9237067468?profile=originalBy David Amoruso

Reputed East Hartford wiseguy John A. Barile was sentenced to 71 months in prison on Thursday for arson, insurance fraud, gambling and extortion offenses. 52-year-old Barile has longstanding ties to the Genovese family crew in Springfield. His current crimes seem picked straight from the movie Goodfellas.

Together with an associate, Barile owned Enzo’s Restaurant and Lounge in Middletown. By 2009, Enzo’s was facing financial difficulty, and Barile began planning to cause a fire at the restaurant in order to collect the insurance proceeds. He informed his co-owner about the plan and began consulting with others on how to start the fire to make it look like an accident.

On the evening of January 9, 2010, Barile and several others got together to discuss the fire at Enzo’s. They planned it for the next morning. Barile placed greasy rags in the kitchen around the fryolators and applied grease to the kitchen walls. Later in the evening, after the restaurant had closed, a fire began in the kitchen. Rather than extinguishing the fire, Barile transferred the fire to one or more of the greasy rags. He then let the place burn as he himself left the restaurant.

Later, he sought payment from an insurance company for losses suffered as a result of the fire, and concealed his role in causing the fire from the insurance company and law enforcement. The insurance company ultimately paid $189,787.69 to the scamming wiseguy to settle the insurance claims related to the fire.

A sum he now has to pay back as part of his guilty plea.

The insurance fraud was just one of many illegal rackets, Barile had going on. From 2010 through till early 2014, he also conducted an illegal sports-related bookmaking operation. This illegal gambling business involved at least five other people including sub-bookmakers. During this period, this was his main source of income. At times, the gambling business grossed more than $2,000 per day.

One bettor who repeatedly placed bets with Barile’s gambling business eventually owed him approximately $50,000 from unpaid gambling losses. On November 8, 2011, Barile and two associates met the bettor at a parking lot in Hartford. At the meeting, the mobster tased the bettor with a Taser or similar device in order to punish him for not paying his debts and enforce collection of the payment.

In February of this year, Barile pleaded guilty to one count of arson, one count of mail fraud, one count of conducting an illegal gambling business and one count of collecting an extension of credit by extortionate means.

He was released on a $350,000 bond and placed under electronic monitoring. He is ordered to report to prison on July 12, 2016.

This isn’t the first time Barile’s mob crimes got him in trouble. In 1997, he was convicted for conspiring to violate the federal RICO Act and contempt of court stemming from his involvement in an Mafia-controlled illegal gambling business.

He ended up serving 2 and a half years.

That time, he was one of over a dozen Genovese family mobsters charged with gambling and loansharking, including leaders Anthony Volpe and Francesco Scibelli. Another interesting name on the list of indicted mobsters was Adolfo Bruno, then just a soldier, he eventually would become capo of the Genovese family’s Springfield crew only to fall victim to a power struggle.

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