffee," named after the now-closed Drip Stick on W. 6th St.

It was while Delmonti was running the coffee shop in mid-1998 that he signed an agreement to work for the agency as a paid informant, records show.

Initially, Delmonti told agents about a drug ring that was importing huge quantities of cocaine from out of state.

He identified several of its members, including the businessman in charge: Robert E. Walsh, a former Cleveland police detective.

Federal authorities said Walsh, 70, ran a $20 million drug pipeline that flooded Cleveland streets with high-quality cocaine from Los Angeles. Walsh was sentenced to 20 years in prison in November.

"In discussions I had with other lawyers, everybody pretty much knew that Tony Delmonti was one of the main informants," said William Summers, one of several defense attorneys in the Walsh case.

More recently, federal affidavits show, Delmonti played a key role in raids Thursday night in what authorities describe as a $10 million illegal numbers operation involving Virgil Ogletree, once a close friend of boxing promoter Don King.

Delmonti worked daily with Ogletree at his numbers office in Cleveland in 1999, according to an affidavit by IRS Agent Thomas L. Himes.

That summer, Delmonti invited Rice to the Drip Stick to meet Ogletree, whom he described as his partner in the numbers racket. Rice, who is also known as WKNR AM/1220 oddsmaker "Vegas Vic," said he was approached because of his gambling contacts, and they thought he could help find numbers runners to fill out their network.

And like many others, Ogletree grew to trust Delmonti.

Ogletree told Delmonti that he once gave his friend King a new .357-caliber handgun to defend himself from racketeer Danny Greene, who had threatened to kill King in a dispute over $100,000, according to Himes’ affidavit.

Ogletree also admitted to Delmonti that he killed a bodyguard for rival bookmaker Shondor Birns years before, the affidavit said.

While Delmonti was secretly helping authorities penetrate the Cleveland numbers racket, he was also helping the feds work a sting in Rochester.

There the FBI secretly videotaped the burly 55-year-old Delmonti discussing the laundering of $235,000 and plans to distribute cocaine with Rochester lawyer Anthony F. Leonardo Jr., records show.

The attorney also told Delmonti about a friend, Albert Ranieri, who asked him to launder money from a $10 million armored car robbery in 1990.

After the heist, Ranieri burned thousands of dollars in a barbecue grill because he feared the feds would find him, Leonardo told Delmonti. Ranieri, who was never charged in the armed robbery, had long been suspected because he was one of the two guards who rode in the truck. The guards had claimed they were overpowered by the robbers.

Leonardo contends that the government and Delmonti entrapped him. As a lawyer for numerous mobsters, he had made similar arguments on behalf of a client 13 years ago in a cocaine case in Cleveland.

The client? Anthony P. Delmonti.

"That’s beyond ironic; it’s wild," said William Clauss, who represents another man in the Rochester case, Darryl Graham.

According to federal records, Delmonti discussed paying Leonardo’s retainer by setting up a drug deal.

Leonardo, Ranieri and Graham were arrested Dec. 29 on drug charges. Delmonti’s role in that case was revealed in federal court hearings in January.

Delmonti, whose constant companion was the Drip Stick’s manager, Laurie Trimboli, had been estranged from his wife, Michelle, for several years and filed for divorce in October. Summers, representing Michelle, said he would try to garnishee some of Delmonti’s informant pay to support his client, who is being treated for cancer and can’t support herself.

Despite his business and personal failings - or maybe because of them - Delmonti was an inspiring character to a Cleveland screenwriter.

Tony Marinozzi used Delmonti to base the character of an affable mob boss in "Entrapped," a movie about the mob set in Cleveland, with some scenes planned to be filmed at the Drip Stick. Marinozzi said he had obtained funding for the movie and expected filming to begin this spring.

In an early version of the script, Marinozzi said, Delmonti’s character became a federal informant. But Marinozzi changed his fate when Delmonti became agitated at the portrayal.

"I just don’t want to be known as a rat," Delmonti told him.

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