here's a little history lesson for everybody on both joseph and his dad anthony

"He wanted to be Michael, but he was a little more Fredo.

Joseph Vollaro, 42, the key witness at the center of the feds' 62-person indictment against the Gambino crime family, was desperate to become a "made man," but he ended up a mob rat.

He was so eager that he even lied on the street about being an anointed Gambino member, according to court records. When his lies got back to his first wife's uncle, "Little Sammy" Corsaro, the No. 2 in the Gambinos' New Jersey hierarchy, he was called on the carpet before John "Jackie Nose" D'Amico and John "Junior" Gotti, the acting bosses.

"Jack D'Amico got in the center of it as the boss, arbitrated it, realized that Joey didn't do anything wrong and just said that's the end of it," Steven Lenehan, a mob associate and federal witness, testified during a mob trial in the 1990s.

Lenehan agreed to set the record straight about Vollaro, the man he helped convict in 1996.

He described Vollaro as "friendly, generous, ambitious and a little gangster crazy."

Vollaro has been described as the head of a trucking company who lucked into his association with Gambino mobsters after meeting capo Nicholas "Little Nick" Corozzo in jail. But he was actually born into a life of crime.

His father, Anthony Vollaro, ran one of the biggest illegal gambling rings in the city, based in the Tottenville section of Staten Island, according to court records.

Anthony Vollaro's operation pulled down "well in excess of $50,000 in a given day," according to the testimony of NYPD Detective Kevin Martin.

"Tony Vollaro was someone of substantial authority in the operation, and Joseph Vollaro, as a result, was also someone with management-level authority," Martin said.

But the younger Vollaro was considered green, and a little over-eager.

"Joey had a tendency to overstep his bounds on occasion," Lenehan testified.

He bragged about having a direct line to the boss, D'Amico. D'Amico was nabbed in the recent FBI sting, and Corozzo remains on the lam in the same case.

In reality, Vollaro worked at the edges of the crime family, steering gamblers in Essex County toward his father's gambling book, according to records.

"He wasn't made because he hadn't established the needed mob political skills he need to navigate the induction process," Lenehan said.

"Another year, two at most, I'd get him primed for the 'jump,' but I flipped."

So did Vollaro. In 2004, he began cooperating with the FBI rather than take a life sentence in prison for possession of 2 kilos of cocaine."

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