A Colorado businessman charged this week he was shaken down by indicted Local 91 union thug Mark Congi and henchman Joel Cicero, husband of ousted Local 91 Secretary Cheryl Cicero and son-in-law of indicted union boss Michael "Butch" Quarcini.
Cicero is a Mario Cuomo-appointed member of the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission who -- Albany sources told the Reporter this week -- won't be around for long. Builder Joe Aragon used the word "extortion" to describe the way he was treated, and said Cicero used his position on the Bridge Commission to force the hiring of Local 91 members on a recent construction project here.
Congi and Quarcini face multiple charges of conspiracy and extortion and are looking at 20 years in prison, while Cicero has yet to be charged.
Aragon, who has built 47 Pizza Hut-Taco Bell restaurants around the country with his company, ProServe Corp., tried building one on the New York side of the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge last spring.
That's when the trouble began. Joel Cicero, he said, turned the project into a nightmare.
"These guys (Cicero and Congi) took me and a friend into a room," Aragon said. "They told me I was going to have to hire some guys. I thought I was in a James Cagney movie."
Bridge Commissioner Cicero is also an official in Laborers Local 91, a union identified by federal prosecutors earlier this year as a "criminal enterprise." His father-in-law and many of his friends are under indictment, and his wife was recently kicked out of her $89,000-a-year post as the Local's secretary.
"I went down to the union hall and Cicero was sitting in this big chair like a judge or something," Aragon said. "Mark Congi told me, 'We never forget and you'll never get away from us.'"
Aragon says Cicero and Congi "put the arm" on him, in an attempt to get him to hire Local 91 workers. Undeterred, Aragon proceeded with his construction. Violent pickets began. Despite the fact he had put one of the Laborers on the job, the thugs wanted more and wouldn't let up.
"I had one girl who worked for me hit by a car, incidents of vandalism and threats," Aragon said. "I've never seen anything like it."
The Bridge Commission was no help, he added.
"Joel Cicero was the Bridge Commission," he said. "He told me I'd better play ball, or else."
The Reporter immediately put Aragon in touch with William Hochul, the U.S. Attorney on the Local 91 case.
"I'll testify anytime, any place," Aragon said. "I spent a million dollars to build this thing and this is the only place in the country where I had to go out of business. I believe Cicero and Congi were directly responsible."
Since its opening, the Pizza Hut-Taco Bell at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge has been plagued by bad business. It closed last month, and 25 full-time employees were laid off. According to Aragon, the threats of Mark Congi have been delivered.
"If we put the word out, you won't have a truck stop here," Aragon said Congi told him. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by terrorists who aren't members of Local 91, virtually all of the traffic across the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge has been truckers. And, as Congi forewarned, they haven't been stopping.
The Laborers put the screw in with the Teamsters to stay away from the restaurant, Aragon said.
All told, 25 Niagara County restaurant employees are out of work, a successful businessman from Colorado lost a million dollars and now characterizes his time in Niagara Falls as something out of a gangster movie. Because that was the power of Laborers Local 91 here and because the fix was in from a Bridge Commissioner who ought to be indicted.
It's the kind of creepy stuff that happens here and nowhere else -- not in Cleveland or Erie or New York City. Not in 2002.
By the beginning of next year, the chump-change Joel Cicero will no longer be a member of the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission.
The Reporter has a promise from Albany.
And Mark Congi will no longer be able to bully people trying to do business here.
We have a promise on that from law enforcement.
Denver entrepreneur Joe Aragon said he was shaken down by Local 91 and the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, and he isn't happy about it. He used the word "extortion," and it cost him a million dollars.
He is taking his story to federal authorities and, with any luck at all, even more than the 14 members of the Laborers "goon squad" currently under indictment will be called to answer for their sins.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 15 2002 |