John A. Gotti

John Angelo Gotti (born February 14, 1964) is an American former mobster who was the acting boss of the Gambino crime family from 1991 to 1999.

He became acting boss when the boss of the family, his father John Gotti, was sent to prison.

Gotti was born in Queens, New York City on February 14, 1964, to Italian-American mobster John Gotti and Victoria DiGiorgio Gotti, whose father was of Italian descent, and mother was of half-Italian half-Russian ancestry.

Gotti was raised in a two-story house in Howard Beach, New York, with his four siblings, which include sisters Victoria Gotti, and Angel, and brothers Frank and Peter.

Angelo Ruggiero was his godfather and middle namesake, whom he and his siblings considered an uncle.

Gotti attended New York Military Academy in his youth.

After graduating school, Gotti's father helped him start a trucking business, Samson Trucking Company, and after the business failed, helped him get a position in the Carpenters Union.

According to federal prosecutors, Gotti was inducted into the Gambino crime family on Christmas Eve 1988.

According to fellow mobster Michael DiLeonardo who was initiated 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.

Through his attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, Gotti admitted that he had been involved in the Gambino crime family in the 1990s, and had even been slated to lead the organization after his father was sent to jail in 1992, but claimed he had left criminal life behind after his conviction in 1999.

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 members 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.

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 captains.

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.

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.

By 1998, when he was indicted on racketeering charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) 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.

The younger Gotti was imprisoned for racketeering in 1999, and between 2004 and 2009 he was a defendant in four racketeering trials, each of which ended in a mistrial.

On April 5, 1999, faced with overwhelming evidence, Gotti Jr. pleaded guilty to four acts of racketeering, including bribery, extortion, and the threat of violence, against his father's advice.

His lawyer said he decided to accept a plea bargain because he believed that he would be subjected to repeated prosecutions in multiple jurisdictions if he did not.

On September 4, 1999, Gotti Jr. was sentenced to six years and five months in prison and fined $1 million.

Federal prosecutors said his uncle, Peter Gotti, became head of the Gambino organization after Gotti Jr. was sent to prison, and he 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.

In 2004, months before he was released from prison, Gotti was charged in an 11-count racketeering indictment which included an alleged plot to kidnap Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, as well as securities fraud, extortion and loansharking.

A radio talk show host for WABC, Sliwa had allegedly angered the family by denouncing the elder Gotti as "Public Enemy #1" on his show.

During the trial two former associates, Michael DiLeonardo and Joseph D'Angelo, testified against Gotti.

Three juries eventually deadlocked on the charges, the last in 2006, and federal prosecutors decided not to pursue a fourth trial.

In January 2010, federal prosecutors announced that they would no longer seek to prosecute Gotti for those charges.