An imposing Bonanno soldier nicknamed ‘The Maniac” got just over three years behind bars Wednesday for forcing a loan sharking victim to strip naked in Queens — on top of the nearly five years he’s already serving in part for extorting the same victim.
John Ragano, 62, who also goes by the nickname “Bazoo,” was trying to pressure mob-connected businessman Vincent Martino into paying back a $150,000 street loan — even after he’d already been convicted in a case involving that same loan.
Martino was wearing a wire for the FBI, though, and Ragano’s attempts at extortion came to a head on July 5, 2023, in a scene that could have fit into an episode of “The Sopranos.”
Jurors heard audio from the dramatic encounter during a four-day trial in Brooklyn Federal Court in October that ended in Ragano convicted of extortion, but acquitted on witness harassment and tampering charges.
Martino, 47, walked into the lobby that day of A & G Auto Dismantlers in Ridgewood as Manfred Mann’s classic cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” played in the background, and stepped into a dark warehouse area to meet Ragano face-to-face.
As the two were surrounded by tires and tools, Martino accused Ragano of ratting him out to the feds in a marijuana distribution scheme.
That enraged and confused Ragano, who asked “Are you trying to get stupid on me?” and commanded, started bellowing, “Take off your f–ing s–t right now. Take off your f—ing pants!”
Martino fled the garage, his pants around his ankles and his shirt over his head, but the wire kept recording.
The confrontation happened just five days before Ragano was set to start a 57-month sentence in a union shakedown indictment that led to the convictions of the entire leadership of the Colombo crime family.
Martino was also snared in that indictment, charged with going into the marijuana trafficking business with Ragano and others.
On Wednesday, Judge Hector Gonzalez, who originally sentenced Ragano in the earlier case, added another 37 months.
Despite the guilty verdict, Ragano’s lawyers, Ken Womble and Joel Stein tried to argue that prosecutors presented a “false narrative” at trial, instead presenting his efforts as a misguided but friendly attempt to reclaim the principal amount owed, without interest. They were asking for a one-year sentence.
Stein said the feds sent Martino into the auto shop that day to provoke a response out of Ragano.
“If it wasn’t for July fifth, we wouldn’t be here today,” Stein said. “They concocted this plan to upset him, to piss him off, and they were successful.”
When Womble suggested that Ragano and his victim were merely “friendly Mafia individuals,” the judge asked, “Isn’t there something oxymoronic about that?”
Prosecutors were asking for an additional 51 to 63 months. Gonzalez said he ultimately went with a lower number, in part because of the conditions at MDC Brooklyn, where Ragano has been held for the past year and change, and in part because he considered the crime as an extension of what landed him the original 57-month sentence..
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