A former owner of the New Jersey jiggle joint that served as the set of the Bada Bing strip club on “The Sopranos” is a real-life mob rat who is singing to the feds about his fellow wiseguys, the feds say.
Anthony “Tony Lodi” Cardinalle — who decorated the Satin Dolls club with posters of James Gandolfini and hung a sign outside that said “Thank You Jimmy, Farewell Boss” when the actor died last year — has been spilling his guts for months, records show.
And in a bizarre case of life imitating “The Sopranos,” the reputed Genovese mobster was up to his neck in the Mafia’s effort to control the garbage-hauling business in New York and New Jersey — just like Paulie Walnuts and the rest of Tony’s crew on the HBO show.
Cardinalle, 61, copped a plea in December to racketeering and extortion charges that stemmed from the feds’ probe into mob influence in the garbage industry.
Documents show Cardinalle — whose lawyer says he currently co-owns the Lodi property on which the club sits and has in the past had an interest in the club as well — has been cooperating with Manhattan feds since just before Christmas. The web site GangLandNews.com first reported Thursday that he’d been singing like a canary.
The deal will likely mean less prison time for Cardinalle, who faces up to 40 years behind bars. And the feds also likely agreed not to prosecute him on tax-evasion charges.