LI cop allegedly on Mafia payroll sold his badge to the Bonanno crime family: prosecutors

The Goodfellas needed a bad cop.Ex-Nassau County cop Hector Rosario “sold his badge” to the mob — then helped his underworld cronies evade the law “time and time again,” federal prosecutors said Monday.Assistant US Attorney Sean Sherman told a federal jury during closing arguments at Rosario’s trial that the allegedly dirty cop took $1,500 per month from the Bonanno crime family, then “lied to cover it up.”“He lied to hide information about illegal gambling and organized crime,” Sherman said, adding that Rosario was a “cop in name only” and lied to the FBI more than 30 times when the feds interviewed him about his illicit activities in January 2020.“He lied to protect the Bonanno crime family.He lied to protect himself.”And he was so deeply entrenched with the Mafia — for whom he staged fake police raids on rival gambling dens throughout Long Island — that the Bonannos didn’t even consider him a cop, Sherman said.

“The Bonannos knew the defendant.They trusted him,” Sherman said, adding the family knew he could be bought and had helped them slip the long arm of the law “time and time again.”Rosario, 51, has been charged with obstructing a grand jury probe into racketeering and lying to the FBI as he allegedly conspired to target rival Genovese and Gambino mafiosos during a feud that erupted after a profit-sharing scheme between the families went south.The Bonannos and Genoveses had originally agreed to split the take from the Gran Caffe, an illicit gambling den, federal prosecutors said.But the shaky peace eventually collapsed, and Rosario allegedly “sold himself” to the Bonannos, then staged fake police raids against rival gangsters’ mini-casinos to intimidate them into closing up shop.

On the trial’s opening day, prosecutors introduced jurors to a laundry list of alleged mobsters and mapped out a constellation of illegal gambling operations — which led to the sweeping 2022 bust that netted Rosario and eight alle...