City honcho in frigging 'bid rigging'
A city official was accused of bid rigging with his mobster father-in-law after they were captured in expletive-filled secret wiretaps allegedly crafting a deal for a crony to provide barriers for the Department of Sanitation, The Post has learned.
Frederick Grimaldi, the Sanitation Department's deputy chief for equipment and facilities, was caught on tape March 31 providing precise bidding instructions to his wife's dad, Michael Murdocco, a reputed Gambino crime-family soldier.
The suspected insider information was for their friend Vincent Alessi, owner of Duramix Concrete Corp., to use on documents that had to be submitted for the tens of thousands of dollars' worth of city work.
'[The air-conditioner guy] is a f - - - ing jerkoff. He’s lucky I don’t break his f - - - ing face — that’s how f - - -ing pissed off I am right now with this.'
—Sanitation official Frederick Grimaldi (right) on an alleged bid-rigging wiretap last April
"Then I need his information," Grimaldi says, "and then I'll take it from then."
Grimaldi, 44, Murdocco, 64, and Alessi, 42, were charged by the state's Organized Crime Task Force along with 18 other members of the Gambino and Luchese crime families and their associates on a range of charges from loan sharking to bookmaking to bribery last month.
James DiPietro, Grimaldi's lawyer, insisted the tapes are "much ado about nothing."
"It's outrageous and sad that Mr. Grimaldi cannot be indicted for the hundreds of things he has done for the people of the city, and honored for it, including by his commissioner," DiPietro said.
Less than a year ago, while authorities were eavesdropping on Murdocco in connection with another case, his son-in-law called about finding a friend to provide concrete barriers for Sanitation facilities.
"Dad, how are you?" Grimaldi began in a seemingly innocent conversation March 30 that quickly turned to allegedly fixing a contract.
"$215 plus $60 per block, delivery, it's very good, so we're looking at $275 for everything, right?" Murdocco says.
"Like, ah, $215 and maybe $50," Grimaldi replies. "Maybe just change it . . . Maybe tell him . . . $205 and $50."
Grimaldi planned to use part of his take to pay off a new home air-conditioning unit.
In one conversation recorded April 16, Grimaldi griped bitterly to his father-in-law that the air-conditioning company was stalling and if it were not installed by summer, his wife -- Murdocco's daughter -- was "gonna be screaming."
"He [the air-conditioner guy] is a f - - - ing jerkoff. He's lucky I don't break his f - - - ing face -- that's how f - - - ing pissed off I am right now with this."
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