8 January 18-24, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | trial for the 2018 prison murder of mobster Whitey Bulger. Erstwhile Miami cocaine cow- boy Sal Magluta was a longtime resident until he was transferred to a facility in Pennsylvania in 2022. FBI agent turned Soviet spy Robert Hanssen died in his ADX cell last June, just a few days before Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who’d been housed at ADX for decades, com- mitted suicide while undergoing cancer treat- ment at a U.S. Bureau of Prisons medical center. Yet even among a rogues’ gallery as infa- mous as the collection assembled at the fed- eral supermax, there is a well-defined pecking order. Inmates who pose little threat of vio- lence or escape may, over a period of years, move through a “step-down” program that eventually allows them more time out of their cells, communal dining, and a shot at transfer to a less harsh prison. At the other end of the scale are the inmates subject to “special ad- ministrative measures,” or SAMs — condi- tions imposed by the U.S. Attorney General that restrict not only their movement, but their ability to communicate with each other and the outside world. H Unit is home to sev- eral dozen SAMs cases, jihadists and crime bosses who are considered capable of causing “death or serious bodily injury to persons, or substantial damage to property” if their con- tacts aren’t severely restricted and monitored. And then there are the two guys in the Suites, the most solitary of men. They are each entombed behind double doors in a seven-by-twelve-foot cell in the most silent corner of the supermax. The bed is a concrete slab covered by a thin foam mattress, the view a patch of sky visible from a high, narrow window. Meals are delivered through a slot in the door. There’s a stainless-steel toilet-and- sink combo, a concrete desk and stool, and a shower on a timer to prevent flooding. There’s no one to talk to, but no privacy, ei- ther. The men are under scrutiny 24 hours a day by cameras and listening devices in the cells and by other monitoring equipment dur- ing the hour a day they are allowed to exercise alone in a small outdoor cage. FBI agents read their mail and listen in on their phone calls. One of the men is Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the former head of the Sinaloa car- tel. Known for forging one of the most power- ful and ruthless drug-trafficking networks in the world, as well as for escaping maximum- security custody twice in Mexico, Guzmán is serving a life sentence in the most spartan conditions the federal prison system can pro- vide. But even the restrictions he’s facing are arguably not as severe as those imposed on the other occupant of the Suites. James Sabatino is 47 years old. He has a rap sheet of financial crimes stretching back to his adolescence. He is currently serving a 20-year sentence for running a criminal enterprise that engaged in mail fraud, wire fraud, and the re- ceiving and selling of stolen goods. Despite his alleged ties to the Gambino crime family, a few assault charges in his youth, and some admit- ted loose talk about wanting to blow up a court- house and “clip” certain people who might be inclined to testify against him, he is not serving time for any violent crimes. He’s a con man, not a mad bomber or a drug kingpin. Outside of Florida, hardly anyone has ever heard of him. Yet Sabatino may be the most locked- down, buried-in-oblivion prisoner in the en- tire federal system. The “special measures” in his case are special indeed. He is prohibited from communicating with anyone on the en- tire planet, inside or outside of prison, except for two people: his 75-year-old stepmother, with whom he can have 15-minute monitored phone conversations twice a month, and his attorney. That’s an even more limited circle of approved contacts than El Chapo is allowed. Such measures are deemed necessary be- cause Sabatino has demonstrated an amazing talent for engineering multimillion-dollar scams even from the confines of prison. At an appeals court hearing in Atlanta last year, a federal prose- cutor maintained that Sabatino’s flimflam skills provide more than enough justification for keeping him in the cone of silence he’s inhabited for the past six years. “The problem in this case is that the defendant’s criminal history is so severe,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Dion told an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel, “and he shows such ability to corrupt any- body he came into contact with.” The appeals panel puzzled over a motion by Sabatino’s attorney to modify the restric- tions on his client. It was a simple request but one that raised uncomfortable questions about the process by which the government imposes an almost-total ban on an inmate’s access to the outside world and how SAMs prisoners can ever “prove” they are no longer a security threat. Sabatino’s situation is more com- plex than that of other SAMs cases because the communication re- strictions he faces are imposed not simply by prison authori- ties but also by the terms of his sentence. In 2017, as part of his guilty plea in his most recent scam, Sabatino agreed to the court-ordered restrictions. In fact, he de- manded them, stating repeat- edly that he would commit more crimes if the restrictions weren’t in place. “These restrictions benefit the public, NOT ME!!” Sabatino wrote in a letter to his trial judge in 2022. “I hate these restrictions. They are terrible, but it is the ONLY thing that stops me. I wonder if you people have any idea of how many crimes [the restric- tions] have prevented. Literally it has saved lives!! I don’t get NOTHING from this!” Because he’s represented by an attorney, Sabatino isn’t supposed to send letters di- rectly to the judge. But his angry, frustrated venting to the court is the only form of com- munication his keepers can’t muzzle, and the swaggering tone underscores the central par- adox of his plight: The more isolated he be- comes, the more notoriety he achieves — at least in his own mind. Jimmy Sabatino may be stuck in the Suites, but he’s finally hit the big time. A Con Man’s Résumé January 29, 1995, was a black day for San Di- ego Chargers fans, who watched their team get blown away by the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XXIX. It was an even bigger bummer for hundreds of would-be attendees who showed up at Joe Robbie Stadium in Mi- ami, clutching tickets for which they’d paid a small fortune, only to be denied entrance. The tickets were hot. They had been boosted by an 18-year-old high school drop- out named James Sabatino, who’d obtained inside information about when a shipment of 262 tickets would arrive at a Federal Express distribution center in Florida. Posing as the president of the Miami Dolphins, Sabatino had called FedEx and insisted that the tickets be held for pickup. An associate collected the precious ducats, which were then parceled out to online ticket brokers for up to a thou- sand dollars each. The brazen scheme landed Sabatino in prison for two years. It was hardly his first brush with trouble. Born in 1976, he’d been raised in Brooklyn, primarily by his father, who reputedly had connections to the Gam- bino and Colombo crime families. New Times writers who covered Sabatino’s exploits over the decades revealed that young Jimmy spent time in a psychiatric hospital for anger issues, then in juvenile detention facilities on weap- ons charges and other violations, before mov- ing to Florida in his teens. After the great Super Bowl ticket heist, Sa- batino moved on to more elaborate capers. They were not just about money; sometimes they were a way of advancing Sabatino’s dreams of becoming a major player in the mu- sic industry. He represented himself as a hip- hop promoter. He claimed to be the nephew of Sony Music president Tommy Mottola and scored backstage face time with Julio Iglesias. Using fraudulently obtained corporate letter- head and billing codes, he impersonated re- cord company or movie studio executives and checked into luxury hotels, entourage in tow, running up huge tabs: $16,000 at New York’s Waldorf Astoria, $16,000 at the Los Angeles Ritz-Carlton, thousands more at the Four Sea- sons in London, a whopping $174,000 in charges at a Hilton in Miami. He scammed airline tickets, jewelry from Tiffany’s, and other luxury goods, insisting “the company” would handle the bill. By claiming to be working on big-budget movie or music projects involving various film stars and celebrated rappers, he persuaded wide- eyed vendors to supply him with vast quanti- ties of computers, pagers, and cell phones with no money down. Sabatino had a singular gift for connecting with marks and charming the pants off them. He dangled a world of possibilities, including the possibility that a stout, doughy, tough- talking hustler like himself could be a It took Jimmy Sabatino only four months to work his way back to prison, scamming tony South Beach hotels. New Times file photo A Man Apart from p7 Sabatino had a singular gift for connecting with marks and charming the pants off them.
