Colombo family turncoat's wife Andrea Calabro helps feds with info on mob boss Tommy Shots Gioeli
She went from moll to mole.
The FBI sent the wife of a turncoat Colombo capo on a secret mission to "borrow" evidence from the unsuspecting wife of the crime family's boss, the Daily News has learned.
Andrea Calabro, married to gangster Dino Calabro, was trying to boost his bid for a cooperation agreement with the feds when she agreed to become a squealer last spring, sources and court papers say.
She provided investigators with a detailed layout of the inside of former Colombo street boss Thomas (Tommy Shots) Gioeli's modest colonial home in Farmingdale, L.I.
She also tipped off the feds that Gioeli's wife, Maureen, had a trove of photographs of Colombos at weddings, Sweet 16 bashes, communions and block parties.
A search warrant affidavit, which identifies her as "Confidential Source-1," reveals she told investigators the boss' wife always brought her camera to social events and was a "hoarder" who stored the photos in albums, bags and bins in the basement.
Such photos are a gold mine for federal prosecutors who can use them at racketeering trials to prove links between wiseguys.
FBI agent Scott Curtis said Calabro's wife was instructed to ask Maureen Gioeli if she could borrow some of the photographs - and she agreed.
She even grabbed an address book that was lying on the table when Maureen Gioeli left the room.
"The FBI instructed [Andrea Calabro] only to obtain photographs depicting [Dino Calabro], Gioeli and other members of the Colombo family, and to only obtain those photographs with the consent of Gioeli's wife," Curtis noted.
Maureen Gioeli even blabbed to Andrea Calabro that FBI agents had failed to seize her husband's "man purse" with cell phones and papers when he was busted in January.
Gioeli's lawyer declined to comment.
A former federal prosecutor said the tactic of flipping a mobster's wife was unusual and put her life in danger.
Another lawyer familiar with the case called the FBI's strategy a low blow: "It's sleazy and smacks of desperation," the lawyer said.
Calabro and his wife are in the witness protection program, sources said.
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