Singing Scammer To Audition at Hearing

A turncoat stock swindler who had been primed to testify against John “Junior” Gotti Jr. two years ago — but was never called — is slated to be a witness against a rival Gambino mobster whom Gotti allegedly marked for death in the 1990s, Gang Land has learned.Salvatore Romano, a convicted scammer who fleeced more than $20 million from investors in “pump and dump” stock schemes, will take the stand against wiseguy John “Johnny G” Gammarano, a longtime foe of the Junior Don as well as his late father, the erstwhile Dapper Don, John Gotti Sr.Before federal prosecutors try out their latest mob songbird against Johnny G, the Wall Street con artist will audition at an unusual hearing next week, testifying against a mob lawyer whom prosecutors want to oust from the case.Romano, 39, will tell the court that attorney Joseph Corozzo — whose father, Joseph, is a Gambino consigliere and whose uncle, Nicholas “Little Nick” Corozzo, is a capo — behaved more like a mobster than a lawyer when he represented a Romano cohort in 1999.At the time, according to court papers, Romano was in the midst of a huge stock fraud and money-laundering scheme, and fearful that his crony, a “weak” stockbroker, might cooperate with authorities. Romano claims he paid Mr. Corozzo more than $20,000 to keep him abreast of the stockbroker’s doings, and to ensure the broker didn’t cooperate against him.While Mr. Corozzo has been involved in numerous conflict of interest hearings in recent years, this is the first time a federal judge has required him to take the witness stand to fight a government assertion that he should be bounced from a case. Johnny G, 66, and a Gambino soldier, William Scotto, who will turn 40 on Saturday, are charged with racketeering, securities fraud, and extortion conspiracy. Mr. Corozzo represents Scotto.Just to make sure Mr. Corozzo shows up, assistant U.S. attorneys Jeffrey Goldberg and Daniel Silver have subpoenaed him to appear at the Tuesday session before Judge Charles Sifton in Brooklyn’s U.S. District Court. A second Scotto lawyer, Seth Ginsberg, will cross-examine Romano.The subpoena was “totally unnecessary,” Mr. Corozzo told Gang Land. “As I said in court, if Judge Sifton wants to hear my side of the story, I’ll be happy to tell him.”That’s precisely what Judge Sifton ruled, stating he saw no reason why Mr. Corozzo shouldn’t take the witness stand in a pretrial setting with no jury present, adding a gentle tweak about the lawyer’s choice of clients.“I wonder, as a fellow member of the bar,” Judge Sifton said, “why you accept all this grief of having to go through all these proceedings over and over again? You don’t have to represent anybody, and there are plenty of other people out there who I’m sure would be happy to retain you.”Mr. Corozzo explained that he had been a childhood friend of Scotto’s wife, Kim, who was present in court.The lawyer was full of things he wished he’d told the judge.“I should also have said,” Mr. Corozzo told Gang Land, that “the government goes to every one of my clients to scare them away with stories of alleged potential conflicts. At times it’s effective. So, in reality what the government is doing is steering me to clients that I know for a long time, who know my values, and who trust me to do a proper job.”“My ego tells me they’re afraid of me. But that can’t be, can it?” Mr. Corozzo said with a laugh, before noting that two weeks ago, he had represented an African-American defendant who was acquitted of two cocaine smuggling charges “after an hour of deliberations.”In the small-world department, if Mr. Corozzo prevails, it will pit him against the original prosecutor in the coke case, Mr. Silver, who moved from the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District’s narcotics unit to the organized crime unit while the drug smuggling indictment was awaiting trial.FEDS’ FATAL OMISSION: ‘PIZZA GUY’ Romano became a turncoat after a string of bad luck. He served two years in prison for a 1992 stock fraud case that included his father, sister, and brothers. He cooperated in 2004, after he was nabbed in a sophisticated pump and dump stock scam in which he used a licensed stockbroker as a front man and Swiss banks and international money transfers to turn paper money into cash.In addition to Gammarano and Scotto, Romano fingered mobsters Peter Gotti, Michael “Mikey Scars” DiLeonardo, and Joseph “Little Joe” D’Angelo as partners who shared up to $5 million of the cash that he generated in his far-reaching schemes.He was listed as a witness in the racketeering case in which Junior Gotti was charged with securities fraud, as well as the kidnap-shooting of talk show host Curtis Sliwa, but was never called by prosecutors at the 2005 trial in Manhattan Federal Court.Instead, they relied on Romano’s admitted front man, Joseph Quattrochi — who is also listed as a witness against Gammarano and Scotto — to describe the stock fraud scheme. Mob defectors DiLeonardo and D’Angelo detailed Junior’s alleged participation in the securities fraud, which jurors obviously dismissed, since they acquitted him on that charge.Ironically, prosecutors decided against using testimony from Romano because they thought they were winning the case and “it wasn’t needed,” recalled one member of the team.Born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, the college-educated Romano at Gotti’s trial was portrayed by D’Angelo as a clever, streetwise schemer who posed as a deliveryman to visit Little Joe when the mobster was out on bail and prohibited from meeting with ex-cons like Romano.ILA PRESIDENT SUSPENDED FOR ‘CIGARS’ HANGOUTS The mob-plagued International Longshoremen’s Association has suspended the duties of the president of one of its largest units, Local 1235 of Newark, N.J., for his ties to a powerful Genovese capo, Michael “Mikey Cigars” Coppola. The action against the local president, Vincent Aulisi, and the appointment of a trustee to run Local 1235, were announced last month at the ILA’s national convention, which also featured the resignation of the ILA’s 82-year-old president, John Bowers.The ILA also ousted Mr. Aulisi’s son Edward from Local 1, another Newark-based ILA local, for his refusal to explain several discussions about union activities he had tape recorded with Coppola early this year while the mobster was a fugitive from a 1996 arrest warrant for murder.The actions were announced by the union’s in-house monitor, a former New York appeals court judge, Milton Mollen, whom the ILA retained as its “ethical practices counsel” in 2004 in anticipation of a civil racketeering lawsuit the feds would file the following year.Judge Mollen said he made the moves after reading Gang Land’s account.“I called in Edward and Vincent separately. Edward took the Fifth Amendment. Vincent denied any conversations with Coppola, and said he had no idea why his son was talking to Coppola,” he said. After further investigation, Judge Mollen said, he recommended that a trustee be appointed to supersede the elder Aulisi, and to expel his son. Like all other recommendations that he has made, the ILA executive board accepted them and carried them out, Judge Mollen said.TELL LESS OF IT TO THE JUDGE The Aulisi tapes are the most recent sign that the mob hasn’t given up its lucrative dealings on the waterfront. But, despite that development, the feds’ civil racketeering case alleging the union’s mob ties seems in danger of running aground.Earlier this month, after questioning the theory and scope of the complaint, in particular its citing of cases that go back more than 70 years, Brooklyn U.S. District Court Judge I. Leo Glasser ordered that pretrial depositions, including one that had been set for next week for Mr. Bowers, be put off while he considers defense motions to throw out the suit.“I have eight or 10 pages of prior waterfront prosecutions going back to the 1930s or ’40s,” the exasperated jurist exclaimed.”Why? Because I need context? To know there was organized crime involved at some point on the waterfront? I have been involved with the Gambino and Genovese and Colombo and Bonanno families for so long that there are times when I thought I’d be an honorary member of those families.”This column and other news of organized crime will be available today at ganglandnews.com.

Singing Scammer To Audition at Hearing

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