In June, 1996, federal prosecutors in Manhattan hit Bellomo with murder and extortion charges in a racketeering indictment that grew out of an investigation into the family's 70-year-long control of the annual San Gennaro Festival. He passed three lie detector tests about the murder he was charged with, and in 1997, took a plea deal in which he agreed to accept a ten year sentence for extortion charges.

Four years later, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn took their shot at Barney, charging him, Gigante, and six other Genovese wiseguys and associates

with labor racketeering stemming from the family's control over the New York and Miami docks. Once again, Bellomo agreed to a plea deal, one that called for an additional four year stretch.

In 2006, two years before Barney was due to be released, federal prosecutors in Manhattan came at him again, hitting him hard again, this time for racketeering and murder in the 1998 slaying of Genovese capo Ralph Coppola, a onetime pal of Barney's whose body has never been found.

After steadfastly maintaining his innocence of the murder for 18 months, on the eve of trial, Barney caved in again, and agreed to a plea bargain. It was originally panned as too lenient by the judge in the case. But several tense, highly charged  proceedings later, after prosecutors conceded that their case had fallen apart, and after an emotional plea by Bellomo's daughter, an attorney whose only case since passing the state bar has been her father's, the judge changed his view and gave him a year and a day.

Barney is due to be released in 2009, when he will still be relatively young, 52. His status in the crime family at that time, is an open question.