Seagal’s Former Partner Sentenced

A former business partner of Steven Seagal was sentenced to a year and a day in prison Tuesday after admitting that he plotted to have the mob extort money from the action-film star.

Julius Nasso, 51, a producer of early Seagal films that grossed millions of dollars, also will pay a $75,000 fine and receive psychiatric counseling after his release from prison. He pleaded guilty in August in federal court in Brooklyn to extortion conspiracy.

The plea agreement negotiated between Nasso and Assistant U.S. Atty. Andrew Genser took into account what prosecutors called Nasso’s law-abiding past and a history of acute depression and anxiety that affected his mental stability.

“The judge recognized that this was an aberrant incident that is unlikely to happen again and totally out of character for somebody who is otherwise a well-respected and successful businessman,” said Nasso’s lawyer, Robert Hantman.

Nasso told a federal magistrate that he had an “understanding” that a reputed member of the Gambino crime family, Anthony “Sonny” Ciccone, would confront Seagal at a Brooklyn steakhouse about a debt in a way “that would be perceived to be a threat.”

Ciccone was convicted of racketeering along with Peter Gotti, brother of the late mob boss John Gotti.

At the Gage & Tollner steakhouse in 2000, Ciccone and other Gambino enforcers demanded that Seagal keep working with Nasso and pay him $150,000 per film, the actor testified at Peter Gotti’s trial.

Afterward, Nasso told Seagal, “If you would have said the wrong thing, they would have killed you,” the actor said.

Surveillance tapes later captured Ciccone’s crew chuckling over how “petrified” the actor looked.

Nasso and Seagal formed a production company after meeting in Los Angeles in the late 1980s. Over the next decade, they made movies like “Marked for Death,” “Out for Justice” and “On Deadly Ground” before they had a falling-out.

Nasso sued Seagal for $60 million, accusing the actor of backing out of a four-movie deal.