Mobster's son enters guilty plea in landmark legal case

NEWARK, N.J. -- The son of Philadelphia's former mob boss pleaded guilty to bookmaking charges Thursday in a landmark case in which FBI agents tapped into his computer with a surveillance system that has national-security uses.

Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., 36, relented after losing court battles to suppress the gambling records that the FBI secretly obtained from his computer through the "key-logger" system.

The case attracted attention from privacy advocates, who said the system could be used to spy on computer users.

Scarfo faces about three years in prison at his sentencing June 10.

As part of the deal, the government dropped a loan-sharking charge, letting Scarfo plead to running a sports book operation.

Agents broke into Scarfo's office in Belleville and installed the system on his computer.

The system unlocked encrypted files and let FBI agents record keystrokes, yielding a record of the entire gambling and loansharking operation.

Scarfo maintained the government needed to disclose all of the details of the system to determine whether the bugging was illegal.

He got some relief in the fall, when authorities were forced by a federal judge to release an unclassified summary of the key-logger system.

The judge did not require full disclosure, after authorities claimed that would "jeopardize both ongoing and future criminal and national security operations."

The final blow for Scarfo came Dec. 26. U.S. District Judge Nicholas H. Politan ruled that agents needed only the search warrant they had. Scarfo contended the agents needed permission for a wiretap, which is more difficult to obtain.

He did not appeal the ruling, in part because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said one of his lawyers, Norris E. Gelman.

"This is not the time for that. This is a time to close ranks," Gelman said.

Scarfo's father, the former Philadelphia-Atlantic City mob boss known as "Little Nicky," is in prison.

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On the Net:

U.S. attorney's office in Newark: http://www.njusao.org/break.html

Electronic Privacy Information Center: http://www.epic.org