09-07-2025
Luchese crime family captain gets 21 months for $35 million offshore betting scheme
A Luchese crime family captain will spend 21 months behind bars for running a $1 million-a-year offshore betting website that pivoted to online casino games after the COVID pandemic canceled sporting events in 2020, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled Wednesday.
Anthony Villani, 60, of Pleasantville, ran a gambling operation called 'Rhino Sports' for decades, taking bets from 400 to 1,300 people a week, and netting at least $35 million in profits since the early 2000s. Villani's personal cut of the action amounted to some $15 million, prosecutors said.
Villani moved the operation online in 2004 to dodge scrutiny after spending four months behind bars on gambling charges. But it all came crashing down after a federal indictment in 2022 which saw Villani and four others charged in the lucrative Luchese scheme. All five took plea deals in the case.
Prosecutors were asking for more than three years behind bars, pointing out that Villani engaged in attempted extortion, when he threatened a bookmaker who stole $300,000 from the operation to try to get the money back.
'So just do the right thing. All right? I'm not going to repeat myself. I'm not going to ever say this again. We're just going to have a problem if I find out. All right? And I don't want to threaten you with my friends or anything … I'm just telling you there's no more talking about this from now until the day one of us dies. Me or you,' he told the bookie in one April 2020 conversation, according to court filings.
In another conversation from October 2021, Villani said, 'Listen, get the f—ing money. I'm telling you right now, you don't get this money – f—ing run away.'
Villani's lawyer, Henry Mazurek, asked Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto for a more lenient sentence describing Villani as a reformed man who has made a legitimate life for himself owning juice shops and who serves as the sole caregiver to his elderly mother and stepfather.
'You will never see Mr. Villani anywhere near this courthouse again,' Mazurek said.
Villani, who pleaded guilty to racketeering, money laundering and illegal gambling, must also pay $4 million in forfeiture funds, Matsumoto ruled.
'Today's sentence holds Villani accountable for racketeering crimes committed on behalf of the Luchese organized crime family, while lining the enterprise's coffers and his own pockets with millions of dollars,' U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said Wednesday.
'Illegal gambling and extortion may be commonplace for the Mafia, but a prison term is a bitter outcome for mobsters who show no regard for the law.'
