'Gentleman gambler' Joseph Mastronardo sentenced to 20 months in prison

In his prime, vice cops affectionately dubbed him "the gentleman gambler of Montgomery County." Mayor Frank L. Rizzo called him son-in-law.

And in the gambling world, Joseph Vito Mastronardo Jr. was known as one of America's premier sports bookmakers, with a network stretching from his home in Huntingdon Valley to a Costa Rican office park that raked in millions from high-end gamblers who thought nothing of dropping $10,000 or more on a game.

But as was abundantly clear as he faced a federal judge Tuesday, Mastronardo's prime had passed long ago.

Rail-thin and sallow-faced, Mastronardo, 64, sat silently, gripping a cane and breathing through an oxygen tank as a federal judge sentenced him to 20 months in prison on racketeering-conspiracy and money-laundering charges stemming from his gambling empire.

His lawyer, John W. Morris, likened the punishment to a death sentence for a man barely clinging to life after a recent stroke, bouts of pneumonia, and throat cancer, which has left him reliant on a feeding tube in his stomach.

When it came time to address the court Tuesday, Mastronardo remained quiet. His ailing health has rendered him all but unable to speak, Morris said.

"He is sorry for the time and expense the court has had to go through," said Morris, relaying a whispered message from his client to the judge. As for his crimes, the lawyer said, "he can't apologize for the conduct of a lifetime."

But that, said prosecutors Tuesday, is exactly why he deserved a prison term.

"He has never denied who he is or what he's done," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Bologna said. "It's as much a part of him as his arms, his legs, his face."

Mastronardo pleaded guilty last year as part of a deal with prosecutors that hinged on his 14 codefendants, including his son and brother, also admitting guilt. As part of the agreement, the government dropped all charges against his wife, Joanna, Rizzo's daughter.

Mastronardo, who is out on bail, was ordered to report to federal custody April 2.

But four times before, Mastronardo has faced incarceration on bookmaking charges, and none of his three stints behind bars deterred him from what he once described in a letter to his probation officer as "what I do best and love."

Mastronardo remains, as he has all his life, a gambler unrepentant. And by all accounts, he made a pretty good living doing it.

Consider the numbers from his most recent case:

More than $1.3 million seized at his Huntingdon Valley mansion, including $1.1 million in cash hidden in PVC pipes authorities dug up from his backyard.

An additional $1.7 million seized from bank accounts frozen by the feds, all of it forfeited Tuesday.

And a $3 million money trail traced by the FBI, the IRS, and Montgomery County detectives to offshore accounts in Sweden, Malta, Antigua, and Portugal.

From 2005 to 2011, he expanded what had been a largely local operation into an international Internet profit-maker. His office in Costa Rica took bets from 1,000 gamblers worldwide on the websites BetRoma.com and BetRose.com.

But, Morris said Tuesday, his client's obsession with gambling was far from an addiction. Rather, it was "a profitable fascination with the interface of sports, odds and the laws of probability" - an interest that emerged from a young age.

The son of a produce salesman and a supermarket shop clerk, Mastronardo was first introduced to his lifelong vice as a 10-year-old, while shining the shoes of well-heeled golfers on the greens of the Meadowlands Country Club in Blue Bell.

There, he was often called upon to place bets on behalf of players and doubled his fees by betting against men who tended to overestimate their abilities on the links.

Youthful enterprise expanded to a full-time hobby and eventually a lucrative career. Throughout, Mastronardo proved adept at tolerating risk and profiting from it.

While most bookmakers sought to balance their books by seeking bets from both sides of any given event, he played for the long term, realizing that even an unbalanced book could pay off if a bookmaker struck it lucky with clients who over-bet on favorites or home teams that went on to lose.

In collecting from his debtors, Mastronardo eschewed the extortionate threats and violence employed by others. Those who failed to settle accounts simply were never allowed to place another bet, court filings suggest. And in a region where illegal gambling has long operated under the mob's thumb, he avoided any ties to organized crime. In fact, the mob at times consulted the "Vito line" when setting the odds on their own bookmaking operations.

That did not stop law enforcement from moving against him.

His first brush with the law came in 1987 and resulted in a federal prison sentence. Nearly a decade later he was back in Common Pleas Court in Montgomery County on another bookmaking charge. Prosecutors estimated at the time it generated as much as $50 million in profit a year.

"His arrest, and the conviction and sentence that followed, was a speed bump for Mastronardo," Bologna said in court filings. "After clearing the speed bump, he didn't hit the brakes. He hit the gas."

It was not that Mastronardo didn't realize bookmaking would continue to land him in prison. He just never viewed what he was doing as wrong.

In fact, his lawyer has pointed out in court filings, in the time since Mastronardo first became a target for law enforcement, New Jersey has legalized online sports betting and Pennsylvania has legalized small games of chance like poker machines.

But what U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois appeared to struggle with Tuesday was why - even after prison - Mastronardo persisted. He didn't need the money. His gambling career had made him a millionaire several times over.

He and his wife had inherited large sums from relatives, including Mastronardo's uncle, Thomas Elmezzi, who invented the formula for Pepsi Cola in 1951.

And every year, Mastronardo gave substantial sums to charities including the Norwood Academy in Germantown and the Sisters of St. Joseph as well as to friends with struggling businesses.

In the end, it was Mastronardo himself who offered the best explanation of why he kept gambling. In a 2010 conversation caught on an FBI wiretap, he explained: "I had a great ride. I mean, where [else] can I come from poverty and be worth a fortune and do whatever I want?"

As his lawyer put it Tuesday: "Mastronardo asks that he be judged for what he is: a very decent version of an illegal gambler."