New York Daily News

MOBSTER HIT UP Compensate vics with lawsuit windfall: judge

- BY LARRY MCSHANE

That’s the way the Ping-Pong ball bounces.

One-time Colombo crime family street boss Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli’s $250,000 settlement for a table tennis tumble while behind bars should go for restitutio­n to a fur store and a bank robbed by the gangster and his crew back in the ’90s, a Brooklyn Federal Court judge ruled.

“In this case, once defendant’s settlement is finalized, he will have immediate access to [the money],” wrote Judge Brian Cogan last week in his ruling against the notorious Gioeli. “… His financial circumstan­ces have seismicall­y shifted, and he now has the financial means to make immediate court-ordered restitutio­n.”

Gioeli (inset) is on the hook for a $360,000 payback to a Chemical Bank branch and a business called Furs

By Mina, with Cogan ruling that Gioeli “personally profited from these robberies

… [he] was the undisputed leader of the pack [and] … the other perpetrato­rs were his direct subordinat­es within the Mafia hierarchy, acting pursuant to his orders.”

According to court papers, the settlement money is sitting in an interest-bearing account under the supervisio­n of Federal Judge Kiyo Matsumoto.

Gioeli’s lawyer, Jennifer Louis-Jeune, asked for an extended deadline of Dec. 20 to respond to

Cogan’s decision ordering the defendant to show cause why the new money should not accelerate the 67-year-old mobster’s payback process.

Gioeli is less than halfway through an 181⁄2-year prison sentence following his racketeeri­ng conviction. The restitutio­n was part of his sentence, with the initial payback set at $25 every three months while in custody and 10% of his gross monthly income while on supervised release.

But in August 2013, the PingPong-playing inmate skidded in a puddle near the showers inside the Metropolit­an Detention Center, with Gioeli’s slip-and-fall leaving him with a broken kneecap and a 30-day hospital stay.

He sued the federal Bureau of Prisons for $10 million, eventually agreeing to a quarter-million-dollar settlement.

The fur business robbery in 1992 netted 150 fur coats worth an estimated $900,000, while the 1995 bank heist netted roughly $210,000, according to court documents. Goeli, a tough guy described by racketeeri­ng trial witnesses as a cold-blooded assassin, was ordered to pay the full amount to Chemical Bank and $150,000 to Furs By Mina.

As of two months ago, Tommy Shots had ponied up just $450 in restitutio­n — leaving an outstandin­g balance of $359,550.

Cogan denied Goeli’s motion to vacate or modify the payback, and ordered him to show cause why his six-figure windfall “should not accelerate defendant’s restitutio­n payments, based on a material change in his economic circumstan­ces.”

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