Sperm Smuggler Sentenced

(AP)  A New York gangster who smuggled his semen out of federal prison to impregnate his wife was sentenced to an additional 16 months in jail.

Kevin Granato, a convicted hit man for the Colombo crime family, and his wife, Regina, pleaded guilty in May to charges they used a cryogenic sperm kit to sneak his sperm from Allenwood Federal Prison to a New York fertility clinic.

The couple's daughter is now 3.

Regina Granato, 40, said the smuggled sperm plot was "made out of pure love."

"We love our daughter and it is her that gives us the only joy and pleasure we have," she wrote in a plea for leniency. At Tuesday's sentencing, she received nine months probation for her role.

Granato, 43, whose current prison sentence for racketeering and murder runs until 2012, could have been sentenced to another 35 years.

The gangster came under suspicion after he was seen in the visitation room showing off a toddler he called his child, even though he had been in jail since 1988 and did not have conjugal visits.

Mob associate Antonio Parlavecchio and his wife, Maria, were indicted on similar charges in December 2000. He had an extra six months added to his sentence.

But in that case, a federal appeals court ordered the vials of sperm destroyed, saying Maria Parlavecchio wasn't entitled to the "fruits of her criminal activity."

There have been as many as five other cases of sperm smuggling at Allenwood, prosecutors said.

Guards were also bribed to ignore smuggling of bodybuilding pills, toiletries, Genoa salami and Romano cheese, authorities said. More than a dozen people were charged in the schemes, including four guards.