At around the same time last year that an FBI bug picked up John A. “Junior” Gotti bad-mouthing his father’s chosen profession, a gangster in another dysfunctional mob family was caught spewing out words more in tune with his brood’s equally notorious bloodlines.

The unlucky mobster caught churning out venom was Colombo soldier Theodore “Teddy” Persico Jr., a nephew of mafia boss Carmine “Junior” Persico, a cousin of a one-time acting boss, and a son of a mob capo, all of whom are incarcerated in federal prisons around the country.

The conversation took place in Brooklyn in May 2004, less than a month after Teddy, 41 – the same age as the Gottis’ Junior Don – got out of Green Haven state prison after serving 16 years for drug dealing.

The feds picked up Teddy and his brother Carmine talking about wiping fingerprints off a gun, an exchange that was a notch or two below the intellectual caliber of “Growing Up Gotti.”

“I don’t need you to clean it. Just give me the gun,” Teddy barked at his brother, after his younger sibling asked him to wait a few minutes so he could “clean” telltale fingerprints from the gun and from bullets already loaded in the automatic weapon.

“Look, I know how to shoot. Just give me the gun,” Teddy demanded, as he wondered aloud how any self-respecting gangster-in-training could put “dirty” bullets in a gun: “How do you keep a pistol with f- -ing dirty bullets in it in the first place? You got an automatic pistol, you clean the bullets, you put them in the f- -ing clip, and the clip is ready whenever you are.”

Teddy was on his way to a mob “sitdown” at the time, according to an affidavit by an FBI agent, Christopher Braga.

While Teddy was incarcerated, he missed some important family activities, including the bloody Colombo war from 1991 to 1993 that left 12 dead and many others wounded. Undaunted, he continued his gangster activities.

Among other things, according to court records, he befriended and corrupted a corrections officer, and maintained control over his Brooklyn-based drug-dealing operation, raking in $500 a week from his key operative, who avoided arrest in the case that landed Persico his hefty prison term.

By all signs, however, Teddy Persico was to get back into the swing of things once he got out from behind bars.

When he walked out of Green Haven, he jumped into a well-stocked stretch limousine that was waiting to take Teddy back to Brooklyn. Among the amenities was a porn star-hooker provided by a family associate with a lucrative online porn and escort business, according to the Braga affidavit.

Unfortunately for Persico, the porn dealer had also been supplying the FBI information about mob activities from New York to California for four years, and was wired up and on the scene when Carmine Persico gave his brother Teddy a handgun that triggered his tape-recorded rant about clean and dirty bullets.

The associate, a paid FBI informer, has linked Teddy to California-based mobster Dominick “Donnie Shacks” Montemarano, a longtime buddy of boss Carmine Persico, wrote Braga. Montemarano, 67, was convicted of assault and parole violations two years ago and is due out of federal prison in two years.

In addition, sources said, the informer has told the FBI that Edward Garofalo – whose father, demolition contractor Edward “the Chink” Garofalo was killed in 1990 on orders from John Gotti Sr. – is a key Teddy Persico operative and partner in a Staten Island trucking company that was raided last month in a continuing federal grand jury investigation.

Late last year, after placing a wiretap on Teddy’s cell phone, the FBI caught him shaking down a woman who owned a glass business, and overheard Teddy, his brother Carmine, and a cousin, Andre D’Apice, using threats to collect a $25,000 loan-shark debt from a Staten Island shop owner and another victim, wrote Braga.

In May, a year and a week after he was released from state prison, Teddy was back behind bars, this time in a federal lockup in Brooklyn, indicted on racketeering, extortion, and loan sharking charges, and detained without bail as a danger to the community.

Unlike Junior, who asked that conversations tape-recorded last year by the FBI be played at his racketeering trial, and was turned down, Teddy wants his tape-recorded discussions suppressed from evidence at his racketeering trial, scheduled for October.

In court papers, attorney Joseph Corozzo claims the information from the porn dealer was unreliable and improperly used by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn to wiretap his client’s cell phone. An assistant U.S. attorney, Deborah Mayer, disagrees, and told Gang Land she will soon file papers opposing Mr. Corozzo’s motion.

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Meanwhile, as the Junior Don’s trial for racketeering charges opened in Manhattan this week, an interesting mix of relatives, family members, and friends crammed into the bigger than usual courtroom to be part of the biggest mob trial of the year.

Junior’s mother-in-law and father-in-law were there to hear the first turncoat Gambino gangster, Frank “Frankie Fapp” Fappiano, point a damning finger at their son-in-law as a mobster with whom he socialized and had business dealings.

Gotti’s brother, Peter, and his most outspoken sibling, sister Victoria, who told reporters she came to show support for her brother, were there, too.

Looking tired and troubled, Victoria left shortly after Fappiano took the witness stand, but not before a mild outburst by a brawny fellow she came and left with, as Fappiano explained that “rats” who violate the mob’s vow of silence are marked for death.

“Ironic,” he said. “From a f- -ing rat.”

Sitting larger than life a few rows back was Steven Kaplan, 39, a longtime cohort of Junior’s, who allegedly took part in a baseball bat attack against Curtis Sliwa three months before the Guardian Angels founder was shot in a kidnapping that Junior is charged with ordering.

It’s unlikely that Kaplan, who has a couple of minor arrests on his rap sheet, will be in court when turncoat capo Michael “Mikey Scars” DiLeonardo takes the stand.

In a pretrial decision, Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that DiLeonardo will be permitted to testify that the Junior Don told Mikey Scars that he dispatched Kaplan and two other cronies to assault the radio talk show host “in retaliation for Sliwa’s verbal attacks on the Gotti family.”

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Everyone knows the mafia can’t exist without legal mouthpieces, but yesterday came news of a first in Gang Land history: Disgraced mob lawyer Thomas Lee pleaded guilty to soliciting a mob hit from Bonanno boss Joseph Massino during meetings he had with the imprisoned gangster before he became the first New York boss to defect.

Lee was seeking permission for then acting boss Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano to kill gangster Patrick DeFillippo, according to court records. The lawyer also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for lying to a Brooklyn federal judge, Nicholas Garaufis, about his dealings with Massino during pretrial court sessions.

In pleading guilty, Lee told Judge Garaufis that he “began meeting with Joseph Massino” in late 2003 and early 2004 and “used my position as a lawyer to pass messages between Mr. Massino and Mr. Basciano, who I knew to be members of the Bonanno crime family.”

Lee, who faces up to 87 months in prison, will be sentenced in November.

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