Ex-Union Benefit Fund Trustee Gets 18 Months In Prison For Perjury

Briarcliff Manor resident lied about ties to organized crime.

By William Demarest

A former union leader from Briarcliff Manor was sentenced today in federal court in Manhattan to 18 months in prison and fined $10,000 for perjury.

Joseph Olivieri, 56, of Briarcliff Manor, also faces three years of supervised release after he gets out of prison.

Olivieri is the former executive director of the Association of Wall, Ceiling, and Carpentry Industries of New York and a former trustee of the benefit funds managed for the District Council of New York City and Vicinity of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. He was convicted by a jury after a one-week trial before U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in October 2010.

"Joseph Olivieri was a corrupt union trustee who, along with his cronies both inside and outside the union, exploited the hard-working carpenters whose pension and benefit funds he was supposed to protect,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara. “Today's sentence is the latest result of this office's campaign to root out organized crime and corruption in the union and to prosecute those responsible."

According to the evidence presented at trial and other documents, Olivieri lied under oath about his ties to the Genovese organized crime family, as well as his ties to a union contractor who was defrauding the Carpenters Union benefit funds while he was a trustee.

Olivieri committed this perjury during a court-ordered deposition in a civil racketeering case the U.S. Attorney's Office brought against the Carpenters Union that was intended to rid the union of corruption and organized crime influence.

Olivieri is one of 10 people convicted in this probe, and was the only one to go to trial. He is the eighth one to be sentenced.