Untangling a lobbyist's stake in a casino fleet

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Boulis was incensed

When the deal was done, Kidan moved to Florida to run SunCruz. Abramoff stayed in D.C.

Abramoff and Kidan started paying themselves $500,000-a-year salaries. Among the first checks Kidan wrote were payments totaling $310,000 that he sent to Abramoff to help pay for the sports skyboxes at FedEx Field, MCI Center and Camden Yards.

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Operating out of SunCruz's offices near Fort Lauderdale, Kidan moved into a $4,300-a-month luxury condo paid for by SunCruz and bought a 34-foot powerboat. He quickly put his mark on the business, firing SunCruz employees including several of Boulis's friends and relatives.

"We fired his friends, we fired his family and he wasn't happy with it," Kidan later told the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale.

Kidan said that he found the ships were in disrepair and that there were overdue bills. He refused to make his loan payments to Boulis.

Boulis was incensed. In October 2000, he wrote letters to Kidan demanding payment, threatening to tell the lenders and Abramoff that Kidan was reneging.

Two former SunCruz insiders say that Boulis's truculence sent Abramoff and Kidan back to their friends on Capitol Hill. Scanlon, at the time a public relations consultant employed by SunCruz, once again asked Ney to place comments in the Congressional Record. Two days after Boulis's last letter, Ney did so. "I have come to learn that SunCruz Casino now finds itself under new ownership," Ney stated in the record. Kidan's "track record as a businessman and a citizen lead me to believe that he will easily transform SunCruz from a questionable enterprise to an upstanding establishment."

In the midst of the infighting with Boulis, Kidan decided to hire an old New York friend, Anthony Moscatiello, who was running a catering hall. Kidan made him a food-and-beverage consultant. Moscatiello has been described by law enforcement as an unofficial bookkeeper for New York City's Gambino crime family.

He and Kidan first met about 1990 when Kidan was running a bagel business in the Hamptons. Moscatiello had been indicted on federal heroin-trafficking charges in 1983 along with Gene Gotti, brother of John Gotti, the boss of the Gambinos. Moscatiello was accused of trying to dissuade witnesses from testifying in the case. After Gotti and several others were convicted and sentenced to prison, charges against Moscatiello were dropped.

In Florida, Moscatiello began visiting Kidan's condominium and golfing with Kidan and Waldman, according to depositions of Kidan and Waldman. Kidan later testified he was unaware of Moscatiello's legal troubles or the alleged Gambino affiliations.

CONTINUED : 'This guy is violent'

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