Capo John “Jackie Nose” D’Amico, a longtime aide-de-camp of late Mafia boss John Gotti, was recently anointed by the Gambinos to stabilize the floundering family and lead it out of a 15-year tailspin, Gang Land has learned.

For the last few months, law enforcement sources say, D’Amico, who prior to Gotti’s rise to the top was a bookmaker and lowly soldier before, has been quietly, but firmly, functioning as the family’s “street boss.”

“He’s meeting people and taking care of business,” a source said.

A staunch supporter of the Dapper Don during his heyday, Jackie Nose was a close ally of Gotti’s replacement boss – brother Peter Gotti – and an adviser to John A. “Junior” Gotti during his tenure as acting boss, according to court records.

“He was a member of the Gambino family Administration for years, from 1993 up until his [1999] arrest,” another source said. D’Amico pleaded to a federal rap in 1999 that began as a racketeering charge but ended in an illegal gambling plea deal that cost him a relatively short 17 months in prison.

Jackie Nose was Gotti’s constant companion during his glory days. He was regularly spotted accompanying Gotti on his notorious “walk-talks” around his Little Italy headquarters, events that were memorialized on numerous FBI videotapes that were played at the 1992 trial that ended Gotti’s reign.

“A John only comes along once in a life,” D’Amico told reporters during that trial, praising Gotti as an “original.” Gotti “had two things going for him,” the outspoken D’Amico said at the time. “He was loved and feared. He’s the only person I’ve seen with both. You call it charisma. He has that. But love and fear was what counted. People don’t cross a man they love and fear.”

Well-liked by his peers, sources say D’Amico has the experience needed to deal with internal problems, as well as disputes with other families over turf and bigger, more volatile issues – like the shooting last week of a Gambino capo, for example.

Another important attribute, sources say, is that the 69-year-old gangster is no longer constrained by strict federal supervision, having completed a threeyear stretch last year following his September 2001 release from prison.

Assisting D’Amico in his new role, sources say, is Domenico “Italian Dom” Cefalu, 59, a member of the family’s Sicilian faction who now serves as the family’s acting underboss.

The new leaders owe their rise to an FBI onslaught that has former acting boss Arnold “Zeke” Squitieri awaiting trial for racketeering in Manhattan and former underboss Anthony “the Genius” Megale facing sentencing for a racketeering rap in Connecticut. Consigliere Joseph “JoJo” Corozzo rounds out the Administration, sources said.

Italian Dom was “made” in November 1990, the last induction ceremony conducted by Gotti. He was arrested the following month on racketeering and murder charges. He was convicted and died in a federal prison hospital in 2002.

Convicted of heroin trafficking in 1982, Cefalu proved his mob mettle during the years after Gotti’s conviction by serving 51 months in prison for two contempt of court convictions that stymied the feds’ efforts to convict a family capo of murder charges.

As he was about to be released from prison after doing 18 months for civil contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury, the feds hit him with criminal contempt for not testifying at the trial of Pasquale “Patsy” Conte, which cost Cefalu 33 additional months behind bars.

As for the shooting of capo Carmine Sciandra at one of his three Top Tomato markets last week, Gang Land expects D’Amico & Co. to render a split verdict regarding blame, agreeing pretty much with the decision that has been made by Staten Island authorities.

Like the law enforcers, wiseguys in the know say the fault begins and ends with ex-cop Patrick Balsamo. He allegedly was the out-of-control, bat-wielding gunman hell bent on revenge who shot Sciandra. While Balsamo, who was released on $25,000 bail, faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted of first-degree assault, his punishment would likely be decidedly more severe if the Gambinos have their way with him.

They have absolved Bonanno soldier Ronald “Ronnie Mozzarella” Carlucci, 62, and associate Michael Virga, 52, of any fault, asserting that Carlucci drove to Top Tomato intent on stopping Balsamo, 49, but got there too late, and fled after the shooting.

“Ronnie Mozzarella is probably the least violent mobster in the five families,” a law enforcement official said about the reputed mobster, whose nickname derives from his substantial mozzarella business.

Carlucci’s cheese business is so successful, and he earns so much money – some of which he dutifully funnels up to his mob superiors – that in 1998 he was transferred from one Bonanno crew to another whose capo “did not have enough earners in his crew,” according to an FBI report obtained by Gang Land.

Even though his business, identified by law enforcement officials as Lioni Latticini, of Union, N.J., is legitimately operated, Carlucci is obliged to pay tribute from those earnings to his crime family.

As acting Bonanno boss Vincent “Vin ny Gorgeous” Basciano told turncoat boss Joseph Massino early this year in a tape-recorded discussion obtained by Gang Land: “How did Ronnie Mozzarella get there? What, he was born and became a mozzarella guy? He got there because of us.”

Lioni, which began as a small mozzarella store in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, is now the largest importer of mozzarella Di Bufala from Naples. The firm produces and distributes mozzarella and other cheese products in 35 cities from New York to California each year, according to its Web site.

Carlucci, who lives near the company’s wholesale outlet in Bensonhurst, Virga, who is listed on Lioni’s Web site as director of sales, and their lawyer, Raphael Scotto, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

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Vinny Gorgeous and Patrick “Patty from the Bronx” DeFilippo hate each other with the same passion that ex-cop Balsamo allegedly displayed at Top Tomato last week. But the two Bronx gangsters will just have to suck it up and proceed to trial together on racketeering charges.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis rejected Patty from the Bronx’s request to allow his lawyer to play taped discussions between Massino and Basciano as part of his defense, and refused to sever his case from Basciano’s.

DeFilippo claimed the tapes were essential for his defense, but the judge disagreed, deciding that whatever information from the tapes might be relevant could be introduced into evidence in other ways.

In a sop for DeFilippo, Judge Garaufis ruled that some redacted portions of Massino’s words might be admissible on cross-examination, but the judge defined the circumstances so narrowly that it is highly unlikely that jurors will hear any of Massino’s words.

The tapes include portions in which Basciano is heard discussing a plot to kill Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Andres, who has been the lead prosecutor in the case from the outset but who will not prosecute a follow-up trial in which Vinny Gorgeous is charged with conspiring to kill Mr. Andres.

Being the alleged target of a murder plot by his defendant would likely stimulate Mr. Andres to try a little harder against Vinny Gorgeous, but his continued role in the current case has not been challenged by Basciano’s defense lawyer, Barry Levin.

“I have no intention, or desire, to recuse Mr. Andres,” Mr. Levin said. “I look forward to trying the case against him, so long as the charges that are pending in Basciano II will not be part of this trial.”

This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at www.ganglandnews.com.