FBI agent testifies ex-Nassau Det. Hector Rosario repeatedly denied working for Bonanno crime family

Former Nassau Det. Hector Rosario — currently on trial for moonlighting for the Bonanno crime family — denied working for the mob to the FBI even after agents presented him with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, an agent testified on Thursday.

In January 2022, Special Agent Orlando Tactuk showed up at the Mineola apartment of Rosario, a 15-year veteran of the police department, with secret recordings, cooperating witness statements and the detective's own words on a 2014 police report — all evidence supporting accusations that he had been working with the mob outfit for years.

The 20-minute interview with the agents, which makes up the key evidence in the case, ended with the agents informing Rosario that lying to federal agents was a crime.

“[We] asked if he wanted to revise his statements," Tactuk testified in federal court in Brooklyn Thursday. "He did not want to revise his statements."

His close friend, Bonanno associate Sal Russo, testified that he had put Rosario on retainer for $1,500 a week as early as 2012 to conduct fake raids on rival mob gambling spots, locate drug suppliers and leak sensitive police information to the crime family.

But after Russo and another Bonanno soldier Damiano Zummo got caught selling a kilo of cocaine to an undercover police officer, the pair flipped and started cooperating with the FBI to build a case against Rosario.

Russo said he agreed to wear a wire to secretly record the former detective and took him to his illegal marijuana growhouse in Jamaica, Queens, to try to get him involved in transporting the drug at the FBI’s behest.

Over several conversations on the phone and in the growhouse, Russo recorded Rosario warning him that the FBI was watching and handing over information about a confidential informant, according to testimony.

Years before, the detective used his position in law enforcement to try to shut down gambling spots run by the Genovese and Gambino crime family.

Nassau County District Attorney Det. John Clinton also testified on Thursday morning, telling the jury that in 2014 he had documented a tip from Rosario that the South Shore Bridge and Chess Club in a South Franklin Avenue office building was a front for a Gambino crime family joker poker den.

Rosario also gave investigators the address of a Lynbrook gelato parlor with a Genovese joker poker operation in the back room.

Rosario refused to allow Clinton, who was part of a squad investigating organized crime for the district attorney’s office, to meet with his source for the information.

"It was a little unusual," he told the jury.

When Tactuk and his partner knocked on Rosario’s door at 7 a.m. on Jan. 27, 2022, to ask him if he knew about the gambling spots, the growhouse and his relationship with organized crime figures, he denied everything, he testified.

Tactuk played him a secret recording that Russo had made in the marijuana growhouse, he said.

"He said he was not aware of Mr. Russo having a business in New York," the agent testified. "We told him that he was observed at the marijuana growhouse. He said that he had never been there."

Brooklyn federal prosecutors charge that Rosario, 51, used his access to police databases to look up information and passed the name and address of a confidential informant along to his friends in the Bonanno family.

After seeing Zummo’s photo in a police precinct, Russo said that he and Rosario drove to the mobster’s house to warn him that he was being investigated.

When the FBI agents asked about it he told them that "he was not aware of the name Damiano Zummo."

Rosario was fired by the Nassau County Police Department after his indictment was unsealed in August 2022.

Rosario is also charged with lying when he denied knowing about a Merrick store called Sal’s Shoe Repair, where the Genovese crime family ran a backroom gambling den.

On Thursday afternoon, Salvatore "Sal the shoemaker" Rubino took the stand and told the jury that the former detective had conducted a fake raid on his Genovese-backed operation in the spring of 2013.

He said that Rosario and two other men with police shields hanging from their necks forced their way into his shop and pushed him into the back room.

"The guy turned to the other guy and said break the machine," Rubino said. He suspected that they weren’t police officers when the men left without taking any names or making an arrest.

Rubino said his suspicions were confirmed when he saw the detective weeks later at a seedy West Hempstead bar run by Russo.

The prosecutors are expected to rest their case early next week.