NYC Mobster Gets Extra 16 Months For Sperm

[BERIGAN]

If I had a nickel for every time I heard about sperm smuggling!

NYC Mobster Gets Extra 16 Months For Sperm Smuggling

Sperm Used To Help Conceive Daughter, 3

POSTED: 5:09 p.m. EDT August 20, 2003

UPDATED: 9:26 a.m. EDT August 21, 2003

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- A New York City mobster who smuggled his semen out of a federal prison so that he and his wife could have a baby was sentenced to an additional 16 months behind bars.

Kevin Granato, 43, and his wife, Regina Granato, pleaded guilty in May to charges that they used a cryogenic canister to sneak his sperm from the Allenwood prison in central Pennsylvania to a New York fertility clinic, where it was used to conceive their now 3-year-old daughter, Gianna.

Regina Granato, 40, of Staten Island, was sentenced to nine months probation for providing a prisoner with a prohibited object. She also was fined $5,000 and ordered to perform 100 hours of community service.

In a written statement to the judge, Regina Granato asked for leniency, saying her decision to try to have a baby with her imprisoned husband was "made out of pure love."

"We love our daughter, and it is her that gives us the only joy and pleasure we have," she wrote.

Prosecutors said as many as five inmates at the prison may have smuggled their semen in an attempt to impregnate their wives and girlfriends. Guards were also bribed to ignore smuggling of bodybuilding pills, toiletries, Genoa salami and Romano cheese, authorities said.

More than a dozen people were charged in the schemes, including four guards.

Convicted racketeer Antonino Parlavecchio and his wife, Maria Parlavecchio, were indicted on similar sperm-smuggling charges in December 2000. He had an extra six months added to his sentence.

Maria Parlavecchio, who was sentenced to a year of probation, waged an unsuccessful legal battle to get the government to turn over three vials of preserved semen that she had successfully smuggled to a clinic in New York. The samples were destroyed after the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she wasn't entitled to the vials because they were "fruits of her criminal activity."

Granato's federal racketeering sentence was to have run until 2012.

http://www.wnbc.com/news/2420258/detail.html

Edited August 21, 2003 by BERIGAN

[mgraham333]

The samples were destroyed after the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she wasn't entitled to the vials because they were "fruits of her criminal activity."

Is it considered a fruit or a vegetable...