NEW YORK -- The leaders of the Gambino crime family, who have run the organization while reputed godfather John Gotti is in jail, were indicted Friday on charges they operated a murderous, racketeering conspiracy.
As the indictments were announced, a federal court clerk was charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy for feeding information in sealed indictments to the Gambino crime family. Mildred Russo, 66, was suspended from her $23,030-a-year job after being arrested at her home.
Authorities said the 57-page federal indictment for the first time included felony charges against some of the most 'insulated' of the reputed mobsters who have escaped prosecution in the past.
Nine of the 16 indicted in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn were arrested Friday morning by the FBI. Five are still at large, one is scheduled to surrender next week and another is already jailed on unrelated charges in Miami.
The 16, alleged to be the ruling hierarchy of the Gambino organized crime family, were charged with being involved in a comprehensive racketeering conspiracy dating from 1967 that included murder, extortion, robbery, loan sharking, illegal labor payoffs, gambling, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
Among those charged was a veteran deputy clerk in federal court in Manhattan who was accused of supplying the Gambino mobsters with confidential information about ongoing investigations.
The indictment 'outlines the disciplined manner in which the family as an entity maintains its control over and insinuates its influence into entities as large as major labor unions, as economically significant as the Port Mobil Deep Water Facility being built on Staten Island and as representative of the American dream as local mom and pop stores,' said U.S. Attorney Reena Raggi.
Edward McDonald, chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force for the Eastern District of New York, said the case was 'particularly significant' because those indicted include 'some of those who have been most insulated, those whose criminal activities have been most difficult to detect and to prove.'
The nine arrested by the FBI pleaded guilty, and seven of them were released on bail.
Of those arrested, only three were among the top mobsters charged in the case:
-Reputed Gambino family consigliere or Joseph Gallo, 74, of Queens, faces 49 years in prison and $65,000 in fines if convicted on all counts of rackteering, bribery, and loan sharking.
-Joseph Zingaro, 74, a capo and crew boss, faces 25 years in prison and $45,000 in fines for rackteering and gambling.
-Angelo Ruggiero, 46, of Long Island, a soldier and member of what prosecutors said was the 'John Doe' crew, faces 20 years in prison and $25,000 in fines. Sources said 'John Doe,' named as an unindicted co-conspirator, was really John Gotti, the reputed family boss who is in jail awaiting trial on other federal racketeering charges.
Ruggiero was charged with participating in several killings ordered to enforce discipline in the crime family.
The bribery charges involve attempts to pay a prison officials to transfer Mafia associates from one facility to another, including Carmine 'Junior' Persico -- reputed boss of the Colombo crime family.
