Former federal agent who aided organized-crime figure is sentenced to 10 years in prison
An ex-FBI agent who helped a mob figure get a job as a prison warden is facing up to 10 years in prison in Florida for conspiring to transport stolen cash.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a brief released Monday before a hearing in federal court that Steven Francis Joseph (“Frank”) Puskarich was sentenced to 10 years in prison for lying to the FBI and lying to the Department of Justice. Puskarich, who still holds his law license, has been working as a warden since December. He also admitted he had been a federal agent between 1990 and 1993.
Joseph was a partner in a law firm that oversaw the transport of $400,000 in cash and checks stolen from a South Florida armored-car operator following the 1991 bank robbery of an armored-car cash depot that left two people dead.
Puskarich admitted that he lied to the FBI about how the money from the armored-car robbery wound up at the federal prison in Haines City, Fla., in what federal authorities call “the first time in history a federal public employee has facilitated the transportation of money obtained through illegal activity.”
Puskarich also lied to the U.S. Attorney’s Office about the circumstances surrounding his meeting with a man named Michael “Mike” Joram. Puskarich admitted that he lied to federal investigators about his role in facilitating the transportation of the $400,000. However, he said he never lied to the Department of Justice.
Puskarich faces up to 60 years in prison when sentenced in October. He could get up to life in prison because prosecutors said he conspired to commit money laundering and violating federal law by lying to the FBI and the Justice Department.
He is likely to be sentenced on the latter charge.
For years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, Puskarich was known as “Frank’s Boy,” because he lived in the same building as the mob boss who oversaw the armored-car robbery. During a 2007 civil deposition, Joseph said he met with the mob boss to convince him to cooperate with police.
That testimony was at odds with what the Justice Department said on the matter for years.
In December