By Frank Donnelly | fdonnelly@siadvance.com
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- He sang for the government and it paid off.
Former Pleasant Plains contractor and truck owner Joseph Vollaro, whose cooperation helped take down the Gambino crime family's entire organizational chart in 2008, was sentenced Friday to time served for his own crimes.
Vollaro potentially faced 20 years to life, but a Brooklyn federal court judge said organized crime "would thrive" without cooperators like Vollaro.
In 2008, he pleaded guilty in Brooklyn federal court to racketeering conspiracy, making false statements and narcotics distribution.
Vollaro wore a wire to record dozens of conversations with high-ranking Gambino members, which led to indictments covering a slew of crimes over three decades, including murder, theft of union benefits and extortion at the site in Bloomfield where NASCAR wanted to erect an 80,000-seat racetrack.
Vollaro, who is in witness protection, began cooperating about a decade ago after he was busted with a kilo of cocaine.
Vollaro also aided authorities in an unrelated case close to home.
He recorded phone conversations and wore a wire to conduct drug deals for state prosecutors in a case that resulted in the 2009 indictment of members of a Staten Island-connected, cross-country cocaine ring.
Two of those arrested, brothers Richard and Joseph Fallacaro, whose family owned Jo Jo's Tire and Service Center in Richmond Valley, were later sentenced in state Supreme Court, St. George, to nine years in prison.
Vollaro had owned Andrew Trucking Co. and Master Mix Inc. in Travis.
