The last time Gang Land saw Gambino capo Nicholas (Little Nick) Corozzo, (right) the onetime heir apparent to John Gotti’s crime family was grinning from ear to ear as a federal judge gave him eight years in prison for a potpourri of racketeering charges.

No, the tough Brooklyn gangster from Canarsie hadn’t lost his faculties. The prison term, his first in a lifetime of crime, was a dozen years less than he could have gotten, and he knew the crime family would be his for the taking when he got out in June of this year.

But the feds have developed evidence tying Little Nick to the ambush shooting of radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa – and two murders – and are looking to nail the 63-year-old gangster for those crimes as part of a new racketeering case, Gang Land has learned.

This seems sure to squash an end game that was set in motion in 1996. That's when the jailed-for-life Dapper Don is said to have heeded suggestions from the Mafia Commission to step down when the appeals of his conviction were finalized, and Corozzo was primed to become boss the following year.

In April 1996, FBI agents heard Little Nick confirm reports that agents had learned from informants as they monitored a conversation he was having in a Ft. Lauderdale hotel with a cooperating witness. Corozzo related how he went from a despised soldier who thought he might be killed following Gotti’s 1985

takeover to being selected by “family capos” to take over from Gotti in 1997. He explained that at first he “did not want the job” but agreed to take it after Peter Gotti pledged his support and Gene Gotti contacted brother John and told him: “What are you waiting for. He deserves it. Give it to him.”

Those plans were scotched in December 1996, however, when Corozzo was hit with racketeering charges, first in Florida, (right) and a month later in New York.

Corozzo’s latest troubles stem from his status as a close advisor to then-acting boss John A. (Junior) Gotti in June 1992, sources said.  

“His father didn’t like (Corozzo) but Junior respected him and often sought his counsel,” said one law enforcement source, pointing out that Little Nick was elevated to capo only after the elder Gotti was convicted in April 1992.

As Gang Land reported last year, the Junior Don allegedly ordered the shooting “to teach (Sliwa) a lesson” for his repeated portrayals of the late Dapper Don as a low-life killer who deserved life in prison for his conviction for racketeering and five murders.

Sources say Corozzo furnished an up-and-coming crew member to serve as

triggerman in the shooting, which was designed not to kill the outspoken Guardian Angels founder but to emasculate him.

Sliwa, who blamed the Gottis for the shooting shortly after the early morning assault, was critically injured with bullet wounds in his abdomen and both legs after he hailed a cab in the East Village and a masked gunman who had been crouched down on the front passenger seat stood up and began firing down at him.

Sources said Corozzo crew member Michael (Mikey Y) Yannotti was the masked gunman in the Sliwa assault and that the wheelman who drove a stolen taxi cab in the plot was Joseph D’Angelo, a one time protégé of Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano.

Yannotti, 31, and D’Angelo, 35, became “made men” after the shooting, according to turncoat capo Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo, (left) who described their roles for the feds and fingered Little Nick and Junior for supervisory roles in the assault, sources said.

Four years after the Sliwa shooting, Yannotti allegedly blew away two low level Gambino associates in a dispute over drugs on Jan. 27, 1996 as the men, Robert Arena and Thomas Maranga, both 26, were driving on a quite residential street in the Mill Basin section of Brooklyn, sources said.

“It was a sneak job that Corozzo approved,” said one law enforcement source.

The drug dealers didn’t know what hit them. Maranga, who played a bodyguard in “Bullet,” an action flick released after the double homicide starring Mickey Rourke and the late Tupac Shakur, and Arena, who had several

prior arrests and a .357 magnum in his belt, were surprised by a hail of bullets from an automatic weapon as the car neared the corner of East 66 Street and Avenue T, according to police reports.

Police found a pager belonging to Yannotti near the crime scene and have long suspected him in the slayings but the murders are still officially listed as unsolved.

“Many years of investigations in the state and federal systems have failed to produce any evidence linking Mr. Yannotti to those shootings,” his attorney Joseph Corozzo told Gang Land. “They seem to be old allegations being regurgitated in an attempt to besmirch Mr. Yannotti in an unrelated investigation (into the Sliwa shooting).”

Corozzo, who also represents Nicholas Corozzo, his uncle, said he was “certain that Nicholas Corozzo had nothing to do with those shootings. Both of those young men were drug dealers and he has never had any connection with drug dealers.”

Regarding the Sliwa shooting, Corozzo said: “We give no credence to the government’s theories about (the relationships between Junior Gotti and Nicholas Corozzo) and we believe they will never fly in a court of law.”

Lawyers for Junior Gotti, Richard Rehbock and Jeffrey Lichtman, have previously denied any involvement by him in the Sliwa shooting.

Neither FBI spokesman Jim Margolin, nor Manhattan federal prosecutors Joon Kim, Michael McGovern and John Hillebrecht, who are conducting a grand jury investigation into the Sliwa assault and the Mill Basin murders, would comment about the case.