"Joey the Clown" is no Al Capone Says Defense Attorney

Friends of ours: Al Capone, Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo

Joey "the Clown" Lombardo's attorney, Rick Halprin, says the upcoming Family Secrets mob trial is about "Al Capone and his successors."

"One of them is not Joey Lombardo," Halprin said, adding, "If you look at the two convictions in detail from his cases, they support that."

Lombardo was convicted in the 1980s for scheming to bribe U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon and for working to bring the skim of millions of dollars from Las Vegas casinos to Outfit bosses, one of their most lucrative deals.

Lombardo is offering a most unique defense -- the so-called withdrawal defense -- that he is no longer part of any conspiracy.

It's a difficult defense to present but it's also causing concern among the federal prosecutors handling the Family Secrets case, according to sources familiar with the matter.

When he was released from prison in the early 1990s, Lombardo took out a newspaper ad, saying he was not part of the mob and asking anyone who saw him meeting with gangsters to report him to his parole officer.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir