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Prosecutor cites Smalis' help to FBI in backing leniency plea
Thursday, August 24, 2000 By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Only with the cooperation of Shadyside painting contractor Ernest Smalis could federal authorities have prosecuted former Democratic state Rep. Frank Gigliotti of Brookline and four other corrupt public officials, a federal prosecutor argued in a request for leniency filed yesterday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Farrell asked U.S. District Judge Robert J. Cindrich to give Smalis a lighter sentence in recognition of his assistance to federal authorities.
Smalis, who assisted federal agents for 2 1/2 years, participated in almost daily interviews with agents or conversations with people who were targets of an investigation into public works corruption.
Smalis, 54, will be sentenced tomorrow on tax evasion and fraud charges. Under federal sentencing guidelines, his punishment could range from six years and five months to eight years.
In his request for leniency, Farrell said Smalis helped the FBI tape-record more than 200 conversations with public officials who extorted bribes, including Gigliotti, former City Councilman Joe Cusick and three bridge inspectors.
Without Smalis' assistance, Farrell wrote, "there would not have been any prosecution of Mr. Gigliotti."
Smalis risked his personal safety because Gigliotti was, "associated with several organized crime figures," including Anthony J. Lagattuta, who died at age 63 of brain cancer in 1996, and John "Duffy" Conley, who is serving a 10-year sentence following his 1995 conviction for conspiracy and operating an illegal gambling business that consisted of a large video poker machine empire.
Smalis' cooperation was "unproductive for the first six months," Farrell wrote.
Just before taking a lie detector test from the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Sept. 15, 1998, Smalis admitted that he bribed two bridge inspectors connected with work on the Panther Hollow Bridge.
Smalis revealed that he had not disclosed the bribes to federal authorities because he hoped that Charles Schweinberg and Robert Loughner would testify on his behalf in a lawsuit he filed against the City of Pittsburgh regarding the bridge project.
However, Smalis became "reliable and competent" in setting up recorded conversations with public officials.
"He followed the agents' directions; he avoided inducing any wrongdoing; and he maintained his composure in the face of the targets' occasional suspicions that he might be recording their conversations," Farrell wrote.
Gigliotti is serving a 46-month prison term for extortion and mail fraud.
In December, a federal grand jury returned a 27-count indictment accusing Gigliotti of soliciting and accepting bribes from Smalis and two other contractors.
Starting in 1998, Smalis gave Gigliotti cash and a paid trip to Disney World in exchange for the legislator's influence with state agencies and board members at the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority.
On tape, Gigliotti was heard soliciting bribes from Smalis, who was trying to regain his certification to do work for the state. Smalis had lost his ability to work for the state after pleading guilty to federal tax and fraud charges and to unrelated state charges for environmental violations.
Smalis, a convicted arsonist, also bribed Schweinberg and Loughner to overlook shoddy work.
Another bridge inspector, Victor Stivason of Cowansville, Armstrong County, has admitted he accepted a backhoe from Smalis as payment for approving false forms about work on an Armstrong County bridge.
Cusick is in a halfway house and Loughner, Schweinberg and Stivason await sentencing.
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