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February 11, 2008

Oster trial: At Stuffies, real-estate talk and $5,000

PROVIDENCE -- The jury in ex-Lincoln Town Administrator Jonathan F. Oster's trial today heard a recorded meeting at a North Providence restaurant where a businessman, working with authorities, handed an envelope containing $5,000 in state police-supplied cash to Robert R. Picerno, who with Oster allegedly attemped a bribery scheme.

Robert Gelfuso, who was working on a Lincoln playground project on contract, got the money and a recording device from the state police in the parking lot of a liquor store on Dec, 19, 2001, then drove about a half-mile to Stuffies, a then-restaurant in North Providence.

On the tape, Picerno, who since pleaded no contest in 2004 to bribery and conspiracy charges, and Gelfuso commiserate at the restaurant about the real estate business in general and in Lincoln. At conversation's end, Gelfuso passed the envelope bearing the $5,000, the first installment of a $25,000 bribe the state says Picerno and Oster conspired to extract from Gelfuso in exchange for selling the town-controlled H&H Screw Co. property to Gelfuso and his business partner, David Wayne Daniel, for $105,000.

Oster faces two counts of bribery and two counts of conspiracy involving alleged bribes he and Picerno are said to have sought from potential buyers of the H&H Screw Co. land, as it's known, which is about six acres on Route 116 in Lincoln. Oster does not face charges with regards to the handling of the contract to renovate Fairlawn Playground, but Judge Gilbert V. Indeglia ruled the state could use it to try to demonstrate a behaviorial pattern by Picerno and Oster.

Read about Friday's testimony in the case.

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney, with reports from Journal staff writer John Hill

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 1:34 PM | Permalink

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