Rep. John Tierney's Wife Pleads Guilty

Patrice Tierney, the wife of Congressman John Tierney from the sixth district of Massachusetts, pleaded guilty yesterday “to four counts of aiding and abetting the filing of false tax returns for her brother, a federal fugitive who has been indicted on charges of illegal gambling and money laundering” in connection with an online sports betting operation he allegedly ran on the island of Antigua as reported by Stephanie Ebbert for The Boston Globe.  In an editorial The Boston Globe is asking Rep. Tierney ”to offer a full, public account of what he knew about her activities, and why he did or did not question the legality of her actions.

Rep. Tierney’s Massachusetts colleague Barney Frank would legalize online gambling over the objections of law enforcement as reported by Sewell Chan for The New York Times:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has said he would not support efforts to legalize online gambling, a view shared by most state attorneys general. “Because Internet gambling is essentially borderless activity, from a money-laundering and terrorism-financing perspective, it creates a regulatory and enforcement quagmire,” said James F. Dowling, a former special agent with the Internal Revenue Service.

In recent years the feds have busted several individuals allegedly tied to New York City’s Mafia families for their suspected involvement with some online gambling sites.

Rep. Barney Frank has been the most vocal and passionate proponent to legalize gambling over the internet, and his bill HR 2267 to do so was approved last July before the House Financial Services Committee by a 41-22 vote as reported by Catherine Dodge for Bloomberg.

Frank, originally from Bayonne, NJ, was profiled last year in a piece by Jeffrey Tobin in The New Yorker, and according to the Congressman “his father was involved with the Mafia”:

“Because Bayonne was such a sleazy place, nobody knew whether Barney was going to wind up in Congress or in jail” [said lawyer Alan Dershowitz]. According to Frank, his father was involved with the Mafia. “[Alfonse Frank] Funzi Tieri, a big-time gangster with the Genovese family, came to my brother David’s bar mitzvah, when I was twenty-three,” he said. Sam Frank died at the age of fifty-three, while Barney was an undergraduate at Harvard, and Barney took a year off to help resolve the family’s tangled financial affairs. “The Mafia guys were very helpful to me at the time,” he said.

According to former Daily News reporter and editor Thomas Collins Jr. in his 2002 memoir NewsWalker, reputed capo Matthew Ianniello — convicted in 1985 for a skimming operation involving several of his gay bars  – allegedly “was sponsored into the Genovese crime family by Frank ‘Funzi’ Tieri.”

Meanwhile, speaking of gays and the Mafia, on Capital Hill gay staffers have established the so-called Pink Hill Mafia through an online newsletter to foster social and professional connections as reported by Jason Horowitz for The Washington Post.  The Pink Hill Mafia most assuredly is not a criminal group but given the historic connections between organized crime and the gay community its name choice is regrettable:

As Pink Hill Mafia has privately expanded, the official organization of House gay staffers sought the spotlight for openly gay staffers in congressional offices. Now, some of the official group’s leaders are worried that the “unofficial” group’s e-mail list coming to light will distract from their bipartisan agenda. Christopher Crowe, the House gay staff association’s new president, wants his group to “work inside the office and have an influence” on lawmakers. In short, the official organization frets that Pink Hill Mafia will be misconstrued as an actual mob, with ugly connotations of mission and methods.