PART I
There have been so many injustices that have taken place in Dr. John Bisanti’s life since the November of 2000. On Wednesday, February 4, 2004, John was sentenced to forty-one months in Federal Prison for "attempting to evade and defeat the payment of his income tax for the years 1994-1998." Those of us who have been blessed to know him and his family and those who have suffered with them feel that it is important that his story be told. John was a victim of the United States Judicial System and was an innocent man incarcerated. A small part of his story is told below and he is currently working with a well-known publishing company in order to print his story.
John has done a great deal for his family, friends, and the Springfield, Massachusetts community. He became a doctor specializing in neurology before the age of twenty-five and has been practicing for over sixteen years. His offices would sometimes serve over a hundred patients a day and help hundreds of patients a week even before it began accepting insurance.
If you attended Springfield College, John may have been your mentor or you may have been an intern earning college credits while working at his office. Perhaps he was your volunteer team doctor if you played on the Urban Youth League Football Team. You may have been a student at one of the local public schools when he spoke on issues of health and chiropractic or gave motivational lectures. You might have been involved with one of the various children’s charities or soccer teams that he donated to. If you once belonged to the Italian community in Springfield you may know John from the meager South End as an Italian who made good for himself the honest way. You may have been one of the many patients of his who couldn’t afford to be treated so John “worked something out.”
In November of 2000, John was in the process of what he thought was a legitimate sale of a collector’s vehicle that he spent most of his life dreaming of and saving for to a wealthy Russian eccentric. He needed to sell the car in order to receive moneys to settle his civil tax debt. In the middle of the sale, several FBI agents stormed into the room pointing guns at his head. They then arrested him while charging him with money laundering. Unbeknownst to John, the Russian eccentric was actually an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation Agent.
The said vehicle was a Ferrari F40 LM that John displayed at various national events. He would give underprivileged children and other interested spectators rides around national racing tracks and let them take photos in it. Only two in the world existed and the other was in a museum.
John had purchased the vehicle as an investment. Ferraris appreciate significantly in value over time. He had collected other less expensive Ferraris in the past and once attended the official Ferrari racing school in Italy. John had always been proud of his Italian heritage and been passionate about Ferrari even as a child. He was so passionate about Ferrari that he even had himself tattooed with its official symbol.
The individual who was showcasing John’s car at the time, Irv David, owner of Prestige Imports in South Florida, was who was actually laundering money. He cooperated with Federal Prosecutors by giving them the names of wealthy businessmen he ASSUMED must have been involved with illegal money. He did this in order to strike a plea bargain which would reduce his prison sentence. Unfortunately, one of these assumed individuals was John.
As a result, the government decided to entrap John also ASSUMING that he was involved in illegal business. They claimed that John was aware that the undercover FBI agent pretending to purchase his car was running prostitution ring in Russia. Had he been aware of such, he would have been committed the crime of money laundering. John was very fortunate, however, that EVERYTHING was videotaped and recorded. NOWHERE on the tapes does the undercover agent mention that he is involved with anything illegal.
John’s only brother, Emilio, also a chiropractor, spent sleepless nights reviewing the tapes over and over, in order to prove his older brother innocent. Emilio kept track of the numerous times the undercover agent tried to entrap John into committing a crime, all the recorded proof displaying John’s innocence, and the various discrepancies with the prosecution’s story. His work was submitted as multiple pages of evidence for the jury to examine. This was the main reason why the Florida Judge and Jury were disgusted with the situation and found John INNOCENT on the basis that the U.S. Government entrapped him.
The prosecutor, Richard Gregory, who tried the case was the same attorney who worked on the Manuel Noriega trial. He hadn’t lost a case in almost twenty years and was notorious for prosecuting mafia-related cases. Throughout the trial, because of John’s ethnicity, the same prosecutor implied repeatedly that John was mafia. He even went as far as to hold back the names of the prosecution’s witnesses because they were “afraid for their lives” and accused John and Emilio of running an undercover prostitution ring in their office.
Although those accusations were proven to be FALSE and although John was innocent, he spent three months in a maximum-security prison until he was found innocent. He was put into solitary confinement for over a week because there was no room for him, where he spent his thirty-sixth birthday and Thanksgiving. He spent Christmas and the New Year in prison and missed out on the chance to say good-bye to a close aunt of his who passed away.
Can you imagine what it must have been like to go from never seeing a jail cell to being treated like a criminal? Can you imagine spending three months in jail facing TWENTY years for a crime that you didn’t commit? Can you imagine all that he and his family have had to go through? They will be affected forever by this traumatizing experience.
They’ve lost one of the largest chiropractic businesses in Western Massachusetts and the reputation that John spent most of his life creating thanks to legal fees, time consumption, and bad publicity. To this day, John has never asked for nor received any sort of retribution or apology from the FBI, the Miami Police Department, the local Sheriff’s department, the Internal Revenue Service, or the media. All played a key role in the injustices that John and his family have experienced.
PART II
John needed to recuperate from this traumatizing experience. He went to Italy with his mother to relax and be amongst family. Approximately THREE weeks after John was acquitted and freed from prison, and while he was in Italy, a CIVIL tax matter that John had hired accountants and attorneys to work on became CRIMINAL and an investigation had already begun. It was the same tax debt that John was trying to settle when he attempted to sell his Ferrari.
John could have easily just stayed in Italy but came back to the U.S. because he knew that he had done NOTHING wrong . He thought that he could resolve the matter when he came back to the States. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
John was arrested on July 2, 2002. On August 15, US Magistrate Judge Kenneth Neimen ordered that Bisanti remain in federal custody pending a trial. If convicted on the said charges, John faced up to 5 years imprisonment, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.
ONCE AGAIN, John spent another three months in jail, NEVER having been convicted of a crime. After those three months and after his mother, her boyfriend, and his two uncles put their properties up as bond, John was released. The conditions of his release were that he had to spend two weeks confined to his mother’s home and thereafter could only leave the house Monday’s through Fridays 7am-9pm and 7am-7pm on Saturdays. John was not allowed out on Sundays.
John spent EIGHTEEN months on electronic monitoring, sometimes referred to as the “ankle bracelet” and could not leave the state of Massachusetts. None of that time is considered punishment federally. Electronic monitoring is only considered punishment if you belong to an agency and/or committed your crime in Washington D.C.. Although this is Federal Law, it was obviously created solely for employees of agencies like the Internal Revenue Service and politicians. The case was investigated by the US Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, and is being prosecuted by Assistant US Attorney Ariane D. Vuono at the office of US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan.
In September of 2004, John was convicted of attempting to evade and defeat the payment of his income tax. Although John’s intent was always to pay, the Massachusetts jury found him guilty. The Trial Judge, Michael Ponsor, did not permit anything that had happened to John in the previous case (before he returned from Italy) to be brought up in court. John was not even allowed to bring up the fact that the IRS had the Ferrari in their custody during the first case, released it back to him after he was acquitted, and then finally levied it one last time.
Ponsor ruled that the previous case could ONLY be brought up in court if the U.S. District Attorney, Ariane Vuono, could also mention that John previously tried to sell his car to someone involved in a “child prostitution” ring. EVEN THOUGH this person was an undercover FBI agent entrapping John AND EVEN THOUGH it was RECORDED, PROVEN, and DOCUMENTED that John was unaware that this agent was involved with ANYTHING illegal, Ponsor ruled that the child prostitution allegation could be mentioned to the jury. The defense then decided not to bring up the fact that the one and only time he found a buyer for the F40 LM - the only way that he could pay his tax debt - was actually the government entrapping him. As a result, Vuono was then able to tell the jury that John had made NO attempts to pay his tax debt since the defense was afraid to bring up the attempted sale of the car as a result of the trial ruling.
Paul Mancinone, the tax attorney and certified public accountant that John had hired to work with the IRS regarding his outstanding tax debt advised John that if he postponed the payment of his income tax until caught up on his tax returns, the IRS would reduce his debt through what is called an “offer and compromise.” An offer and compromise in tax terms is similar to a credit card settlement – when you wait for the credit card balance to become past due, then offer a settlement so that the credit card companies reduce the balance owed to them in order to encourage payment. An offer and compromise is perfectly legal.
Paul met with the IRS on behalf of John before the case went to trial. Upon returning from the meeting, he hired an attorney to represent himself, didn’t return any of John’s phone calls, and John NEVER HEARD FROM HIM AGAIN. During the trial, Paul tried to exercise his right to attorney-client privilege and the judge did not allow it.
Vuono asked Paul whether or not he told John that he had to pay his tax debt or face jail time. Reluctantly, with his shoulders shrugged, and with his wife present in the courtroom, Paul said that he did. Off the record, Ms. Vuono, the prosecutor, told John that she believed that he always intended to pay and told an acquaintance of John’s that she believed John was innocent but that there was too much money spent investigating him.
Vuono did, however, to bring up the false child prostitution allegation at his sentencing where John, his family, his friends, and the press were present. This was AFTER he had already been convicted of attempting to evade his tax debt. Needless to say, the unfounded sensationalistic accusations by the prosecution such as the above-mentioned child prostitution were quickly reported in the local newspaper throughout the trial by Springfield Union News Reporter, Stephanie Barry. Barry NEVER once verified the truth nor spoke to John himself but seemed to find every opportunity to speak with and report for the prosecution.
Vuono is now an Appellate Court Court JUDGE in Massachusetts. Most judges in Massachusetts are former prosecutors (state/federal employees of the government) since judges there are unfairly APPOINTED. In some states like Florida, however, judges are ELECTED.
There was a Boston Globe article printed last year in which it was mentioned that Bisanti’s wife believed Irv David and Paul Mansinone cooperated with federal authorities, who then, in her opinion, wrongly brought charges against her husband. "Honestly, I'm angry that this injustice took place and nothing will be done about it." Said Eugenia who has a background in paralegal studies.
CONCLUSION
Are you aware of organizations such as The Innocence Project? If not, click on The Innocence Project's link posted below. The stories and statistics on their website will astound you.
Did you know that the United States has the highest prison population in the world? Too many innocent people, especially children and families, have suffered as a result of U.S. policies. We should pray for those who continue to suffer.
It is quite easy to understand the trauma suffered by John and his family at the hands of the legal system during what was should have been some of the best years of their lives. They, as well as a significant amount of others, will forever know the United States as a country where at any given moment an innocent man can have his liberties taken away from him and his whole world collapse right before his eyes.
