In a bid for leniency for his involvement in a $1-million-a-year cocaine ring, he offered to produce a $5,000 painting filched in 1985 from the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Museum in Cambridge.
But when Carmello Merlino faced 25 years in federal prison for his involvement in a botched heist at an armored car depot, the reputed New England Mafia figure claimed he was set up over bogus assertions he had access to $300 million of stolen art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
“The government pulled a real fast one,‘ Merlino, then 68, told U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns before being sentenced to 47 years in federal prison on Nov. 22, 2002. He died three years later at age 71.
But when Carmello Merlino faced 25 years in federal prison for his involvement in a botched heist at an armored car depot, the reputed New England Mafia figure claimed he was set up over bogus assertions he had access to $300 million of stolen art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
“The government pulled a real fast one,‘ Merlino, then 68, told U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns before being sentenced to 47 years in federal prison on Nov. 22, 2002. He died three years later at age 71.
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