An Amherst police detective has been charged with lying to FBI agents about his dealings with Peter Gerace Jr., the Cheektowaga strip club owner who faces bribery, sex- and drug-trafficking charges.
A sealed criminal complaint filed Nov. 28 in U.S. District court accuses Gregory Trotter of knowingly and willfully making materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statements when questioned by the agents on Sept. 30, 2022. The complaint was unsealed this week, and Trotter appeared Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah J. McCarthy for his initial court appearance.
Prosecutors did not seek to put him into custody but Trotter agreed to relinquish his firearms and surrender his passport.
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In a statement, the Amherst Police Department said Trotter has been put on paid administrative leave. The department declined to provide any other information.
FBI agents questioned Trotter to determine the extent of his relationship with Gerace.
Federal authorities have accused Gerace of bribing Joseph Bongiovanni, at the time a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, and conspiring to engage in drug trafficking and sex trafficking at Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga. Gerace’s charges include maintaining Pharaoh’s as a drug-involved premises where vulnerable young women were exploited through their drug addictions and coerced into engaging in commercial sex acts with him, his friends and associates.
An affidavit by Jason A. Kammeraad, a special agent with the FBI’s Buffalo field office, said the investigation into Gerace has established that Gerace has substantial contacts in law enforcement, including at the federal, state, and local level, and with members of the judiciary.
“The investigation has further determined that Gerace has at times attempted to improperly leverage these relationships,” Kammeraad said in his affidavit.
So federal investigators have worked to identify the nature and extent of Gerace’s contacts and communications with members of law enforcement and determine if any of them have shared information about incidents, law enforcement sensitive techniques, investigations, arrests or sensitive information with Gerace.
A former Pharaoh's Gentlemen's Club employee faces three counts of witness tampering over accusations she assaulted a witness in a sex- and drug-trafficking investigation targeting Peter Gerace Jr., owner of the Cheektowaga strip club.
One particular focus of their interview with Trotter involved Gerace reporting his Rolex watch had been stolen.
On March 4, 2019, Gerace filed a police report with the Amherst Police Department regarding the theft. Gerace reported the watch was allegedly stolen by a former Pharaoh’s dancer and former intimate partner of his, according to the federal complaint.
On April 9, 2019, the former employee and girlfriend was arrested and brought to the Amherst Police Department in the early morning hours.
After her arrest, a supervisor at the police department, who does not have a relationship with Gerace, assessed she had information that would potentially be relevant to federal agents. So the supervisor contacted a federal agent, and federal agents interviewed her at a local police department.
She provided information that was relevant to the ongoing federal investigation into Gerace and Pharaoh’s, according to the complaint.
Shortly after speaking with federal agents, her cooperation with federal agents was discovered, and she was assaulted by a former Pharaoh’s employee and friend of Gerace, according to agents.
Jessica Leyland faces three counts of witness tampering over accusations she assaulted her in July 2019. Leyland reportedly approached the witness at a local restaurant/bar and said she heard the witness was “talking to the feds” and asked the witness “what the (expletive) is wrong with you?”
The woman who cooperated with authorities after her arrest by Amherst police over the watch told agents she could not figure out how Leyland was aware that she spoke with federal agents. She said she had not told anyone that she had provided information to federal law enforcement, according to the affidavit.
As federal agents investigated how her cooperation came to be known by Leyland, they identified Trotter as a detective with a relationship with Gerace and who had been involved in the stolen watch arrest.
During his Sept. 30, 2022, interview with FBI agents, Trotter “made a series of materially false, fraudulent, and fictitious statements that attempted to minimize his relationship with Gerace and his involvement in (her) arrest,” according to Kammeraad’s affidavit.
Prosecutors will not be free to say Mafia or La Cosa Nostra – or even soldier and connected – whenever they please, although U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo did not impose a complete ban on those words.
Trotter was asked about his relationship with Gerace, his involvement with the investigation of Gerace’s stolen watch, and his involvement in the arrest of the woman. Trotter’s responses in each of the categories of inquiry were false, according to the complaint.
Trotter, for example, said, “I think my last interaction with [Gerace] was Jan of 2017.”
The FBI said Trotter, in fact, provided Gerace with his personal cellphone number in December 2018 and thereafter had been in communication with Gerace in the days, weeks and months leading up to her arrest in 2019.
Extraction data from Gerace’s cellphone revealed “consistent communications” between Trotter and Gerace from December 2018 until April 2019.
Trotter also made false statements disavowing his role in the investigation into Gerace’s stolen Rolex and the woman’s arrest.
Among them, Trotter said, “it wasn’t my case so I didn’t really have any involvement.”
Gerace reached out to Trotter by text message within hours of filing the police report, according to the complaint.
“In truth and in fact, and as Trotter then and there well-knew, Trotter and Gerace worked together to orchestrate (her) arrest,” according to the complaint.
“Trotter and Gerace have a relationship that has transcended the typical victim/detective professional relationship, to the point where Trotter provided very personalized service to Gerace, which included texting from his personal phone, meeting Gerace at PGC, providing real-time updates as to the course and status of the investigation, and seemingly dropping everything to arrest someone located in a different town at Gerace’s urging on April 9, 2019,” according to the complaint.
Trotter acknowledged during the FBI interview that he has been to Pharaoh’s socially on several occasions, and text messages between him and Gerace indicate they invite each other to various outings to include “drinks” and “golfing.”
Defense attorney Joseph M. LaTona appeared with Trotter at the initial court appearance, but LaTona’s representation appears limited to only that hearing. Latona has not been retained and has previously represented Gerace, so that potential conflict means Trotter will need to find another lawyer.
The FBI did not identify the former Pharaoh’s dancer who Gerace had accused of stealing his watch, but it appears she is Phlycia Hunt, a witness who is expected to testify against Gerace at his upcoming trial.
In a defamation lawsuit that Gerace filed in State Supreme Court in 2020 against his ex-wife Katrina Nigro and Hunt, he alleged that Hunt stole his Rolex wristwatch while she lived with him, and she was confronted by Amherst police about the theft. Gerace alleged in the lawsuit that the FBI interviewed Hunt and she provided the FBI with false information about Gerace to avoid prosecution.
The FBI charged Hunt in May with possessing drugs.
Trotter is the first law enforcement officer or judge charged as a result of the investigation of Gerace and Bongiovanni, but not the only one to come under scrutiny.
Federal agents executed search warrants at the home of State Supreme Court Justice John Michalski in 2022 and Erie County Sheriff’s Office Jail Deputy Louis Selva in 2019.
Gerace was a close friend of Michalski and arranged sex for him with high-end prostitutes, according to prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who called the judge an “unindicted co-conspirator” in court documents. Michalski died by suicide 12 days after agents raided his Amherst home.
Selva, who was best man at Bongiovanni’s wedding, resigned from the Sheriff’s Office hours after agents raided his North Buffalo home.
Neither Michalski nor Selva were charged with crimes.