John Gotti Jr. Charged With Being Chip Off the Old Don

John Gotti Jr. was charged Wednesday with carrying on the family business.

Gotti, whose father, “Dapper Don” John Gotti Sr., is serving a life sentence, was among 38 men indicted on a sweeping array of charges including extortion, loan-sharking, gambling and bribery.

New York Atty. Gen. Dennis C. Vacco said that, if the charges result in convictions, law enforcement officials will have “come as close as we dare say to driving a stake through the heart of organized crime in this region.”

The 33-year-old Gotti, who turned himself in to authorities early in the day, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. He was ordered held until Friday, when a judge will decide whether he is eligible for bail.

“This case never should have been brought against him,” Gotti’s attorney, Richard Rehboch, told reporters. But “it’s nice to indict someone with a surname,” he said.

At a press conference of federal, state and local law enforcement officials in White Plains, N.Y., prosecutors accused “John Junior” Gotti of helping supervise the Gambino family while his father, the Mafia family’s don, is still in prison for murder, murder conspiracy, obstruction of justice, loan-sharking, bribery and tax fraud.

Among the members of the Gambino family who were arrested or charged Wednesday are two “capos,” or captains--Louis Ricco, 68, and Salvatore Locascio, 38, whose father, Frankie Locascio, was convicted with Gotti Sr. in 1992.

In a related indictment, prosecutors charged former Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain, 53, with cooperating with Gotti and others in trying to control the distribution of MCI’s prepaid phone cards in the New York area. After phone company officials realized the scam, they deactivated the cards, prosecutors said.

“This is one of the first cases of traditional organized crime infiltrating the telecommunications industry,” said Brian E. Gimlett, the Secret Service agent in charge of the New York area.

McLain, baseball’s last 30-game winner in 1968, is already serving an eight-year sentence in Michigan for skimming $3 million in pension money from the now-defunct Peet Packing Co.

Vacco told reporters that during the four-year investigation agents found the “holy grail”--a kind of family tree for the New York Mafia.

The investigators said charges included a plan to steal salaries for no-show employees at several construction sites and charges of conspiracy to murder two employees of a topless nightclub in New York.

Gotti was not charged in the murder conspiracy.