As Michael “Mikey Cigars” Coppola sweats out DNA tests that could mean an indictment for a 1977 mob hit, the feds have ratcheted up the pressure on him, his family, and his associates as they seek to tie him to a 2005 mob rubout, Gang Land has learned.

Federal prosecutors have charged a longtime Genovese associate with providing the hideaway Mikey Cigars allegedly used to evade the law for 11 years — a condo on Manhattan’s Upper West Side — in a new indictment that also raised the stakes for Coppola, his wife, and their son.

According to the expanded indictment, Philip “the Horse” Albanese was part of three separate criminal conspiracies that began with his January 28, 2000, purchase of an apartment at 210 W. 74th St. “in which Coppola did, in fact, reside.” The plots ended with the fugitive capo’s arrest near the apartment on March 9 of this year.

The Horse seemed to get a wonderful deal on the 11th-floor apartment. He bought it for $100,000 from a couple who paid $147,500 for it in 1987, according to transfer taxes paid on the two sales listed in real estate records obtained by Gang Land.

“It was a steal,” one real estate broker said with a laugh.

Albanese, who sources say has “close ties” to an imprisoned former acting Genovese boss, Lawrence “Little Larry” Dentico, also obstructed justice when he told FBI agents he had no contact with Mikey Cigars in recent years, the indictment charges. Albanese was released on $290,000 bond secured by the deed to his Madison, N.J., home.

The indictment also charges the Horse, Mikey Cigars, his wife, Linda, and their son, Louis “Junior” Rizzo Jr., who does not use the Coppola name, with conspiring to harbor a fugitive, to aid a federal offender, and to commit misprision of a felony. That rarely

used statute — the first time Gang Land mentioned it in 19 years was in a May 3 column about a plea offer turned down by a Genovese capo, Liborio “Barney” Bellomo — makes it a crime to not report a crime.

Like the late Lawrence Ricci — a family soldier killed in 2005 while he was on trial for labor racketeering — Dentico, 83, Coppola, 61, and Albanese, 63, are New Jersey-based gangsters allegedly aligned with Genovese capo Tino Fiumara. Fiumara, 66, said to be a powerful racketeer with a lot of sway on the New Jersey docks, recently relocated to Long Island from the Garden State.

On March 6, three days before his arrest, Coppola learned from an associate named Eddie Aulisi that Albanese had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn that was looking into Ricci’s murder, according to a transcript of a tape-recorded conversation obtained by Gang Land. Ricci’s body had been found in the trunk of a car in Union, N.J., in November 2005, about six weeks after he disappeared.

“The Horse got served,” Aulisi said, explaining in a coded discussion that the subpoena “wasn’t unexpected” but had arrived on a Sunday when his lawyer was away, making it necessary for Albanese to learn the particulars of the subpoena from an associate.

“He’s gotta go in front of the, ahhh, you know, the crew there … where they’re gonna give him immunity,” Aulisi, a son of a Newark-based dock-worker’s union president, said. Aulisi also kept Coppola up to speed on his waterfront rackets while he was on the lam, according to the transcript.

It’s likely that Aulisi was correct about the grand jury’s intention to grant immunity to the Horse, and that Coppola’s arrest altered those plans. Sources say Aulisi and others are targets of a continuing grand jury probe.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, two assistant U.S. attorneys, John Buretta and Taryn Merkl — who have told the trial judge they expect to lodge racketeering charges against Coppola and Mr. Rizzo — state that a court-ordered wiretap picked up the father and son discussing the murder weapon in the Ricci slaying.

The prosecutors, as well as lawyers for Albanese, Michael Coppola, and Linda Coppola, did not return calls, or declined to comment.

Mr. Rizzo’s attorney, Thomas Ashley, said he hoped to convince the Second Circuit Court of Appeals at oral arguments, set for next week, that his 41-year-old client, who is not charged with any violence and has no prior convictions, should be granted bail as he awaits trial.

Meanwhile, there is a small ray of hope for Coppola. New Jersey prosecutors have yet to file results of a comparison between DNA in saliva taken from Coppola 12 weeks ago and DNA samples from hair retrieved at a 1977 murder scene, fueling speculation that they may be inconclusive and derail the state’s efforts to prosecute him for the murder of John “Johnny Cokes” Lardiere.

Reached by Gang Land, New Jersey’s deputy attorney general, Mark Eliades, declined to say whether the testing was being done by the FBI, which did the DNA analysis of the crime scene hairs in 1996 after Coppola became a suspect, or at the state police lab, as a prosecutor told the Star-Ledger in April.

Mr. Eliades insisted, however, that prosecutors had not yet received the test results, stating: “We were told we should have them shortly. The minute we do, we will notify the court.”

YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST

The indictment of Philip Albanese was “inevitable,” according to the tape-recorded wisdom of wiseguy Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato heard this week at the re-trial of former acting Bonanno boss Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. The Horse’s indictment was assumed to be destined by his mention in a Gang Land column in May, according to an insight gleaned from a November 20, 2004, jailhouse phone call between Bruno and his wife, Cathy Burke, the daughter of legendary Queens gangster James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke. That’s what did Vinny Gorgeous in, Bruno opined during his analysis of Basciano’s arrest by the feds the previous day.

“This was inevitable,” Indelicato said. “Something’s gotta come out of these things when they write about you. Especially when Jerry Capeci writes about you. You know you’re dead after that.”

Gang Land pleads guilty to having written about the Horse and Vinny Gorgeous in the weeks before they were indicted, but is innocent of any wrongdoing where Bruno is concerned. Each time he’s been nailed by the feds since 2001 — twice for parole violations and once for murder — it came with no prior mention in Gang Land.

A GUIDELINE CAN BE ONLY A GUIDE

Mob scion Anthony Colombo, who was acquitted of racketeering in February, last week copped a plea bargain to settle extortion charges left hanging when jurors were unable to reach a verdict at his trial. The 62-year-old mobster, who has been confined to his home since his indictment three years ago, faces 12 to 18 months in prison, according to sentencing guidelines. But he could get less.

Shortly before his trial, the only other wiseguy among 19 defendants in the case, Gerard “Green Eyes” Clemenza, who had also been confined to his home since 2004, copped a plea deal on loan-sharking charges that called for 18 to 24 months, according to the guidelines.

At sentencing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, to the joy of lawyer Nicholas Kaizer and the consternation of Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Halperin, Judge Naomi Buchwald gave Clemenza eight months, in part, she said, because the government had overstated the allegations of violence against Clemenza that caused him to be confined to his home as he awaited trial.

Meanwhile, Chris Colombo, the outspoken youngest son of slain Mafia boss Joe Colombo, who was convicted of the gambling counts he admitted during his trial but got a hung jury on racketeering and extortion charges, told Gang Land he plans to press the issue at a November retrial. He faces anywhere from 12 to 30 months for the gambling raps.

Colombo, who gave the feds fits when he turned his not-so-strict house arrest conditions into a nice payday playing himself in an hour-long HBO spoof called — what else? — “House Arrest,” said simply: “They made me an offer I could refuse.”

This column and other news of organized crime will be available today at ganglandnews.com.