Mobsters Would Call Reality TV Show ‘Throwing Up Gotti'

It was the week before Christmas in 2004. There was food and wine on the table and an FBI bug hidden underneath. A trio of veteran wiseguys was trashing a reality TV show that struck close to their hearts, "Growing Up Gotti," the saga of John Gotti's racy, platinum blonde daughter, Victoria, and her three teenage sons, dubbed "Hotti Gottis" for their well-gelled good looks.

"It's a soap opera, and the kids look like girls," the host, Genovese capo Ciro Perrone, 85, thundered. He is owner of a popular Italian restaurant in Ozone Park, Don Peppe, where the men regularly gathered at a big round table in the back for dinner and discussion.

"It's one of the most disgusting, insulting shows" on television, the aging capo's longtime right-hand-man, John Yannucci, said, according to a report about the discussion written by FBI agent John Penza.

Colombo soldier Ralph Scopo, a close Howard Beach pal of the late Gambino boss, was "so embarrassed" for his late friend's family that he said he couldn't talk about it, Mr. Penza wrote in an affidavit that was filed last year with the federal judge who approved the bugging.

Worse, Scopo noted, the Gotti boys in the show were incomprehensible. "The kids can't even talk," he said.

In fact, the vocabulary and diction of sons John, Carmine, and Frank was so poor that A&E ultimately resorted to subtitles to help viewers figure out what they were saying.

The wiseguys, of course, weren't alone in their distaste. The conversation took place on December 14, two days after the New York Post's Phil Mushnick wrote in his "Prime Time" column that "you don't have to be Italian to be offended" by the crude, vulgar, and negative stereotypes that fueled "Growing Up Gotti."

Critics, Gang Land among them, said the show did more to degrade Italian Americans and tarnish their image than a dozen "Godfather" films. But what do critics know? On the A&E Web site for the show, viewers can still learn how to "dress like a Gotti," or join the "Hotti Gotti Girls Club," or play a neat new online "Pantsing Game," where you sneak up behind someone and try to pull down their pants without them catching you.

That demonstrated one positive aspect of the show, Yannucci suggested to his pals, one that is central to the mobster's creed: "They are making money," he said.

"They are paying a hell of a price to be an embarrassment," Scopo replied, adding that the boys' father, imprisoned Gambino soldier Carmine Agnello, "can't tell them what to do anyway; he's heard about it, but never seen it."

Unfortunately for Scopo, the FBI's secret tapes were used not for a focus group reaction to the Gotti show but as the basis for a racketeering case that charged Perrone, Scopo, Yannucci, and 17 others with loansharking, gambling, obstruction of justice, labor racketeering, and other crimes.

Scopo, 57, and Yannucci, 61, pleaded guilty to lesser charges. But Perrone, an old school wiseguy, opted for trial along with three co-defendants — mob associates Steve Buscemi, 43, and Joseph Quaranta, 50, and Perrone's son-in-law, Paul Kahl.

Yesterday, in its eighth day of deliberations in a two-month trial, a Manhattan Federal Court jury reported it was hopelessly deadlocked on the main racketeering charge against Perrone. Earlier, the panel indicated it had reached agreement on other counts. Jurors resumed their talks after Chief Judge Kimba Wood read them a so-called Allen charge that essentially instructed them to go back at it, with vigor.

From early indications, the deliberations could continue for a few days more. An hour or so after they resumed, the panel sent out another note requesting that it work tomorrow, Veteran's Day, an official court holiday, to wrap up the case.

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Mob prince Alphonse "Allie" Persico still has a long way to go to match the feat John "Junior" Gotti pulled off six weeks ago when he got his third straight hung jury. But the imprisoned acting Colombo family boss was grinning from ear to ear last week when jurors in his racketeering trial were unable to reach a verdict.

Unlike the 42-year-old Junior Don, Persico will not be free to do what he wants with the rest of his life even if he gets two more hung juries and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn follow the lead of their Manhattan counterparts and toss the charges. Allie still has nearly six years remaining on a prior racketeering conviction.

There was no escaping the immediate comparisons between Persico's mistrial and the three divided juries that led to the dismissal of all charges against the son of the Dapper Don.

Attorney Sarita Kedia, who was part of Junior's defense team, took over as Persico's lead lawyer when the Gotti jury began its deliberations. In fact, for a few days, as Gotti's trial was winding down and Persico's was beginning, she shuttled back and forth, occasionally appearing in both courtrooms on the same day.

After the Persico jury was dismissed — it deadlocked 10-2 for conviction, according to a report by Daily News reporter John Marzulli — Judge Sterling Johnson told lead prosecutor Thomas Seigel: "You can commiserate with those guys over in the Southern District," the official name for Manhattan Federal Court.

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