Colombo gangster, accomplice charged in botched robbery of Staten Island restaurant owner, say Brooklyn feds
A Colombo gangster schemed to rob a Staten Island restaurant owner of the night’s cash proceeds — but the heat-packing restaurateur upended the plan by shooting a member of his robbery crew, federal prosecutors allege.
Reputed Colombo associate Vincent (Vinnie Mercedes) Saldinardi, 31, and co-conspirator Marlon Bellefleur, 48, were arrested Tuesday on a two-count federal robbery indictment.
The wounded member of their crew, who’s not named in court papers, survived the Nov. 22, 2021, shooting, and drove several miles before collapsing at a gas station off the West Shore Expressway in Travis.
Saldinari’s five-man robbery crew targeted the owner of Baci, an Italian restaurant on Richmond Road in Dongan Hills, law enforcement sources said. Saldinardi knew the owner’s movements, and that he carried a bag of about $10,000 cash when he left at about 10 p.m. every night, the feds allege.
So he and and one of his co-conspirators — the unidentified man who was shot — met at a gym and started planning the heist.
The plan was to get to the restaurant owner before he left town to go to Florida, and to beat him up during the robbery “to teach the victim a lesson,” federal prosecutors said in a detention memo filed Tuesday.
They recruited Bellefleur, who sold drugs to the co-conspirator, who in turn brought along two more men. One of the two was Bellefleur’s 19-year-old son, prosecutors said.
Saldinardi sat in a Volkswagen in the restaurant’s parking garage, waiting for the restaurant owner to emerge from a doorway.
When the owner appeared, Saldinardi flashed the car’s light, say the feds.
That was a signal to the other robbers, who poured out of their vehicles and attacked the restaurant owner, with one of them putting the victim in a chokehold while Bellefleur’s son started punching him, prosecutors allege.
But the victim, leery about being robbed of his cash, carried a small gun. He fired three times on the robber who put him in the chokehold, and the crew scattered in three cars.
The shot man escaped with the bag of cash. Still bleeding from his wounds, he met Saldinardi at the Staten Island Mall parking lot to pass him the cash, say the feds.
The shot and bleeding robber then tried to drive to New Jersey — but his wounds got the better of him.
Saldinardi, who’s serving a nine-month sentence on Rikers Island for a February stalking conviction, made phone calls from jail to try to obstruct the investigation, including telling his sister to delete his Instagram account, prosecutors allege.
Saldinardi and Bellefleur were arraigned Tuesday in Brooklyn Federal Court, where Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom pushed back a decision on their bail until Friday. They remain held without bail until then.
