A Bonanno crime-family member who threatened to “slap the s–t out” of a turncoat and then forced him to strip butt naked to find a wire was found guilty of extortion Friday by a Brooklyn federal jury.
John Ragano, a hulking solider nicknamed “The Maniac,” was convicted following a four-day trial where the mobster was caught on tape threatening to beat down Vincent Martino, a mob informant who owed him $150,000 in illegal loans.
The July 2023 recording was captured just five days before Ragano was sent to prison on a separate racketeering conviction — when the portly gangster met Martino, who accused Ragano, 62, of being a rat in the back of A&G Auto Dismantlers in Ridgewood.
The Mafioso can be heard acting dumbfounded by Martino’s accusation before he accuses the mob associate of wearing a wire and demanding him to drop his trow.
“Then take off your f–king shit right now, man. Take off your f–king pants right now,” a raging Ragano says in the recording.
“Let me see — I want to see. I don’t have a wire on me either.”
Martino testified Wednesday that his pants were around his ankles and his shirt as the made man searched for a wire and continued lacing him, telling him he was going to “f–king slap the shit out of [him]” if he ratted him out to the feds.
“You owe me my f–king money. Let’s see how you’re going to do when I get out,” Ragano seethes in the recording.
The strip search failed to find the hidden microphone, which was attached to Martino’s clothes, prosecutors said.
Martino, a mob associate, said that he noticed two men were approaching him from behind with what appeared to be a tire iron and another metal weapon so he grabbed his pants and ran to his car to call the feds — as Ragano’s last words on the recording warn Martino that he knows where he lives.
Martino was one of the key witnesses at trial after he found himself $275,000 in the hole to the mob after taking a series of loans out when he fell on hard times.
He said he began cooperating with the feds to dig himself out of the debt hole to the mob.
Ragano, who’s serving a nearly five year sentence for the racketeering, was acquitted of extortion conspiracy, witness harassment and witness tampering.
“The defendant’s extortion of a victim while on pre-trial release, carried out even in the sanctity of the federal courthouse, is an affront to the criminal justice system and a glaring example of this Bonanno mobster’s flagrant disrespect for the law,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. “With today’s verdict, the jury has delivered a clear message that the rule of law will prevail over extortionate threats.”
The wiseguy will be sentenced at a later date and faces up to 20 years in prison.
