Mob Broke His Heart, Scars Says

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

To hear Mikey Scars tell it, it was a mob version of a love story gone bad – a twisted “Romeo and Juliet” meets “Goodfellas.”


It wasn’t a woman who jilted Mikey Scars: It was the Gambino crime family, which he had honored, loved, and obeyed for more than three decades.


“They broke my heart,” said Mikey Scars, who would rather be called Michael DiLeonardo. “Why did they have to do that?”


DiLeonardo, a 49-year-old former captain in the Gambino family, told his story of love and double-betrayal in federal court in Manhattan yesterday during the murder conspiracy trial of family boss Peter Gotti and his sidekick, Thomas “Huck” Carbonaro, who are facing life in prison.


Mikey Scars, whose grandfather was a member of the forerunner to the Gambino family 100 years ago, detailed his more than 30-year run with the Gambinos, identifying some 80 mobsters and associates.


In June 2002, he was indicted with three others on charges that included murder, racketeering, and loan-sharking. He wasn’t too worried, even though he faced life, because he knew he would still get his hefty cut of money from an extortion racket, which would take care of his girlfriend, Madeline, and their then 2-year-old son, Anthony.


Over the years, he said, he had kicked up to his bosses some $250,000 in tribute from various scams, but now he was having trouble collecting his rightful share. He sent word to Huck through a visitor that he and his co-defendant, Eddie Garofalo, wanted their cut.


After two months, Huck finally replied via messenger that there would be no money for Mikey and Eddie. “The message was that we had nothing coming and that was the way it was,” DiLeonardo said.


In what had to be one of the worst business decisions in mob history, Gotti, underboss Arnold Squitieri, and other members of the family’s “administration” had decided to pocket the cash on the grounds that DiLeonardo and Garofalo had been skimming.


“It wasn’t true [but] I was broke and put on the shelf,” Mikey Scars said – mob talk for being demoted and taken off active duty. “I was completely disenfranchised.”


“How did that make you feel?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McGovern asked.


“It broke my heart,” DiLeonardo replied. “They could have taken all the money. I would have just been mad. …They didn’t have to break me down.”


Mikey Scars said he was angry and confused. He confided to a fellow inmate what had happened. “I told him, ‘These guys broke me. I never did anything to them. Why are they doing this to me?'”


He said the inmate replied: ‘”You know why they are doing this you? It’s because they know you’re never going to be a rat.'”


A short time later, he contacted the feds and became a rat. In November 2002, he and the feds reached a working agreement, and Judge Richard Casey, who is presiding at the Gotti trial, allowed Mikey Scars to be released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center for two weeks so he could tape conversations with fellow mobsters. DiLeonardo’s mother was dying, so he ostensibly was being allowed out to see her and take care of her affairs.


While he was out, he tried to convince his son, Michael, then 16, to come with him, Madeline, and their son into the Witness Protection Program. His son refused.


“I was upset … I was real nerved up over this and I wasn’t sleeping,” Mikey Scars said. He said he went to a doctor, who prescribed a sleeping pill, Ambien, and an antidepressant, Zoloft. It didn’t help much, and one night he said he awoke at 3 or 4 a.m.


“I started thinking about history; what I knew about history and about dying with honor,” Mikey Scars told the hushed courtroom.


He thought about the Japanese warriors who committed hari-kiri, and the Romans who would drink wine, step into a hot bath, and slit their wrists. He walked downstairs to get the medicine bottles.


“I wanted to die with honor,” he said, tears starting to run down his cheeks. He said he went back upstairs, opened the door to the room where his girlfriend and their son were sleeping, mouthed the word goodbye, and “then went to sleep.”


He awoke in a hospital, angry that his girlfriend had found him and called for help. A few days later, he was returned to jail and placed in total segregation.


It took nearly four months, but he then “reached out” for prosecutors and agreed to continue cooperating in hopes of getting out of jail – and getting revenge against the mobsters who broke his heart.


The New York Sun

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