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6.23.2001 00:10
Man gets 21/2 years for threatening
employee of Plunder Dome witness
• Edward Pires is sentenced to far less than the 10-year maximum for witness tampering.
BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE
-- Edward Pires, of 45 Sweetbriar Ave., East Providence, was sentenced yesterday to serve 30 months in federal prison for threatening to harm an employee of a key government witness in the Operation Plunder Dome corruption investigation of City Hall.
The sentence -- while lengthy -- is far less than the 10-year maximum provided under federal sentencing guidelines for the crime of witness tampering -- a charge to which Pires pleaded guilty in February.
The U.S. Attorney's office recommended the 30-month term, which was imposed by U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux.
During a hearing in February, Pires, 55, admitted that last Oct. 10, he telephoned JKL Engineering, a business owned by key government witness, Antonio Freitas, and said an unidentified employee would "catch a beating" because he worked for a "stool pigeon."
According to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, Pires, in another call to the engineering firm, said he didn't like that someone was trying to "take down Cianci."
The reference was to Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., who has since been indicted in the corruption probe, along with two top aides and others.
According to an FBI affidavit that supported Pires's arrest, the FBI traced the calls to a cellular telephone that belongs to an associate of Pires, and Pires admitted making the calls after he heard on the radio about Freitas's role in the federal investigation.
Freitas secretly videotaped and recorded about 180 meetings with Providence city officials, which has led to the pleas or convictions of several former city officials and lawyers. Last year, he testified that in cooperation with the FBI, he posed as a corrupt businessman willing to pay bribes in order to get favors from city officials.
Pires has been detained at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, in Central Falls, since his arrest in October.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James H. Leavey said at yesterday's sentencing hearing that "there was no evidence, nor the slightest suspicion, that Mr. Pires was acting on anybody's behalf" when he made the threatening phone calls, according to Thomas Connell, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Margaret E. Curran.
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