R.I. demolition company owner gets 2 years' probation

Published Nov. 12, 2009 at 8:43 p.m.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The owner of a demolition company, who pleaded guilty to offering union officials gifts and payments, was sentenced Thursday to two years' probation.

Gerald Diodati, 60, is banned from working for any labor organizations throughout the two years and must perform 200 hours of community service each year for the duration of his sentence. He was also undergo mental health treatment.

U.S. District Judge William E. Smith waived any fines, saying that Diodati had already endured financial hardships due to the dive his reputation took at being involved in the conspiracy.

Diodati, an estimator for Hemphill Construction and owner of Rhode Island Demolition, was the last of three men sentenced Thursday for their roles in a kickback scheme.

Smith sentenced Nicholas Manocchio, a former director of Laborers' New England Region Organizing Fund, to three years probation. Harold L. Tillinghast Jr., an organizer for the union, received two years' probation.

Tillinghast, Manocchio and Diodati were indicted November 2008 on charges that they participated in a kickback scheme involving Rising Sun Mills, a redevelopment project on Valley Street in the city's Olneyville neighborhood.

In conducting its investigation, the FBI in 2002 opened a fictitious construction firm, Hemphill Construction, in Johnston that pursued jobs in southern New England.

An agent posing as Hemp-hill's owner met with Tillinghast and Diodati and the group reached a deal in which Diodati and others agreed to make payments of $1,000 and more to Tillinghast and Manocchio.

In April 2003, Tillinghast allegedly told Diodati and the undercover agent that he would try to get Hemphill Construction a demolition contract at Rising Sun Mills. The deal involved a $2,000 kickback to Tillinghast, the authorities said.

The scheme also had a backdrop of organized crime activity, authorities say. Matthew L. Guglielmetti Jr., a capo regime in the Patriarca crime family, did construction work at mill project and participated in some of the meetings at Hemphill's office. He is now serving time in federal prison on drug charges.

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