Metro

Inmate offered ‘hitman’ $40K to kill judge in revenge plot: lawyer

A vengeful Long Island crook plotted to torture and murder a federal judge and an assistant US attorney because he blamed them for his fraud conviction, prosecutors said at the start of his conspiracy trial Thursday in Brooklyn federal court.

Joseph Romano, 50, of Levittown, was so enraged by his 15-year sentence that he cooked up a demented scheme to make his legal enemies pay in the most twisted ways imaginable, said prosecutor Una Dean.

“As far as he was concerned he was above the law,” Dean said. “So he sat stewing in his jail cell thinking about how he would get revenge.”

Dean said that Romano offered an agent posing as a hitman $40,000 to mutilate and murder Judge Joseph Bianco and prosecutor Lara Treinis-Gatz.

Romano was caught on tape giving his disturbing instructions to an undercover agent.

“Find out where Bianco is, go there, and — boom — right in the f—–g head,” he said on a surveillance tape, prosecutors said.

Romano also spouted off about wanting to cut off Bianco’s testicles and the prosecutor’s breasts.

His rants revealed that he hoped to make Bianco’s death look like an accident and planned to put Treinis-Gatz’s corpse in a drum and make it vanish.

Romano was convicted in 2012 of selling collectible coins at inflated prices to vulnerable investors.

While in jail, prosecutors said he told a jailhouse snitch about his dastardly plans and was put in touch with a government agent posing as a willing hitman.

But Romano’s attorney, Michel Bachrach, said his client simply had to act like a violent hoodlum in jail to protect himself and had no real designs on murder before the snitch and fake hitman drew him deeper into the scheme.

“In order to survive, Joseph Romano has to talk a big game,” Bachrach said, adding that the snitch wanted to beat on Romano to earn himself points with prosecutors and lessen his sentence.

The trial continues Friday.