Suffolk police officer, 2 co-defendants expected to plead guilty in brothel case, sources say

A Suffolk police officer accused of operating a long-running prostitution ring with brothels in Holbrook and West Babylon is expected to plead guilty along with two co-defendants in Riverhead Friday morning, sources familiar with the case said.

George Trimigliozzi, 56; the alleged ringleader of the scheme, Frank Saggio, 60, of West Islip; and the ringleader’s girlfriend, Dana Ciardullo, 32, of North Bellmore, will change their not guilty pleas when they appear before Suffolk Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei, said the sources,  some of whom were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

Trimigliozzi’s plea would also cover a second indictment in which he was charged with the rape and sexual abuse of women he met through online dating sites, a source said. Ciardullo will plead guilty to promoting prostitution, her attorney, Nancy L. Bartling, of Garden City told Newsday.

Bartling said her client is "eager to move on with her life here and accepting responsibility for the charges." 

More specific terms of the other plea agreements were not disclosed Thursday. Should any of the three defendants decline to enter a guilty plea Friday, a trial date would be set, a source told Newsday.

Trimigliozzi, an 18-year department veteran, previously pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of enterprise corruption, two counts of falsifying business records, filing a false instrument and official misconduct. He is alleged to have "collected proceeds" from the sex workers and coordinated their schedules at the Holbrook brothel, which he managed with a third co-defendant, Steven Arey, 54, a now-suspended physical education teacher in the Islip school district, prosecutors previously said.

Arey is next due in court Oct. 8. His attorney, Michael J. Brown, of Central Islip, said he is still “working toward a favorable outcome” for his client.

Trimigliozzi’s attorney, William Keahon, of Hauppauge, declined to comment.

Saggio and Ciardullo were also charged with dozens of counts of enterprise corruption and promoting prostitution.

Saggio, an admitted mob associate with prior felony convictions, oversaw the prostitution brothels, which included Tunnel of Love in West Babylon, from October 2019 to June 2024, according to court papers. His attorneys, Anthony La Pinta and Mark Lesko, of Hauppauge, declined to comment Thursday evening.

Trimigliozzi and his co-defendants in the brothel case are alleged to have forced the sex workers, some of whom spoke limited English, to sign "leases" to pay for the use of the suites — $6,000 monthly for the Holbrook location and $12,000 for West Babylon, prosecutors said. The sex workers were paid in tips.

Dozens of women worked at the brothels from 2019 to 2024, according to prosecutors.

The prostitution enterprise netted hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit, prosecutors said.

Investigators from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, with help from the FBI and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office, used surveillance, informants and undercover police officers to build a case, which went before a special grand jury.

Prosecutors have alleged in a civil forfeiture complaint against Saggio and Ciardullo that the brothel operation produced nearly $2 million in revenue for Saggio, which he laundered through corporations to purchase Fire Island real estate.

The police officer and the teacher allegedly served as managers on Saggio’s behalf at a Sunrise Highway building in Holbrook known as the American Girls Spa "Suite 3." The Sunrise Highway building also contained two additional brothels allegedly managed by Saggio: Spa "Suite 4” and Reiki for Healing "Suite 5."

Authorities said Ciardullo served as the manager at the Tunnel of Love.

The investigation was conducted by the Suffolk County District Attorney's Public Corruption Squad and is being prosecuted by Laura de Oliveira, the deputy chief of the Public Corruption Bureau, and Chief Kevin Ward.

The yearslong investigation began after Trimigliozzi responded in his squad car to a robbery at the Holbrook brothel in March 2021 despite working in a different precinct, prosecutors previously said. Working an overnight shift in the Third Precinct, he arrived at the brothel, located in the Fifth Precinct, in uniform after being alerted to the robbery by a worker at the brothel.

"You have this Third Precinct police officer there," Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney told reporters last October. "Why was he there? And the investigation sort of proceeds from there."

Trimigliozzi also pleaded not guilty in May to three counts of first-degree sexual abuse, third-degree rape and second-degree unlawful imprisonment.

 Prosecutors said Trimigliozzi took a woman he met on a dating app out for a date in Hampton Bays on June 10, 2022, and pushed her down on her bed, raping her, after asking for a tour of her home, where she had invited him to sober up before riding his motorcycle home.

A year earlier, on May 14, 2021, he is alleged to have touched a woman's genitals during a date in Patchogue while she was seated in the passenger seat of his car, prosecutors said. De Oliveira told Mazzei at Trimigliozzi’s May arraignment that he reached over the woman and closed a door she had opened to leave the vehicle, then placed his body between her and the door, "prohibiting her escape."

Prosecutors said both alleged victims believed they could trust Trimigliozzi because they knew he was a police officer.

Newsday's Nicole Fuller contributed to this story.

CORRECTION:  A previous version of this story misstated George Trimigliozzi's status with the police department both in the headlines and story.