By Jerry Capeci

Looking like anything but a wiseguy in sneakers and powder blue prison duds, Baratta admitted to conspiring to sell heroin to the most eager customers in the world: federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

Baratta, who has been in federal prison for six years and was due out in 2005, got stung trying to sell some heroin to the DEA in 1996 after a jailed drug dealer told him his brother was in the market for some smack.

In a pretty routine sting, the DEA snared a few others, and all were indicted last year on drug trafficking charges. The others realized they were cooked, pleaded guilty, and were sentenced. But Baratta, who faced the heaviest time because of his priors, held out until last week. Manhattan Federal Judge John Sprizzo said Baratta was too old to be lectured, should have known better, and sentenced him to an additional eight years in prison.

He'll get out in 2012, at age 72, unless he decides to sell some more heroin to the DEA.

(For those who missed last week's column, The Volkie goes to the so-called journalist who makes the most mistakes and places the most unadulterated drivel into one article, book or television appearance, or who consistently exhibits the wretched and pathetic journalistic non-skills of Ernest Volkman -- as exemplified in his awful book, "Gangbusters.")

We noted that Lombardi wrote that a mobster who died 10 years ago was angry with Gambino boss John Gotti but we failed to report that the article also named a mobster who died four years ago as a viable successor to jailed Genovese boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante. We regret the omission.

Vito (Bruce) Palmieri, a longtime friend and cohort of Gigante's, who lived at 165 Christopher St., died of natural causes on August 11, 1994. He was 69.

Capos John (Jackie Nose) D'Amico and Louis Ricco, (right) and soldier Mario Antonicelli are scheduled to enter their pleas before Judge Barrington Parker in White Plains Federal Court.

D'Amico, 62, former confidante of John Gotti and a man-about-town with the once Dapper Don, got a great deal and will receive a sentence of 21-to-27 months for gambling charges, according to Gang Land sources.

Ricco, 69, and Antonicelli, 68, will plead guilty to racketeering charges and receive between three and four years, according to the plea deals they signed last week, sources said.

Each agreed to accept a slightly longer sentence than ones they would have gotten if Junior Gotti had accepted a deal that would have put him behind bars for about six years. Junior, whose trial is expected to begin in the spring, faces about 18 years if convicted.

Pierre de Champlain, of Hull, Quebec, is the first prize winner of our fifth contest. He will receive a copy of "Gotti: Rise & Fall" autographed by yours truly and co-author Gene Mustain.

An intelligence analyst for a law enforcement agency, de Champlain, 52, has been researching organized crime, primarily La   Cosa Nostra and the Sicilian Mafia, for 30 years. He has written three books (all in  French) on the history of the Mafia in Quebec.

Our second prize, a similarly autographed copy of  Murder Machine, goes to Juan Mendivil, 35, of San Jose California.

Mendivil, a computer hardware and network engineer, is married and the father of two young sons. A native of Tijuana, Mexico, he became interested in mobsters after spotting many vacationing wiseguys from California  playing the ponies at the Caliente Race Track in his hometown.

One entry per person, via e-mail. Anyone caught making more than one submission will be rubbed out along with their entry.

Previous contest winners, employees of Gang Land and the Daily News and their families, are ineligible to win a prize, but can still play along for the hell  of it. In case of ties, winners will be selected at random.

There's still plenty of time to enter. The deadline is Sunday, Jan. 31.

First prize is a copy of "Gotti: Rise & Fall," autographed, of course, by yours truly and co-author Gene Mustain. Incidentally, Gene submitted an entry to Contest #5 and signed his infant son's name. Luckily, we caught on to the scam, and will return Mustain's wife and child to him after the deadline to this contest.

Second prize is a similarly autographed copy of Murder Machine: A True Story of Murder, Madness and The Mafia.

Each question is worth one point. For those with problems in arithmetic, a perfect score is 13. And there's no penalty for a bad guess. Good luck.

During the 1963 Senate Hearings, which featured the testimony of  celebrated turncoat Joe Valachi, (right) several mobsters who were, or would eventually become Mafia bosses, were associated with the wrong crime families.

          Match the boss with the incorrect family in which he was placed.

  Big Al's Corner

By Allan May

(This week, Big Al tackles a couple of  queries by Rick from Tampa about "Moe Dalitz and the old Cleveland Purple Gang." Rick wanted to know if  Dalitz was the Cleveland family's  "representative" in Las Vegas and if he was connected with the Bronfman family of Canada.)

First off, a point of clarification - the Purple Gang originated in Detroit. Dalitz, who once lived in Detroit and had family there, had connections to the Purple Gang but his main influence was in Cleveland. Born in Boston, Dalitz moved to Cleveland and used the name Maurice Davis so he wouldn't embarrass his family, who remained in Detroit and ran a legitimate laundry business.

Dalitz's important status in the underworld was apparent when he was invited to the Atlantic City crime conference in 1929. The meeting, which coincided with Meyer Lansky's honeymoon, was the first movement toward a national crime syndicate. The theme of the conference was nationwide cooperation. Some discussions took place on the beach with mobsters walking around barefoot with their pantlegs rolled up. The main topics of conversation were post-Prohibition plans for the liquor business and dividing up the country into exclusive gambling franchises. Depending on which book you read, the meeting was initiated by Lucky Luciano, Lansky, (left) Frank Costello (right) or Johnny Torrio of Chicago. What is not in dispute is that the participants came from a wide variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds including Italian, Irish, Polish and Jewish.

The Bronfman family started out in the hotel business in Canada but during Prohibition they reportedly made tremendous profits by shipping liquor into the United States, reportedly shipping booze through Cleveland, Detroit and New York. 

Dalitz's connection to the Bronfman family stemmed from the fact that the Bronfmans shipped most of their liquor through Cleveland because of the city's proximity to the Canadian border. However, the Bronfmans also dealt with the Purple Gang in Detroit, and with various New York bootleggers including Luciano (right), Lansky and  Arnold Rothstein. The Bronfmans were always entertained lavishly and treated to the best seats at boxing matches by their underworld hosts. After Prohibition, the Bronfmans' distilleries were among the most profitable in the liquor industry.

Dalitz's Cleveland partners were Morris Kleinman, Louis Rothkopf, and Sammy Tucker. It is not clear how the four got together, but in the early 1920s, their combined ruthlessness, street smarts, political connections and legitimate operations resulted in a formidable underworld enterprise. The members of the Cleveland Syndicate kept low profiles, but walked away wealthier and more intact than their Italian counterparts -- in Cleveland and in other parts of the country.

From 1926 to 1933, the Cleveland Syndicate prospered by bringing Canadian liquor across Lake Erie. Called the "Big Jewish Navy,"it shuttled illegal booze to the Lake Erie shoreline between Rocky River and Mentor. From rum-running on Lake Erie they moved on to control luxury resort hotels in Florida, and plush casinos in Las Vegas. 

Occasional busts by the Coast Guard or the Cleveland Police did little to hamper the syndicate's business. By the late 1920s, Cleveland's gangsters had formed a working relationship that allowed each faction to operate freely without any bloodshed. The Jewish Cleveland Syndicate and the Italian Mayfield Road Mob would form an alliance that would make their leaders millionaires and allow them to live to spend it. This alliance also allowed for the Irishman Thomas J. McGinty to prosper with his West Side bootlegging and rum-running operations.

After Prohibition ended the Cleveland Syndicate was involved in gambling dens locally until law officials chased them out. They initially went to  southern Ohio and northern Kentucky to operate, and ran a pretty successful operation out of Newport, Kentucky called the Beverly Hills Club. Dalitz joined the army in 1942, but after World War II, he got involved in Las Vegas and was one of the principal owners of the Desert Inn along with Clevelanders Kleinman, Tucker, and McGinty. It's not accurate to call Dalitz "Cleveland's representative." His connection to the Italian organized crime element in Cleveland ended in 1939 when the Mayfield Road Mob was basically dissolved.