Former Brooklyn Pot King and Maraschino Cherry Tycoon May Be Dead, But He Still Owes Us Money: DA

Photo via elizarax/Flickr.

Perhaps the most epic Red Hook crime story of the year was that of Arthur Mondella, the 57-year-old maraschino cherry tycoon caught with a 2,500-square-foot marijuana farm, the largest in NYC history — along with hundreds of thousands in cash and a fleet of luxury vehicles — in the basement of his seaside family business, Dell’s Maraschino Cherries.

Mondella reportedly committed suicide the moment district attorney’s investigators came sniffing.

“Take care of my kids!” he screamed to his sister, Joanne, through his cherry factory’s bathroom door before shooting himself in the head.

But Mondella’s dramatic self-sacrifice hasn’t necessarily cleared up his family’s legal troubles, according to a new report from DNAinfo.

Red Hook correspondent James Fanelli reported on Monday that ”because Mondella led a double life as a marijuana grower, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office may take a bite out of his cherry empire.”

In his will, Modella reportedly left his business — which reaps $20 million per year in profits — and his $8 million estate to his three daughters and his sister.

The Brooklyn DA’s Office declined to comment on the amount of money and/or assets Mondella’s family still owes for their patriarch’s crimes.

However, a DA spokesman did say in a statement to Patch that ”this matter is still under ongoing investigation. We seek forfeiture of funds obtained through criminal acts whenever appropriate and will do so in this case.”

A woman who answered the phone at Dell’s on Monday said only, ”We have no comment,” before hanging up.

“None of us had even the slightest clue that he was living this double life, but if there were ever a smart and savvy enough businessman to pull off such a feat, it would be Arthur,” Michael Farkas, a local attorney and a friend of Mondella’s, told the Times for a posthumous profile on the cherry tycoon.

From the profile:

“On his desk, Arthur Mondella kept jars of the glossy-red fruits, Dell’s Maraschino Cherries, that seemed to make everything else possible: the yacht, the Porsche and the Rolls-Royce, the Rolexes, his daughters’ tuitions, the loans — often forgiven — to the workers he’d given second, third and fourth chances. On the wall, he had mounted a large television to keep watch over the business he had helped build since childhood.”

“At 57, Mr. Mondella seemed to have stepped out of an old Brooklyn movie, a tall, gravel-voiced, hard-bargaining man who charmed women, impressed men and was said to shoulder all the burdens of his family and of many of his employees, too. He would do almost anything for the people he cared about, his friends said. He killed himself, some of those closest to him say, because he couldn’t face his family, or because he wanted to spare them.”

In another stranger-than-fiction report on the bust, the Daily Beast described how DA’s investigators used a local mystery concerning cherry-red bees, believed to be feeding off Dell’s syrup runoff, as an excuse to snoop around the factory.

Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” an anthem from Mafia-era Brooklyn, reportedly played as Mondella’s casket was transported to nearby Green-Wood Cemetery.