FAMILY ISSUES: Renee Graziano’s (with fellow ‘Mob Wife” Ramona Rizzo) ex is at the center of a Mafia family scandal
By MITCHEL MADDUX, New York Post
The real-life drama on “Mob Wives” is again starting to outshine the stuff on TV.
The gangster ex-husband of the show’s undisputed star, Renee Graziano, is “likely” to take the witness stand in a Brooklyn mob trial early next month — his first appearance as a government informant — sources tell The Post.
Turncoat Hector “Junior” Pagan wore a hidden microphone to tape conversations with at least six organized crime figures after he agreed last summer — while taping the VH1 reality show — to flip.
Federal prosecutors, however, appear reluctant to actually put Pagan on the witness stand. They have been settling the cases Pagan helped to make before the trial by offering the taped gangsters less-than-usual jail sentences in exchange for guilty pleas.
But now it appears there is a holdout, a Bonanno crime family underboss named Nicholas (“Nicky Mouth”) Santora.
He has turned down plea offers, according to a report in the authoritative online Web site Gangland News, and is preparing to go to trial a week from Monday.
Santora, 70, who reputedly played a significant role in the famous mob murder of Bonanno boss Carmine Galante in 1979, is charged with gambling and extortion.
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