The Bonanno crime family was so excited to have one of its own soldiers running former Mayor Giuliani’s favorite restaurant that it ordered him to steer clear of all criminal activity. 

“Perry (Criscitelli) is going to stay in the background. I told him you ain’t going to be used for nothing (violence.) ‘You’re an earner. You know there’s shooters and earners, you’re an earner. Get on your feet, do what you gotta do.’” 

The family’s current acting boss, Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano, uttered those words last December 21 during a high-level meeting with two colleagues who were then running the family with Basciano for imprisoned boss Joseph Massino. 

Criscitelli, 54, was inducted into the crime family in 2001. He must have seemed like a perfect Manchurian Candidate to the delighted Bonannos.

In 1996, Criscitelli, owner of Da Nico Ristorante on Mulberry Street, was selected as president of the San Gennaro feast, after Giuliani had proclaimed that the mob’s influence had been eradicated from the annual street festival in Little Italy.

Despite Giuliani’s pronouncements, however, FBI documents obtained by Gang Land indicate that at least three crime 

families – the Gambino, Genovese and Bonanno clans – were still sharing spoils generated by the popular street fair as late as last year. 

During an October 26, 2003 meeting, Basciano’s then-cohorts on the family’s three man ruling panel, capos Anthony (Tony Green) Urso and Joseph (Joe Saunders) Cammarano, (right) told turncoat capo James (Big Louie) Tartaglione about a dispute that had taken place over the festival a month earlier, according to an FBI summary of the tape-recorded session.

FBI agents Gregory Massa and Joseph Bonavolonta wrote that Urso reported that he had worked out a favorable resolution to the disagreement that would bring more money to the Bonannos at a sitdown with representatives of the Gambino and Genovese families. “Perry is going to take care of it,” Urso said.

An independent monitor, assigned by Giuliani in 1996 to investigate the members of Figli di San Gennaro Inc., the nonprofit agency that ran the Little Italy festival, had determined Criscitelli was qualified to serve as its president.

Towards the end of his second term as Mayor, Giuliani and then-girlfriend Judith Nathan were regular diners at Da Nico. During the same period, Bonanno mobsters assembled there as many as four times a week, according to FBI testimony at Massino’s trial. 

As late as this past summer, Giuliani was recommending DaNico as his favorite

restaurant to delegates to the Republican Convention. (At right, Giuliani and members of his staff arrive at Da Nico for lunch in September 1999 in photo by Richard B. Levine.) 

That recommendation ended in July, when reporter Kati Cornell Smith disclosed that Criscitelli’s status as a “made guy” had surfaced at Massino’s trial. Criscitelli quickly resigned. An embarrassed Mayor Bloomberg scurried to revamp the board that oversees the feast, appointing former federal prosecutor Nelson Boxer as a monitor. 

“The allegations of mob connections at the restaurant surfaced years after Mayor Giuliani left office,” said Giuliani spokeswoman Sunny Mindel. “As for Mr. Criscitelli, he was approved for his position by an independent monitor who was appointed by the city in 1996.”

Last December, in addition to praising Criscitelli’s moneymaking abilities, Basciano lauded his own business acumen as he expounded on the need for greater secrecy, even among family members.

“You know, the complexion of this life has changed. If we’re going to go about this, and we’re going to talk freely about everything that’s done, we’re not going to survive. We have to have legitimate rackets,” said Basciano. He has financial interests in the construction industry, real estate, restaurants and beauty salons, including the Hello Gorgeous on East Tremont Avenue in The Bronx.

“I got a shot in three or four years to become a multi-millionaire, legitimate," he said. "I’m working harder here. Anything I got to do, personally, I don’t feel I have to tell anybody. I do it myself. It falls on me”  – and a small select circle of his wiseguy “friends.”

Those friends, the cagy, 44-year-old gangster stressed, were hoodlums first.

“You can teach a hoodlum how to be a businessman,” said Basciano, "but you

can’t take a businessman and teach him how to be a hoodlum. You can’t do it. If you’re a hoodlum, Louie, I can show you the right direction, we can make money. But if you’re a businessman, I can’t show you how to be a hoodlum.”

A key crew member he was training, Vinny Gorgeous stated, was Dominick Cicale, 37, a recently inducted soldier whom Basciano had elevated to acting capo following his own ascension to the crime family’s Administration.

“He did 11 years in the can (for drug dealing.) He’s a hoodlum. It’s a lot easier to train a hoodlum. He’s with me 24/7. He knows everybody in my regime. He knows how I talk, how I act. He knows I don’t bend from anybody.” 

Basciano, who was acquitted in 1994 of supplying heroin to a smuggling ring that reaped $10 million a year from 1985 to 1991, is also respected by mob peers as a tough guy.

In the Oct. 26 meeting, Urso (right) cocked his hand like a gun and said that Basciano “had a lot of these guys and if something needs to be done, he will do it himself,” according to agents Massa and Bonavolonta.

Two months later, the cocksure Basciano nearly made a tape-recorded admission of a murder to the wired-up

Tartaglione (left) after the turncoat showed him FBI and police reports that tied Basciano to a mob slaying.

“They’re going to be tough to pinch me on this,” he said. “You want to know why? They got no forensics. They have nothing. Forget about the fact that I didn’t do it anyway. Okay? I had nothing to do with it. But if I did, there’s no guns, there’s no eyewitnesses, there’s no rats. How are they going to pinch me on that?”

A month after the hour-and-40-minute session, Urso, Cammarano and 25 others were hit with a litany of racketeering charges, based primarily on the testimony of a slew of family turncoats, including underboss Salvatore (Good Looking Sal) Vitale.

Basciano escaped prosecution, thought, and seemed to have put his finger on two important reasons in his discussions with his unlucky cohorts.

After he was “made,” Basciano said, he only saw Vitale socially: “I never had an illegal conversation with him.” In addition, he said, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn doesn’t “want any acquittals. I guess no office does but this office (won’t seek an indictment) if there’s no corroboration on what one person has to say.” 

Sources say prosecutors Nicolas Bourtin, Taryn Merkl and Greg Andres are currently working to gather the corroboration they need to make a racketeering case against both Basciano and Criscitelli.