Soprano's Teach Life Lesson to Boss

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

Tony Soprano can be tough on James Gandolfini, too. "It's a dark, dark world and you're in it a lot," the star of "The Sopranos" said of his career-defining character. "However, if you're in a dark world, I can't think of any other to be in. There are a lot of pluses. It just takes a heavy toll sometimes."

Gandolfini was reflective on Friday talking about "The Sopranos," which returns to HBO on March 12 after a hiatus three months shy of two years. Fans are eager for something new, yet Gandolfini is in the midst of filming the last several episodes.

Seated on a stage with co-stars Edie Falco, Lorraine Bracco and Michael Imperioli, Gandolfini noted that only Bracco had much success prior to the series and many of the show's actors went through the whirlwind of sudden fame. "It's been an incredible life lesson that a lot of us wouldn't have had without this opportunity," he said. "It teaches you about what's important."

The actors, and series creator David Chase, did a delicate dance with reporters in trying to say something but ultimately reveal nothing about the final season. Twelve new episodes will start in March, and a final eight in January 2007.

Repercussions from the jailing of New York mob boss and rival Johnny Sack will define the new season, along with Tony's reconciliation with Carmella. Julianna Margulies, who plays a real estate agent; Hal Holbrook, who plays a businessman ensnared by the mob; and Ben Kingsley, who plays himself, are among this season's guest stars.

Although there have been false alarms about "The Sopranos" ending in the past, "it does feel like the end this time," Gandolfini said. "It's made me think of how I approach work and make sure that you work just as hard now as you did in the beginning," he said.

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Murdered man's mother files $150M suit against city, 'Mafia Cops'

Friends of ours: Lucchese Crime Family, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, Nicholas Guido
Friends of mine: Louis Eppolito, Stephen Caracappa

The mother of a Brooklyn man shot dead on Christmas Day 1986 in a case of the mob mistakenly killing the wrong man is suing the so-called "Mafia Cops" and the city for his murder. Pauline Pipitone, whose son Nicholas Guido, 26, was killed as he sat in a car after a holiday dinner, has charged in her lawsuit filed in Brooklyn federal court that former detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa were part of the mob blunder that led to Guido's death.

Pipitone, who is executor of her son's estate, is suing for $150 million. She alleges that the NYPD failed to aggressively investigate allegations that Eppolito and Caracappa had been linked to criminal activity. Eppolito, 57, and Caracappa, 64, were indicted last year on charges they moonlighted as hit men and intelligence moles for the mob while they were cops. The indictment charged that as many as 10 murders are linked to their activities for former Luchese crime family acting boss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.

In the case of Guido, federal prosecutors have alleged that Eppolito and Caracappa funneled information to Casso, who was seeking revenge after being targeted in a failed assassination plot. Casso and his cohorts were seeking a reputed Gambino associate named "Nicholas Guido," 29, for being part of the the plot to kill the Luchese leader. Investigators have charged that Eppolito and Caracappa accessed NYPD databases to locate Guido for the mob, but erroneously came across Pipitone's son, a telephone company employee who had no criminal affiliations.

Pipitone's court complaint, which is seeking damages for Guido's wrongful death and deprivation of his constitutional rights, was filed last Thursday and appears to incorporate the allegations contained in the federal charges.

Eppolito and Caracappa, who are currently free under house arrest conditions on $5 million bail, have denied all the charges. They are scheduled to go to trial next month in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Jack B. Weinstein, although defense attorneys are seeking an adjournment.

Last week, federal officials in Las Vegas secured a tax evasion indictment against Eppolito and his wife, Francis. Investigators allege Eppolito didn't report income he made from various book and film deals.

"It was a terrible, terrible crime, but it isn't possible Caracappa could have committed it," said Edward Hayes, the lawyer representing Caracappa, about the Guido murder.

Hayes said the NYPD knew very early on the correct name of the "Guido" allegedly involved in the Casso assassination plot and that presumably that name was in the NYPD databases.

Defense attorney Bruce Cutler, who is defending Eppolito, couldn't be reached for comment Sunday.

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Mob figure dies, taking 'a lot of secrets' with him!

Friends of ours: Chris Petti, Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, Frank "The Bomp" Bompensiero, Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno, Bonanno Crime Family

San Diego mob figure Chris Petti, whose attempts to earn money for the Chicago mob ultimately led to convictions of several underworld bosses as well as financier Richard Silberman, has died, the FBI confirmed yesterday. A close associate of slain Las Vegas rackets boss Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, Petti had lived in Chula Vista and reportedly had been in poor health.

Born Christopher George Poulos in Cicero, Ill., Petti died on New Year's Eve, according to an obituary notice published Friday. He was 78. Petti was long regarded as a low-level hood - a law enforcement official once suggested his lack of respect made him the Rodney Dangerfield of the mob - but his expletive-laced phone conversations, picked up in FBI recordings, led to major federal convictions here.

According to the FBI, Petti sought to fill the void created by the 1986 murder of Spilotro, who was beaten to death, along with younger brother, Michael, and buried in an Indiana cornfield. Petti was in frequent contact with Spilotro's bosses in Chicago and was directed to collect money still on Spilotro's books and to scout out earning opportunities.

According to court records, his extortions included threats to chop off one man's legs; in another, he told a victim that he owed the mob $87,000 and needed to come under Petti's wing. "When you eat alone, sometimes you choke," Petti threateningly told the man, according to court records.

One potentially major venture caught his bosses' attention: a scheme to infiltrate a casino planned in North County by the Rincon tribe.

During that late 1980s investigation, Silberman unexpectedly showed up in FBI surveillance, plotting with Petti and an undercover FBI agent to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars. Silberman had been a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. and was married to then-county Supervisor Susan Golding. Silberman was convicted in 1990 and sent to prison. He and Golding divorced, and she went on to serve two terms as San Diego mayor.

With the Silberman trial out of the way, federal prosecutors returned to the Rincon case. Top leaders of the Chicago mob were indicted in 1992; two were convicted the next year and sentenced to three years in prison. Petti pleaded guilty that year in a deal calling for 9½ years in prison but no requirement to testify against his bosses. When U.S. District Judge William B. Enright asked if Petti was indeed guilty, he at first replied: "I guess so." Petti gave a firmer answer when pressed by the judge. He also served a concurrent term in prison for a Las Vegas federal drug offense.

Petti's lawyer in the San Diego case was famed criminal-defense attorney Oscar Goodman, known for his defense of mobsters such as Spilotro. Today, he is mayor of Las Vegas. The prosecutor was Carol Lam, now U.S. attorney for San Diego and Imperial counties.

Retired FBI agent Charlie Walker, who had tracked Petti for years, said the Rincon case revealed Petti's ambitions. "A lot of law enforcement thought he was a two-bit punk, that he didn't have any connections, but he did," Walker said yesterday. Walker said he gained "a bit of grudging respect" for Petti for his refusal to turn informant. "You hate to say you respect anyone (in the mob)," said Walker, "but the one thing about Chris . . . when we arrested him, he had plenty of opportunities to cooperate, if he wanted to, but he steadfastly refused. "He went to his grave with a lot of secrets. I would have loved to have talked to him," said Walker, now assistant federal security director for the San Diego branch of the Transportation Security Administration. No doubt it would have been an interesting story.

Petti was listed in Nevada's "black book" of people - many of them mob figures - banned from Silver State casinos. In a confidential, 1975 intelligence report, the California Department of Justice listed Petti as a "close associate" of San Diego mob boss Frank "The Bomp" Bompensiero, who would be gunned down, gangland-style, in 1977 while walking to his home in Pacific Beach from a nearby pay phone. It was later learned that Bompensiero had been an FBI informant.

Infamous mob turncoat Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno claimed during San Diego federal court testimony in 1982 that Petti and Spilotro had plotted to kill him. Fratianno, who collaborated on an autobiography titled, "The Last Mafioso," went on to earn millions of dollars testifying against Mafia figures. He died in 1993.

Petti co-founded P&T Construction in the 1970s; at one time the company was believed to be involved in aluminum-siding schemes involving Bonanno crime-family figures. He had multiple arrests - for theft, extortion, gambling and other crimes - but few convictions. Among them: a 1970s conviction for a baseball-bat assault in La Jolla.

Thanks to Philip J. LaVelle

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New Arrest Details for Joey the Clown

Friends of ours: Joseph Lombardo

Authorities described Joseph Lombaro's arrest as tense as FBI and other agencies SWAT teams prepared for a possible violent confrontation as Lombardo is known to possess a violent nature. Agents stated at the news conference that an "anonymous tip" lead them to the neighborhood where Lombardo was arrested. Agents identified him by the report on the clothing he was wearing, a white suit with green polka dots, a squirting flower, a spinaround green bow tie and fluorescent green fright wig. After agents frisked him and found 250 silk handkerchief's, a folding floral bouquet and a .38 caliber "Honk-Honk" horn, he slyly told the arresting agent; "Pull my finger."

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Mobster embarassed after Justice Department releases secret tapes

Friends of ours: Gambino Crime Family, Victor Riccitelli, John Gotti, Anthony "the Genius" Megale

An elderly Mafioso who was caught on tape discussing the Gambino crime family hierarchy asked a federal judge to dismiss his racketeering case this week, saying prosecutors unfairly embarrassed him by making his incriminating conversations public. Victor Riccitelli, 72, broke the mob's honor code in October, admitting his Mafia membership and pleading guilty to racketeering rather than have the FBI's tapes played in court.

Prosecutors surprised Riccitelli in December, however, when they included details of his conversations in a memo placed in the public court file. The Associated Press reported on the conversations, which included descriptions of the Mafia induction ceremony and the mob's leadership structure.

"The government's conduct in this regard was for the sole purpose of embarrassing the defendant and obtaining an outlet for the public disclosure of otherwise nonpublic materials," defense attorney Jonathan J. Einhorn wrote this week in a motion to dismiss the case. Einhorn said the disclosure amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. Justice Department spokesman Tom Carson said prosecutors would respond to Riccitelli's motion before he is sentenced Jan. 20.

In their December memo, prosecutors said they released the conversations to prove that Riccitelli had lied when he said his conversations about the Mafia were just things he had read in a book. "That was a weak excuse as a way to put on a show," Einhorn said Friday. "It was just a back-door opportunity for the government to show all the information it had."

Riccitelli is one of more than a dozen men arrested in a landmark Connecticut organized crime case in 2004. Prosecutors said the Gambino family, the crime syndicate once run by John Gotti, ran gambling and extortion rackets throughout Fairfield County.

Riccitelli's conversations pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the family. He talked openly with a Stamford strip club owner, not knowing the man was working for the FBI. In those conversations, Riccitelli identified Stamford sanitation worker Anthony "The Genius" Megale as the No. 2 man in the organization. Megale also pleaded guilty in the case and is awaiting sentencing.

Thanks to Matt Apuzzo

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