A retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent in upstate New York was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison after being convicted of shielding his drug-trafficking friends.
Joseph Bongiovanni, 61, of Tonawanda, was convicted in October 2024 of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, obstruction of justice, and making a false statement to law enforcement.
A federal jury found him guilty of protecting friends and associates involved in drug trafficking — including individuals linked to Italian organized crime in Buffalo — while serving in office. He was acquitted of the most serious charges, including accepting $250,000 in bribes from the Mafia, which prosecutors said he received in cash-filled envelopes.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo sentenced him to five years in federal prison, far less than the 15 years sought by the prosecution.
Bongiovanni, who served as a DEA special agent in the Buffalo office from 2001 until his retirement in 2019, used his position to defraud the agency “by violating his oath to the United States Constitution and duty to enforce the drug laws of the United States,” prosecutors said.
The disgraced law enforcement agent shielded his friends and associates involved in drug trafficking from investigation, arrest and prosecution.
“Some of the conduct he undertook includes exposing the identity of confidential informants; he created false DEA reports; he filed false confidential source records, and he falsely opened files,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York Michael DiGiacomo said at a press conference following the sentencing. “By engaging in this conduct of knowing how the DEA operates, he was able to make himself the funnel of all information, for whenever an investigation was opened regarding his friends.”
Bongiovanni — who, according to DiGiacomo, was the first DEA agent ever convicted in the Western District of New York for protecting drug dealers — has denied any wrongdoing, telling the judge he had “always been innocent” and that he “loved that job.”
With News Wire Services