La Cosa Nostra

AS HE LEFT the U.S. Attorney's Office in 2007, renowned mob prosecutor Barry Gross spiked the football - right in the faces of all the South Philly wiseguys he'd put behind bars. "We defeated the mob," Gross proclaimed during a post-retirement interview with the Daily News . Yesterday's sweeping indictment against reputed Philadelphia mob boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi and 12 alleged associates is clear proof that Gross was wrong. Or was he? The Philadelphia faction of La Cosa Nostra is a shadow of its former self, eclipsed by the more sophisticated and creative Russian mafia and other underworld groups that profit from vice and scams.

One day after defense attorneys called him every name in the book, Ralph Natale took command of the witness box, like the general he described a mob boss to be. His responses were firm, direct, well-rehearsed. Gone was the arrogance and the chip on his shoulder he exhibited last year when he pleaded guilty to eight murders, or when he testified against Camden Mayor Milton Milan at a federal bribery trial. Yesterday, the short, muscular 66-year-old was dressed in a black suit, crisp white shirt and black tie with shaved bald head, gray goatee and mustache - an outfit apropos for a funeral.

It's a high-profile job with a chance to make big bucks. But the retirement plan stinks. That's the message delivered again last week as mob boss John Stanfa, 55, and four of his top associates were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 30 years to life. "I think the sentences should send a message to anyone else foolish or shortsighted enough to be attracted to the life of La Cosa Nostra," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Courtney 3d, one of four prosecutors who handled the case against Stanfa and more than 20 of his associates.

Ralph Natale called it "mob talk. " It was, he said, from his life on "the dark side. " Now he is a cooperating government witness. And yesterday, his fourth day on the witness stand in the federal racketeering trial of Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino and six other reputed wiseguys, the onetime mob boss provided the jury with an insider's view of La Cosa Nostra. Responding to questions posed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Gross, Natale talked about mob jargon, explained omerta - the code of silence - and provided an account of a typical "making," or initiation, ceremony.

He's seen it all. He's done it all. And now he's ready to tell all. Veteran mobster Peter "Pete the Crumb" Caprio, indicted on racketeering-murder charges here in March, has agreed to cooperate with the government. "Murders, racketeering, labor cases - it's across the board," FBI Agent Dennis Marchalonis said in describing the 70-year-old Caprio's organized-crime involvement. "This is a guy who was once popped for running a [liquor] still. He's been around for a long time.

They talked of cutting out the tongue of a young South Philadelphia mobster, and of burying him and two others in quick-dry cement. They mocked an old bookie who begged for his life after a package containing a dead fish and a bullet arrived at his door. They spoke of crushing a trash tycoon in his own compactor. They ridiculed an informant who had been divorced by his wife and disowned by his family. They considered recruiting hit men from Sicily or New York to rub out dissidents in the Philadelphia underworld.

Relationships are tricky, but some rules of dating go unsaid. Don't wait to tell your new girlfriend that you're a mob informer who spent 12 years in prison for murder and racketeering. And never, ever threaten to smash her head with a hammer. Roger Vella Jr. failed on both counts. First he lost the girl, then his freedom. Vella, whose cooperation against the Philadelphia branch of La Cosa Nostra was once hailed as "remarkable" by a prosecutor, was sent back to prison last week after stalking the ex-girlfriend and failing to get permission to travel.

PHILIP "CRAZY PHIL" Leonetti learned to shoot a gun at age 10 and says that he participated in the same number of gangland murders under the twisted tutelage of his crazier uncle, mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo. That much Leonetti has admitted in court. But in his new tell-all book - and what mafioso worth his salt doesn't cap an illustrious career with a book deal these days? - the former underboss of the Philadelphia-South Jersey mob in the 1980s breaks 16 years of silence to reveal how he came "very close" to whacking the last guy anyone would have expected.

As far back as 1945, when a gang of armed men burst into the former Casablanca nightclub and turned the place upside down in search of the reputed racketeer, Marco Reginelli, the area now known as Cherry Hill appealed to mobsters. The history of the township includes episodes of mob violence that seem to come right out of gangster movies. There was the time in 1965 when real estate developer Frank Adamucci was gunned down in the lobby of the Rickshaw Inn as customers milled about.

EX-MOB underboss Philip Leonetti's book, Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra , was published Tuesday by Running Press. Retail price is $24, but it can be found on Amazon for as little as $14.66. The book was cowritten by Scott Burnstein, a true-crime author and staff reporter for the Oakland Press , and Christopher Graziano, a freelance journalist and mob historian. It's an eye-opening look at life inside the Philadelphia-South Jersey mob during the 1980s.

Relationships are tricky, but some rules of dating go unsaid. Don't wait to tell your new girlfriend that you're a mob informer who spent 12 years in prison for murder and racketeering. And never, ever threaten to smash her head with a hammer. Roger Vella Jr. failed on both counts. First he lost the girl, then his freedom. Vella, whose cooperation against the Philadelphia branch of La Cosa Nostra was once hailed as "remarkable" by a prosecutor, was sent back to prison last week after stalking the ex-girlfriend and failing to get permission to travel.

GEORGIE is not happy. Neither is his mother, Manny. Or his burly bro Anthony, who looks ready to throw down even on a good day. The whole Borgesi clan is irate - because George isn't coming home, as they'd expected. "F---in' punk," George Borgesi barked at Assistant U.S. Attorney John Han, who argued successfully on Wednesday to have the onetime mob consigliere kept in prison even though prosecutors failed to secure a single conviction against him following a trial that began in mid-October.

PHILIP "CRAZY PHIL" Leonetti learned to shoot a gun at age 10 and says that he participated in the same number of gangland murders under the twisted tutelage of his crazier uncle, mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo. That much Leonetti has admitted in court. But in his new tell-all book - and what mafioso worth his salt doesn't cap an illustrious career with a book deal these days? - the former underboss of the Philadelphia-South Jersey mob in the 1980s breaks 16 years of silence to reveal how he came "very close" to whacking the last guy anyone would have expected.

EX-MOB underboss Philip Leonetti's book, Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra , was published Tuesday by Running Press. Retail price is $24, but it can be found on Amazon for as little as $14.66. The book was cowritten by Scott Burnstein, a true-crime author and staff reporter for the Oakland Press , and Christopher Graziano, a freelance journalist and mob historian. It's an eye-opening look at life inside the Philadelphia-South Jersey mob during the 1980s.

It's an 83-page racketeering indictment designed to cripple the Philadelphia mob, but the U.S. Attorney's Office is playing a last-minute game of who's-the-boss while 14 defendants are awaiting trial. When Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi was busted last year, the indictment described him as a "made" member of the city's La Cosa Nostra family who "rose through its ranks to become its underboss, then acting boss, and then, after the incarceration of his predecessor Joseph Merlino, the boss of the Enterprise.

SAY WHAT you want about the Philadelphia Mafia, but they have a helluva health-care plan. Mob boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi, for example, had a gold-plated benefits package that came with his no-show position at Top Job Disposal, a South Philly trash company where he "performed no work or productive services," according to a superseding indictment unsealed Thursday. LigambiCare also extended to his relatives, federal prosecutors say. Because what's the point of leading an organized-crime family if you can't spread the wealth around?

E VEN AS Joey Merlino was settling into a South Florida halfway house last summer after 12 years in prison, the FBI issued a confidential alert warning law-enforcement officials that the former Philadelphia mob boss might try to set up shop in the Miami area with some of his old associates. The memo was contained in the first batch of some five million emails being released by the anti-secrecy group Wikileaks - including several FBI alerts obtained by a Texas-based private-intelligence firm on topics ranging from biker gangs to al Qaeda's English-language website.

JOE STANFA doesn't want you to read this. He can't make you put down the newspaper or click on another website, but he's worried that continuing on could be bad for business, for his fresh start. "I don't want to scare people away," Stanfa said from behind the counter at Joey Giusepp's, his new pizzeria just off the Schuylkill Expressway, in Grays Ferry. Stanfa is perhaps the only proprietor in Philadelphia who doesn't want you to know about his pizza joint. He'd rather make you a hoagie than talk about the blood that was shed at the same address nearly 20 years ago, or the story behind the scar on his cheek.

DON'T WORRY ABOUT me, judge. Those Philly wiseguys wouldn't lay a hand on me. I'm untouchable. That's basically what Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., son of former Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, told U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler in Camden yesterday. And it worked. Scarfo, 46, an alleged made member of New York's Lucchese crime family awaiting trial on corporate-fraud charges in New Jersey, will be removed from a protective unit at the federal lockup at 7th and Arch streets.

RALPH NATALE has always been a talker. In 1994, after doing 15 years in prison on drug-dealing and arson charges, he talked himself into bed with a hot blonde half his age - his daughter's best friend - with empty promises of a better life and a yarn about his 62-year-old wife's ailing health. While he was boss of the Philadelphia mob, the FBI secretly recorded Natale talking about sketchy business deals, insubordinate underlings, a proposed Atlantic City strip club with "the finest broads" and his hatred for government informants who rat on fellow Mafia members.