A team of FBI agents from the Bonanno squad was pleased. They weren’t exactly jumping up and down and giving each other “high fives,” but they had collective “Gotcha” looks on their faces during a visit to a Brooklyn jewelry store the other day.

Based on a tip from an informant, the agents had paid a visit earlier this month to D J Jewelers, Inc. at 113 Church Avenue in the Kensington section, just a few blocks from the landmark Greenwood Cemetery. There, they found a handgun just where they thought they would. 

And veteran Bonanno wiseguy Joseph (Desi) DeSimone, 69, the object of their attention, was there to witness the entire episode.

Since April 5, 1996, when he completed a 13-month stretch for federal loansharking on his 62d birthday, DeSimone had remained under the radar screen as the feds turned their focus to nailing the family hierarchy for racketeering and murder. 

On this day, however, DeSimone (right) became just one more target in the ongoing federal assault that has sent dozens of Bonannos to the slammer in the last few

years and has its boss, Joseph Massino, (left) facing racketeering/murder charges and a possible death penalty.

Lawyer Martin Stolar, who represented DeSimone in the mid-1990s, was not surprised the agents found a handgun in the store. Indeed, the attorney would have been more surprised if they hadn’t.

“The place gets stuck up a lot,” said Stolar, who recalled a 1995 armed robbery that took place while DeSimone was in the store, which the attorney said is owned by DeSimone’s daughter:

“This guy comes in with a gun to rob the store. He sticks it in Desi’s face. Desi pulls it out of his hands – he tells the guy to get the hell out of here – and the guy takes off down the street with Desi chasing him. It was the ballsiest thing I ever heard of,” said Stolar.

FBI spokesman Jim Margolin, and Brooklyn federal prosecutors Greg Andres and Mitra Hormozi, refused to confirm or deny that the seizure took place.

There are limits to the amounts of cash that a top gangster can be expected to get his hands on, even a reputed Mafia boss who has had an 11-year run atop one of New York’s five families.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis (right) made that succinct observation Tuesday at a status conference in the racketeering case against Massino, who awaits trial in April for eight murders – he faces the possibility of capital punishment for one – and a slew of other charges.

Lead defense attorney David Breitbart – Massino has retained three lawyers – asked to put the case off until September to enable a noted death penalty specialist time to join the defense team, a request Garaufis rejected.

But the jurist also denied a prosecution motion that Massino face trial in April for seven murders and the other charges, followed by a second trial on the single slaying for which he could face the death penalty.

The judge noted that Massino’s lawyer costs for two trials would be prohibitive. “He’s no Bill Gates,” said Garaufis. 

Like all federal judges, Garaufis has a lifetime appointment, one that gives him tremendous powers in his courtroom.

But when it comes to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Garaufis, as other judges have long since recognized, knows he has little say about anything that goes on there, even when the BOP wants to be accommodating.

Two months ago at the request of defense lawyer Mathew Mari, Garaufis asked prison officials to assign Luchese capo John (Johnny Sideburns) Cerrella (left) to a Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Otisville, NY or in Allenwood, PA to serve his eight year prison term.

Because Cerrella has a pending case in Florida – it will not add any time to his sentence – the requests were against BOP regulations that require inmates to reside in a maximum security prison (a USP) and prison officials assigned Cerrella, 63, to a prison in Beaumont, Texas.

When Mari heard of it, he moved into action. He made numerous calls to BOP officials and the chambers of Judge Garaufis. Along the way, Mari said, the Judge’s chambers called BOP officials, and finally, last Friday, after BOP officials told Mari that Cerrella’s designation had been delayed, the lawyer went to the Metropolitan Detention Center to tell his client the relatively good news.

“Sorry, you just missed him. He’s on his way to Texas,” Mari (right) said he was told. For security reasons, BOP officials never discuss the movement of inmates, only where they are. Or were. Tuesday, for example, Cerrella was in Oklahoma City. Yesterday, he was in the Beaumont USP in Beaumont, Texas. Today, .... 

On occasion, Gang Land and its author become the topic of conversation in federal court. In the interest of full disclosure, here are two recent examples in which former top gangsters from Staten Island, now looking at long stretches in federal prison, expressed their views in Brooklyn Federal Court.

When he appeared as a defense witness for an old crony last month, Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano (left) called Gang Land “an authority outside the mob on organized crime.”

Last week, as he was about to be sentenced to 108 months for racketeering, Bonanno capo Anthony (T.G.) Graziano had an entirely different take.

“He says bad things about me – I’m a drug fiend, not even a drug addict,” said Graziano, an apparent reference to a recent column in which Gang Land reported allegations about Graziano (right) that were contained in court papers.

“There should be a law against what he writes, and gets away with,” said Graziano. “He writes lies and gets paid for it.”