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By Francis X. Gilpin

Associate Editor

Making it in the pizza business was tougher than Eric B. Linares and Richard Otero imagined.

Three years ago, the two men began negotiating to buy a Westshore Pizza franchise in Clearwater. The deal, brokered by company co-founder Robert D. Vasaturo, called for Linares and Otero to make a down payment of $30,000 and assume a $50,000 loan.

When Linares and Otero went to close the deal, however, they found out that the loan had some unusual provisions.

They had to make $300 weekly cash payments to Barry C. Durrance and Joseph M. Tumminia, who were selling the Clearwater franchise. Yet none of the weekly payments would apply to reducing the loan's principal.

"This sounds like a loan shark loan!" Linares protested during a 2002 meeting with Durrance and Tumminia at the office of Tampa lawyer Ronald E. Perez.

Indeed, the repayment schedule pushed the annualized interest rate to 31.2%, more than 10 percentage points above what state law allows. Although Otero questioned the loan's legality, "Tumminia, Durrance and Perez gave him the distinct impression that this was not a negotiable point," according to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report.

Fearing for their $30,000 down payment, Linares and Otero went along with the loan. When they were late with a $300 weekly payment, an angry Durrance would scream at them. Durrance told them that he had to cover for them until Linares and Otero could get him that week's payment.

By the time that the payments stopped a year later, Linares and Otero had shelled out $14,400. They ended up reselling the Drew Street pizza shop for a loss, after they claim Vasaturo let other franchisees poach on their territory and they decided they couldn't afford to repay the loan.

Linares and Otero weren't the only Westshore Pizza franchisees saddled with allegedly usurious loans.

The FDLE and Tampa police have arrested five men, including a reputed associate of the Lucchese crime family, whose enrollment in a federal witness protection program didn't slacken his desire for easy money or fondness for the limelight.

The 2-year-old investigation has been noteworthy for who hasn't been charged, too.

Westshore Pizza co-founder Vasaturo, who is represented by celebrated Tampa criminal defense lawyer Barry Cohen's firm, has avoided arrest. Hillsborough County's state attorney, Mark Ober, declined police requests to file against Perez or retired Tampa Bay Buccaneer Sean F. Love, who were implicated in the lending scheme.

Despite unflattering publicity from the arrests, Westshore Pizza keeps on growing.

Two companies, including publicly traded Heathrow-based Quality Restaurant Ventures Inc., have relinquished their Westshore Pizza franchising rights outside of the Tampa Bay area. But the buyer of those rights, Westshore Pizza Franchising LLC, is stepping up expansion plans.

Richard Onderko, managing member of the franchiser, recently announced that additional Westshore Pizza shops will open throughout Florida. Onderko's goal is to create a national network of Westshore Pizza parlors.

Cellblock startup

Westshore Pizza was an idea conceived behind bars.

Robert Donald Vasaturo came to Florida in 1994 after he got out of jail in Pennsylvania, according to state records. Vasaturo, now 40, had befriended another inmate who suggested they open a pizza shop in Florida when they were released from jail.

Vasaturo's company, Philly Westshore Franchise Corp., retains the rights to open Westshore Pizza outlets in six Bay area counties, including Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas.

Vasaturo didn't return a telephone call from the Gulf Coast Business Review. But his lawyer, Todd Foster, says Vasaturo is cooperating with the Westshore Pizza investigation.

The first Westshore Pizza shop was on Tampa's West Shore Boulevard, thus the name. From the start, Westshore Pizza specialized in Philadelphia-style pies and cheese steak sandwiches.

The ex-con partner of Vasaturo left within a year. But Vasaturo quickly added locations with financing from Temple Terrace businessman Joshua D. Burke.

Vasaturo told investigators that he met Burke while playing softball. Burke, now 44, was charged with racketeering last October.

In all, Burke made seven loans to Vasaturo and loaned additional sums to Westshore Pizza franchisees. Using proceeds from a sale of cellular telephone towers, Burke drove a hard bargain.

Borrowing $45,000 to remodel a Westshore Pizza shop in South Tampa, Vasaturo had to repay Burke $600 a week from 1996 through the middle of 2001. The weekly payments increased to $620 after that and escalated to $650 within three years, state records show.

By last year, Vasaturo told investigators, he had paid Burke $306,800 in interest on the $45,000 loan. But Vasaturo says he was prevented from buying his way out of the loan.

In 1998, Burke loaned another $30,000 for a second South Tampa location, which entitled him to a 25% ownership stake in the pizza shop and weekly payments of $300 from Vasaturo. Two years later, Burke put another $40,000 into the shop. That made Burke half-owner and required Vasaturo to make extra weekly payments starting at $324. The payments were capped at $380 by the fifth year of the loan, the records show.

The interest payments alone on the $30,000 loan totaled $95,700 by 2004, according to an affidavit by Tampa police detective James W. Bartoszak, who used the sworn statement to gain court permission to search Burke's house last summer.

Vasaturo could get out from under the $40,000 loan if he made 260 consecutive weekly payments adding up to $91,728. Then he had to repay the full $40,000 principal. But Burke could reject the buyout, in which case Vasaturo's weekly payments would continue in perpetuity.

That's not all. Although Burke never worked a day at Westshore Pizza, he enjoyed dining privileges at one of the pizza parlors, on South Dale Mabry Highway. "According to Vasaturo, Burke would arrive with 10 to 15 persons [and] act like he owned the place and allow all to eat free," FDLE agent Ken Sanz wrote in a report.

Burke's criminal defense attorney, Paul M. Sisco of Tampa, declined comment.

Hoops pals

Even though Josh Burke's terms were steep, he and Vasaturo got along well for a while, even playing basketball together. One of their hoops buddies was Sean Love, who played two seasons with the Bucs during the 1990s as a reserve on the offensive line and special teams.

Love, 37, of Tampa, heard about Burke's loans and "asked about doing what Josh was doing," Vasaturo told Bartoszak.

In 1999, Burke fixed up Love by drafting the papers for a $40,000 loan to Vasaturo, who wanted to put a Westshore Pizza in Tampa's Hyde Park restaurant district.

The documents show Love received $1,000 monthly payments from Vasaturo for three years. After Vasaturo paid the $36,000, two of his partners in the Hyde Park pizza parlor, Burke and Durrance, could buy out the Love loan for $40,000. If neither partner exercised that option, Vasaturo could later buy out the loan for as little as $25,000, but only if he had already paid an additional $66,000 in interest.

In 2001, Love made another $40,000 loan to Vasaturo for improvements to one of the older Westshore Pizza shops.

Last year, Love met with Vasaturo and Barry Cohen law partner Todd Foster. Vasaturo tried to persuade Love to reduce the interest rates on the loans so they would be legal under Florida law.

Love wouldn't restructure either loan, according to state records. Bradley K. Blank, a Boston lawyer who negotiated Love's football contracts and works as a sports agent for professional athletes, had told Love that the loans were perfectly legal.

Blank told Florida investigators last fall that he considered the transactions between Love and Vasaturo to be investments, not loans. Blank referred to the $1,000 payments that Vasaturo made monthly to Love as "dividends," not interest payments.

But Vasaturo and Kevin Kalwary, a private investigator with Cohen's law firm who sat in on the May 2004 meeting with Love, both recalled the ex-football player repeatedly referred to the transactions as loans. Love couldn't be reached for comment.

Bar complaint

Whatever the transactions were, Vasaturo was still paying Love as recently as September 2004, according to state records. By then, Vasaturo says he had paid Love more than $90,000. Love offered to forgive the debt for an additional $80,000.

A month later, however, Blank offered investigators his theory that Love lacked criminal intent to be charged with loan sharking. Blank says Love had relied on his legal opinion back in 1999 that the transactions were investments.

Ober's office agreed. Assistant Hillsborough State Attorney Richard P. Lawson declined to sign an arrest warrant for Love, according to state records.

Likewise, Perez escaped prosecution, despite claims by several witnesses that the lawyer had helped clients such as Durrance and Tumminia disguise excessive interest payments in loan papers.

Durrance, 39, of Lutz, and Tumminia, also 39, of Odessa, have been charged with criminal usury.

Perez reacted unfavorably at first to the terms under which Linares and Otero assumed the $50,000 loan for the Westshore Pizza shop in Clearwater, Durrance told investigators.

"It was illegal," Durrance quoted Perez as saying. "He needs to term it as a management fee."

Perez, who didn't respond to a request for comment, was able to bring a halt to the alleged shylock payments that Vasaturo had been making to Burke since the mid-1990s.

By 2002, Vasaturo and Burke had become estranged over finances at the Westshore Pizza shop in Hyde Park. Acting on behalf of Vasaturo, Perez threatened to seek $1 million in punitive damages from Burke for overcharging his client. Burke agreed to stop collecting in exchange for Vasaturo's promise not to seek civil or criminal redress.

Perez's law firm donated $300 to Ober's first election campaign in 2000, according to state records. But A. Wayne Chalu, chief of Ober's economic crimes unit, says that played no role in the decision not to prosecute Perez.

"Our duty is give individualized attention to each set of circumstances," says Chalu. "We spent a considerable amount of time - hours and hours and man-hours - making sure that our decisions were based on the facts."

In May, the FDLE filed a complaint against Perez with the Florida Bar. Perez's lawyer, David A. Maney of Tampa, told the Bar that Perez acted appropriately by recasting a portion of the interest payments from Linares and Otero as management fees.

Ybor pizza vendor

Richard D. Sabol wasn't as lucky as Perez and Love.

The native New Yorker, who has been charged with racketeering in the Westshore Pizza case, was branded "a career criminal with lifelong ties to organized crime families" in a 1999 federal appeals court opinion. The appeals court described Sabol as an associate of Joseph Giampa, a reputed captain in the Lucchese crime family.

Vasaturo told Florida investigators that he didn't know Sabol well. Yet somehow Sabol began selling pizza by the slice from a Westshore Pizza kiosk in Tampa's Ybor City entertainment district two years ago.

The appellate ruling provided a detailed account of Sabol's work as an informer for federal agents. Evidently that help earned Sabol a new identity as Richard J. Ciro Jr. and a trip from New Jersey to Florida through the witness protection program.

In 2001, Indialantic businessman Larry Bell wrote to then-U.S. Sen. Bob Graham to complain that Sabol/Ciro "had intimidated and strong-armed me" into selling a coffee shop without paying for it. Sabol/Ciro subsequently resold the coffee shop for $40,000, according to Bell.

Bell asked Graham why the federal government was protecting Sabol/Ciro. Graham asked the FDLE to look into the matter. FDLE agent Lawrence Turner learned that Satellite Beach police had been told that Sabol/Ciro pulled a knife on two people during an argument. But the alleged victims later refused to testify against Sabol/Ciro.

Turner obtained a videotape of Sabol/Ciro giving an interview to a New Orleans television station. During the interview, Sabol/Ciro identified himself as a federally protected witness whose testimony had sent to prison major organized crime figures from Louisiana and New Jersey.

In Tampa, the occasionally violent behavior of Sabol/Ciro frightened Vasaturo's secretary, state records show. She told investigators that she considered Sabol/Ciro to be "a dangerous person."

Sabol/Ciro served in several capacities for Vasaturo and other Westshore Pizza business partners, according to court records.

Along with operating the Ybor City kiosk, Sabol/Ciro, 45, of Melbourne, scouted new Westshore Pizza locations for Vasaturo in the Orlando area. Sabol/Ciro also assisted a long-time Tampa pizza parlor operator named Joseph Carta by collecting delinquent payments on usurious loans, according to investigators.

Carta, 64, who owned a building that housed one of the early Westshore Pizza shops, has been charged with racketeering.

The first trial in the Westshore Pizza racketeering case is scheduled for December.