A turncoat stock swindler who was primed to testify against John (Junior) Gotti two years ago – but never called – is slated to be a witness against a rival Gambino mobster whom Gotti allegedly marked for death in the 1990s, Gang Land has learned. 

Salvatore Romano, who fleeced more than $20 million from investors in “pump and dump” stock scams, will take the stand against wiseguy John (Johnny G) Gammarano, (right) a longtime foe of the Junior Don as well as his late father, the erstwhile Dapper Don. 

But before the feds try out their latest mob songbird against Johnny G, the Wall Street con artist will audition at an unusual hearing next week against a mob lawyer whom prosecutors want to oust from the case.

Romano, 39, is set to testify that attorney Joseph Corozzo – whose father Joseph is the family consigliere and whose uncle Nicholas (Little Nick) Corozzo is a capo – behaved more like a mobster than a lawyer when he represented a Romano cohort in 1999. 

At the time, according to court papers, Romano was in the midst of a massive stock fraud and money laundering scheme and fearful that his crony, a “weak” stock broker, might cooperate. Romano claims he paid Corozzo more than

$20,000 to keep abreast of the stockbroker’s doings, and to ensure the broker didn’t cooperate against him.

And while Corozzo has been involved in numerous conflict of interest hearings in recent years, this is the first time that a federal judge has required him to take the witness stand to fight a government assertion that he should be bounced from a case. Johnny G, 66, and soldier William Scotto, who will turn 40 on Saturday, are charged with racketeering, securities fraud, and extortion conspiracy. Corozzo represents Scotto.

Just to make sure Corozzo shows up, prosecutors Jeffrey Goldberg and Daniel Silver subpoenaed him to appear at the Tuesday session before Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Charles Sifton. (left) A second Scotto lawyer, Seth Ginsberg, will cross-examine Romano.

The subpoena was “totally unnecessary,” Corozzo told Gang Land. “As I said in court, if Judge Sifton wants to hear my side of the story, I’ll be happy to tell him,” he said.  

That’s precisely what Sifton ruled, stating he saw no reason why Corozzo shouldn’t take the witness stand in a pre-trial setting with no jury present, adding a gentle tweak about the lawyer’s choice of clients.

“I wonder, as a fellow member of the bar,” said Sifton, “why you accept all this grief of having to go through all these proceedings over and over again. You

don't have to represent anybody, and there are plenty of other people out there who I’m sure would be happy to retain you.” 

Corozzo (right) explained that he had been a childhood friend of Scotto’s wife, Kim, who was present in court.

The lawyer was full of things he wished he’d told the judge.

“I should also have said,” Corozzo told Gang Land, that “the government goes to every one of my clients to scare them away with stories of alleged potential conflicts. At times it’s effective. So, in reality what the government is doing is steering me to clients that I know for a long time, who know my values, and who trust me to do a proper job.”

“My ego tells me they’re afraid of me. But that can’t be, can it?” laughed Corozzo, before noting that just two weeks ago, he had represented an African American defendant who was acquitted of two cocaine smuggling charges “after an hour of deliberations.”

In the small-world department, if Corozzo prevails next week, it will pit him against the original prosecutor in the coke case, assistant U.S. attorney Silver, who moved from the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s narcotics unit to the organized crime unit while the drug indictment was awaiting trial.

Romano became a turncoat after a string of bad luck. He served two years in prison for a 1992 stock fraud case that included his father, sister and brothers. He cooperated in 2004, after he was nabbed in a sophisticated “pump and dump” stock-fraud scam in which he used a licensed stock broker as a “front man” and Swiss banks and international money transfers to turn paper money into cash. 

In addition to Gammarano and Scotto, he fingered mobsters Peter Gotti, Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo (left) and Joseph (Little Joe) D’Angelo as partners who shared up to $5 million of the cash that he generated in his far-reaching schemes. 

He was listed as a witness in the racketeering case in which Junior Gotti was charged with securities fraud, as well as the kidnap-shooting of talk show host Curtis Sliwa, but never called by prosecutors at the 2005 trial in Manhattan Federal Court.

Instead, they relied on Romano’s admitted “front man,” Joseph Quattrochi – who is also listed as a witness against Gammarano and Scotto – to describe the stock fraud scheme. Mob defectors DiLeonardo and D’Angelo detailed Junior’s alleged participation in the security fraud, which jurors obviously dismissed, since they acquitted on that charge.

Ironically, prosecutors decided against using testimony from Romano because they thought they were winning the case and “it wasn’t needed,” recalled one member of the team.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, the college educated Romano was recalled at Gotti’s trial by D’Angelo (right) don't as a clever, street-wise schemer who posed as a deliveryman to visit Little Joe when the mobster was on bail and prohibited from meeting with ex-cons like Romano.

“He came with a pizza and a hat on. He looked like a pizza guy,” D’Angelo testified.

The mob-plagued International Longshoremen’s Association has suspended the duties of the president of one of its largest units, Local 1235 of Newark, for his ties to a powerful Genovese capo, Michael (Mikey Cigars) Coppola. (left) The links were first disclosed in a Gang Land column in May.

The actions against local president Vincent Aulisi, and the appointment of a trustee to run Local 1235, was announced last month at the ILA’s national convention, which also featured the resignation of the ILA’s scandal-tarred 82-year-old president, John Bowers.

The ILA also ousted Aulisi’s son Edward from Local 1, another Newark-based ILA local, for his refusal to explain several tape recorded discussions about union activities he had with Coppola early this year while the mobster was a fugitive from a 1996 arrest warrant for murder. 

The actions were announced by the union’s in-house monitor, former New York appeals judge Milton Mollen, whom the ILA retained as its Ethical Practices Counsel in 2004 in anticipation of a massive civil racketeering lawsuit that the feds would file the following year. 

Mollen said he made the moves after reading Gang Land’s account. “I called in Edward and Vincent separately. Edward took the Fifth Amendment. Vincent denied any conversations with Coppola, and said he had no idea why his son was talking to Coppola.” 

After further investigation, said Mollen, he recommended that a trustee be appointed to supersede the elder Aulisi, and to expel his son. Like all other recommendations that he has made, the ILA executive board accepted them and carried them out, Mollen said.

The Aulisi tapes are the most recent sign that the mob hasn’t given up its lucrative dealings on the waterfront. But, despite that development, the feds’ civil racketeering case alleging the union’s mob ties seems in danger of running aground.

Earlier this month, after questioning the theory and scope of the massive complaint, in particular its citing of cases going back more than 70 years, Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser (left) ordered pre-trial depositions, including one for Bowers that had been set for next week, be put off while he considers defense motions to throw out the suit.

“I have eight or 10 pages of prior waterfront prosecutions going back to the 1930s or ‘40s,” exclaimed the exasperated jurist. “Why? Because I need context? To know there was organized crime involved at some point on the waterfront? I have been involved with the Gambino and Genovese and Colombo and Bonanno families for so long that there are times when I thought I’d be an honorary member of those families.”

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do – tells the complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall. Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June 2002. We added a postscript, and with a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga right up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.02, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

The best of Gang Land is available in a book store near you. Or you can pick up a copy of "JERRY CAPECI'S Gang Land: Fifteen Years Of Covering The Mafia" at a special low price from the Godfather of online booksellers, Amazon.com.

The 330-page oversized book includes an index and eight pages of photographs. It is sure to contain a few of your favorite columns, as well as some you may have missed during Gang Land's lengthy run that began in 1989 in The New York Daily News and continues today online and in The New York Sun.

The book's 125 columns chronicle the New York Mafia landscape from John Gotti's heyday in 1989 as the swashbuckling Dapper Don to the remarkable day in 2003 when Gotti's longtime rival Vincent (Chin) Gigante gave up his Daffy Don routine and confessed to having put on a crazy act for three decades.

Amazon.com has it in stock for $12.32  – 35% off the $18.95 list price.