Victoria Gotti Explodes in Court with Profane Tirade

She's one bad mother.

Mob matriarch Victoria Gotti unleashed a foul-mouthed fusillade at a federal judge Wednesday, exploding in fury as he booted a purportedly pro-defense juror.

"F----- animals!" screamed the seething mother of defendant John A. (Junior) Gotti. "They're railroading you! They're doing to you what they did to your father!"

Junior Gotti turned from the defense table to soothe his mother, but the wife of late mobster John (Dapper Don) Gotti ignored her 45-year-old son - and escalated her profane tirade.

"They're doing to you what they did to your father," the volatile Mafia mom ranted. "You f------ liar! You bastard!"

Junior interrupted: "I can deal with it. I'm okay. Don't worry about it. I'm fine." But his mother kept blasting with both barrels.

"They're the gangsters, right there!" she yelled. "The f------ gangsters! You son of a bitches! Put your own sons in there. You bastards!"

Federal Judge Kevin Castel was in the middle of dismissing contentious juror No. 7 when Victoria Gotti - who has a history of histrionics - sprung from her seat in full maternal meltdown.

She was hustled from the courtroom by three of her children before a scowling Castel continued, cutting loose the pro-defense juror. Prosecutors had sought her dismissal.

He also dismissed No. 7's nemesis, juror No. 11. The jury was out of the courtroom when Castel made his ruling - and when Victoria Gotti erupted.

"I don't know the source of the friction between the two jurors," Castel concluded after Victoria Gotti left. "It may be that one is a difficult personality or that both are difficult.

"Accordingly, I am striking both jurors."

The blowup came as the defense was wrapping up its case in Gotti's fourth racketeering trial in five years. The first three ended with hung juries and mistrials.

The jury rift opened last week, after a letter to the judge from an anonymous fellow panelist.

The juror ratted out No. 7, a 34-year-old mail carrier, as sweet on defense lawyer Charles Carnesi and giving her "undivided attention" to the defense case.

The letter raised hopes in the Gotti camp of a fourth mistrial. Then more problems emerged this week, with juror No. 11 accusing No. 7 of taunting her.

Castel attempted to calm the divided jury with sweet talk and sweets - a jar of Twizzlers. Neither worked. And nothing could calm Victoria Gotti, who had verbally assaulted Castel after a hearing in May.

"Why don't you hang him now?" she asked sarcastically at the time. "These are the good guys? God help us!"

Three years ago, in another Junior trial, she shouted at a federal prosecutor. "Who the hell do you think you're talking to?" she snapped.

Thanks to Alison Gendar and Larry McShane.

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Mafia Wars is Profitable

At least one company is making money off of social networking. The game developer behind 'FarmVille' and 'Mafia Wars' has seen its web-based games take off – and deliver profits.

On any given day 500,000 tractors are sold on the Internet. But don't start buying stock in John Deere or Caterpillar just yet. These are $20 "virtual" tractors that belong to the 50 million players of FarmVille, the largest and fastest-growing social game on the Internet.

Social games are free online applications accessed through sites such as MySpace and Facebook. If you've spent any time on either site you're probably familiar with titles such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Caf World. All three games, which rank among the top five games played daily on Facebook, were developed by San Francisco-based Zynga, one of the tech sector's most talked-about companies these days.

Behind the buzz: Annual revenue at the two-year-old firm is likely to surpass $100 million this year, prompting speculation that the company — backed by the likes of LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and PayPal cofounder-turned-investor Peter Thiel — will soon go public. The software company also has managed to do something that other hot online brands such as Twitter and Facebook have not: Zynga has found a way to make social networking profitable.

Zynga was founded in 2007 by Mark Pincus, 43, who also started social-networking site Tribe.net and software company SupportSoft (SPRT), which eventually went public. (The name Zynga is a misspelled tribute to his deceased American bulldog, Zinga.) While many of his Web 3.0 peers rely on advertising and sponsorship for revenue, Pincus makes its money by getting gamers to buy virtual goods, like tractor fuel or land in the case of FarmVille, that enable players to build bigger farms at a faster rate.

By developing games on social networks, Zynga is able to capitalize on the viral nature of the platform. (Zynga estimates it has 70 million monthly unique visitors.) Gamers can invite friends to join them in the game, and they can send updates on their progress to their friends, stoking interest.

Once hooked, Pincus says, players spend real money on virtual goods to help them advance to higher levels — thereby enriching Zynga. And although playing requires only short spurts of time, the game never ends, as Zynga's designers keep adding levels so that players come back for more.

"For me it's just relaxing and fun. I don't have to think hard about it, and I can do it while watching TV," explains Lauren Kohn, 37, a mother of three in San Jose who has spent more than $100 on virtual goods since she started playing FarmVille four months ago.

Pincus won't reveal his margins, but he acknowledges that the company has been profitable every month since September 2007.

By contrast, Twitter doesn't even have meaningful sales, and Facebook only recently claimed to be cash-flow positive. And if online reports are to be believed, Zynga spends millions each year marketing itself on Facebook, thereby providing the social-networking site with a chunk of its revenue. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

Thanks to Jessica Shambora

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Jury Infighting at the Gotti Trial?

There's more infighting on the Gotti jury than at a gangland sitdown - and they're not even deliberating yet!

A tattling juror revealed the bad blood in a letter to the judge - ratting out a foul-mouthed, lunch-stealing fellow juror who isn't in a hurry to convict the mob scion.

"She announced that we the jurors better be prepared to be deliberating until after the Christmas holiday because ... she is not going to allow any f------ body to rush her," the two-page letter said.

The missive - signed "A Concerned Juror" - also accused juror No. 7 of ogling "defense attorney Mr. Charles Carneglia," apparently confusing defense lawyer Charles Carnesi with mob hit man Charles Carneglia.

The seventh juror allegedly found him "very handsome" and gave her "undivided attention" to the defense team, the letter said.

The mixup brought laughter from the defense table. "Hey, Frank," Gotti said to radio producer Frank Morano out of the jury's earshot. "The juror thinks the guy who represents me is a five-time murderer! What shot do I have?"

The letter contained other complaints about juror No. 7:

- She loudly announced plans for a book "regarding sitting in a jury room with jurors and their f------ attitude."

- She constantly spewed obscenities.

- She charged a takeout order of fried calamari to the court's tab when the panel visited a local restaurant.

Gotti supporters said juror No. 7 seemed to be an independent spirit but called for Judge Kevin Castel to give the letter writer the heave-ho. Castel did neither - but he did interview each panel member about the allegation that the juror, a 34-year-old postal worker, violated orders and yapped about the trial.

The judge asked each of the 16 jurors whether juror No. 7 had violated her oath by talking about the case, reading about it or getting information from outside sources.

"Maybe," said one juror, a 52-year-old retired teacher. "I think if someone talks to her about it on the outside, they may bring information to her about what they heard."

The judge did not ask who wrote the letter, and it was unclear if it might lead to a fourth mistrial in the federal racketeering case against Gotti.

The letter wasn't the only surprise yesterday: A woman called Castel's chambers to say she was approached by people saying, "John Gotti is on your side!" Out of the jury's presence, Castel asked the U.S. marshals to speak with the woman, who left her name and number, but dismissed it as a prank.

Thanks to Alison Gendar and Larry McShane

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GANGSTERS OF MIAMI: True Tales of Mobsters, Gamblers, Hit Men, Con Men And Gang Bangers from the Magic City

Rising from a swampy flatland a little more than a century ago, Miami has grown to become a trend-setting metropolis known for tourism, fashion, nightlife and style. Miami is also the city of Hollywood's "Scarface" Tony Montana, television's Miami Vice and popular culture's "Cocaine Cowboy." Ron Chepesiuk's Gangsters of Miami (Barricade Books, November 2009) digs beyond the headlines and fantasy to provide a close up look at the real role that mobsters, gamblers, hit men, drug lords, con men and other gangsters have played in making America's youngest city also one of its most fascinating.

Known as the Magic City, Miami has always been the home for a colorful variety of gangsters. They include the notorious smugglers of the Prohibition era, such as Gertrude Lythgoe, Bill McCoy, James Horace Alderman, the Ashley Gang, and Red Shannon; famous mobsters like Al Capone and Meyer Lansky who helped make Miami a gambling Mecca, the Cuban Mafia and its syndicate, La Compania, led by godfathers Jose Battle Sr. and Jr.; the marijuana traffickers of the early and mid 1970s, most notably the legendary Black Tuna Gang; drug lords of the Medellin and Cali cartels and master minds of the cocaine explosion, such as Griselda Blanco, the so-called Black Widow Blanco, Pablo Escobar, the "King of Coke" and Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela; the Russian Mafia with colorful characters like Ludwig "Tarzan" Feinberg, who came to America after the fall of the Soviet Union; and the street gangs that plagued Miami after the advent of crack cocaine in the mid 1980s, led by such vicious gang bangers as Anthony "Little Bo" Fail and Corey "Bubba" Smith.

The book also provides details of headline making cases and characters like the tourist murders of the early 1990s, the Operation Swordfish money laundering investigation; the Yahweh Ben Yahweh investigation, the Don Aronow and James Callahan murders, the Andrew Cunanan murder of noted fashion designer Gianni Versace, and the rise and fall of Chris Paciello, the so-called "King of South Beach." Gangsters of Miami also investigates the police and governmental corruption that has plagued the Magic City since its early days.

Gangsters of Miami is a lively and well-documented account of Miami's gangs and gangsters, showing that fact can be more riveting than fiction. The praise for the book has been lavish:

Steve Morris, Publishers of the New Criminologist web site, said "Chepesiuk's aptitude for revealing the inner workings of organized crime within a community is once again on display here as the reader is cast into Miami's bloody underbelly. A remarkable achievement by the author."

Scott M. Dietche, author of The Silent Don: The Criminal Underworld of Santo Trafficante Jr. calls the book "one of the most complete looks at crime in South Florida."

Lew Rice, Former Special Agent in Charge, DEA and author of DEA Special Agent: My Life on the Front Line hailed Gangsters of Miami as a "must read for anyone interested in an historical and colorful account of crime in the Magic City."

Ron Chepesiuk, an award-winning investigative journalist, has been described as "the master of high octane journalism." He is the author of Gangsters of Harlem and Black Gangsters of Chicago, Drug Lords, a Fulbright Scholar, an adjunct professor in the journalism department of UCLA's Extension Division and a consultant to the History Channel's Gangland documentary series. He has also been interviewed by the Biography Channel, Discovery, the History Channel, Black Entertainment Television, and NBC's Dateline.

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John Ambrose, Former U.S. Marshal, Sentenced to Prison

A deputy U.S. marshal who was convicted of leaking secret information about a mob witness was sentenced today to four years in prison — a punishment a judge said is designed to deter others in law enforcement from ever contemplating similar crimes.

The marshal, John Ambrose, sat motionless as U.S. District Court Judge John F. Grady handed down the sentence to a courtroom filled with his family, friends and onetime colleagues.

Ambrose, who was convicted in April, had sought probation. His lawyer said his client lived for his job and his conviction has likely stripped him of any future in law enforcement.

Prosecutors had recommended he spend more than six years in prison.

Federal sentencing guidelines called for Ambrose, a 41-year-old father of four, to spend between 12 and 18 months behind bars, but Grady said that wasn’t nearly enough time. “There is really no mitigating circumstance in this case as far as the evidence is concerned,” Grady said. “What we’re dealing with here is a very serious crime . . . that has virtually no likelihood of detection.”

Ambrose in 2002 and 2003 worked stints in the federal witness protection program guarding mob turncoat Nicholas Calabrese, whose testimony in 2007 helped convict several mobsters in the landmark Family Secrets trial.

Ambrose was convicted of leaking information about Calabrese to a family friend, William Guide, who had done prison time with Ambrose’s late father after their convictions in the “Marquette 10” police corruption trial in 1983. In a twist, Grady was the judge in that case.

Prosecutors have said that Guide, who was never charged with any crimes regarding the younger Ambrose’s case, had known mob ties.

Authorities linked the leaks to Ambrose based on video surveillance of two mobsters talking at a federal prison in Milan, Mich., and overhearing the words “Marquette 10.”

They also say Ambrose’s is the only security violation in the history of witness protection program.

Ambrose’s lawyer, Frank Lipuma, told Grady that his client did have talks with Guide and even “shot his mouth off,” but that “there was never any intent” to harm the program.

After court, Lipuma said he will ask that Ambrose stay out of prison pending appeal. If Grady rejects that, Ambrose is to report to prison Jan. 26.

“I think he relied a little too heavily on the deterrence factor,” Lipuma said of Grady’s sentence. “Mr. Ambrose is not sorry for what he did because what is claimed that he did has been, from day one, overstated.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Markus Funk said prosecutor took no joy in sending a law enforcement officer to prison. “It’s obviously a sad day,” Funk said. “However, we want to emphasize from our perspective the judge’s sentence was fair and just.”

Thanks to Chris Fusco and Natasha Korecki

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