page_title: John A. Gotti
section_title: Leadership of the Gambino crime family and imprisonment
hierarchical_section_title: John A. Gotti / Leadership of the Gambino crime family and imprisonment
caption_attribution_description: English: An FBI surveillance photo of suspected mobsters Thomas (Tommy Sneakers) Cacciopoli, John (Junior) Gotti and John Cavallo.
context_page_description: John Angelo "Junior" Gotti is an American former mobster who was acting boss of the Gambino crime family from 1992 to 1999 after his father, John J. Gotti, was sent to prison. Junior himself was imprisoned for racketeering in 1999. Between 2004 and 2009, Gotti was a defendant in four racketeering trials which all ended in mistrials. In January 2010, federal prosecutors announced that they would no longer seek to prosecute Gotti for those charges. He has been referred to as "Teflon Jr." for evading conviction like his father.
context_section_description: According to federal prosecutors, Gotti was inducted into the Gambino crime family on Christmas Eve 1988. According to fellow mobster Michael DiLeonardo, initiated in the same night, Gravano held the ceremony to keep Gotti from being accused of nepotism. He was named a caporegime (captain) in 1990, and is believed to be the youngest capo in the Gambino family's history.
  In April 1992, his father, John J. Gotti, received a life sentence for racketeering and related offenses. His father asserted his prerogative to retain his title as boss until his death or retirement, with his brother Peter and his son Gotti Jr. relaying orders on his behalf.
  Remembering how his father had been brought down by FBI bugs, Gotti adopted a more secretive way of doing business. He discussed mob business mainly through "walk-talks," or conversations held while walking alongside trusted capos. He also tried to pose as a legitimate businessman. However, several of his button men didn't think much of him, thinking he was incompetent. He was not nearly as good a negotiator as his father had been, and the Gambinos lost out on several disputes with the other families. The Genovese family was so unimpressed with Gotti that it refused to deal with him at all. In 1995, Charles Carneglia and John Alite were involved in a major conspiracy to murder Gotti.
  In a 1997 search of the basement of a property owned by Gotti, the FBI found a typed list of the names of the "made" members of his organization, as well as $348,700 in cash, a list of the guests who attended his wedding, along with the dollar amount of their wedding gifts (totaling more than $350,000), and two handguns. Also found was a list of several men who were inducted into other families in 1991 and 1992; a longstanding rule in the New York Mafia calls for prospective wiseguys to be vetted by the other families before being inducted. However, normally these lists are destroyed almost as soon as the inductions take place. The discovery enraged Gotti's father as well as the other bosses, since it put dozens of other mafiosi at risk of government scrutiny. The episode earned him the nickname 'dumbfella' in the New York media.
  By 1998, when he was indicted on racketeering charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, Gotti Jr. was believed to be the acting boss of the family. Many of the charges related to attempts to extort money from the owners and employees of Scores, an upscale strip club in Manhattan. According to the indictment, the Gambinos had forced the owners of Scores to pay $1 million over a six-year period in order to stay in business, with Gotti's share of the money totaling $100,000. In addition to the lists seized in the 1997 raid, prosecutors obtained transcripts of prison conversations in which Gotti Jr. received advice from his father on how to run the family. Faced with overwhelming evidence, and against his father's wishes, Gotti Jr. pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years and five months' imprisonment in 1999. He had also given testimonial information against other mobsters, such as Alite. Federal prosecutors say his uncle, Peter Gotti, became head of the Gambino organization after Gotti Jr. was sent to prison, and is believed to have formally succeeded his brother shortly before Gotti Sr.'s death in June 2002. Gotti Jr.'s indictment had brought stress on his parents' marriage; his mother, up to that point, unaware of her son's involvement in the Mafia, blamed her husband for ruining her son's life and threatened to leave him unless he allowed Gotti Jr. to leave the mob.
caption: Thomas Cacciopoli (left), Gotti (middle) and John Cavallo in an FBI surveillance photo.
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