Prosecutors try to link Milan to mob payoffs

By CLINT RILEY
Courier-Post staff
CAMDEN

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday presented their strongest evidence that Mayor Milton Milan took cash payoffs from the mob at his City Hall office.

With surveillance photos, a secretly recorded telephone call and testimony from investigators, prosecutors detailed a suspicious meeting between Milan and Daniel Daidone, a man described by former mob boss Ralph Natale as his middleman with the mayor.

The evidence capped two weeks of testimony about the mayor' s alleged mob ties.

Jurors on Wednesday were shown bank surveillance photographs taken on Dec. 2, 1997, of Daidone illegally cashing a $9,000 check at a Philadelphia bank, with the help of his daughter who was an executive secretary at the bank.

Five minutes after leaving the Center City bank with an envelope stuffed with large bills, Daidone calls Milan on a tapped cellular telephone.

"How you making out?" Milan asks Daidone in the 12:50 p.m. call.

"Very well, thank you. Very well," Daidone responds.

"Listen," Milan says from his City Hall office. "I wanted to reach out to you anyway because I wanted to see if, uhm, maybe you could help me. I got a couple, few outstanding, uh, things I wanted to take care of and ..."

"OK," Daidone responds.

"Maybe, uh, some sort of uhm, resource available if you can help me," Milan says.

"If I can, eh, I'll make it available," Daidone replies.

A little more than a hour later, an FBI surveillance team watches Daidone walk into City Hall.

John Garafolo, a member of the FBI's organized crime task force, testified Wednesday that he followed Daidone into an elevator in City Hall and accompanied him to the fourth floor. Garafolo said he watched the mob associate enter Milan's office.

The sequence of events is the spine supporting a largely circumstantial case presented by prosecutors that Milan was on the mob's payroll.

Since the trial began, jurors have heard dozens of secretly recorded conversations of mob boss Natale discussing business plans in Camden with Daidone. They have seen surveillance photographs of Daidone with Milan and separately with Natale and other mob associates. And they have listened to Natale himself.

The former mob boss turned cooperating government witness told jurors during three days of testimony that Daidone was his go-between with Milan, whom Natale admitted to meeting only once, by accident.

Prosecutors accuse Milan of taking more than $30,000 in cash and gifts from the Philadelphia mob between March 1996 and June 1998, including a January 1998 West Palm Beach, Fla., golf trip he took with Daidone.

Milan has maintained his innocence.

Carlos Martir Jr., the mayor's lead defense attorney, said after court Wednesday that government prosecutors are trying to use meetings between Milan and Daidone to make inferences that are not there.

He contended the mayor was not asking for money from Daidone in the Dec. 2, 1997, conversation heard by jurors on Wednesday.

Asked what "resource" the mayor was asking Daidone to provide, Martir said, "You'll find out."

Daidone is not expected to testify and has not been charged with any crime.

Alleged mob payoffs are just one of four central themes in the government's 19-count indictment of Milan. Next week, prosecutors are expected to provide evidence to support other allegations against the mayor. Witnesses will include convicted drug lord Jose "JR" Rivera, former Camden municipal prosecutor Joseph Caruso and several contractors who worked on the mayor's house.

The prosecution is expected to rest its case by Wednesday.

Milan's defense team could begin making its case by Thursday. Martir said no decision has been made about whether Milan will testify.