NICHOLAS MANOCCHIO

PROVIDENCE — A ranking official of the Laborers’ International Union of North America yesterday became the third person to face criminal charges in an ongoing investigation into kickback payments on a development in the city’s Olneyville neighborhood.

Nicholas Manocchio, director of the Laborers’ New England Region Organizing Fund, also known as NEROF, has been indicted on one count of labor conspiracy for allegedly accepting cash and other items of value including liquor, rental cars and gift certificates from an undercover FBI agent posing as a contractor looking for business in Rhode Island.

Manocchio, 55, of Cranston, has deep criminal bloodlines. He is the nephew of Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, described by the authorities as the longtime head of the Patriarca crime family, otherwise known as the New England mob.

In 1980, Manocchio, then a student in microbiology at the University of Washington, was arrested for killing Richard Fournier, 24, outside a restaurant on Mineral Spring Avenue in North Providence. He was convicted of intentional manslaughter and conspiracy to commit assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Records from the Adult Correctional Institutions show that Manocchio served about seven years of a 12-year sentence. Upon his release, he ran a sports memorabilia store in Cranston before he landed a job with the Laborers’ Union.

The indictment was unsealed yesterday afternoon in U.S. District Court. Also indicted were Harold L. Tillinghast Jr., 44, of Cranston; and Gerald Diodati, 59, of Seekonk, on the same labor racketeering conspiracy charges. They both made their initial appearances in federal court last month. Now, in the wake of yesterday’s indictment, they will return to court to be formally arraigned.

The criminal investigation, which was launched six years ago, is being directed by two veteran assistant U.S. Attorneys assigned to the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, in Washington.

The investigation began in 2002 when the FBI opened a fictitious construction firm, Hemphill Construction, which was seeking work in Rhode Island and elsewhere in Southern New England. The business was in a retail plaza on Atwood Avenue, just off Route 6, in Johnston.

A few months after setting up shop, an undercover FBI agent, posing as a principal owner of Hemphill Construction, met with Diodati and Tillinghast. They allegedly reached an agreement that Diodati and unnamed others would make cash payments in excess of $1,000 to Tillinghast and Manocchio.

The undercover FBI agent signed a collective-bargaining agreement on behalf of Hemphill Construction with the Rhode Island Laborers’ District Council which included the Laborers’ Union, Local 271, on South Main Street in Providence.

In April 2003, Tillinghast allegedly told Diodati and the undercover FBI agent that he would try to get Hemphill Construction a demolition contract with Rising Sun Mills, a redevelopment project on Valley Street in Olneyville.

Diodati prepared a bid for $977,000 on behalf of Hemphill Construction for demolition work on the project. A few weeks later, Diodati and the undercover agent met at Hemphill Construction’s offices and discussed making a $2,000 kickback to Tillinghast to help sway him to give Hemphill the demolition work.

The payment was allegedly made and Hemphill was awarded the contract.

A key figure in the probe is Matthew L. Guglielmetti Jr., a capo regime in the Patriarca crime family, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence in Fort Dix, N.J. At one point, according to an affidavit supporting the charges, Guglielmetti told an undercover FBI agent that “his status as a member of La Cosa Nostra afforded him special influence with the Laborers’ International Union of North America and elsewhere.”

Guglielmetti was a member of the Laborers’ Union and he worked on the Rising Sun Mills project.

The indictment also alleges that in November 2003, an official at Hemphill Construction and Rhode Island Demolition paid $500 to a Laborers’ Union official to cover a bill for a rental car in Florida. A few weeks later, on Dec. 22, 2003, the indictment alleges, Tillinghast accepted $2,000 from the Hemphill Construction representative and gave it to Manocchio in his office at the Laborers’ Union headquarters in Providence.

Manocchio was Tillinghast’s boss.

In court yesterday, Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond released Manocchio on $25,000 unsecured bond and restricted his travel to Rhode Island. He is scheduled to return to court on Dec. 5.

bmalinow@projo.com