Yesterday, government witness Dominick Chicale testified that he had been ordered to murder Pizzolo after he did a disastrous job building a new mansion for the mob boss.

Pizzolo did a good job excavating the Schurz Ave. site in the Bronx, but then bit off more than he could chew with the rest of the project: He forgot to hook up French drains in the foundation. "Vinny was very angry, especially because one of the houses was his," Cicale said on the stand in Brooklyn Federal Court. Then bricklayers made a mess of the white brick. "It was horrible; Vinny had a fit," Cicale recalled. There were imperfections in the foundation--a barrel sticking out of one footing and a piece of plywood in another. Finally the carpenters were ready to walk because Pizzolo wasn't paying them.

Pizzolo was shot in Brooklyn in November 2004, at the direction of Cicale. He tried cement shoes first but made the mistake of letting the failed contractor pour them and they crumbled.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Roberto Settineri on Wednesday pleaded guilty to a charge of money laundering conspiracy and got a 50-year sentence. He said he had shuffled money around and destroyed Ponzi scheme-related documents for Rothstein.

According to Jeffrey Weiner, Settineri's lawyer, Rothstein double-crossed Settineri, ratting him out to the Feds. "My client was foolish enough to try to help Rothstein. He didn't start out the day with the intention to commit a crime. He regrets what he did, and he's taken full responsibility for it." In January of this year, Rothstein agreed to cooperate with the government as part of a plea deal related to the charges.

Rothstein drew people into the scheme by offering to let them invest in legal settlements his firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler P.A., was working on. As with Bernie Madoff's fake investment fund and Nevin Shapiro's fabricated grocery distributorship, the settlement agreements were imaginary.