Old Gambino soldiers don’t fade away: They keep showing up on FBI videotapes.

More than 15 years after John Gotti strutted up and down Mulberry Street, the feds are still playing FBI videotapes of underlings – many whose mob affiliations had previously been unknown – paying their respects to the swashbuckling Dapper Don at his Little Italy headquarters.

Like old home movies, the silent, black-and-white videos show wiseguys of all shapes and sizes hugging and kissing Gotti during the Dapper Don’s heyday, the years 1988 to 1990. The tapes have spoken volumes about the men’s links to the crime family at numerous racketeering trials in federal courts in New York and on Long Island.

Next week, federal prosecutors Deborah Sue Mayer and Mitra Hormozi plan to go to the videotapes again, this time for the racketeering and loan sharking trial in Central Islip of Gambino soldier Michael “Mikey Gal” Guerrieri, 79, and co-defendant John “Johnny Boy” Ambrosio, 62.

Following Gotti’s stunning 1987 acquittal for racketeering, the strong-willed mob boss began insisting – against the advice of wiseguys, including his brother Gene – that captains and their crew members show up at the Ravenite Social Club at least once a week.

Like scores of other mobsters, Mikey Gal and Johnny Boy knew better than to violate that rule.

Soldier Louis DiBono learned too late that the rule was strictly enforced. As Gotti explained to then-underboss Frank Locascio in a tape-recorded conversation: “Know why Louie’s dying? He’s dying because he refused to come in when I called.”

Other echoes of the more recent past haunt Gotti’s old clan as well. The prosecutors will also play jailhouse tape recordings of the long-imprisoned Gene Gotti discussing Mikey Gal’s loansharking business with other family wiseguys in 1999, along with tapes of both defendants in numerous discussions with a former gambling operation partner who allegedly became a loanshark victim.

Ambrosio’s attorney, Henry Mazurek, said the government’s case consists of “dusty old files” and that his client will be exonerated at trial “because he is completely innocent.” Guerrieri’s lawyer declined to comment.

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Guerrieri is a crotchety, outspoken free spirit who opted to spend a few nights in prison two years ago rather than avoid contacts with his longtime gangster friends as a condition of bail, a deal that had been agreed to by prosecutors and was initially granted by a judge.

“I don’t know no doctors or lawyers,” he protested. “Who am I supposed to hang out with? Send me to jail,” he told Central Islip Judge Joanna Seybert, who obliged when Mikey Gal repeated that he would not abide by her stated bail conditions.

Guerrieri realized the stupidity of his outburst a few days later and has been free on bail ever since.

The aging gangster has a soft spot for Ambrosio and the family of his alleged partner-in-crime – and, on occasion, even for his shakedown victims, according to court papers.

In 1996, while he and Ambrosio were incarcerated for separate crimes, Mikey Gal instructed a gambler during a jailhouse visit to divert his $500 weekly protection money payoffs to “Ambrosio’s family because they needed the money more than Guerrieri did,” prosecutors Mayer and Hormozi wrote.

When Guerrieri was released from prison, he reduced the extortion payment to $300.

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Two other veteran Gambino captains who frequently graced the FBI’s Mulberry Street footage are likely to watch themselves visiting the now-defunct Ravenite on courtroom television monitors if their pending cases ever get to trial.

One, capo Salvatore “Fat Sal” Scala – long identified by the feds as a gunman in the assassinations of Paul Castellano and key aide Thomas Bilotti – was recently charged with extorting $2.5 million in payoffs from a Manhattan strip club between the mid-1990s and 2002.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joon Kim declined to discuss his trial strategy, but Gang Land expects that Mr. Kim, who used Ravenite videos to help convict Peter Gotti of racketeering charges in Manhattan Federal Court earlier this year, will play them once again. Scala, 62, is scheduled for trial next January. He is currently serving a five-year stint for shaking down a Long Island porn dealer for $50, and is due to be released next May.

His lawyer, Bruce Barkett, said it was “very troublesome” that the feds waited until Scala was close to getting out of prison before hitting him with similar charges that predate those for which he had been convicted, and which Barkett believes “would not have added a day to his sentence” if they had been lodged at the same time as the earlier case.

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Some wannabe wiseguys just don’t get it.

In late 1992, John A “Junior” Gotti ran through a well-known routine about becoming a “made man” to Craig DePalma, reminding him to say “no” when he was asked if he knew why he was summoned to a secret gathering of mobsters who would take part in his induction ceremony.

Because the elder Gotti and his consigliere Frank Locascio were both serving life sentences at the time, the initiation rite was conducted by capos James “Jimmy Brown” Failla and Giuseppe Arcuri, according to a variety of sources, including DePalma’s father, longtime mobster Greg DePalma.

Greg DePalma carries the story from there, according to a transcript of a taped conversation made during a two-year undercover FBI investigation that led to indictments earlier this year of 35 mobsters and associates, including three doctors.

“So Jimmy Brown says, ‘You know what you are doing here? Why we sent for you?’ He says, ‘Yeah, I am going to be made.’ You had to see Jimmy Brown and what’s his name, they were laughing. I couldn’t stop laughing. My son, he’s honest you know?”

DePalma, 73, also appears on Ravenite videos, but in his case – he was overheard on hundreds of hours of audiotapes discussing a wide range of mob activities by himself and dozens of others – the old videos will serve as little more than window dressing.

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Nearly three years after John Gotti died in prison – June 10 is the third anniversary of his death – the Dapper Don’s brothers Peter, Gene, and Richard, son Junior, nephew Richard, and former son-in-law Carmine Agnello continue to pay heavily for their deeds.

But daughter Victoria and her three sons enjoy celebrity status, behaving like village idiots on “Growing Up Gotti” and reaping rewards from his notoriety as stars of a real-life mob family that is more dysfunctional and demeaning to Italian-Americans than Tony Soprano’s reel-life version.

Readers can get the full flavor of the so-called reality show in just 60 seconds by viewing a video promo on the A&E Web site, where you can also read Victoria’s tip of the day and buy T-shirts and a diet book by son Frank, a “Hotti Gotti” who didn’t want to be a “Fatty Gotti.”

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