Opinion ID: 461592
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Investigation and Attempted Cover-up

Text: 11 In November 1982, a federal grand jury served subpoenas for the contents of certain Central Division officers' desks, including Inspector DeBenedetto's. 3 Learning of this, Chief Inspector DePeri called Captain Alvaro at Police Radio, and instructed him to destroy the two copies of the poker machine payoff list kept at Northwest Division Headquarters. Alvaro returned to the headquarters, broke into Martin's desk, and retrieved Martin's poker machine payoff list. Alvaro also searched Ricci's desk and found Ricci's copy of the payoff list along with some of the extorted funds. After returning the money to Ricci, Alvaro went home and burned both payoff lists. 12 Once Alvaro began cooperating with the federal investigation, he recorded conversations with DePeri and Martin concerning the destruction of the lists. During a conversation with Martin, Alvaro expressed his concern that the grand jury would infer that he had retrieved and destroyed the payoff papers in Martin's desk. In response, Martin indicated his willingness to testify before the grand jury that he had ordered Alvaro to break into his desk to retrieve his own papers. In another conversation, after observing that Ricci had been indicted by the grand jury, Martin told Alvaro that he would be able to raise the money to cover Ricci's back taxes and legal expenses to repay Ricci for going to bat for him. 13 According to the government, the investigation produced evidence of a city-wide conspiracy, unbounded by any particular police division. Although the defendants in this consolidated appeal were all connected to the scheme through the Northwest Division, the government took the position at trial that the evidence established that protection money was passed vertically within the Northwest Division and laterally between divisions.