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By Jerry Capeci

A relatively light sentence for tax evasion like the 10-months Gambino capo Salvatore (Tore) Locascio got last week -- half of which he can serve at home -- normally wouldn't ruffle prosecutorial feathers. But this one did.

A codefendant of John A. (Junior) Gotti, Locascio got the lightest sentence he could for pleading guilty to evading income taxes on $260,000 in gambling profits. And he won't have to surrender until after the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Judge Barrington Parker gave him only six months less than the maximum. But federal prosecutors think mobsters should get  the heaviest possible sentences, especially those who've led charmed lives. Locascio forfeited $1.5 million in gambling income, but the feds say it's a drop in the bucket for the Scarsdale resident who operates telephone hotlines that offer services from baseball scores to psychic advice.

Law enforcement officials say Locascio, 39, took over the substantial and lucrative rackets previously controlled by his father, Frank -- (left) the onetime Gambino consigliere convicted of racketeering and murder with John (Dapper Don) Gotti and currently serving life.

The younger Locascio was originally charged with racketeering and extortion involving Scores -- a trendy Upper East Side strip joint popular with tourists, businessmen and sports figures. He was able to negotiate a plea deal because the feds had little, if any evidence, against him.

Locascio also infuriated federal prosecutors last year when he was indicted with Junior (right) and more than 30 others and made arrangements to surrender the following Monday.

Locascio, 39, failed to tell them he was spending the weekend in San Diego partying with friends at Super Bowl XXXII.

It's not known whether Tore had the Denver Broncos, who upset the favored Green Bay Packers, but he scored pretty well in White Plains last week.  Meanwhile, Junior, who faces 70 to 87 months in July, is hoping that Parker is still in a good mood when it's his turn to stand in the dock.

"Good fellows don't sue good fellows. . . . Good fellows kill good fellows," said Profaci during a discussion about a dispute between rival crime families.

The thought of anyone other than mobsters ripping off mobsters rarely comes up.

But an ongoing court battle is a telling indication of the dwindling respect that some people have for the mob, and the way some gangsters react when they are victims of crime.

Thomas Gambino, the eldest son of legendary Mafia boss Carlo Gambino, (right) is a college-educated, multi-millionaire Garment Center businessman with no reputation for violence. A capo in John Gotti's crime family, Gambino was convicted of racketeering, and when he went to prison in 1996, he left instructions for his  stockbroker of 15 years to invest in blue chip stocks and bonds. 

But Maurice Gross, who worked for a now-defunct brokerage, Klein Maus & Shire, allegedly bought thousands of shares of speculative penny stocks in a "pump and dump" at the Wall Street firm.

So Gambino (left) filed a lawsuit charging that fraudulent trades began in 1997 and continued through much of 1998. The suit seeks to recuperate nearly $4 million Gross allegedly stole from Gambino and his wife, his brother Joseph and his wife, and his son.

A Manhattan Supreme Court Judge has ordered Gross to refrain from selling his home in Chappaqua, an exclusive community north of the city, while the suit is pending. The house sits on 1.25 acres, has a heated, in-ground swimming pool, and is worth at least $500,000, according to court records.

Meanwhile, Gross and other executives of his former brokerage house, are being investigated by state and federal agents, in a sense doing the digging for the aging capo, a real sign of the changing times.

In a unanimous ruling, the appeals panel threw out the murder conspiracy conviction of Genovese consigliere James (The Little Guy) Ida (left) in the June 13, 1991 murder of Ralph DeSimone.

The reversal means nothing to Ida, since two other murder convictions were upheld and his life sentence remains intact. But the ruling is almost a shot at trial judge Lewis Kaplan and prosecutors' theory of DeSimone's death.

Prosecutors claim that Ida and the then-acting boss and underboss at the time, Liborio (Barney) Bellomo and Michele (Mickey Dimino) Generoso, ordered DeSimone's murder because they believed he was an informer.

Bellomo and Generoso, in a highly unusual move, took and passed three polygraph examinations, including one by a noted polygraphist, Paul K. Minor, in an effort to convince Kaplan and the feds they had nothing to do with it. Eventually, they pleaded guilty to other charges, still insisting they had nothing to do with the killing, and were sentenced.

At Ida's trial, Luchese acting boss Alfonse D'Arco testified that he was present in January or February of 1991 when Generoso, Bellomo (right) and Ida said they were going to kill DeSimone because he was an informant. Codefendant Louis Ruggiero was actually charged with killing DeSimone, but was  acquitted. Ida was convicted of ordering the hit. Kaplan ruled that despite his acquittal, Ruggiero was the trigger man, that the Genoveses were behind it, and the jury's verdict against Ida would stand.

The appeals judges said the evidence failed to establish that Ruggiero was a Genovese associate, or that he killed DeSimone for the Genovese family, or that there was any connection between the murder, Ruggiero, and the Genovese family. Even if the Genoveses did plan to murder DeSimone in February (he was killed in June) there has to be some evidence linking the Genoveses --namely Ida, Bellomo and Generoso -- to the crime during the intervening four months, the court ruled.

The polygraph results of Bellomo and Generoso were not mentioned in the court's 36 page opinion, but the fact that two gangsters each passed the three lie detector tests had some weight in the final opinion.

"The jury did its job well and it should not be called to account," said Judge  Jack Weinstein after hearing testimony from a former cop who had been tape recorded discussing various juror indiscretions during the trial. The ex-cop, Alfred Santoro, had been hired to drive anonymous jurors to and from court. He testified that most of what he said was "puffery" he made up to impress private investigators posing as would be employers.

Many of those remarks were made to a woman prosecutors described as an "attractive and flirtatious female" who sweet-talked Santoro into telling tall tales about Gigante -- Santoro guarded him when he was hospitalized before trial -- and the members of the jury he chauffeured.

In one taped conversation, Santoro went on and on about his law enforcement career and his special insights about the mob as the woman oohed and aahed. "Oh, I'm interested," she cooed at one point. "Wow," she said sweetly.  "You gotta write a book, you ARE interesting," she said later.

Gigante, 71, who feigned insanity for seven years after he was first hit with racketeering charges, was convicted of racketeering and extortion in July 1997. He was sentenced to 12 years that December.

Gigante used the woman and two investigators in a "concerted, expansive effort to undermine the jury's verdict," said assistant U.S. attorneys Daniel Dorsky, Andrew Weissmann and George Stamboulides.

Dorsky, who convicted Colombo boss Andrew Russo (right) of tampering with a 1994 anonymous jury that convicted his son of murder and racketeering, is conducting a grand jury investigation into the conduct of the Gigante family and the private investigators it hired following Gigante's conviction.