Elderly tax scammer avoids MDC Brooklyn after judge’s intervention

September 5, 2024 Robert Abruzzese, Courthouse Editor

The Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, known for its dangerous conditions, gross understaffing and medical mistreatment, where Judge Gary Brown refused to allow 75-year-old Daniel Colucci to serve his sentence. Photo: John Minchillo/AP

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A 75-year-old convicted tax scammer, Daniel Colucci, will not be serving his nine-month sentence at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) after a federal judge raised concerns about the jail’s “dangerous, barbaric conditions.”

Colucci, a 75-year-old Long Island man, was convicted of orchestrating a tax fraud scheme that netted nearly $1 million. He was sentenced to nine months in prison and faced the possibility of serving time at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, a facility plagued by dangerous conditions, inadequate medical care, and violence.

Judge Gary Brown had threatened to vacate Colucci’s sentence if he were sent to the troubled facility, citing its history of gross understaffing, medical mistreatment and inmate violence. In response to these concerns, the Bureau of Prisons agreed to place Colucci in the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts, instead of MDC Brooklyn.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kelly confirmed that the Bureau of Prisons will not send Colucci to MDC but will send him to the aforementioned Federal Medical Center in Massachusetts. Colucci was convicted of defrauding nearly $1 million in a tax scheme and must surrender on Sept. 17.