It’s as good as “The Sopranos” — and it’s real.
Aging mobsters from New Jersey’s DeCavalcante crime family were at no loss for Paulie Walnuts-worthy ideas on how to get rid of an “out of control” capo from Elizabeth, new FBI wiretaps show.
Among the proposed solutions, revealed by the feds Thursday as they busted 10 members of the family that inspired the hit HBO mob series: acid in the face, a thorough “spray painting” with bullets, or a dozen slugs to a particularly sensitive section of the anatomy.
“You gotta maim him or you just gotta put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, or somebody’s gotta get a f–kin’ jar of acid and throw it in his f–kin’ face,” alleged DeCavalcante capo Charles “The Beep” Stango, 71, was caught on tape brainstorming with fellow mobsters in December, according to transcripts released by the US Attorney’s Office in Newark.
Other suggestions tossed around by Stango, who now faces some 40 years in prison for allegedly dealing coke, plotting to start a Toms River-based escort service, and the never-consummated revenge hit: Maim him, throw him “in the Amazon,” or toss “a couple of pineapples” (grenades) his way.
“Let me put him in a chair … and when he gets better, put him in a chair again and let them wheel him around,” the septuagenarian seethes at one point in the transcripts, part of the failed contract murder charges against him.
“You put 12 in his nuts. Okay. I’d take his legs out,” Stango demands at another point before snarling, “I’m a ‘High Noon’ guy.”
Stango, arrested Thursday at his home in Henderson, Nevada, was also caught on tape in a phone call with now co-defendant and alleged DeCavalcante consiglieri Frank “Goombah Frankie” Nigro, 72, of Toms River.
“You want him in the Amazon?” the alleged capo asks the alleged consiglieri. They’re again discussing the rival capo, an unidentified DeCavalcante made member whom Stango refers to variously as “The Mutt” and “the fat f- -k.”
Ironically, The Mutt had offended Stango by trying to steal away a valuable associate — who turned out to be an inevitably not-so-valuable undercover who’d infiltrated the family for more than three years.
“Or do you want him spray-painted,” Stango suggests, offering a more local alternative to “the Amazon.” According to the transcripts, both men laugh, and then the alleged consiglieri, still laughing, answers, “Both.”
The “hit” is discussed throughout December and January, according to the criminal complaint. Then in February, Stango settled on a manner of death. He sent the undercover to hire two “motorcycle gang” members to dispatch “The Mutt” via a pair of more prosaic revolvers, the feds allege.
“You might think the f–kin’ [Hells] Angels are coming in from f–kin’ hell or something, you understand?” he tells another co-defendant, alleged DeCavalcante associate Paul Colella, of the would-be assasins.
“But they ride with The Beep,” he added, in a swaggering reference to his own nickname.
But Stango has a soft side, according to the transcripts, which detail conversations in which the alleged capo gives careful, fatherly advice to his son and now co-defendant, Anthony “Whitey” Stango, 33, of Brick, NJ.
“No f–kin’ rap s–t,” Stango advises his kid in a February phone call, describing what kinds of music should be permissible in a high-end escort service the two hoped to set up, as a mob business, within a club they’d open some day in Toms River.
“Just soft s–t. OK?” the father advises. “Soft stuff where somebody can come. You got couches, you got f–kin’ boobs, you got every f–kin’ thing, and it’s a club.”
He warns, “You can’t run no dope out of there.” Anthony responds, “All right.”
And don’t get greedy, the dad warns his kid.
“The bulls and the bears, Anthony, they survive,” Stango explains, according to the feds’ transcript.
“The pigs, they get slaughtered. OK? Always go for a f–kin’ bologna sandwich. OK?” he adds, bringing his point home.
“You know? Don’t go for the french fries and f–kin’ steaks and s–t. Just get the bologna sandwich. If you got five bologna sandwiches, you’re eating pretty good.”
The 10 defendants face charges including plotting to commit murder, plotting to run a prostitution business, and cocaine distribution.