Leonard DiMaria

Gambino capo Leonard DiMaria, a tough Brooklyn gangster, has served as the  right-hand-man-in-crime for Gambino capo Nicholas (Little Nick) Corozzo for three decades. A codefendant along with Little Nick in the 1987 racketeering case that catapulted Gotti to celebrity status and the cover of Time Magazine, DiMaria provided much comic relief during the often contentious courtroom battles between Gotti's ouspoken lawyer Bruce Cutler and lead prosecutor Diane Giacalone during the contentious seven-month trial. Acquitted along with Little Nick, Gotti and four others, DiMaria was charged with racketeering in a Florida case with Corozzo in December, 1996, and released on bail. A month later, however, he was hit with another racketeering charge, this one in New York, based in part on a three year sting operation in which an FBI agent posed as a fence, whom Lenny quickly befriended.

After six weeks of house arrest, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn convinced a judge that DiMaria was a danger to the community and he joined Corozzo in a federal lockup in Brooklyn to await trials in New York and Florida. While housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center, he and Little Nick got snared in another sting, this one run by the Bureau of Prisons, that snared both wiseguys as well as corrupt correction officers.

He ultimately pleaded guilty in both New York and Florida and was sentenced to a total of nine years in prison - one more than Little Nick. Released in March of 2005, he will be under strict supervised release restrictions until 2008, and hasn't yet begun traveling in the same circles as Little Nick, whose supervised release ended in June of 2007.

	Counterfeit Justice
	Did you hear the one about the Wiseguy who . .