A Palm Beach County restaurateur on Friday pleaded guilty to threatening a witness who was about to testify before a 1996 federal grand jury investigating convicted Mafia figure Thomas Farese.
Frank DeCesare, 71, of North Palm Beach, faces up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines for obstruction of justice at his sentencing Sept. 8 before Senior U.S. District Judge Jose A. Gonzalez.
His restaurant, DeCesare’s, has been a fixture in North Palm Beach for 23 years and West Palm Beach for 10 years before that. It’s a place where organized crime figures rubbed elbows with athletes, celebrities and average folks, according to police and prosecutors.
DeCesare is president of Florida Ventures Inc., which held the liquor license for the Club Diamonds strip club on North Congress Avenue in West Palm Beach.
Federal prosecutors say DeCesare was merely a front for Farese, a capo regime, or made man, in the Colombo crime family, who couldn’t hold a liquor license because of a 1980 racketeering and marijuana smuggling conviction.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence LaVecchio said state and federal agents monitored August 1996 phone calls between DeCesare and Illinois beer distributor Michael Stern, who also held a hidden 7 percent stake in Club Diamonds after paying $100,000 in 1995.
Stern agreed to let agents monitor his calls.
They heard DeCesare encouraging Stern to lie to an upcoming grand jury investigating Farese’s stake in the club, which was in DeCesare’s name.
A few weeks later, DeCesare discovered Stern was cooperating with federal agents. On Sept. 4, he left a message on Stern’s answering machine threatening to advise Illinois alcohol regulators of his illegal ties to the Florida strip club.
Many states, including Illinois, forbid liquor distributors from owning bars.
DeCesare concluded the message by stating that if Stern “screwed” with him, he would “screw” with Stern.
Farese was sentenced to six years in prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to one count of a racketeering conspiracy to commit money laundering and hide his interest in Club Diamonds in West Palm Beach and Goldfinger in Sunrise.
Court records indicate DeCesare holds the title to the Lauderdale-by-the-Sea home, where Farese, his wife, Suzanne, stepdaughter, Tina, and son-in-law, Glenn Agostinelli, had been living.
That home at 255 Algiers Ave. will become the focus of an upcoming forfeiture battle between the Fareses and prosecutors.
