Three Agree to Plead Guilty to Loan-Sharking Charges

Reputed mob figure Joseph Isgro and two associates have agreed to plead guilty to federal loan-sharking and extortion charges, the U.S. attorney’s office disclosed Wednesday.

Isgro, 52, is accused of lending money at a weekly interest rate of 5% to people in financial distress and employing musclemen to collect the payments outside a swank Beverly Hills shopping center.

In the 1980s, Isgro was the target of an unsuccessful payola and racketeering prosecution that lasted nearly a decade. At the time, he was one of the most influential record promoters in the country.

Over the last six years, prosecutors said, he turned to loan sharking, heading a ring that conducted much of its business in front of Le Grand Passage shopping center on Beverly Hills’ Canon Drive.

That is where Isgro was arrested in March after weeks of videotaped surveillance by Beverly Hills police and FBI agents.

Two associates, Anthony Saitta, 63, and Valentino Bartolone, 35, were also arrested and accused of acting as Isgro’s collectors.

One victim, Frank Arico, told authorities that Saitta struck him on the side of his face and threatened to “slit [his] head open” when he could not make a payment on a $20,000 loan.

Arico left town afterward.

Another victim, Bernard Beyda, a 66-year-old businessman from Rancho Palos Verdes, told Beverly Hills detectives that he feared for his safety because he could not keep up with his payments.

He said he had already paid $70,000 interest on a $50,000 loan.

At a court hearing last month, prosecutors played an audiotape of a Feb. 29 telephone conversation in which Saitta threatened Beyda for missing a payment.

Beyda, fitted with a hidden recording device, met with Isgro March 4 outside Le Grand Passage, telling him he could raise only half of the $5,200 that was due on his current installment.

Isgro sounded sympathetic and offered to reduce Beyda’s “vig” (a loan-sharking term for interest rate) from 5% to 3%.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Terri Law said the undercover tapes make it clear that Isgro was in charge of the loan-sharking operation. In addition, she said, “pay and owe sheets” bearing Isgro’s initials were seized at Saitta’s home.

According to an FBI affidavit, Isgro, who lives in Tarzana, is a soldier in New York’s Gambino crime family, a claim denied by his lawyer, Donald Re.

Isgro, Saitta and Bartolone, who are being held without bail, are scheduled to enter their pleas today before U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins.

In exchange for their pleading guilty to two felony counts each, the prosecution agreed to drop six other charges against them.

The defendants also promised to make restitution to their victims.