‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ star’s ex convicted of hiring mobster to assault her new lover
The ex-husband of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Dina Manzo was convicted Tuesday of hiring a mobster to beat up his former beau’s new lover — and now he’s facing more than four decades in prison.
Federal prosecutors said Tommy Manzo, a prominent New Jersey restaurateur who lives in the ritzy suburb of Franklin Lakes, planned the 2015 attack on David Cantin, Dina’s now-husband, then recruited an alleged mafioso from the Lucchese crime family to pull it off.
In return, the feds said, the 59-year-old Manzo promised his hired gun a free wedding at his catering hall, The Brownstone in Paterson, New Jersey.
After a two-week trial in Newark federal court, Manzo was found guilty of committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to commit a violent crime in aid of racketeering resulting in serious bodily injury and concealing documents related to a federal investigation, the feds said in a press release.
Taken together, the crimes threaten to imprison him for a maximum of 43 years.
“The facts and circumstances in this case read like something from a bad TV crime drama, but the evidence and testimony presented in court prove it was reality,” James E. Dennehy, head of FBI’s Newark field office, said in a statement.
“We truly hope the victims in this investigation are able to move on with their lives and forget about Manzo and his criminal mafia bedfellows.”
Besides the jail time, Manzo faces fines of up to $500,000, the feds said.
He will be sentenced Oct. 15.
Manzo’s attorney, Zach Intrater, declined to comment Tuesday afternoon.
The conviction slams the door on Manzo’s marathon case, which began when the feds indicted him in 2020 for an assault they said happened about five years earlier.
That’s when Manzo — whose family has owned The Brownstone since the 1970s — offered a deeply discounted wedding to mob capo John Perna of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, in return for Perna roughing up Cantin.
“Manzo was outraged that his former wife became romantically involved with another man,” prosecutors said in court documents. “Rather than accept that, as law-abiding individuals do, Manzo wanted to extract physical revenge. Unwilling or incapable of doing so directly, he leveraged his catering hall.”
Perna and a guy from his crew caught up with Cantin in the parking lot of a Passaic County strip mall in July 2015, then worked him over with a slapjack, the feds said.
The savage attack left Cantin battered and scarred, according to court documents.
Perna — the son of former mob capo Ralph Perna — later pleaded guilty to committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering activity and was sentenced to nearly three years in prison.
He was released last August, according to jail records.
Meanwhile, Manzo remained free on bail as the case against him proceeded at a nearly glacial pace.
Earlier this year, a federal judge dismissed the first set of charges because prosecutors had taken too long to bring them to trial.
But authorities quickly re-indicted him, and the long-dormant case finally began picking up steam. His trial finally began May 20.
“As a unanimous jury found, Manzo committed multiple offenses by providing a free wedding in exchange for the assault and then concealing documents relating to that wedding,” US Attorney Philip Sellinger said in the statement.
“He will now face just punishment for his crimes.”
Manzo married Dina in an over-the-top 2005 wedding chronicled on the VH1 reality series “My Big Fabulous Wedding.”
But the couple split in 2012 over his alleged infidelity, “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Kim DePaola told The Post in 2020 — though the couple didn’t officially divorce until 2016.
