A notorious Florida conman will serve his 20-year sentence in solitary confinement at the infamous federal Supermax prison – at his request.
A federal judge granted Jimmy Sabatino’s request during a Monday hearing in Miami.
Sabatino told federal Judge Joan Lenard the only way to stop him from committing cons is to keep him from contacting the outside world, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.
Sabatino pleaded guilty to running a $10 million fraud from his cell at Miami’s federal jail where he was being held for an earlier fraud.
In his latest con, the 41-year-old Gambino crime family associate used smuggled cellphones to dupe luxury retailers to send jewelry, watches and other items to his outside co-conspirators.
Sabatino convinced two federal corrections officers at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami to provide him with five cell phones – one Samsung device and four iPhones.
A notorious Florida conman will serve his 20-year sentence in solitary confinement at the infamous federal Supermax prison – at his request. A federal judge granted Jimmy Sabatino’s request during a Monday hearing in Miami. Sabatino is seen above in 2014
The Supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, holds some of the nation’s worst criminals
The officers have not been charged, though they have been fired from their jobs.
Sabatino then used the phones to trick retailers into sending him luxury items after telling them they would be featured in music videos and promotional films being shot in Miami.
Instead of returning the items, authorities say Sabatino’s associated pawned them and deposited some of the money into his commissary account.
A portion of the profits were funneled to organized crime figures.
The elaborate fraud was run by Sabatino, Gambino family associates, another inmate, two women who lived in Broward County, and others.
In his plea agreement, Sabatino acknowledged using the phones to make calls and send text messages while posing as an employee of Sony Music Entertainment and Roc Nation, the agency founded by Jay Z.
Among the inmates at Supermax are Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (seen above)
His co-conspirators in the scam hired limousines and stayed at luxury hotels in Fort Lauderdale, South Beach, and Atlanta, according to court records.
Sabatino was ordered to repay over a dozen businesses that he ripped off, including Van Cleef & Arpels jewelers, Piaget watches, Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik.
The Supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, holds some of the nation’s worst criminals.
Among the inmates are Unabomber Ted Kaczynski; Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols; Robert Hanssen, the former FBI agent who spied for Russia; and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in civilian court of the September 11 attacks.
In the Supermax, Sabatino will only be permitted to have contact with his lawyer and his stepmother.
Sabatino will also not be allowed to have contact with other prisoners. He will not have permission to write letters or make telephone calls to anyone.
He is also prohibited from speaking with anyone connected to organized crime.
In handing down her decision, the judge said that the restrictions will remain in place ‘until such time as the defendant demonstrates that his communications no longer pose any kind of threat.’
When Lenard asked Sabatino if he had anything to say before sentencing, he replied: ‘I don’t apologize to nobody.’
In 2014, Sabatino was sentenced to five years in prison for posing as a music label executive to scam Miami hotels out of $600,000 in presidential suites, bottles of champagne and haute cuisine
‘As far as the government is concerned, they allowed this case to happen… they should be embarrassed,’ he said.
In 2014, Sabatino was sentenced to five years in prison for posing as a music label executive to scam Miami hotels out of $600,000 in presidential suites, bottles of champagne and haute cuisine.
Before that con, Sabatino had already served more than 15 years for scamming hotels across the US and the UK and swindling a phone company out of millions – from inside his prison cell.
In one of his schemes, he pleaded for lazy eye surgery from inside prison – and eventually convinced authorities to spend $247,000 of taxpayers’ money on the operation.
He had pleaded guilty to grand theft and fraud after his hotel spree between July and September 2013 – just weeks after he was released from federal prison.
Sabatino started pulling scams when he was just 17, when he was arrested after he posed as a Coca-Cola executive to get hotel rooms.
Then in 1995, he was given 262 free tickets to the Super Bowl by pretending to be a Blockbuster exec before he sold the tickets for $235,800.
He was sentenced to two years in prison.
Before that con, Sabatino had already served more than 15 years for scamming hotels across the US and the UK and swindling a phone company out of millions – from inside his prison cell
After he got out, Sabatino, who was 21 at the time, threw himself a $55,000 party at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square – but was arrested when he failed to pay the bill.
While out on bail, he fled to London, where he scored a free room at the Four Seasons by pretending to be a movie-studio exec – before he was sentenced to prison there.
He was deported to the US after calling the FBI from jail and threatening to kill President Clinton.
In that case, he was sentenced to four years in prison but two years into his sentence, he was charged with running a scam from prison that defrauded a phone company out of $3 million.
He was sentenced to 11 more years.
Then in 2008, he fed the Los Angeles Times fake FBI documents – which the newspaper printed – linking him to a 1994 assassination attempt on Tupac Shakur.
He was finally released in May 2013 – just weeks before starting his hotel spending spree.