They call themselves stand-up guys, but these mobsters sank to new lows.
The feds yesterday charged 14 alleged Gambino members and associates, including its reputed boss, with a slew of old-standby Mafia crimes — such as murder and extortion — dating back to the reign of the late “Dapper Don” John Gotti.
But the most damning charges relate to a current prostitution ring — one that trafficked in underage teenage girls through Craigslist ads.
Veteran mobster Daniel Marino, 69, commanded a rejuvenated Gambino family of 200 made members and 300 more associates — many of them in their 20s and 30s — as they collected more than $20 million in illicit profits over the past decade, the feds charged.
Some of the profits came from a prostitution ring allegedly run by Marino’s most trusted soldier, Thomas Orefice, 33, who pimped out teenage girls, including a 15-year-old, through online ads from 2008 to 2009.
“This perhaps reflects a new low for the Gambino family,” said US Attorney Preet Bharara.
“She looks like she’s 12 and sounds like she’s 10,” one source described the 15-year-old to the FBI.
All the other girls were under 20, according to the feds.
Orefice, and associates Dominick DiFiore, 30, and Michael Scotto, 24, allegedly split the fees with the girls 50-50, drove them to their assignations and even brought them along to high-stakes card games they ran.
They were helped in the scheme by accused madam Suzanne Porcelli, 43, who acted as the hooker booker, the feds said.
Orefice was also allegedly behind a scheme to rip off some of New York’s swankiest restaurants. He allegedly paid kickbacks to top chefs to order his grossly overpriced meat — sometimes 40 percent higher than the going rate. Prosecutors would not say which eateries were involved.
While Marino serves as the most recent street boss of the Gambinos, sources said, the Dapper Don’s brother, Peter Gotti, is still running the family from his federal jail cell.
Marino, the sources said, served as part of a triumvirate with two other bosses, who the feds did not name.
Despite the perversity of the underage prostitution that would put the mob’s self-professed family values to shame, it was Marino’s past — not present crimes — that did him in.
He allegedly approved a hit on his own nephew, Bonanno associate Frank Hydell, who was executed at a Staten Island strip club called Scarlett’s in 1998 for cooperating with the feds.
“When Daniel Marino was faced with that choice, between his own family and the Gambino crime family, he chose the Gambinos,” Bharara said.
Marino, who between 1994 and 2000 was in state prison for murder, is further accused of conspiring in 1989 with John Gotti and Salvatore “Bull” Gravano to murder another rat, Thomas Spinelli.
Marino pleaded not guilty yesterday.
The feds took pains to separate the Hollywood image of the mob from the real-life lowlifes being charged.
“In truth, despite the popular fascination, it was never really about the thousand-dollar suits. It was — and is — about murder, mayhem and money,” said George Venizelos, head of the FBI’s New York office.
Another longtime soldier, Onofrio Modica, 46, was charged with trying to tamper with the jury of John Gotti’s 1992 trial in Brooklyn federal court.