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District justice, teacher convicted Both guilty of running video gambling parlor Tuesday, February 06, 2001 By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Far removed from the image of the small-town braggart he projects in government tape-recordings, Monongahela District Justice Ron Amati emerged from a federal courtroom yesterday the very model of somber restraint.
"The jury made its decision," he said softly, "and I respect that."
After a monthlong trial, jurors found Amati, 46, and schoolteacher Debra Vlanich, 49, both of Carroll, guilty of operating an illegal gambling enterprise out of a Finleyville coffee shop.
Amati was found guilty on all counts, including the charge that he used his elected position as a magistrate to further the video poker operation and hinder law enforcement.
The obstruction count was the one that Amati's attorney, Philip Ignelzi, had fought hard to have dismissed and the one that the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office most wanted to make stick.
"This was not a gambling investigation," said Wells L. Morrison, agent in charge of the FBI's Monongahela Valley office, after the verdict. "This was a public corruption investigation into the criminal activities of an elected official who betrayed the public trust."
Aside from Amati's single statement, he and Vlanich had nothing else to say, nor did their lawyers.
For the U.S. attorney's office, the decision brings a satisfying conclusion to an investigation by the FBI and state police into illegal gambling in the Mon Valley that has seen four other defendants plead guilty.
Amati was the big fish, however, because of his status as a magistrate who used his knowledge of police raids on video poker establishments to protect his gambling interests.
At a meeting with reporters after the verdict, U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said that fact gives the Amati case more weight than other prosecutions for illegal gambling, which is widespread throughout Pennsylvania.
"It's the actual use of his office that was most serious," Litman said. "This is really core corruption. It's the use and abuse of your office ... That's serious stuff. We're gratified by the jury verdict."
Amati and Vlanich were indicted in April, Amati on charges of gambling, conspiracy and obstruction. He was accused of receiving payments totaling a little more than $10,000 as his cut of the illegal profits.
Vlanich, who has been suspended from her job as an elementary schoolteacher in the Belle Vernon Area School District, was charged as a co-conspirator.
Amati had denied he profited from video poker machines and described most of what he said on the government's 241 secretly-recorded tapes as boastful "B.S." designed to inflate his clout in the community.
The tapes were the key to the case. One focused on a meeting Amati had with cooperating witness Bob Hansen and undercover Trooper Anthony Cornetta, at which the men agreed to each pay $5,000 and become one-third owners of the coffee shop. They eventually bought the building in May 1998.
After the negotiations, Amati told Maggie Hill, a woman who was brokering the sale, that only Hansen and Cornetta were the buyers and that she would have to deal with them. Last week, when prosecutor James Wilson asked Amati if he had lied to Hill to conceal his ownership of the business, he admitted he did.
In another critical tape, Amati and Cornetta discussed a series of state police raids on poker establishments for which Amati signed search warrants on Nov. 24, 1998. The next day, Amati was recorded as he plotted to temporarily remove the machines from the Clubhouse Coffee Shop to hide them from police.
"I think what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna have the machines taken out of there for two weeks," Amati is heard saying on the tape. "I don't want to lose the machines." Later in the same conversation, Amati tells Cornetta that the plan to move the machines is his alone.
Wilson had asked Amati if the tape indicated he was worried about the police taking his machines.
"If that's what it says," Amati replied.
That 17-minute tape may have been the most important piece of evidence in the government's arsenal. After deliberating part of Friday and half of yesterday, the jury asked to hear it again. Less than an hour later, the verdict came in.
The FBI and state police first approached Amati in 1997 because they had information that the district justice wanted to set up a video gambling operation. Hansen, a restaurant equipment supplier from Clairton, said Amati told him of his interest when the two first met in 1993.
Hansen agreed to help authorities after watching his son blow his entire first paycheck playing video poker.
Working at the direction of the FBI and police, Hansen approached Amati to see if he would go in on a deal to buy the coffee shop along with Cornetta. In May 1998, Cornetta, Amati and Hansen met to buy the building and rename it Clubhouse Coffee Shop.
Ignelzi tried to paint the prosecution as overzealous in its attempts to set the trap Amati walked into by going into business with Cornetta. The government didn't deny that intent, but said Amati had ample opportunity to pull out and never did.
Amati will be sentenced April 19. Each of the three counts carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but federal sentences are usually mitigated by such factors as prior records or requests for leniency.
Amati could face a harsher sentence than he otherwise might have because of his actions during the trial. After the verdict, Wilson told U.S. District Judge Gustave Diamond that Amati had contacted witnesses in the case, conduct Wilson said the government will address at sentencing.
Diamond let Amati and Vlanich go on bond with the condition that Amati have no contact with the jury.
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