Do you remember back in January when the FBI made what it hailed as the biggest mafia raid ever? One traumatized pooch sure does, and his alleged mobster owner is trying to use his puppy's problems to get leniency from the courts. Seriously.
A lawyer for the 40-year-old, 370-pound, made man Frank "Frankie Steel" Pontillo says that the Feds' concussion grenades from that fateful January raid sent his four-pound puppy flying "into a wall" and that "The little dog has not been the same since." So naturally the lawyer is asking Federal Judge Leo Glasser to ponder the government's overkill (which he compares to the Navy Seal operation that took down Osama bin Laden) when sentencing Pontillo in Septemeber.
Unlike some of the other wiseguys snagged in the raid, Pontillo was only indicted for buying less than $10,000 worth of stolen electronics from a snitch in a sting operation. Not that he's all sweetness and light. In 1991 Pontilla and others were charged with conspiring to dress up as Hasidic Jews to make to murder rivals during the Colombo "civil war." But he swears he's just a big gentle bear now, he says in court papers that he hasn't been able to do much since he ruptured two spinal discs in 2008 "playing an interactive video game."
Meanwhile, the police upset my puppy might be the best excuse to get out of jail we've heard in ages.
