Brooklyn, NY – A man who tried to sell an engagement ring through Craigslist ended up getting sprayed with Mace and robbed by his supposed buyer — a Mafia associate who helped pull off a daring armored-car heist in the ’80s, authorities said.
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Gerald DeGerolamo, 65, responded to the ad for an engagement ring posted by David Cushman and the two agreed to meet in front of 125 Christopher St., law-enforcement sources said.
Once Cushman took out the ring, DeGerolamo sprayed him in the face with Mace, grabbed the ring and ran.
A passer-by saw the suspect and flagged down a cop, who arrested DeGerolamo on charge of second-degree robbery. The ring was recovered and returned to Cushman.
DeGerolamo, who has a long federal rap sheet, is an associate of the Luchese crime family, FBI sources told The Post.
In 1989, he and two accomplices, including his son Jimmy, stole $3 million from an armored-car company. In 1991, he was convicted on 17 counts related to the robbery and sentenced to eight years in prison.
The following year, however, he escaped from a federal prison in Allenwood, Pa., officials said.
He did not remain on the lam for long.
In 1993, he and two associates tried to pull off a “Trojan horse scheme” at another armored-car company.
The plan was to hide an accomplice in a crate, supposedly filled with priceless artwork, and have it delivered by armored car to the company’s vault.
Once inside, the very short associate he enlisted for the job was to grab as much cash as he could and hide with it inside the crate, said Ken Maxwell, the special agent in charge of the case.
But DeGerolamo and his partner did not know that the FBI was already on their trail. When agents entered the vault, the thief was buried in so much money they could not find him at first, Maxwell said.
DeGerolamo was convicted once again and released on Halloween 2003, authorities said.
It’s unclear what DeGerolamo has been up to since his 2003 release, but his recent exploits, such as the engagement-ring theft, pale in comparison to his earlier work, one law-enforcement source said.
“He went from the creative to the mundane,” the source said.
Not one of the Mafia’s brightest. Never would have even been made in the old days. He’s an embarassment to organized crime.
This guy is out after 8 years but Rubashkin faces 25?
Jeremiah Wright got it right: G-d damn america, americas crooked justice system that is
Craigslist,in my opinion is a dangerous way to conduct business-there have been murders, rape, abductions and molestations with people posting and/or responding to such ads as “employment”, etc. Also, even though the government has sharply cracked down on what formerly was known as the “erotic services’ category (now simply called “Adult”) it remains a major conduit of prostitutes and those who would avail themselves of such “services”.
Not well written or researched – there’s no street named “Christopher” in Brooklyn. There is an avenue by that name, but that’s in Brownsville (I know it because my grandmother OBM lived there many many years ago). It was a very rough neighborhood 40 years ago, so you can imagine how it is now. The only street I know by that name is in Greenwich Village, in Manhattan.