Feds want $182K from Colombo boss who won money in prison ping-pong injury settlement

The feds want to seize back more than $182,000 from a Colombo family street boss who was awarded the money through a personal injury suit against the government when he cracked his own kneecap playing prison ping-pong.

Prosecutors have filed papers to get their hands on Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli’s settlement money to partially satisfy a $360,000 forfeiture order related to a pair of robberies in the 1990s.

The feds found out through an investigation into the 67-year-old wiseguy’s finances that his only “significant asset” at this point is his personal-injury award, court papers state.

“The government’s investigation indicated that the proceeds of the Defendant’s offenses, which date back to the 1990’s, have been dissipated, disposed of or transferred to third parties, or are otherwise not available for forfeiture,” an inspector with the US Marshals Service wrote in court papers.

The forfeiture bid is subject to approval by Brooklyn federal Judge Brian Cogan.

Gioeli was accused of masterminding the 1992 robbery of Furs by Mina, a Nassau County clothier, in which he and two Colombo associates posed as a father-and-sons trio out shopping, court records show.

They restrained the shop owner and looted the store, making off with 150 fur coats stuffed into trash bags — a roughly $900,000 haul.

A jury in 2012 acquitted Gioeli on the fur store robbery and another 1995 stick-up at a Long Island bank — it also cleared him on charges that he orchestrated the 1997 murder of NYPD officer Ralph Dols Jr., who made the fatal mistake of marrying Colombo consigliere Joel “Joe Waverly” Cacace’s ex-wife.

Original Post https://nypost.com/2020/04/15/feds-want-182k-from-colombo-boss-who-won-prison-ping-pong-suit/