Payment Dispute and Murder
The business relationship soured soon after the fraudulent purchase. Boulis allegedly clashed with Kidan over the falsified wire transfer. Abramoff was mostly a silent partner, but both he and Kidan used SunCruz funds to pay for numerous personal expenses. Boulis also alleged that Kidan had links to organized crime. The relationship between Kidan and Boulis grew so contentious that they had a fistfight at a business meeting in December 2000, with both parties allegedly making threats. Boulis was shot to death in Miami two months later in February 2001, in what police called "a gang style hit". A lawsuit brought by Boulis' estate alleges that Adam Kidan made three payments of $10,000 to Anthony Moscatiello immediately prior to the murder.
Kidan had hired Anthony Moscatiello as a business advisor despite Moscatiello's previous indictment as former bookkeeper for the Gambino crime family (led by Mafia crime boss John Gotti), paying him $145,000 through SunCruz for services that were allegedly never rendered. Anthony Ferrari also received $95,000 from SunCruz as payment for security services, in addition to further sums in casino chips.
Moscatiello and Anthony Ferrari were charged with murder, conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder. James Fiorillo was charged with murder and conspiracy. In May 2006, Adam Kidan told authorities that Moscatiello and Ferrari confided in Kidan that another Gotti associate, John Gurino, killed Boulis. Gurino himself was killed in October 2003. Gurino wasn't part of the investigation before Kidan gave authorities Gurino's name.
Read more about this topic: Sun Cruz Casinos Sale (2000)
Famous quotes containing the words payment, dispute and/or murder:
“There are always those who are willing to surrender local self-government and turn over their affairs to some national authority in exchange for a payment of money out of the Federal Treasury. Whenever they find some abuse needs correction in their neighborhood, instead of applying the remedy themselves they seek to have a tribunal sent on from Washington to discharge their duties for them, regardless of the fact that in accepting such supervision they are bartering away their freedom.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Your next-door neighbour ... is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“My chance, when it came, was due, literally, to the fact that I was slender.... You cannot make an opera audience believe that a man will endanger his soul, and commit robbery and murder for a very stout lady’s sake.”
—Maria Jeritza (1887–1982)