A reputed mobster arrested Thursday in the explosive NBA gambling scandal pleaded guilty last week to unrelated charges that he tried to take over the Big Apple’s garbage business by force.
Alleged Gambino capo Joseph Lanni, aka “Mommino” was accused Thursday of participating in a multibillion-dollar ring of rigged poker games run by mobsters who enlisted NBA notables — former player and Portland Trail Blazer coach Chancey Billups and ex-Cavalier Damon Jones — to attract victims to play.
The arrest came less than a week after he pleaded guilty Oct. 17, along with six other so-called wiseguys, to running a vast racket that used extortion, witness retaliation and other crimes in an effort to gain control of the city’s waste and demolition operations, prosecutors said at the time.
Lanni, 54, was hit with a new, unrelated indictment on Thursday charging him with one count of operating an illegal gambling business for allegedly receiving paid proceeds from the ill-gotten gains taken from victims in the poker games.
The new case, which charged a total of 31 people, including the two NBA greats, accuses Lani and two other alleged members of the Gambino crime family of collecting payments from a group of people who ran underground poker games at 80 Washington Place in Greenwich Village.
The gangsters allegedly arranged payments to Billups and Jones to act as “face cards” to attract victims who wanted the opportunity to play against a former professional athlete. The victims lost millions of dollars in the scam, prosecutors alleged.
The FBI asked that Lanni be held without bail pending trial in his new case because he has a history of criminal convictions and violence.
They noted that he also allegedly liaised with other made men while on the loose at the city waste facility, violating the conditions of his release.
Lanni – who lives on Staten Island and goes by “Joe Brooklyn” – was first convicted of securities fraud in 1999 and sentenced to 2.5 years behind bars. He was convicted again in 2014 of promoting gambling and sentenced to a year in prison, prosecutors said in court filings.
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The suspected mobster was also involved in allegedly intimidating a witness in 2021 who he and two other mobsters believed had betrayed them, prosecutors alleged.
Additionally, Lanni and alleged goon Vincent “Vinny Slick” Minsquero got into a wild confrontation with the married owners of a restaurant in Toms River, NJ, in September 2023 after the couple asked them to leave after getting into a fight with customers.
Things reached a fever pitch when Lanni and his accomplices threatened to burn down the establishment “with you in it” and allegedly beat up the couple later that night, the court papers alleged.
The troubled duo reportedly went so far as to buy a gas container from a station across the street from the restaurant to make good on the threat. But they then returned the container, the FBI alleged. They were not charged in that incident.
Lanni faces up to five years in prison if convicted on the new charges in the rigged gambling case. He has yet to be sentenced on the racketeering and conspiracy charges, for which he could get anywhere from 6.5 to 8 years, a judge in that case said last week.
The rigged poker games were organized starting in 2019 from Miami, Las Vegas, the Hamptons and two locations in Manhattan, including the Washington Place mansion where Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott lived in 2021 when the influencer was pregnant with their second child, authorities said.
The famous couple was not named in the indictment and there was no indication that they knew what was going on.
Four of the five La Cosa Nostra families in New York City are allegedly involved in the regular poker games: the Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese and Bonanno families, prosecutors said.
A separate indictment, also made public Thursday, accused Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, also known as “Scary Terry,” and ex-Cleveland Cavaliers player Jones of providing insider information about teams and players for betting on games.
Although Billups was not charged in the second case, he is considered “Co-Conspirator 8” in court papers, which allege he tipped bettors that the Blazers were going to tank their March 24, 2023 game against the Chicago Bulls — a tip that caused the bettors to make big wins, the court alleges.
Billups and Rozier were placed on leave by their teams, according to the NBA, which said it was cooperating with the FBI.
“We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness and the integrity of our game remains our top priority,” the NBA said in a statement Thursday.
Lanni’s attorneys in the extortion case did not immediately return a Post request for comment Friday morning. It was not immediately clear who is representing him in the new case.
No one answered the door at Lanni’s home during the Post’s visit there Friday, nor did anyone answer the phone when The Post called the numbers he listed.
-Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts and Erin Maher
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