3 Men with Crime Family Ties Tried to Buy Off Jury in Boxer’s Drug Trafficking Trial

On November 16, 2025, three men met in a home in Staten Island, N.Y., about a plan to pay a juror up to $100,000. They would ask for a “not guilty” vote in a drug trafficking case in return, according to a recording of their conversation. 

“How they gonna pay?” one of the men whose phone had been tapped by the FBI is heard asking. “Cash,” another said.

Former heavyweight boxer from Montenegro, Goran Gogic, was charged in October 2022 in Brooklyn federal court with one count of conspiracy to violate the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act and three counts of violating the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act. 

Between May 2018 and July 2019, prosecutors say Gogic, working with others, transported “massive quantities of cocaine” worth $1 billion from Colombia to Europe through the United States. 

Near the coast and ports, commercial cargo ships were allegedly loaded with cocaine at night; crew would then hoist the drug from speedboats that crossed the ships and hide it in shipping containers that had enough room, according to prosecutors. A different set of workers in Europe would offload the cocaine, they said. 

Law enforcement seized three shipments—nearly 20,000 kilos of cocaine—one from the New York and New Jersey port and two from the Port of Philadelphia. The seizure of 17,956 kilos of cocaine, worth over $1 billion, in Philadelphia on June 19, 2019, was one of the largest in U.S. history.  

Gogic was arrested in Miami in October 2022 while boarding a flight out of the country. He faces between 10 years and life in prison. He pleaded not guilty.

Gogic’s trial was set to begin on November 17, 2025, but the conspiracy to bribe a juror resulted in the entire jury’s dismissal, just as it was to hear opening statements. “You can never be sure that it's only one juror that's been approached or compromised,” former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani tells A&E Crime + Investigation. 

A spokesperson for the Brooklyn federal prosecutors said an anonymous jury was to be chosen for Gogic's trial. “It is rare, but not uncommon, at least in organized crime cases and terrorism cases, for the judge to use a federal statute that allows for anonymous juries,” Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.

When attorneys try a case, they get the names and some identifying information on potential jurors and during jury selection, other information, such as employment details, can come out, Walden and Rahmani tell A&E Crime + Investigation. Such information can be misused by people to intimidate, bribe or otherwise influence jurors, they said.

“The only real tool that federal judges have to guard against that is to protect the identity of the jurors, so that literally there's only generalized information that's disclosed,” Walden says. 

In the next round of jury selection, the court can also choose to limit the number and kinds of questions that the lawyers are allowed to ask potential jurors, Walden says, or decide that the attorneys will not ask potential jurors questions and instead submit their questions for the judge to ask on their behalf. After the jury is seated, the judge can go so far as to sequester them.

“The court is taking the proper steps to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Rahmani says.

After the jury tampering conspiracy came to light, three attorneys were disqualified from Gogic’s defense team for having “severe” potential or actual conflicts of interest, among them Joseph Corozzo Jr., the son of a Gambino crime family consigliere. 

“Mr. Gogic should be represented at trial by an attorney who is not preoccupied by a related investigation into his own potential misconduct,” Judge Joan Azrack, who is presiding over Gogic’s case, ruled.

Corozzo was named the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors who say that witnesses were possibly intimidated leading up to Gogic's trial and legal documents, including a photo of a witness’s child, were found in the defendant’s jail cell. 

“That's terrifying,” Walden says. “Now we're talking about potential witness tampering, not just jury tampering.”  

Walden questioned Corrozzo’s law partner Ron Rubinstein on the stand in another alleged witness-tampering case in 2002 after Rubinstein was implicated in a mob informer’s testimony. At the time, Rubinstein pleaded the fifth.

Co-counsel to Corozzo, Angela Lipsman, argued that the defense did not intentionally give Gogic the protected documents and that some may have inadvertently gotten mixed in during jail visits with papers he was allowed to have.

Two of the conspirators accused of jury tampering—Valmir Krasniqi and Afrim Kupa—were arrested at their homes on November 17, 2025, the day after the conversation on Staten Island. 

Kupa was found with a document containing a juror’s name, address and employment information. Krasniqi had sent a photograph of that juror to the third conspirator, Mustafa Fteja, in a text message. Fteja was also arrested that day but released on $150,000 bond. A decision to grant Krasniqi bail was overturned.

On February 19, 2026, Fteja pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. 

On March 4, 2026, Krasniqi pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. 

On May 5, 2026, Kupa also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

Kupa already had a criminal record. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to cocaine conspiracy charges alongside members of the Gambino crime family. He was also previously convicted of narcotics trafficking, racketeering, bank larceny and bank fraud. 

Federal prosecutor Emily Dean said Kupa is thought to be part of a Balkan organized crime group, according to The New York Times. The Italian restaurant he worked at is a “known meeting spot for Italian and Albanian organized crime,” she said.

The conspirators are yet to be sentenced. They each face up to 20 years in prison.

“There is a history, particularly in organized crime, where part of their credo is not accepting the criminal justice system at all,” Walden says. “There's a long legacy of mobsters that go to great lengths to try to stack the deck in their favor.”