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Trouble at the Bing...

Draper

New Jersey

http://m.nydailynews.com/1.1604615#bmb=1

2.6.2014, 01:47 PM
Man connected to strip club featured in ‘The Sopranos' is real life mob rat

Bada Bing, you rat.

A crook whose family owns Satin Dolls, the New Jersey strip club that served as the setting for the Bada Bing in “The Sopranos” TV series, is a real-life mob informer, court papers show.

Anthony (Tony Lodi) Cardinalle, 62, is cooperating with the feds after copping a plea in December in a waste hauling criminal case.

Cardinalle is not only a shareholder in the owner of the land for the jiggle joint that was the backdrop for one of Tony Soprano's favorite haunts. His pursuits resemble those of actor James Gandolfini's mafia boss character, who used waste hauling as a front.

Satin Dolls was decked out with show memorabilia following Gandolfini's death last year, and had the words, “Thank You Jimmy, Farewell Boss,” posted on a sign outside.

Cardinalle, a Genovese crime family associate who lives in Saddle River, N.J., was revealed as associated with Satin Dolls in court papers he filed asking a judge to order a psychological examination of Howard Ross, another defendant in the waste hauling case.

The website Gang Land News first reported Cardinalle's connection to Satin Dolls.

Cardinalle isn't an owner of the club itself, although his wife once was and his daughter now is, his lawyers noted.

“I have been the manager of both Satin Dolls — which was the Bada Bing club in ‘The Sopranos' — and AJ's — clubs owned by Anthony Cardinalle's family,” William Pepe wrote in a Sept. 9 affidavit filed in Manhattan Federal Court. “Anthony owns the real estate and the buildings the clubs are in.”

Pepe wrote the affidavit to back up Cardinalle, who was trying to beat his racketeering and extortion charges by proving Ross to be bonkers. Cardinalle claimed the principal evidence against him would be dirt Ross dished to a federal informant posing as the owner of a trash hauling company. Ross also worked at Satin Dolls as a doorman and hired hand.

“Ross was always bragging about his mafia connections and how he knew everybody in the five families,” Pepe wrote.

“For example, Ross told me that he was very close with Joseph Colombo. Colombo was killed in 1971 when Ross would have been a preadolescent.”

Ross, 49, took a plea deal in November. Cardinalle pleaded guilty to conspiring to participate in a racketeering enterprise from March 2009 to April 2012 and to conspiring to commit extortion between July 2010 and May 2011.

Both charges carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison, but Cardinalle could be in line for a lesser hitch come May 23 if he fully cooperates.

Cardinalle and Ross were among 32 people busted last January in connection with a scheme to control trash collection businesses in New York and New Jersey.

“I agreed with others to participate in a conspiracy where others wanted an individual to give up a percentage ownership in his waste hauling company,” Cardinalle said in his Dec. 19 plea. “This individual was advised by me and others that he had no choice but to agree or his company would be closed down by others almost immediately.”