PROVIDENCE — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a former high-ranking union official and two other men to probation and temporarily barred them from holding labor positions for their roles in a scheme to trade money and gifts for construction contracts.

U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith gave Nicholas Manocchio, a former director of the Laborers’ New England Region Organizing Fund, three years’ probation for accepting cash, liquor, rental cars and gift certificates from an undercover FBI agent posing as a contractor seeking business in Rhode Island.

Before being sentenced, Manocchio told Smith that he was “ashamed and embarrassed and repentant.” He had worked for social justice causes, he said, and had tried to break through the labor movement’s culture of favoritism. “I hope you don’t define me by that single act.”

“It’s difficult to reconcile the two faces presented,” Smith told Manocchio. While he had accomplished much, Manocchio had also breached trust, the judge said. He ordered Manocchio, 55, of Cranston, to pay $2,500 in fines, the amount he admitted taking.

Manocchio is the nephew of Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, who authorities describe as the longtime head of the Patriarca crime family. Luigi Manocchio was convicted of manslaughter in the 1980s for killing a man outside a North Providence restaurant.

Smith gave Harold L. Tillinghast Jr., a union organizer who worked under Manocchio, and Gerald Diodati two years’ probation each. He also ordered them to perform 200 hours of community service each year of their terms.

Before Tillinghast’s sentencing, his lawyer Olin W. Thompson asked for leniency, saying his client had already suffered damage to his reputation that was acutely painful because he had spent his “entire life trying to escape the shadow” of his father and uncle. Tillinghast, of Cranston, is the son of the late Harold L. Tillinghast, and the nephew of Gerald M. “Gerry” Tillinghast Sr., mobsters convicted of killing loan shark George Basmajian in the 1970s.

Thompson said Tillinghast now lives with his mother and works as a waiter and had lost a relationship due to the travel constraints of probation. “I am deeply remorseful for participating in this crime,” Tillinghast said. Smith ordered him to pay $4,500 in fines.

An estimator for Hemphill Construction and owner of Rhode Island Demolition, Diodati relayed to the court his perception of the incident. An undercover agent, he said, had provided and then given the money to Tillinghast. Diodati said he insisted he didn’t want to be involved in criminal activity. “I thought if it wasn’t my $2,000, I wasn’t guilty,” he said.

Diodati, 60, must undergo mental-health treatment. Smith waived any fines, saying that Diodati had already endured financial hardship due to the plunge his reputation took at being connected to the conspiracy.

The three men were indicted in 2008 and later pleaded guilty to charges that they participated in a conspiracy involving Rising Sun Mills, a redevelopment project in the Olneyville neighborhood.

The FBI in 2002 opened a fictitious construction firm, Hemphill Construction in Johnston, that pursued jobs in southern New England. An agent posing as Hemphill’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 told Diodati and the undercover agent he would try to get Hemphill a demolition contract at Rising Sun. The deal involved a $2,000 kickback to Tillinghast, authorities said.

kmulvane@projo.com