Brooklyn federal prosecutors have thrown out corruption charges against two prison guards, Raymond Cotton and Derryl Strong, after learning that their undercover operative, an inmate in the lockup, was dealing drugs at the same time he was working for the feds.

Charges against a Luchese mobster were also dismissed and the conviction of a guard may also be tossed.

The facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, looked like the prison scene in "Goodfellas," where mobsters cooked up a feast with razor thin garlic sliced by Paul Sorvino.

In 1996, just before Christmas, one guard smuggled in a sack stuffed with six steaks, 15 pounds of eggplant, 10 pounds of veal cutlets, 10 pounds of chicken cutlets, 5 pounds of sopressata, 10 hunks of provolone, 10 pounds of mozzarella, 5 pounds of mixed olives and a few sticks of pepperoni.

Gambino capos Nicholas (Little Nick) Corozzo (left) and Leonard DiMaria (right) were among the many mobsters who paid guards for the finer things at the Brooklyn lockup.

"The case went bad when we found out that inmate (Ray) Saladino was double-dealing us," said one federal official. "But you can't lose sight of the fact we cleaned out a bunch of corrupt guards."

Several witnesses, including mob associates Michael DeRosa and Ronald (Messy Marvin) Moran -- both began cooperating in 1997 -- told the feds that Saladino had been dealing drugs when the probe was in high gear.  

Prosecutors, however, contend that Saladino's drug dealing did not taint the conviction of another guard Anthony Martinez. In one tape recorded conversation, Martinez, who hails from John Gotti country in Queens, told an agent posing as Saladino's brother that he wanted so much to be a mobster he was planning to change his Hispanic surname to Martino.

In court papers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Marvin said his office learned  that  Saladino had "facilitated" up to 10 "narcotics transactions" at the jail  after Martinez was convicted.

Saladino did not lie from the witness stand, and even if he committed perjury, the lies were not about material facts, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Kroger argued in court papers.

Besides, added Kroger, Saladino's "moral character" was already so bad -- a 29-year-old career criminal, he beat up two robbery victims, undressed them, tied them to a tree and threatened to kill them -- his drug dealing in prison would have had "no impact on the trial."

Defense lawyer Sam Schmidt disagrees strongly. He has asked Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block to throw out the conviction and order a new trial. In court papers, Schmidt argued that Saladino's testimony, much of it uncorroborated, was crucial and that if jurors knew he was deceiving the feds while working for them, they would not have believed his testimony.

At the only other trial in which Saladino testified, correction officer William Artis was acquitted of all charges. Artis, and eight guards who pleaded guilty or were convicted at various trials, are no longer on the payroll.

But Cotton, a 10-year veteran who is also a leader of the guards' union, and  Strong, who has been a federal Bureau of Prisons employee for 13 years, have refused to resign, and the BOP is filing administrative charges against them.

They no longer have any contacts with inmates -- Cotton conducts union business in the public area at the jail -- but still receive their $600 or so a week salaries.

It's a lot less than the $500 and $1000 payoffs they allegedly got for catering for their prisoners, like former Colombo acting boss Victor Orena (left) and Luchese capo George Zappola, (right) but it's still not chopped liver.

Failla, who died at age 80 in a federal prison a week earlier, was laid out at Azzara's, a Staten Island funeral home where a relative of a very popular FBI agent was also being waked.

When Failla's mourners saw the FBI agents, including members of the squad that had put together the case that had sent the ailing capo to prison, they tried to move the viewing to another location.

But the funeral home's proprietors quickly moved Failla's body as far away from the chapel as possible from where the FBI agents were paying their respects, and the two sets of mourners basically ignored each other except for a few raised eyebrows and whispered curses.

The many Gambino family mobsters at the two day wake included reputed acting boss Peter Gotti, his brother Richard, a soldier, and capos Joseph (Joe Butch) Corrao, George DeCicco and Louis (Big Lou) Vallario. Legendary former docks boss and former capo Anthony Scotto, now just a soldier, and made men from at least three other crime families also paid their respects.

Jimmy Brown Failla, who for decades controlled the Gambino family interests in the private sanitation industry as head of the Trade Waste Association,died at the prison hospital in Fort Worth, Tex. where he had been incarcerated since 1994. He was serving a seven-year stint for taking part in a murder plot ordered by John Gotti. He was due to be released next year. 

Once you check the spellings of the surnames of the two Eddies, it should become clear that they are two different people whose last names were spelled very similarly. Gang Land neglected to highlight that last week.

Eddie Garafola, (right) is a reputed Gambino mobster and brother-in-law of former Gambino family underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano. According to the feds, Garafola, Gravano, and four others in the top photo were involved in the execution of Garofalo, a construction industry businessman and Gambino family associate who drew the wrath of John Gotti and was ordered killed by the Dapper Don. (Gravano is the subject of a wrongful death suit filed by Garofalo's daughters.) The dead man, according to the feds, was a cousin of Gravano's brother-in-law and was nicknamed "Cousin Eddie" by their mob associates to try and avoid the confusion felt by Gang Land readers last week and throughout the years by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.

On July 10, 1985, former assistant U.S. attorney Douglas Grover wrote a letter to a federal judge to correct misinformation that prosecutors had furnished to the court in a tax case against Gravano and his brother-in-law Eddie Garafola.

Grover noted that after speaking with then head of the FBI's Gambino squad, Bruce Mouw, prosecutors had determined that Garafola had not been overheard on a wiretap as they had previously indicated. "The party intercepted during the course of our electronic surveillance .... is named Edward Garofalo," wrote Grover.

"Moreover," added Grover, "additional discussion with Mr. Mouw has led me to the conclusion that these are two separate individuals whose names should not be confused."

Right.