According to Dan Moldea, a writer I like a lot (see my sig), it's total bullshit. He insists Sheeran did not pull the trigger. He had a "sit down" (that's what he called it on his facebook page) with DeNiro and Gus Russo and tried to convince DeNiro not to do the movie. No luck.

I don't care if movies based on true stories get some things wrong. They're movies. The exception would be documentaries, which serve a different purpose than feature films. We now know Goodfellas was mostly bullshit but guess what? It's still the greatest gangster film ever made.