Using information provided by turncoat Mafia boss Joseph Massino, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn is investigating allegations that a Bronx lawyer and a private investigator helped Massino run the Bonanno family from prison, Gang Land has learned.

The attorney and the investigator served as couriers and relayed information between Massino and his acting boss, Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano, both before and after the jailed Massino began cooperating with the feds last September, sources said.

The lawyer under scrutiny, sources said, is Thomas Lee, who has represented Massino and until recently was the attorney of record for a Massino co-defendant in a pending case in which the turncoat mob boss is technically still facing the death penalty.

Mr. Lee and his lawyer declined to comment.

The private investigator, sources say, is Victor Juliano, a retired NYPD detective who has worked for the late Gambino boss John Gotti and his son Junior. In recent years, sources say, Mr. Juliano became very close to Massino and, until his defection became known, visited him at the Metropolitan Detention Center every Sunday.

Mr. Juliano declined to comment about the ongoing grand jury probe, as did Brooklyn federal prosecutors Thomas Seigel and Bridget Rohde.

Massino reported his use of the lawyer and private eye to the feds and later obtained tape-recorded evidence to buttress his remarks, the sources said.

He also taped conversations to convince the feds of another explosive allegation – that Vinny Gorgeous plotted to kill Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Andres. Massino’s taping of Basciano discussing plans to whack Mr. Andres was disclosed five weeks ago in an indictment charging Basciano and capo Dominick Cicale with the December 1 execution-murder of mob associate Randolph Pizzolo.

The same grand jury investigating the alleged murder plot is also looking to determine whether Messrs. Lee and Juliano carried messages between Basciano and Massino that aided and abetted either wiseguy in a racketeering conspiracy, sources said.

“Delivering messages from one gangster to another is not automatically a crime, but that could be construed as criminal conduct depending on the circumstances,” one prosecutor not involved in the case said. This would be so, the official explained, even if the specific conduct, in and of itself, was not likely to be classified as a crime.

“For example,” the official said, “an order to promote one mobster, or demote another, or to transfer a soldier from one crew to another, could be viewed as racketeering activity, an action that is designed to stabilize the family rackets and enable its members to generate money for themselves, a principal purpose of any crime family.”

Mr. Lee, who has represented wise guys from several families, defended mob associate Louis “Lump Lump” Barone in the shooting death in 2003 of a patron who heckled an actress as she sang “Don’t Rain On My Parade” at Rao’s, the legendary East Harlem eatery.

Two years earlier, Mr. Lee was in the middle of a swindle of a $250,000 home from an elderly nursing-home resident, but he was not charged with any wrongdoing. A former client, Ronald Massagli, forged the owner’s signature on a deed and then sold the house to Mr. Lee and two others for the bargain-basement price of $50,000.

Mr. Juliano has been the subject of numerous investigations into jury tampering and other activities while working as an investigator for wiseguys for more than 20 years, but he has never been accused of a crime or had his private investigators’s license suspended or revoked.

For years, Mr. Juliano was based in Kew Gardens, Queens, but he relocated in the 1990s. The reason, according to someone who worked in the same office tower: “The FBI moved into the building and he got tired of running into agents in the elevator.”

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At Balsamo’s in Pelham Bay in the Bronx the other day, they were reminiscing and telling old war stories about Louis “Gigi the Whale” Inglese, one of the funniest, most colorful guys to enter the Gang Land landscape.

Balsamo’s isn’t the kind of place you generally hear funny stories. It’s a funeral home.

Except for occasional sobering moments when another friend, relative, or probation officer stopped by to pay respects to Inglese, who passed away last month at age 70, the room was filled with more laughter than tears. That’s the way roly-poly Gigi the Whale would have wanted it.

There was nothing funny about Louis Inglese’s business in the early 1970s: He sold heroin.

For five tension-filled days in 1974, as he and 14 co-defendants waited for a jury to reach a verdict, Inglese kept everyone – reporters, lawyers, and prosecutors included – laughing as he mimicked the idiosyncrasies of players in the trial, including then-Luchese boss Carmine Tramunti, who would be found guilty of financing Gigi’s heroin importation business.

On May 23, 1974, when Inglese, then 38 and already serving 16 1/2 years for bribery and tax evasion, was sentenced to 40 more years, he told Manhattan Federal Judge Kevin Duffy with a smile, “Judge, I can’t do 56 1/2 years.”

“Do the best you can,” Judge Duffy said.

While doing his best, Gigi was busted when Harlem heroin kingpin Leroy “Nicky” Barnes cooperated, but he caught a break and got no additional time. While Inglese was still doing his best, Chazz Palminteri used him as a model for a character in “A Bronx Tale,” his story of Bronx gangsters and a good guy set in the 1960s. He name for Inglese: Jo Jo the Whale.

Two years later, in 1995, with time off for good behavior, Inglese was released and never looked back.

Whether it was at Jimmy’s Downtown, Nino’s on First Avenue, the Pleasant Avenue Cafe before it closed down, or Rao’s, where he often sat at the corner of the bar away from the door, Gigi the Whale lived the rest of his years hard and fast.

“I kept thinking how it was the official passing of an era,” one friend who attended the wake said. “He was a standup guy and spent a long time in jail, but when he got out, he embraced life and lived those last 10 years as though it were an entire lifetime. He loved it all. He didn’t seem to regret any of it.”

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Turncoat mob associate Salvatore “Fat Sal” Mangiavillano will disclose a heretofore unheard-of method of mob retribution at the bank robbery and burglary trial of Gambino associate Edmund Boyle that starts next week in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Fat Sal, who told how Gambino boss Peter Gotti and solder Thomas “Huck” Carbonaro tried to kill turncoat underboss Salvatore “Sammy Bull” Gravano for his transgressions, says Carbonaro approved showy but less violent tactics against a Brooklyn man who had made unwanted sexual advances toward Huck’s niece.

Instead of assaulting him, Mangiavillano says, he and Boyle spray-painted the outside of his apartment building pink.