the days that Fat Tony would hold court at his East Harlem headquarters, the Palma Boys Social Club, which the FBI successfully bugged. 

The FBI, and prosecutors under Giuliani, for that matter, would have avoided some embarrassment down the line if they had paid closer attention to what Scarpa was telling them about the secretive and powerful Genovese leadership. 

On January 17, 1984, nearly three years before Salerno was convicted in the Commission case as the family boss – erroneously, the feds would later concede – Scarpa reported “that Vincent ‘Chin’ Gigante has been definitely established as the boss of the Genovese family.” 

In addition to the historic Commission case, Scarpa provided crucial details that enabled federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and Manhattan to obtain bugs and wiretaps that led to separate prosecutions of leaders of the Colombo, Luchese and Genovese crime families.

In late 1983, six years before the feds would indict Gigante and leaders of three other families in the “Windows Case,” Scarpa reported that mob associate Peter Savino, who would ultimately cooperate and bring Gigante down at trial, was “involved in a bid-rigging scheme” involving the installation of storm windows in city housing units. 

His knowledge also extended beyond the Five Families. He furnished information about the 1980 murder of Philadelphia boss Angelo Bruno that was later confirmed by other sources. He also

gave dirt about Russell Bufalino, the boss of the Pittston family in Northeast PA, and New England capo Nicholas Bianco. Both were later convicted by the feds in New York. 

And Scarpa, whose informant work began in the early 1960s, was an equal opportunity snitch. He gave up intelligence not only against rival wiseguys and leaders of his own family. He also fingered lesser members of his own crew, according to the reports.

In addition to Scopo – who was “not well liked” by other wiseguys – Scarpa gave the FBI details about the social clubs and other haunts frequented by many Colombo gangsters, including boss Carmine (Junior) Persico and legendary capo John (Sonny) Franzese.

He even drew a sketch of a social club that was the province of capo Dominick (Donnie Shacks) Montemarano and mobster John (Jackie) DeRoss in the early 1980s.  

The same club would be the scene years later of a tense confrontation between Scarpa and mob rival William (Wild Bill) Cutolo that ended without bloodshed, ironically, in a dispute about a Scarpa crew member whom he had once fingered to DeVecchio.  

In 1991, though, Cutolo, who would be the victim of a mob rubout eight years later, chose Scarpa as the target for the first shots fired in the bloody mob war that ended with 12 dead and many wounded in 1993, a year before Scarpa died in prison from AIDS.

Meanwhile, Scarpa’s longtime lover Linda Schiro, whose testimony at DeVecchio's trial contradicted tape recorded accounts of four murders she gave to reporter Tom Robbins and me 10 years ago, denies giving Cutolo's mob rank to an FBI agent 12 years ago.

Schiro chimed in with rambling, angry words – via email and voice mail – about a mention in last week’s column that she told the FBI in 1995 that “word on the street” was that Wild Bill was the family’s acting underboss, four years before he was whacked, allegedly by acting boss Alphonse (Allie) Persico.  

“I have no knowledge about that at all,” she said, disputing that she told then-FBI agent George Gabriel the statement about Cutolo that he attributed to her in a summary of an interview the agent had with her in February 1995.

Over objections from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, a Federal Judge made today a Happy Thanksgiving for wiseguy John Gambino (left).

At a brief proceeding Tuesday, Judge Peter Leisure ended the mob capo's three year term of supervised release even though the 67-year-old cousin of the late family patriarch, Carlo Gambino, had served only 13 months of it since getting out of prison last year.  

Gambino underwent heart surgery behind bars and suffers from a myriad of physical ailments. But the actions of Manhattan Judge Peter Leisure, who gave the mobster 15-years and a $250,000 fine for drug dealing in 1994, were based on “fundamental fairness” and doing the right thing, not sympathy.

In May of 2005, six months before his scheduled release date, Gambino had paid his fine, and was set to be placed in a halfway house, when things suddenly went wrong. He was held 17 additional months on a deportation warrant until October of 2006, when it was dismissed as improper. 

The least the feds should do, argued Gambino’s lawyer Charles Carnesi, was give his client credit for the 17 additional months he

spent behind bars, and terminate his strict supervised release next April. 

The right thing to do, the lawyer said, was to end his restrictions now. He argued that the extra 17 months more than made up for the five month slide he would get if the feds ended his supervision, which is similar to what defendants face while on bail and what ex-cons endure while on probation or parole. 

Nothing doing, countered Assistant U.S. attorney Arlo Devlin-Brown, citing several technical reasons Leisure could use to deny all relief. 

When the judge stated that “fundamental fairness” seemed to be on Gambino’s side, however, the prosecutor quickly softened his position, and found another technical reason the judge could use to give Gambino partial relief, but not all that he wanted.