RAT FICTION | John Gotti Jr., Self-Admitted Lying Informant (Preview)

“They’re gonna do their best to poison the public against me and I gotta to do my best to show what they really did here. I gotta show that they lied, they cheated, they stole, more importantly, we sue. We sue. Pure and simple… We gave our word to my father we would not sue. My father said rats sue. Well then, I guess I’m a rat.”

–John Gotti Jr., F.C.I. Ray Brook wiretap, July 11, 2003

DECEMBER 11, 2024: John Gotti Jr., the accused former ‘de facto’ boss of the Gambino crime family, and a self-admitted former Gambino captain, appeared on Patrick Bet-David’s PBD Podcast, which has millions of viewers. Recorded the day before, one of his goals on the show was to do damage control and change the narrative about his January 18, 2005, proffer session with the Feds, where he provided information to Federal Prosecutors and the FBI against dozens of people in a failed bid to escape punishment for the crimes he was then charged with.

Especially since eight months earlier, Joey Merlino, the accused former boss of the Philadelphia mob, who essentially, speaks for the streets, called him “a rat,” ridiculed, and humiliated him on the April 25, 2024 episode of his podcast, The Skinny with Joey Merlino and Lil Snuff. He even posted the FBI 302 memo documenting Gotti Jr.’s proffer session, the first page of which is below.

That being said— during the PBD Podcast, Gotti attempted to frame the proffer meeting not as an attempt to lessen his charges by implicating others, but as an “innocence proffer” that was approved in advance by numerous accused high-ranking organized crime figures. He pushed a false narrative to Bet-David and his audience, treating them like they were stupid, saying:

“Now, according to, three different cooperators. Two mainly, testified against me (Dominick Cicale and Joey D’Angelo), and a third cooperator (Joe Massino), that never testified against me but he was the most powerful of all the cooperators. Okay. They all said, that, this is what happened. Before I went in, they said I had a meeting, clandestine meeting, in prison, with “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano. They accused him of being the acting boss of the Bonanno family. Really good man, solid guy. Never knew him on the streets, never met him on the streets, but I met him in prison. And they said while we were in the bullpen together, he and I. That I, he followed my lead. I hatched a plan, that I was gonna go in and do what’s called an innocence proffer. An innocence proffer, and, go in to establish an alibi, and I was gonna testify on my own behalf at my trials, and I was, and he suggested that he would do it as well. He said to me, ‘I’m gonna follow your lead.’ This is not according to me, this is according to the government cooperators. He referred to me, he says ‘John, I’m gonna follow your lead. What you do, I’m gonna do.’ Okay. Now, they also went on to say that, before I went in, this was cleared with Vinny Basciano. They said it, not me. Steve Vitable. Steve Vitable is accused of being for 30 years, the number three guy in the DeCavalcante family in New Jersey. Joe Arcuri. Elder Statesman, wonderful man, who they claim was on the panel ruling the Gambino crime family. Alphonse Sisca, who they accused him of being a high-ranking captain in the Gambino family. Arnold Squitieri, who the government accused, of being the acting boss of the Gambino family. And, Joe Massino. Now, Joe Massino verified it. Joe Massino, again, they, he was, he was confessed boss of the Gam, of the Bonanno family. Ultimately flipped. I loved Joe like an uncle…

But yet, this is the, this is the government cooperators saying I sent these messages, that and they all had different input. Vitable supported it. Arcuri supported it. Basciano was on board and doing it with me, according to government cooperators. Uh, Arnold Squitieri did not support it. Alphonse Sisca did not support it. Joe Massino at first had reservations, sent a message back to me, which he did, he sent a lawyer to see me. And the lawyer would verify it. The lawyer was, ‘Tell him, I love him, he’s gonna be perceived as a rat.’ My response back was, ‘Go back and tell Joe, I love him right back. I’m a civilian. I had my father put me on the shelf, okay, I’m a civilian. I don’t, I can, I march to the beat of my own drum. I’m showing respect for my father’s life. I’m showing respect for people that I adore, that I love. I’m giving them that respect. But I don’t have to. I could fight as a civilian. Long as nobody gets hurt. Long as not one person, gets a subpoena, as a result of anything I do…

Before you go into this meeting, I was not obligated, to tell one individual. Gravano told nobody. Any rat that goes to become a rat, doesn’t tell anybody. They sneak in the middle of the night, like the rats that they are. They crawl out of their cell. They leave a note. Marshals come and get them and bring them over. I told seven, eight, nine people, my co-defendants knew. Everybody knew I was going in. They knew exactly, the tactic that I was gonna employ here. They knew ultimately, I was gonna go on the stand in my own defense. They knew it…

But still to this day, you do have imbeciles, you have low lives, you have, uh, has-been cokehead jockeys, people like that, that wanna, blow these reports up and think these are real reports.”

That false narrative is contradicted by— amongst other things— the following.

JULY 23, 2009: JOHN A. GOTTI’S OPPOSITION TO THE PROSECUTION’S MOTION TO ADMIT TESTIMONY FROM COOPERATING WITNESSES JOEY D’ANGELO AND DOMINICK CICALE

In Fall 2009, John Gotti Jr. went on trial in the Southern District of New York on racketeering charges, which included ordering three murders between 1988-91. However— there was a statute of limitations. To convict him, the government had to convince jurors that he was engaged in organized crime within the five years prior to his 2008 indictment.

To discredit the testimony the prosecution wanted to introduce to convince jurors that he was still an active member of the mob in 2005, Gotti Jr. and his attorneys Charles Carnesi and John Meringolo filed the above-titled motion to Judge Kevin P. Castel, in which they presented an argument that contradicts entirely the false narrative he pushed on Bet-David’s podcast. Several pages from it are below.

Read them for yourself:

NOTE: In John Gotti Jr.’s memoir, self-published in January 2015, he backed up that motion by saying that he never conversed with Vinny Basciano prior to December 2008, when they were in jail together at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, N.Y. He wrote:

“At MDC, I had the opportunity to meet Vincent Basciano…

I had met him in passing in the bullpen at MCC in Manhattan years ago. But this is the first time I actually conversed with him, never did on the streets.”

A longer, more in depth version of this story is being published in the book I’m writing: RAT FICTION.

PURGATORY GANGSTER: John Gotti After Death, a novella, is being published on October 27, 2025: John Gotti’s 85th birthday. It is available for pre-order on Amazon. You can purchase an exclusive, signed and numbered, limited first edition paperback, a future collector’s item, here on JohnGotti.com.