John Gotti’s grandson and 82-year-old ‘Goodfellas’ mobster charged over road-rage car fire

The men were accused of conduct as petulant and petty as the $6M Lufthansa heist in 1978 was grand: setting fire to the car of a driver who had cut one off

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NEW YORK — An 82-year-old mob figure who was acquitted in connection with the storied 1978 Lufthansa heist in 2015 was indicted again on Wednesday, this time along with John Gotti’s grandson, accused of conduct as petulant and petty as the $6 million robbery of the terminal at Kennedy Airport was grand: setting fire to the car of a motorist who had cut him off on the streets of Queens.

And if the indignity of being charged in such a scheme was not bad enough, court papers describe its execution as so clumsy that had the elder John Gotti, a crime figure once known as the Teflon Don, not died in prison after a 1992 conviction he might well die now of shame.

To make matters worse, one of two federal indictments unsealed in the case on Wednesday also charged the young mob scion, John J. Gotti, 23, and two other men with a bank robbery that appears on its face to be less than well thought through: The younger Gotti’s girlfriend, according to the court papers, worked as a teller at the bank branch.

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The three men, along with the aging, irascible Vincent Asaro, were all charged in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn with arson and arson conspiracy for setting fire to the car after the road rage episode in April 2012. Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, who announced the case along with the FBI, identified Asaro as a powerful member of the Bonanno crime family for more than 30 years who they said has served in various leadership positions.

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A separate federal indictment charges three other men, one of whom prosecutors say is an associate of the Bonanno family, in a home invasion robbery and several jewelry store robberies.

Gotti was sentenced earlier this month to eight years in prison on state drug charges for selling Oxycodone in the Queens neighborhoods of Ozone Park and Howard Beach, from what had been the home of his grandfather, where he lives with his parents and grandmother.

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Asaro, who has a lengthy criminal history dating to 1957, won a stunning courtroom victory in the Lufthansa case in November 2015, when a jury acquitted him of racketeering and other charges. The case figured prominently in the plot of the 1990 Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas.”

Elizabeth E. Macedonio, one of the lawyers who represented him in that case, cited it when asked about the new charges.

“He’s faced a series of unfounded charges before and was vindicated, and he will do the same this time,” she said.

Gerald Marrone, a lawyer for Gotti, could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

A detention memo filed in the case against Asaro, Gotti and the two other men said that the older man “became enraged at another motorist who switched lanes in front of Asaro at a traffic light” in Howard Beach.

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“Asaro chased the other vehicle for a period of time at a high rate of speed,” the detention memo said. Later, Asaro sought the help of a mob associate in order to get the driver’s address, then directed another to set fire to the motorist’s car, the memo said.

Asaro went along with the associate to identify the car, in the Broad Channel section of Queens, and the associate recruited Gotti and the two other men to set fire to it, the memo said.

Gotti drove his own car, a Jaguar, for the crime, according to the memo, stopping at a gas station with the two other men in the early morning hours of April 4, 2012, to fill a container with gasoline. They drove to Broad Channel and located the car. One of the men doused it with gasoline and the other set it alight, the memo said.

A police officer in an unmarked car witnessed the crime, and when the men saw him they fled in the Jaguar, with the officer in pursuit, the memo said. After a high-speed chase, the officer abandoned his pursuit because the Jaguar was driving so recklessly, it said.

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