TRENTON — Sitting in the dingy steak shop he owns on the northern edge of Trenton, Joseph "JoJo" Giorgianni — obese, wheelchair-bound and tethered to an oxygen tank — was entertaining a developer who said he needed Mayor Tony Mack's help.

Outside the restaurant, pigeons dart and squawk amid crumbling chimneys, and debris from dilapidated porches spills onto the sidewalk. Next to it is what federal agents call the "clubhouse," where a sign on the door says: "Warning. Oxygen in use."

The developer at the table wanted to buy a chunk of land, ostensibly to build a parking garage, and he had come to this gritty neighborhood of liquor stores and check-cashing storefronts to offer Giorgianni and Mack envelopes stuffed with money.

What Giorgianni didn’t know was that the deal hatched on that hot September day in 2010 was a trap. The developer was wired and working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a two-year-long sting that ended a week ago with the arrests of Giorgianni, Mack and the mayor’s brother, Ralphiel Mack.

"What do you think we did all this for," Giorgianni told the developer, according to a transcript of the taped conversation. "I can be bought ... I like to do it like the Boss Tweed way."

The transcripts included in a 39-page criminal complaint that portrays Giorgianni as a colorful and loose-lipped character who relished his role as a middleman and boasted of his disregard for the law.

"One thing about the Mack administration, when I say that, it’s me and Mack, we’re not greedy," Giorgianni told the developer at another point, according to the transcripts. "We’re corruptible. We want anyone to make a buck."

When he received an envelope with cash, according to the complaint, he called or texted Mack and said, "Uncle Remus is here" in a fumbling effort to elude detection.

The government says Giorgianni acted as a messenger between the fake investors and the mayor by arranging the deal in exchange for cash in meetings at his steak shop and in Atlantic City. In all, the developers are accused of paying the three men $54,000 and promising another $64,000 once the deal was completed.

Trenton Mayor Tony Mack is arrested on federal corruption charges 30 Gallery: Trenton Mayor Tony Mack is arrested on federal corruption charges

Giorgianni did not return phone calls seeking comment, and knocks on his door went unanswered. Mack’s attorney said last week his client denied the charges and had no plans to step down as mayor.

The 63-year-old Giorgianni is a lifelong resident of the frayed state capital, where he and his family have sold cheese steaks since 1959. Several people who live near the restaurant spoke well of "JoJo," whom they consider as much of a neighborhood institution as the shop that bears his nickname, though none agreed to be identified.

Yet this isn’t the first time Giorgianni, a fixture in Mack’s two mayoral campaigns, has found himself in the spotlight.

In 1983, he and a friend were convicted of what the state called "carnally abusing and debauching the morals" of a 14-year-old girl who they got drunk in the back of JoJo’s steak house. Giorgianni was sentenced to 15 years.

But that’s just where the story begins.

Hal Haveson, the Mercer County prosecutor who handled Giorgianni’s sentencing, said last week he got an unexpected phone call one night from the judge in the case, advising him of a hearing to determine whether Giorgianni, then 33, should be released for health reasons after a week in prison.

The judge agreed with Giorgianni’s attorney that his client suffered from chronic asthma and hypertension and that he could die in prison because of poor air-conditioning and inadequate medical facilities.

Among other things, the lawyer contended the 500-pound Giorgianni — who had to be weighed by a truck scale — was laboring to make it to the showers. The ruling at first got little attention, but John Stryker, a reporter from the Trenton Times, pursued the unusual tale.

"I spent a month talking to residents, police, women’s groups and they all expressed outrage that he was not in prison, and it just steamrolled," said Stryker, who now lives in San Diego. "But what really crystallized the issue is when the victim in this case ran into ‘JoJo’ on the streets. She called me and said she was scared, and that all but sealed it."

Haveson said the national notoriety that ensued, and a subsequent tip he received, helped put Giorgianni back in prison. Someone had seen Giorgianni at a boxing match at the Sands Casino in Atlantic City, and the fight between Trenton’s Kenny "Bang-Bang" Bogner and Arthur Kato Wilson was taped by ESPN.

"We got the video, and I remember watching it with another prosecutor and there he was, dressed in a white panama hat and a white suit pretty much sitting right in the line of the camera," Haveson said.

And, the prosecutor added, Giorgianni was smoking a big cigar.

So less than a month after his early release, the judge sent Giorgianni back to jail. He emerged from Leesburg State Prison in 1985 — about 100 pounds lighter and with a fresh cigar tucked in his breast pocket as he was carted away in a stretch limousine, according to news accounts at the time.

For years, that was the last public image of Giorgianni until he showed up as a close ally of Mack, a Democrat.

Giorgianni was elected three times as a Republican committeeman in Trenton’s North Ward. Rules barring felons from elected office do not apply to party positions, and he used the address from a property he owned in the city to retain his voting registration though he lives in neighboring Ewing.

"He won, I couldn’t get rid of ‘em," said Joe Truch, the Mercer County Republican chairman at the time. "I don’t know why he did it, but whenever his name was mentioned, it was always followed by child rapist, and I think he wanted another hash tag."

It was about the same time in 2006 that Mack ran for mayor and lost. The criminal complaint filed last week says Giorgianni told the government he arranged financial assistance for Mack, who was struggling to pay taxes and his mortgage.

"This is Tony Mack’s theory, and it’s a smart one," Giorgianni told the government informant, according to the transcripts of the recording. "He uses guys like us who were not going to go out like punks, we’re going out like troopers ... there’s nothing they can threaten us. What can they do?"

When Giorgianni was questioned about the bribes, agents said he told them he collected the money and gave it to Mack’s brother. He said Mack was "basically an honest man" and that he was "good corrupt," according to the criminal complaint.

Jim Carlucci, a monthly newspaper publisher, says Mack has a good heart and believes in second chances, "but when you put those people in charge of public funds, or, in the case of ‘JoJo’, have them serve as intermediaries in questionable transactions, that’s trouble."

Two doors from JoJo’s steak house, a huge banner — with the city’s iconic slogan "Trenton Makes the World Takes" — partly conceals one of the decaying front porches on the block owned largely by Giorgianni.

A portrait of Mack is also emblazoned on the banner with words that mock the unfulfilled promises in the troubled city: "Tony Mack Putting Trenton First."

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