A Brooklyn restaurant worker has admitted to helping his manager and a mobbed-up customer try to bribe a juror in heavyweight boxer Goran Gogic’s international drug trafficking trial.
Mustafa Fteja, 54, pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Federal Court Thursday to obstructing justice, admitting to playing a key role in the bribery plot, which threw Gogic’s trial into disarray and landed the prizefighter’s lawyer in the crosshairs of a federal investigation.
Fteja, who lives on Staten Island, admitted that his co-conspirators told him the juror was sitting on the Gogic trial, and that they asked him to “pass a message” that the juror would get a payday for a not-guilty verdict.
Fteja could face roughly five to six years in prison when he’s sentenced June 23, and may face immigration consequences. Fteja, who grew up in Montenegro, is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Fteja worked at Positano, a Bay Ridge restaurant prosecutors say has ties to organized crime figures. He was acquainted with one of the jurors in the trial, which was set to start in November, according to the feds.
As prosecutors tell it, Fteja reached out to the juror several times on behalf of restaurant manager Valmir Krasniqi and another man, Afrim Kupa, who has a storied criminal record and ties to both the Gambino crime family and Balkan organized crime.
The plot unfolded just a few days before opening arguments. Fteja made several calls to the juror and convinced him to meet on Staten Island on Nov. 13, where Fteja asked the juror for a “favor,” then offered to pay for a not-guilty verdict, according to a criminal complaint.
Fteja told the juror that Krasniqi and others directed him to make the offer, and phone records show Fteja and Krasniqi were in contact throughout the day, both before and after the meeting, according to the feds.
Fteja met the juror again on Nov. 15, and got more specific about dollars, telling him he’d get $50,000, then bumping it up to $100,000, according to prosecutors.
The FBI was clued in to the plot, though, and was was listening to recordings of Fteja and Krasniqi’s calls.
On Nov. 16, the feds surveilled a meeting of all three conspirators at Krasniqi’s Staten Island home, and the next day, all three were hauled into federal court to face charges.
U.S. District Court Judge Joan Azrack put Gogic’s trial on hold and dismissed the whole jury, and the feds are looking into whether the boxer’s lawyer, Joseph Corozzo Jr., was involved in the plot, or in the potential intimidation of at least three trial witnesses.
Prosecutors are asking that Azrack disqualify Corozzo — the son of the late reputed Gambino crime family consigliere Joseph (Jo Jo) Corozzo — from representing Gogic.
Gogic, who remains held without bail, was set to stand trial on charges he trafficked more than 20 tons of cocaine through U.S. ports, coordinating between cocaine suppliers in Colombia, cargo ship crew members who transported tons of the drug, and port workers in Europe and the U.S.
Fteja remains free on $150,000 bond, while Kupa and Krasniqi remain held without bond in the MDC Brooklyn federal jail.
Krasniqi’s lawyer, Mathew Mari, has tried to downplay his client’s role in the scheme, saying that he was merely trying to “score points” with Kupa, a regular restaurant customer, by helping him connect with Fteja, who he’s described as a bus boy.
“Lots of people come in there, organized crime, everybody comes in his restaurant,” Mari said at a November bail hearing. “If you go in his restaurant, you’re going to love it. You’re going to like it. I go there almost every day. I’ve known this guy for 12 years. He accommodates people. Should he have accommodated this situation? Definitely, now in hindsight, certainly not.”
