Ex-Nassau detective heard on recording in court warning Bonanno crime family member about FBI surveillance

A Brooklyn federal jury on Wednesday heard a former Nassau County detective on a recording repeatedly warn a Bonanno crime family member to be careful because FBI agents were watching him closely.

"What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t look out for your interest," Hector Rosario, 51, currently on trial for obstruction of justice and lying to federal law enforcement authorities, could be heard on the recording telling Sal Russo, a Bonanno family wise guy, as the two stood inside an illegal marijuana grow house in Jamaica, Queens, in April 2018.

"They don’t care if it’s daytime or nighttime," Rosario said. "They got people watching."

But it was Rosario, who served in the police department from 2007 until after his arrest in 2022, who needed the warning. Russo had decided to cooperate with federal investigators months earlier after getting arrested for selling a kilo of cocaine to an undercover agent.

At the direction of the FBI, Russo wore a wire to record the former detective and try to get him to help transport the drug from the Queens warehouse to Russo’s auto body repair shop in Valley Stream.

According to federal prosecutors, Rosario was moonlighting for the mob from at least 2012 to 2019, finding sources of heroin for a Long Island-based crew, tipping them off to criminal probes and trying to intimidate Genovese and Gambino crime family members to abandon rival backroom gambling parlors.

Mobile sports betting and recreational marijuana were both illegal in New York State until 2021. Two years before, however, during an investigation into illegal gambling on Long Island, the FBI had suspected that a Nassau County police detective was on the mob payroll.

Russo said agents instructed him to persuade Rosario to drive behind him as he transported the dried marijuana back to Long Island, but the former detective believed there was an ongoing criminal probe and authorities were waiting for him to commit another crime.

"They’re gonna search you, they’re gonna search me, they’re gonna search everybody," Rosario warned. "They don’t care. They’re the feds. Listen to me, for once in your life don’t touch none of it."

The former detective had also passed the address of a cooperating witness to Russo, according to the testimony.

On Tuesday, Damiano Zummo, another Bonanno soldier, told the jury that the crime family used Rosario to conduct fake raids to intimidate rival backroom joker poker parlors in Merrick, Lynbrook and Valley Stream.

Rosario, who was paid $1,500 a week for his work with the organized crime family, only managed to execute a fake raid in one gambling den, in the back of Sal’s Shoe Repair in Merrick, Zummo said.

In February, Russo had asked the former Nassau County detective to give him the address of another marijuana grower believed to be cooperating with federal investigators.

Rosario, knowing Russo had already been arrested for selling cocaine to an undercover officer, tried to use code, telling him on a recorded phone call that he had seen a Netflix movie about a guy arrested for gun and marijuana possession, but Russo didn’t catch on.

Rosario was more direct when he allegedly wrote down the man’s address on a notepad from Russo’s auto body repair shop.

Prosecutors showed a photo of the note to the jury.

In January 2020, FBI agents showed up at Rosario’s home around 7 a.m. and confronted him about his alleged work with the mob, but he denied it. He said he had never heard of Sal’s Shoe Repair and denied knowing Russo, not knowing they had already made the recording.

Rosario’s lawyer sought to undermine Russo’s testimony by painting him as an opportunist and a liar who betrayed a friend.

"He says he’s worried about you. He says loves you again and again and you’re setting him up," defense lawyer Louis Freeman said to Russo during cross-examination.

Russo shrugged and said, "Yes."