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Mar. 24, 1997 JUNIOR WANTS HIS CIVIL RIGHTS
JOHN A. (Junior) Gotti is really serious that the $350,000 state investigators found in an Ozone Park social club are not proceeds from any rackets but proceeds from his wedding seven years ago. The reputed Gambino acting boss and son of John Gotti, the imprisoned real boss, is so serious that he's thinking about going to court to get it back. "This largely was the residue of the moneys he received at his wedding," said lawyer Richard Rehbock, young Gotti's mouthpiece. "Remember, he had a wedding in 1990 (attended by lots of wiseguys) who brought lots of money. There was in excess of $480,000 given to him as gifts - in cash. And many of the more prominent rats in this city contributed very healthy sums. Law enforcement knows this."
Rehbock said state Organized Crime Task Force investigators also seized watches and rings that belonged to Junior's father and court records and legal notes that are essential for additional planned appeals of his 1992 racketeering and murder conviction. "They have stolen these papers in an effort to deprive him of the ability to continue this effort," said Rehbock in an interview with WNBC-TV in New York. "We are considering very seriously filing a federal civil rights law suit against the attorney general of the state of New York." The money and other items were seized in raids on five locations in a state probe of possible tax violations and other crimes by two Gotti-connected construction companies that have done more than $17 million in work since 1992. Since the state attorney general is not a made guy, a lawsuit would not violate Mafia protocol eloquently stated by Colombo family capo Salvatore Profaci about a year after Gotti's lavish wedding reception at the Helmsley Palace Hotel. "Good fellows don't sue good fellows," Profaci said. "Good fellows kill good fellows."
"Quite frankly, that's probably part of the thing that backs up our statement that he isn't said boss that everybody in the newspapers and media says he is," said Rehbock. Gang Land could not reach Sal Profaci for his learned assessment of the situation.
WHILE Junior Gotti, via his lawyer, was threatening to file a lawsuit, his mother, Victoria, was publicly expressing her grief over the tragic death of her son Frank, who was hit by a car and killed 17 years ago while riding a motorbike. Victoria Gotti, as she has done each year on the anniversary of his death, placed memorial notices in The Daily News to Frank, who was 12 when he died. "Happy Anniversary in Heaven. Words could never describe the feeling of your loss. Your memory is with us every day of our lives," read the notice, placed in the name of her son John and his family. "We love & miss you always," said the notice from her and her husband. "Love Mom and Dad."
THE Dumb Wannabe Wiseguy Award of the week goes to Joseph Gambino Jr. of Howard Beach, Queens.
Well, it did get him some unwanted publicity. The state police, fully aware that a routine gun arrest would never get much attention from the media, reported Gambino's purported relationship in a press release. Thomas Gambino's attorney quickly informed reporters that someone as dumb as Joseph Gambino Jr. could hardly be related to the mobster. Whoops, said the state police, reporting that Gambino had tried to impress the state troopers who busted him but in reality he was merely a "lightweight crime figure." Gang Land seems to recall seeing all this in a movie starring Jim Carrey, "Dumb and Dumber."
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By Jerry Capeci
Among the
turncoat mobsters who attended the bash and reportedly gave $10,000 gifts were Gambino
family underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, Luchese underboss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso
and Colombo consigliere Carmine Sessa.
But when one
considers that Joe Colombo, the Mafia boss who went public and picketed the FBI, was
gunned down at a midtown Manhattan rally, wouldn't filing a lawsuit - playing by the rules
- be a little unusual, let alone dangerous?
Nabbed
for gun possession during a routine traffic stop in Massapequa, L.I., Gambino, 24, told
the cops that he was a relative of imprisoned Gambino crime family capo Thomas Gambino,
(right) as if that information would somehow work in his favor.
