Pisello Ordered to Surrender, Start Jail Term

A U.S. judge Friday ordered reputed organized crime figure Salvatore Pisello to surrender May 23 to begin serving a two-year prison sentence for tax evasion.

Pisello was sentenced in April, 1985, but has been free since May, 1985, on $15,000 bail pending his appeal, which was rejected by an appeals court April 10.

In setting a voluntary surrender date, U.S. District Judge Harry L. Hupp turned down a request by prosecutors that Pisello be jailed immediately as a potential fugitive.

At a hearing Friday, Marvin L. Rudnick, a special attorney for the Los Angeles office of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force, stated that an ongoing Los Angeles grand jury investigation had uncovered “substantial new evidence linking (Pisello) to criminal activity in the record industry, evidence so strong that it might cause him to flee.”

At the time of his sentencing last year, Pisello was described in court documents as an alleged international heroin trafficker and high-ranking soldier in the Carlo Gambino crime family of New York who, in 1983 and 1984, engaged in a series of record business deals.