Son of Colombo Mob Boss Appears To Be Slinging Pizzas In Dyker Heights

Son of Colombo Mob Boss Appears To Be Slinging Pizzas In Dyker Heights

The son of one of Bensonhurst’s most ruthless convicted mobsters appears to be slinging pies for a local pizza joint.

Lawrence Persico, whose father is Carmine “The Snake” Persico, reputed boss of the Colombo crime family, was observed making deliveries for Mia’s Pizza Shop in Dyker Heights on Friday, the New York Daily News reports.

The Daily News — being the Daily News — took the opportunity to poke fun at the ex-con, this time for trying to make an honest living:

Persico would park his black Nissan Altima on 85th St. near a fire hydrant, walk inside the pizzeria and emerge minutes later carrying a plastic bag of takeout or an insulated bag for carrying pizza boxes.
“My, how the mighty have fallen,” observed a law enforcement official who viewed photos of the pizza bag man taken by The News. “I guess that’s how he gets his dough.”

Lawrence, who is the second oldest of his father’s three sons, was convicted in 2005 of holding a no-show operating engineer job and served 21 months in prison. His oldest brother is serving a life sentence, while the youngest was recently convicted of loansharking and is facing a three-year prison sentence, according to the Daily News.

The patriarch, Carmine, was swept up in the historic Commission Trial, where he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 139 years in prison.

The crime family’s relationship with pizzerias is less than savory — one its members was accused of extorting a pizza maker who might have stole the sauce recipe from L&B Spumoni Gardens. The charges were eventually dropped.

A lawyer representing Carmine told the Daily News that Lawrence isn’t an employee at Mia’s Pizza.

“He hangs out there,” the lawyer reportedly said. “He knows the owner and he’s helped out a few times. It’s not a job.”

Lawrence has hit some hard times financially since doing his time. He owes the government a $759,000 forfeiture judgment from his criminal conviction, but his last payment in January was only $50, according to the Daily News.

In 2005, after he was released from prison, the Daily New reports that Lawrence wrote to a judge: “I never felt a sense of freedom…Instead I felt this tremendous frustration with my pending debts to the government, as well as my legal, personal, and family debts.”