Mob Moll: I Want My Shingle Back

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July 19, 2001

By Jerry Capeci

Mob Moll: I Want My Shingle Back

Two years ago, Dorothy Fiorenza, a willowy, raven-haired lawyer, dropped a Gang Land bombshell and testified how she lost her heart to former Colombo boss Andrew Russo.

Now she claims that she lost her mind as well.

Fiorenza, who entered the federal Witness Protection Program after her
testimony helped send former lover Russo to the slammer for five years, is trying to overturn her conviction and regain her license to practice law.

The reason? She was slightly nuts when she pleaded guilty to witness tampering.

The medical term for Fiorenza's problems, according to a psychiatrist who has been treating her for two years, is "bipolar disorder." The condition, more commonly known as manic depression, runs in Fiorenza's family, the shrink said.

Whatever the problem, it didn't stop Fiorenza from travelling secretly to New

York earlier this year to try and retrieve her New York lawyer's license.

How and where she would use it is difficult to fathom. Fiorenza fears the mob would kill her if she returns to New York, and it is extremely doubtful that the federal witness program could somehow transfer the license to her new name in her new state.

“I don’t know,” quipped Fiorenza’s lawyer Jerome Karp, "the government can do some great things." Karp stressed that his client’s main interest had to do with her “self worth. She worked hard to get it, feels she’s done nothing wrong and deserves to have it back.”

Fiorenza, now 35, knew something was terribly wrong soon after she pleaded guilty and settled in with her husband, mob associate Lawrence (Larry Tattoos) Fiorenza, according to court papers obtained by Gang Land. They met and married while he was in prison, in 1996, after her fling with Russo (left) had ended.

"Everybody kept saying that I should be happy that I'm not in jail – which of course I was – but I just could not stop crying. And so the (deputy U.S.) marshal took me to see a doctor and he diagnosed me as having bipolar disorder," she testified at a disciplinary hearing before the

Grievance Committee of the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court. A decision is expected by the fall.

About Larry Tattoos, an HIV positive heroin abuser from whom she has separated, Fiorenza testified that she married him – nine months after they met – because “he was like a lost soul. I felt maybe I could help Larry.” (At Russo’s trial, she testified that friendly guards allowed them to have sex during visits. No bribes were paid, she said.)

In a 10 page report, the psychiatrist concluded: Fiorenza "clearly suffers from severe mental illnesses" that “clearly make it difficult for her to exercise reasonable judgment” and “that there is more than probable cause to believe that she was incompetent” when she pleaded guilty in 1999.

Fiorenza suffers from “obsessive compulsive disorder” and by age eight “developed a complex system of signs, omens and duties” that continue to the present, including an obsession to “having to perform actions in groups of threes.” For example, she has to enter a room with two others, has to “eat in three-bite groups” and does many other things in “groups of three because they represent the Holy Trinity.”

The shrink noted that Fiorenza began to suffer “mood disorder” at age 12, when she began having "hypersexual thoughts" which evolved into

hypersexual activity in her late teens. While practicing entertainment law, she became “intoxicated with her associations with celebrities,” a condition the psychiatrist believes “contributed to her association with Mafia figures.”

Despite it all, or maybe because of it all, she was able to help Larry Tattoos. He had been convicted of racketeering and murder conspiracy and was facing life when they met. Four years later, he was released as part of her agreement to testify against Russo.

And today, with mood stabilizing and other medications she now takes, Fiorenza, her doctor and Karp, all feel she is a good candidate to flourish as an attorney.

So does James J. Lynch, a Brooklyn psychiatrist who examined her for two hours in March, the day she testified before the Grievance Committee.

“She seems to have the intellectual capacity to perform at a level that a lawyer needs,” Lynch opined, “given her ability to complete college in a short time (two and a half years), complete law school in a short time (two
years), work as a family lawyer for several years. With the medication
working, with treatment still in effect, it would be my goal that she should
be working.”

Feds: Bellomo Washed ILA Cash

Former acting Genovese boss Liborio (Barney) Bellomo was a big loser last week as Brooklyn federal prosecutors plucked him out of nowhere and hit him with money laundering charges going back to 1996.

Bellomo (right) who began serving 10 years for extortion in June 1996, was charged with taking part in a money laundering conspiracy that began six months earlier and continued through August 1997.

The money was embezzled from pension funds of dock workers in the International Longshoremen's Association. Frank Serpico

Bellomo, 44, was added to a pending racketeering indictment against eight others, including the mobster who followed him as acting boss, Frank (Farby) Serpico, (left) capo Alan (Baldie) Longo, and six others.

The eight were carved out of a massive 40-defendant indictment filed two months ago after an undercover operation in which turncoat Genovese associate Michael (Cookie) Durso wore a wire for three years.

Bellomo allegedly washed the stolen union funds with

associate Thomas Cafaro, son of Vincent (Fish) Cafaro, a Genovese soldier who defected in 1986 and testified against many top gangsters, including Gambino boss John Gotti.

Alan Longo In a related matter yesterday, Gotti and Colombo boss Alphonse (Allie) Persico were featured in a long tape recording in which Durso captured Longo explaining high-level dealings he had with Gotti 12 years ago and discussions he expected to have with Persico this year.

After hearing the conversation, and opposing arguments by prosecutor Paul Weinstein and lawyer Joseph Sorrentino, Judge I. Leo Glasser ruled that Longo (left) was a danger to the community and should be held without bail to await trial.

Earlier, Glasser released Cafaro, 42, who is also charged with racketeering and money laundering schemes involving securities frauds and stolen check schemes, on high bail under strict house arrest restrictions.

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	Jerry Capeci P.O. Box 435 Radio City Station New York, NY 10101-0435 Copyright, 2001- All Rights Reserved