Chris Paciello, Former SoBe Kingpin, Beats DUI Charges

By Kyle Munzenrieder Mon., Aug. 13 2012 at 2:12 PM

Ever notice how some of Miami's most connected, bold-faced names always somehow get their DUIs reduced to reckless driving charges? It was a recurring theme in our rundown of celeb mug shots.

Well, controversial South Beach nightlife icon Chris Paciello is the latest to join the club. He's escaped DUI charges and been hit with reckless driving instead.

Paciello got popped last February in Miami Beach for DUI, but his attorney Michael Grieco tells Random Pixels he's beaten the charges:

I provided the State Attorney with video [embedded below] of my client during booking inside the police station showing his sobriety. I also provided them with x-rays of his lower extremities showing evidence of surgical implants, making his performance (or lack thereof) on the roadside exercises questionable.

Paciello is quite the colorful South Beach legend. He opened a nightclub here in 1994 with money from a bank robbery committed with a Mafia-connected gang he ran with in Long Island. He then went on to open Club Liquid, a celeb hot spot, and reportedly romanced Madonna.

By 1999, his criminal past caught up with him, and he was arrested on charges of robbery and murder, but got off with only ten years because he had been informing the FBI.

He was released in 2006 and recently returned to the South Beach scene with the opening of FDR Lounge at the Delano.

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An FBI agent was arrested Thursday after being indicted on charges stemming from allegations that he conducted a years-long affair with the wife of a man he twice helped put behind bars.Special Agent Joe Gordwin, 39, was arrested at his Phoenix office and is facing six counts of wire fraud, five counts of making false statements and seven counts of witness tampering.

Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said Gordwin broke the rules and the law by having an "improper sexual relationship" with the wife of a man he was investigating and then trying to cover it up.