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Government: Junior Gotti Still Involved In Mob

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May 22, 2006 3:33 pm US/Eastern

Government: Junior Gotti Still Involved In Mob

NEW YORK (AP) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: John A. "Junior" Gotti (File).
AP

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A new federal indictment charged John "Junior" Gotti on Monday with continuing to commit mob-related crimes even as he claims that he quit organized crime years ago.

The new accusations come as prosecutors prepare for the July 5 start of Gotti's third trial on racketeering charges. Juries deadlocked at two previous trials in the last year.

The new indictment alleges that Gotti tampered with a witness last year and used money earned illegally through the Gambino crime family to create and operate holding companies used to buy real estate and collect rents.

Gotti's lawyer, Charles Carnesi, did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment Monday.

Since the end of Gotti's last trial, prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to Gotti's relatives and suspected Gambino crime family members and associates.

The indictment said the younger Gotti used money made through racketeering to help establish and operate a brokerage company that received rent proceeds from businesses.

It said Gotti participated in a conspiracy last summer to persuade a witness to testify falsely at a trial involving members of another organized crime family.

According to the indictment, members of the Gambino crime family also recommended defense lawyers to other members and associates to ensure they would remain loyal to the family and not cooperate with the government if they were arrested.

The new indictment's allegation that Gotti continues to work with the mob challenges the defense legal theory at his last trial that Gotti had quit the mob by 1999, when he pleaded guilty in another racketeering case.

Gotti's lawyers said his decision to quit organized crime triggered a five-year statute of limitations that had expired by the time prosecutors brought charges in a 2004 indictment.

The centerpiece of the prosecution's case remains -- an allegation that Gotti ordered two attacks on radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa in 1992 after the Guardian Angels founder criticized Gotti's father on his radio show. John Gotti died in prison in 2002, a decade after he was convicted of racketeering and murder, and sentenced to life in prison.

The government alleges that Gotti ordered a baseball bat beating of Sliwa and a kidnapping several weeks later that ended with Sliwa being shot three times before he dived out of a moving taxi. Sliwa recovered; Gotti has denied ordering attacks on Sliwa.