Joseph (Joe Vito) Mastronardo

Joseph (Joe Vito) Mastronardo was the embodiment of a true "Gentleman Gambler." From humble beginnings as a shoe-shine boy and golf caddy to becoming one of America’s most renowned bookmakers, his life was a mix of charm, controversy, and brilliance.

Despite his entanglements with the law, Joe Vito maintained a unique integrity in his illicit profession, leaving an indelible mark on Philadelphia’s gambling underworld .

Joseph Vito Mastronardo Jr., widely known throughout the city of Philadelphia and, more specifically, the gambling industry as “Joe Vito,” was born in the City of Brotherly Love in 1950 to Joseph V. Mastronardo Sr. and Lucy (nee’ Marsilio).

Joe would grow up to become one of the nation's most respected professional gamblers, handicappers, and sports bookmakers. Dating to Joe’s childhood, his father, Joe Senior, was reputed to have also been in the illegal gambling business and allegedly served time for a bookmaking conviction. It may partially explain why his son later gravitated to the gambling industry so fervently.

As a teenager, Joe was said to have gotten a job working as a shoe-shine boy and later a golf caddy at the local Meadowbrook Country Club, where he came into contact with well-heeled big businessmen who belonged to the club. He did the same as an employee at the Squires Country Club and later Cedarbrook Country Club.

Joseph (Joe Vito) Mastronardo

As a caddy working the golf course these club members would sometimes ask young Joe to call in a horse or sports bet for them with their local bookmaker. After becoming familiar with the whole process,the ambitious young man started to hold a few bets back and book some of those bets himself, essentially serving in the capacity of a bookmaker.

In time, this became a side business of sorts for him, and he expanded it to the point that this became a steady business model for him.

There is another story that both Joe and his brother John got their start and learned the gambling trade while working in the bookmaking operation run by their father, Joseph V. Senior, who was a known gambler or “KG” around the Philadelphia area and had several bookmaking convictions to prove it.

Joe was said to have been a natural at it, too. He was said to have been a wiz at calculations and mathematics. He was also very adept at figuring out the odds and other minutiae related to various sporting events which only served to later help him set his own ‘sports line’ for betting and odds-making.

As a young man, he met and quickly fell in love with a local girl named Joanna Rizzo, who just happened to be the only daughter of the iconic Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, who was an extremely controversial public figure in his own right.

Rizzo was a former highly decorated policeman who was later elevated to become the Police Commissioner of the entire Philadelphia Police Department. Known as a stickler for law and order, years later Frank Rizzo was also elected to the highest public office in Philadelphia, the city’s mayoralty.

He also became one of the most controversial figures in that city’s history during the 1960s civil rights movement when he confronted the widespread rioting in Philadelphia.

Although initially taken aback by his daughter's choice of a bookmaker as her desired suitor, in time, the very conservative Frank Rizzo couldn’t help but become endeared to his future son-in-law. Rizzo realized that although he was breaking the law daily with every wager he accepted from his customers, Joe Mastronardo was well-spoken and a gentleman in every sense of the word.

Rizzo came to view Mastronardo as a bright, respectful, family-oriented young man who truly loved his daughter. He saw through the surface of what Joe just did for a living and noted the young man’s true genteel character. And although Rizzo had a passionate hatred for lawbreakers, Joe was different. And the old man liked what he saw very much.

Joe and Joanna got married in 1978, and throughout the ensuing years, it's believed his father-in-law would wag his finger at Joe on rare occasions because of his chosen "vocation." Still, over time, the two men were said to have developed a deep love and respect for one another as only a father could have for his own son. Rizzo fully supported him because of Joe’s innate sweetness and generosity.

An Iconic Figure

Over the years, “Joe Vito,” as he was generally known, was to become an iconic figure in Philadelphia’s illegal gambling business. Through the decades he and his kid brother John grew their gambling operation to immense proportions. But Joe Vito was no ordinary bookie. He was very unique in both the format and operation of his bookmaking racket and his attitude toward those with whom he dealt.

As time went on, Joe Mastronardo was said to have made millions of dollars. So many millions that the Mastronardos lived with their son Joe F. Mastronardo in a multimillion-dollar, two-story European-styled mansion on the 1600 block of Stocton Road, near Herkness Drive, in the exclusive Meadowbrook section of Abington Township, Pennsylvania.

Joe operated for years in tandem with his younger brother and taught him the ins and outs of the business, indoctrinating his sibling in bookmaking. The “Mastronardo Bookmaking Operation,” as federal prosecutors would later refer to it was based out of Montgomery County.

Years later, when they were arrested at the height of their financial volume and power, the FBI and federal prosecutors who headed the investigation into their sprawling nationwide gambling network estimated that the ring had over 1000 active betting customers and did a gross business of over $50,000,000 a year. That's roughly one million dollars per week and a lot of greenbacks.

He and his brother were generally viewed as operating one of the country's largest and most successful sports gambling operations since at least the 1980s.

He had carved his niche early on at the upper end of the gambling underworld and dealt with an exclusive clientele who could well afford to bet thousands of dollars per game and, who, if they refused to pay, were never threatened or harassed.

Hence, the “Gentleman Gambler” moniker was born from this smooth method of operating. The Mastronardos operated a business where your word was your bond. If a gambler reneged on a debt, he was simply told he would no longer be able to bet with the Mastronardos, said several sources familiar with their approach.

Their success can be measured by their lifestyles, and those of their immediate family. Both men lived in well-appointed homes, drove expensive cars, traveled worldwide on exotic vacations, and dined in the finest restaurants.

The Mastronardos accepted wagers from well-heeled bettors from all across the country, including gamblers from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Chicago, and Las Vegas. With the advent of advanced computer technology in the mid-1990s, Joe Vito decided to follow the growing trend of other bookies by placing his ‘nuts and bolts’ bookmaking office beyond the reach of American authorities.

He relocated his entire operation down to the island nation of Costa Rica where sports gambling is legal. By relocating his betting office, phone clerks, and telephones from Pennsylvania down to the City of San Jose, Costa Rica, he successfully put his gambling operation away from the clutches of local and federal law enforcement, for the time being, at least.

However, because most of his bettors were American citizens, he still needed a way to interact with them locally and domestically weekly. So, closer to home, he was said to utilize a local gasoline station as a drop and rendezvous point for his runners and customers.

Located on Norristown Road in Blue Bell, this location served the dual purpose of being a mailing address where out-of-state wagering customers could mail payments to him and local bettors could either pick up their winnings or drop off payments for their losses.

The Gentleman Gambler

In his lifetime Joe Vito became widely known and acknowledged as a master sports bookmaker with a well-deserved reputation as that of a "gentleman gambler." His wagering customers, as well as those in law enforcement who tracked him over the years and the local media alike, marveled at his soft-handed approach in dealing with those who, for one reason or another, failed to pay him off when they lost their bets.

He gained the moniker as the “Gentleman Gambler” because of those business methods. Whereas other bookies were generally known to apply pressure to losing bettors who reneged on paying or those willing to pay but who didn’t have the money to back up their losing bets, Joe took a much different approach to those who looked to stiff him for one reason or another.

The Gentleman Gambler

Instead of strong-arming his players, threatening them, or otherwise hurting them in any way, shape, or form. Mastronardo simply wrote the debt off, and that particular customer was banned. If you didn’t pay your losses, then you couldn’t bet with Joe Vito anymore. Period. It was that simple!

In time, the very business-like approach and "legitimate" type mentality that Joe successfully applied to a very "illegitimate" type of business would not only endear him to his customers, but he even gained the begrudging respect of those in law enforcement who busted up his gambling operations and arrested him over the years. Mastronardo was always viewed more as a businessman who happened to be in an illegal business, as opposed to a racketeer and hoodlum per se.

Despite this "cleansed" approach and professional business model to the illicit gambling rackets, he was indeed repeatedly arrested over the years in some very highly-publicized gambling cases. In fact, from the time he was 25 years old forward, he was arrested or charged at least seven times on illegal bookmaking and related charges. Starting with his first known arrest in 1975, Mastronardo’s criminal file reads as follows;

October 6, 1975 -- As a young man, he was nabbed by police carrying five sheets of rice paper with about 1000 college and professional football bets and ’tally work’ totaling approximately $50,000. He was charged with possessing bookmaking records (but later acquitted of the charge). He may have been working under his father at this point in time.

May 5, 1978 -- Three months before his marriage to Joanna Rizzo, he was arrested for carrying sports tally sheets again. Also arrested was his brother John. (But the charges were eventually dropped against both of them.)

December 16, 1983 -- Possession of gambling records and gambling conspiracy (fined and given a suspended sentence.)

June 30, 1986 -- In a joint investigation run by IRS agents and local authorities, the thirty-six-year-old Joe was charged as the kingpin of a $50-million dollar-a-year interstate-betting operation (later dismissed instead of an anticipated federal prosecution.) In this case, government accusations were that he had laundered profits through the Shearson-Lehman brokerage firm. Prosecutors were never able to prove that count, but Joe was convicted of gambling and received two years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, followed by five years of probation. His brother John received three months in prison, a $250,000 fine, and five years probation.

In April 2006, he was busted on a 23-count federal gambling indictment. During the course of executing these arrest warrants, the police raiders seized over $2,700,000 in assets from the Mastronardo home, that of his brother John, other suspects, and several hidden stashes. Joe and his lawyers eventually worked out a deal with prosecutors where he pled out to a single misdemeanor gambling count in return for foregoing any claims to the $2.7 million in cash seized during the execution of those search warrants. Joe Mastronardo was technically sentenced to serve a short jail term but was placed on six months of house arrest, followed by six years of supervised criminal probation instead.

Authorities said one million dollars of that seized cash were regularly held for "standing capital" and operating liquidity. The rest was seized at 13 other locations in the Philadelphia area and Boca Raton, Florida, where Joe Vito maintained a satellite office with his father. In all, 46 search and seizure warrants were executed by the FBI, Montgomery County detectives, and numerous police agencies, which targeted homes, vehicles, bank accounts, and safe deposit boxes.

Federal law enforcement authorities also seized a computerized list of bettors from Mastronardo’s home office, which was described by sources close to the investigation as including captains of industry, major sports figures, and other wealthy clients in and outside of the United States who commonly bet anywhere from $500 to $50,000 on both college and professional games.

In June 2010, the Mastronardos were charged under a state case that was eventually moved into the federal court system because of the heavier draconian penalties for gambling. The Montgomery County District Attorney’s office eventually acquiesced and released all the investigative information and evidence they had in the case to the feds.

Less than two years later, in 2012, the feds came down hard on the Mastronardo brothers once again. They were both released on $1 million bail after being indicted on Federal RICO charges for operating a massive international sports gambling operation. The arrests were reported in all the newspapers. After an intensive undercover probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, prosecutors charged nineteen defendants with operating a continuing criminal enterprise, racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, operating an illegal gambling business, money laundering conspiracy, interstate travel in aid of racketeering, transmitting wagering information, banking law violations, and illegally structuring cash deposits.

Charged in the case were Joseph V. Mastronardo Jr., John Mastronardo, Joseph F. Mastronardo, Eric Woehlcke, Harry Murray, Joseph Vitelli, Anna Rose Vitelli, Patrick Tronoski, Edward Feighan, Kenneth Cohen, Schuyler Twaddle, Michael Loftus, Michael Squillante, David Rounick, Ronald Gendrachi, and Joanna Mastronardo.

The Sunshine State

In those later years, his dear old dad, Joe V. Mastronardo Sr., who had retired down to South Florida years earlier, was said to have handled a portion of the Florida end of the business along with his close aide, Harry Murray. Another Florida-based aide named Jimmy Visco was said to act as a sometime courier of funds and gambling profits. Visco was generally responsible for collecting money from various agents and runners, sub-books, and bettors due to Mastronardo Sr. and then transporting those same funds up from Clearwater, Florida, to Philadelphia. He also handled all profits from Joe Vito’s father, Joe V. Sr.

Named along with the nineteen gamblers were a check-cashing agency, two private domestic bank accounts, numerous international bank accounts, and a charitable organization. Prosecutors charged all these said entities with illegally assisting and aiding the Mastronardos and their gambling operation to disguise the true source of illicit monies transferred and deposited on their behalf. While executing the various arrest warrants, FBI agents also raided various private residences and businesses connected to Joe Vito. During the course of these search warrants, authorities seized another whopping $2,100,000 in cold cash.

The indictment alleged that between 2005 and 2011, the gambling network utilized internet websites and 1-800 telephone numbers that allowed bettors to place sports wagers on football, baseball, basketball, soccer, golf, horse racing, and other sporting events. English-speaking residents of Costa Rica were said to have staffed the phones and internet sites, fielding incoming calls from bettors. Other methods of communication between bettors and bookies included Skype, cell phones, email, Blackberries, PDAs, text messaging, and in-person communication. The network’s runners often allegedly met bettors in person at public buildings and parking lots to collect or deliver payments that ranged from $1000 to more than $100,000 at a shot.

Losing bettors could transfer payment through various methods, including the J & A Check Cashing Service and a false charity. Over a 12-month period, investigators traced the laundering of 72 cash deposits in amounts less than $10,000, totaling more than $500,000, which were solely related to transactions Joanna Mastronardo handled for her husband.

In 2013, federal agents executed four search warrants at the Mastronardo home and three other locations looking for liquid assets. After digging up the entire property with a backhoe and shovels, agents discovered and seized more than $1.3 million in cash found hidden in PVC pipes buried in Mastronardo's backyard. An additional $1.7 million was found in various bank accounts belonging to the family, and the feds froze it. It was all part of a seizure action that totaled more than $6.3 million. The prosecution also said there was a money trail of wire transfers in excess of $3.2 million to financial institutions in Sweden, Malta, Antigua, and Portugal.

Mastronardo's estate.

Side Note: Among the nineteen defendants charged in the 2010 case was his brother John, 59, a one-time standout football player at Villanova University, who had tried out for the Eagles professional football team; and Joe’s son, Joseph Frank, 33; were among a dozen co-conspirators who later pled guilty. Joe’s wife, Joanna, 65, had also been charged, but the charges were dropped with her husband’s plea. Prosecutors used her arrest as a wedge to force Joe to plead out to save his wife.

By this point, Joe was operating his bookmaking business at such an exalted level that he was netting millions of dollars annually. He and his wife Joanna, as well as their family members, were living in opulence, and it showed. They resided on a multi-acre estate that housed a Tuscan-style mansion worth millions. This residence was in one of Pennsylvania's most prestigious communities.

Joe’s customers were said to include some high rollers who didn’t hesitate to plop down $10,000 up to $50,000 on a single sporting event. Joe was a skilled and influential oddsmaker, and his betting "line" was followed by bookmakers around the country. Considered one of the premier oddsmakers in the Philadelphia area and one of the very best in the country, his betting line, the “Joe Vito Line,” was considered an industry standard. It rivaled any betting line in Las Vegas, or anywhere else, for that matter.

He Never Hurt Anyone

Over the years, Joe Vito insisted that what he was doing was not a crime. He never hurt anyone, and gambling was becoming more and more acceptable and legalized elsewhere. Joe Vito wasn’t called the “Gentleman Gambler” for nothing. He was never involved in violence and was known as a charmer who made friends everywhere.

A former friend and lawyer named Dennis J. Cogan said, “He did wonderful things for people. He was complex and interesting, kind and compassionate. If a person couldn’t pay his gambling debt, Joe would forgive the debt. It was just that he couldn’t bet with Joe again.”

Cogan said both Joe and his brother John took care of people who needed help. He cited the time John Mastronardo gave up his tickets to Super Bowl XXXIX to a woman dying of cancer whose last wish was to see the Eagles play the New England Patriots.

Joe Vito

“They were special guys,” said Cogan. “They didn’t do things to get their names on buildings. That wasn’t what they were about. They were low-profile but very generous to a fault.”

But with this latest appearance in federal court things quickly took a turn for the worst. This newest arrest also triggered a violation of the parole he was serving from his previous 2006 gambling conviction. So, not only was Joe now facing a new indictment, but he was also immediately remanded to prison for the probation violation. The magistrate remanded Mastronardo to a Federal Penitentiary for 8 to 59 months behind bars. It was to be the first significant prison time the savvy gambler had ever experienced.

After a lifetime of continually rolling sevens, this turn of bad luck couldn’t have come at a worse time for the inveterate gambler. Over the years, Joe’s health had continually plummeted to that point. He had suffered from a very serious throat cancer operation that he survived, had battled throat and tongue cancer for upwards of fifteen years, and then back to back had suffered a major stroke in those last few years. He had a heart condition and life-threatening breathing problems as well. He had lost over twenty pounds in weight, was gaunt in the face, and now required an oxygen tank and a litany of daily medications for his very survival. At one point ,shortly before a court appearance, he was required to have a feeding tube in his stomach.

After numerous delays, he was eventually convicted on the old 2010 bookmaking case. On the day of his sentencing standing before the court in February of 2015, a gaunt and fragile-looking Mastronardo and his defense lawyer, John W. Morris, argued with the prosecutor's depiction of Mastronardo as a master criminal who had repeatedly scoffed at the law over the years by engaging in illegal gambling rackets for decades. Joe’s lawyer also made the very legitimate case that any incarceration of Mastronardo would be tantamount to a death sentence because of the terrible health of his client.

In a pretrial motion, Attorney Morris asked for house arrest rather than prison for his client, saying that Joe Vito was Guys and Dolls , not Goodfellas . He described him as having the charm of Paul Newman in The Sting .

The counselor backed up his plea for mercy by submitting the professional testimony of Mastronardo’s physician, as well as that of other health professionals, who all argued against any form of imprisonment where their patient would not be able to receive the intricate level of health care he required to keep him alive. Mastronardo’s lawyer and doctors pleaded with the jurist to show compassion and spare the gambler from certain death behind bars. That Mastronardo’s life was hanging by a string.

For their part, federal prosecutors did acknowledge Mastronardo’s very serious health conditions in open court. Still, they countered that the Federal Bureau of Prisons had more than sufficient health facilities and high-tech medical care to more than adequately deal with any medical needs that might arise that the inmate might have down the road.

The judge also publicly acknowledged for the court record that the defendant was in “terrible health.” He then basically buried him above ground.

This callous, pro-government U.S. District Court Federal Judge Jan DuBois then sentenced the obviously frail and gravely ill Joseph V. Mastronardo Jr. to a term of 20 months incarceration behind federal prison walls for the unconscionable crime of having accepted wagers from his willing customers. It was a non-violent violation of the law at best, but one that, in the eyes of the judge and government at least, certainly deserved the most draconian of jail sentences available….and that was that!

The judge made sure to also sentence Joe’s son, Joseph F. Mastronardo, to five months in prison and five months of house arrest. Joe’s brother John received nine months in the jug and another nine months of house arrest.

Then, the sickly senior citizen was remanded to prison. Brought into the federal lockup in a wheelchair and clutching his oxygen tank while breathing through his nose tube, a rail-thin Mastronardo surrendered on the date so designated by the judge to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In his wisdom, the jurist used his supposedly vast intelligence and even-handed judgment to mete out his brand of "justice" as it were.

Nine months later, on Monday, November 9, 2015, Joseph Vito Mastronardo collapsed to the prison floor and was rushed to the infirmary at the Devins Federal Correctional Medical Facility at Ayer, Massachusetts. He passed away a few minutes later. He was only 65 years of age.

He had been speaking with his wife Joanna on the prison telephone only minutes earlier when he quickly rushed her off the phone. Later that same day her home phone rang again. This time it was the prison chaplain calling with the sad news that Joe had passed away. It was believed that he died from complications of chronic pneumonia.

A Legendary Bookmaker

During his lifetime, Joseph "Joe Vito" Mastronardo became one of history's most successful sports-betting bookmakers, one of almost legendary status, who earned untold millions doing what he loved best. Accepting wagers on the outcome of sporting events.

He was one of a kind and never made apologies for what he did. He was proud of his accomplishments as a top bookmaker. He saw bookmaking as a business, like any other business. He never denied being involved in it. Joe was very successful at gambling, and over the years, he had built up a high-end clientele who liked to bet but did not want to become involved with the underworld or racketeers. Joe allowed them to indulge their gambling thirst without rubbing elbows with the more seedy element because Mastronardo was never involved with organized crime that way.

In fact, there is a story retold by his son that recounts Joe once telling Philadelphia mob boss Nicky Scarfo “to go fuck himself” when the psychopathic Mafia leader attempted to shake Mastronardo down for a protection envelope. His son then asked, “Who does that?” Stating, “My father’s got a big set of balls.” Whether the story is completely true or not is up for debate. But what is known is that Mastronardo largely avoided underworld figures and kept his gambling operation ‘clean’ from underworld influence, so to speak.

It is certainly an accepted fact that Philly’s underworld would have loved to grab a piece of Joe Vito’s bookmaking business. But mobsters were never able to get their hooks into him. Maybe it was because his father-in-law Frank Rizzo had once been a policeman, then police commissioner, and eventually the Mayor. Maybe the mob thought Mastronardo’s possible existing connections to law enforcement and influential government officials were too dangerous to mess with, that it would possibly bring too much heat on them if they attempted to extort him. Whatever their thinking was, they never pushed the issue with Joe Vito, and he was allowed to conduct his business unimpeded.

Joe and his son.

He continually advanced his business over the years. He became one of the very first to ever use the internet, with its hidden pass-words, online betting applications, and onsite Costa Rican wire rooms through which bets could be placed. His gross volume became such that even five and six-digit bets were not uncommon for him. One such gambler once ‘settled up’ his weekly debt by delivering $250,000 in cash to Joe Vito in person.

Postscript: In a very emotional interview shortly after his father's untimely death at the hands of the U.S. Government, Joe’s son Joe F. Jr. told mob writer George Anastasia that he thought his father was “the greatest, smartest, toughest guy in the whole world.” He said, “If I turn out to be half the man my father was, that would mean I’m an exceptional human being.”

His son also accused prosecutors of having wantonly and callously killed his father. He told the PhillyVoice that he blames federal prosecutors and the judge for pushing for incarceration for a ‘victimless crime’ for his father's death.

“He shouldn’t have died at all. He wasn’t close to dying. He had just put on 20 pounds. If he had been home, he’d have been able to be treated, like he was countless times before at Abington Hospital,” said Joe of his father’s battles with aspiration pneumonia.

“Every time I got him to the hospital when he was symptomatic of it, they’d treat him, and he’d be ok. Similar problems were coming up lately. What’s the variable here? He wasn’t home. He was at a place with obviously no means to take care of him,” he continued. “It’s absolutely disgusting. The judge, the prosecutors, they killed him!”

Mastronardo’s son went on to say, “They even acknowledged that given my father's failing health and frail condition, he wouldn’t be back to gambling.” The prosecutors indirectly said as much in their sentencing memo that, “Given the defendant’s current health, it is extremely unlikely that he will resume his bookmaking activities.”

His son went on to state “There is absolutely no reason he should have been in that jail cell. Spite work! The whole case was basically a vendetta. At sentencing, our doctors were adamant that this person cannot go to jail, that it’s a ridiculous risk with the health issues he’s facing.”

“In no way, shape or form should he have gone to jail. It’s absolutely disgusting. They are despicable people. They killed my father. For nothing. For having gambled. My dad was a man of great integrity and those people have no integrity. They knew there was a great chance of this happening, and they didn’t care.”

In viewing what the federal government did to his friend and client, one of Mastronardo’s attorneys called the sentences imposed after the pleas had been entered unwarranted, given the nature of the case. He asked, “What useful purpose, other than getting their pound of flesh, does the punishment in this case serve?”

In Joe Vito’s case, it could be argued, the price was more than a pound of flesh…It was his life!

Until the next time…“The Other Guy!”

Joseph (Joe Vito) Mastronardo

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