John Alite - Working For Gotti

Working For Gotti

Alite and Gotti met in their teens and moved quickly into criminal enterprises, according to federal prosecutors. Alite has testified that he and Gotti ran a cocaine trafficking ring in the Forest Hills section of Queens and extracted a tax from other dealers. By the 1990s, Alite says that the ring was earning $1 million a month. On February 14, 1988, Gotti was best man at Alite's wedding in Queens. The date was selected not because it was Valentine's Day, but as a sign of respect for Gotti because it was his birthday.

According to Alite, his relationship with Gotti and the Gambino leadership soured in 1994 when he confronted an associate, Carmine Agnello. Alite claims that he had been having an affair with Agnello’s wife Victoria Gotti, and grew angry when he believed that Agnello was beating her. Victoria Gotti strongly denied the affair. After a tense reconciliation meeting with Gotti, Alite received the family's permission to move to Tampa, Fl, where he had an interest in a valet business run by a friend, Ronnie "One Arm" Trucchio and ran a crew for the Gambino family.

Soon afterwards, Alite and Trucchio became involved in A&A, a valet company in Tampa, FL which later changed its name to Prestige Valet. Beginning in 1995, Prestige had contracts with St. Joseph's Hospital and the shops in Channelside, and parked cars at restaurants and nude clubs. Authorities said Alite used his alleged mob ties to threaten in and intimidate others in the Tampa valet business. Prosecutors, and Alite, also say that he also arranged for the purchase of Mirage, a Tampa nightclub.

In 1995 Alite was arrested for illegal possession of a firearm in violation of a parole agreement and spent three years in prison. After his release three years later, Alite earned an additional three months back in prison for smuggling sperm donation kits for a fellow inmate who was trying to impregnate his wife.

As federal racketeering indictments were handed down for his group's activities in the Tampa area, Alite fled to Rio de Janeiro in January 2004 and lived and worked in the Copacabana neighborhood, according to the Brazilian Federal Police. He lived there for 10 months before authorities there arrested him. He served two years in prison in Brazil while fighting extradition, but was eventually handed over to federal authorities in Tampa, Fl. for trial in 2006.