An ex-con former federal agent will serve up to 15 years in prison for a million-dollar scam that involved a lawyer couple — who were killed execution-style inside their Brooklyn home.
Robert Delvicario, a one-time suspect in the July 2008 slayings of divorce lawyer Mark Schwartz and his wife, mediator Christina Petrowski-Schwartz, was sentenced to five to 15 years in prison by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice John Walsh.
A cleaning lady found the couple naked and with gunshot wounds to the head in the bed of their Marine Park home , but no one has ever been charged in the double murder.
Instead, investigators looking for a motive for the slayings arrested Delvicario and three others in February 2010 and uncovered the couple’s connection to a web of financial shenanigans – including mortgage fraud, money laundering and identity theft.
“The defendant stole and laundered over a million dollars in money,” said Brooklyn prosecutor Laura Neubauer. “The bulk of theft was from innocent and unknown victims.”
Neubauer said Mark Schwartz’s legal practice was among the victims of the scam, in which Delvicario and the others schemed to rip off clients. Delvicario had known Mark Schwartz for decades and went to work for his friend soon after getting out of federal prison.
He was even stood to gain $50,000 and a collection of guns and knives from Schwartz, according to 2006 drafts of Schwartz’s will, which also said that his body should be tossed into the ocean in scuba gear.
But prosecutors portrayed Delvicario – a former U.S. Customs agent who did prison time for stealing money from an evidence locker – as the mastermind of the enterprise corruption racket.
“Unfortunately, he was given too much responsibility and the opportunity to cause a lot of damage to a lot of people,” Neubauer said.
Defense lawyer Michael Cibella said Delvicario had simply done a dirty deal with the couple.
“The deceased were knowingly involved in it,” he said. “They paid a price, obviously, no one should have to pay. But Mr. Delvicario is paying a price, as well.”
Cibella added that Delvicario had nothing to do with the double murder.
“The [district attorney’s office] ultimately brought the enterprise corruption indictment hoping to crack the homicide,” Cibella said. “But that never happened.”
Delvicario wore a rosary under his orange Department of Correction jumpsuit, but declined to speak during his sentencing.
It was witnessed from the second row of the courtroom by Christina Petrowski-Schwartz’s children from a previous marriage, Nicholas Petrowski and Melissa Hansen.
The troubled son, who at one point was questioned by police in the killings, pulled a hood over his head as he walked out of court, crudely flipping his middle finger at reporters.