last week, he jumped to tell her about that exciting moment. There were pictures and everything, he told her. 

From there it was a breeze for motormouth Colombo – who, by the way, has spent less time behind bars than Paris has by about a week – to commiserate her probation and his own current bail status since he recently got the good news that the feds were giving up their efforts to nail him for racketeering. That charge ended in a hung jury last February. 

Colombo still faces sentencing for a bookmaking rap – the feds are asking for two years; he’s hoping for probation and a fine – but he considers that a petty offense and part of his past.

Looking to the future, what the 46-year-old ex-bookie needs now is a job: A legitimate one. One that can help him maintain his outrageously extravagant lifestyle, and maybe help pay whatever fine he gets for his illegal gambling conviction. 

Since the only work he’s had since 2004 was starring in “House Arrest,” an HBO half-hour docu-comedy based on the not-so-

strict conditions that allowed him to leave his upstate home (right) in Blooming Grove for 14 hours a day, he figured why not try to get his own show again. Reality shows are a hot commodity during the screen writer’s strike. 

This time, it could be based on him and his current entourage of cohorts and crackpots and combine the best/worst of The Sopranos, Entourage, and The Beverly Hillbillies. 

In search of this new beginning, Colombo gathered up his Louis Vuitton luggage and his entourage – a disgraced ex-cop who had been canned, a disbarred lawyer who once represented Colombo, and an Elvis wannabe who serves as Colombo’s valet. He then Jet Blued out to Hollywood to sell an all-too-reality show about Chris Colombo and his crew of “mezzo-sopranos.” 

The venture got off to an inauspicious start, however. One member of the fabulous foursome – ex-lawyer Valerie Amsterdam, who served six months behind bars for fraud – did not make the trip but stayed in touch by phone. Amsterdam was a supporting cast member in House Arrest. 

Colombo and the remaining members of his entourage – ex-cop and wannabe porn star John Dragonetti and valet-

chauffeur Elvis D’Amico – ran into heir-head Hilton at the first stop of their planned eight day stay. 

He’s been in Los Angeles less than a week now. But with its glitter and glamour, and its agreeable weather and women – not to mention the opportunity to be a star without having to appear on American Idol – Colombo is sure that LA is his kind of town. And he’d like to stay a lot longer. 

But there are limits. To what Colombo can do, or at least should and shouldn’t do, to become a star, and how long he can stay there to try and pull it off. 

The government – namely assistant U.S. attorney Lisa Baroni – wasn’t too happy in the first place about him taking this trip, and she’ll be paying close attention to details. So will Manhattan Federal Court Judge Ruth Naomi Buchwald, who initially scotched the idea and relented only after a hearing. Buchwald is slated to sentence Colombo for bookmaking in March.  

At the session, Buchwald expressed a strong belief in the First Amendment. She noted, however, that it wouldn’t be such a good idea for Colombo to mock the case he has lived for four

years in any new show the way he did his “house arrest” conditions in his first acting venture. (right)

“If there’s any repeat of what he did the first time on House Arrest, it’s not something that will be to his benefit,” she said. 

So, according to the order that Buchwald signed, by hook or by crook, Colombo will be back at his Blooming Grove home by February 3 – and looking ahead to his future – whatever the case may be. 

His entourage is down to his valet, D’Amico who is wearing full Elvis garb as he drives Colombo around town – Dragonetti was called back for a family emergency – but the eternally optimistic Colombo is confident about his chances. 

“He’s got visions of being the Italian Crocodile Dundee,” said filmmaker Chris Gambale, a longtime Colombo buddy who dreamed up and produced the 2005 “House Arrest” TV show and who’ll produce this latest venture, “Mob Ties,” if it has legs of its own.  

Regarding Colombo’s temperature-raising encounter with Hilton, Gambale told Gang Land: “He said she didn’t deserve all the bad things that happened to her, she was a very sweet girl. She wished him luck in Los Angeles.”

Transportation magnate Domenic F. Gatto says he learned the facts of life – about organized crime and the New York city public school bus industry – from his old man.

Law enforcement sources say Gatto identified his father, whose name is also Domenic, as a mob associate during interviews he had with the feds about labor payoffs he made in recent years to ex-bus drivers union president Salvatore (Hot Dogs) Battaglia. (right) 

Gatto told the feds that his father told him about the mob’s control over the school bus industry in 1974, right after young Domenic bought the Staten Island Bus Company from a friend of his father’s for $25,000, the sources say. His father got him a job as a bus driver with the company in 1972 when he returned from Vietnam with war injuries that required him to find a job where he could work sitting down. 

His father – Gatto described him to the feds as a “low level organized crime figure” – told him that he would have to fork over a weekly mob tax of $250 to his old man that he would

pass on to Julius (Spike) Bernstein, (left) a corrupt official of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union. 

Young Gatto “did not argue with his father and did what he was told,” according to one law enforcement source.

Gatto also told the feds that his dad, whom authorities have described as a close associate of late Gambino boss Paul Castellano, also introduced him to Genovese mobster Lawrence (Fat Larry) Paladino at a Brooklyn candy store, and told him he was a “conduit” to Spike, the sources said. 

Gatto, whose company, Atlantic Express Transportaion Corporation earns more than $200 million a-year as the city’s largest city school bus company, has not been charged with any crimes. His attorney, Peter Silverman, has described him as a cooperating government witness who was neither a target nor subject of the feds’ ongoing probe into the scandal-tarred city school bus industry.