Opinion ID: 151405
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Flight, Return, Arrest, and Cooperation of Kaplan

Text: In the meantime, in 1993, Casso was arrested. In March 1994, Judd Burstein, Kaplan's attorney, telephoned Kaplan to alert him that Casso had probably begun to cooperate with the government. Within hours, Kaplan left New York and went into hiding. In that month there were articles in New York City newspapers stating that Casso had two law-enforcement officers on his payroll. At least one article identified the officers as Caracappa and Eppolito. Shortly after reading these articles, Kaplan told Burstein that he, Kaplan, had been the intermediary between Casso and Caracappa/Eppolito. In 1996, after learning that Casso would not be used as a government witness after all, Kaplan returned to New York. He was soon arrested and charged with narcotics offenses, having conducted a flourishing drug trafficking business for many years (in his best year, distributing more than six tons of marijuana and earning some $2 million). Kaplan resisted repeated government attempts to gain his cooperation, and he proceeded to trial. He was convicted of conspiracy to distribute marijuana and was sentenced principally to a prison term of 27 years. In the Fall of 2004, by then over 70 years of age and having spent the previous nine years in jail, Kaplan decided to cooperate with the government in the prosecution of Caracappa and Eppolito. Principally on the basis of the testimony of Kaplan and Corso, Caracappa and Eppolito were convicted of RICO conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d). In connection with their activities in Las Vegas after retiring from NYPD, Caracappa and Eppolito were also convicted, largely on the basis of the testimony of Corso, of distributing narcotics in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and conspiring to do so in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846; and Eppolito was convicted of money laundering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(3)(B).