Lawyer Joseph Corozzo Jr. tossed from organized crime case, likened to Tom Hagen of ‘The Godfather’ 97%
By John Annese0%
4/29/2026, 5:43:07 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Representativeness Heuristic, and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 57.8% saturation with 394 hits. Analysis detected 2,138 faulty-reasoning hits from 682 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 95.5% and a BS Rank of 97% (541 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 96.80% of the article peer group.
Lawyer Joseph Corozzo Jr. has been booted from another organized crime case, after a judge in Brooklyn ruled he was too personally connected to his Gambino-linked client — who compared the lawyer to Tom Hagen from The Godfather.
Corozzo, who last week was spiked from the drug trafficking trial of heavyweight boxer Goran Gogic because he’s being investigated in a jury bribery plot, on Wednesday was removed from the case of Mark Liverano — who’s charged with loansharking, gambling, interstate stalking and weapon possession offenses.
Federal prosecutors requested Corozzo be disqualified after audio recordings surfaced of Liverano gabbing about the lawyer’s knowledge of his alleged schemes and musing about how he was a “Tom Hagen” figure in the Gambino crime family.
Hagen, played by Robert Duvall, was the fictional lawyer who served as Don Corleone’s consigliere in “The Godfather.”
Corozzo did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Brian Cogan said he the conflict of interest in the case was so obvious, he didn’t need to hold a full hearing to determine whether Corozzo should be removed.
“It could blow up in the defendant’s face to have you as counsel at trial,” Cogan said.
In the recordings, Liverano, 59, directed an associate to connect with Corozzo on how to proceed in his loansharking and gambling schemes, and pointed out that Corozzo was the best man at his wedding, according to court filings by prosecutors.
“They’re getting more powerful, Joe, and his whole family,” Liverano said, according to court papers.
Corozzo’s late father, Joseph (Jo Jo) Corozzo, was the reputed consigliere of the Gambino crime family, and the feds have described Joseph Jr. as the Gambino “house counsel.”
Cogan made a similar decision in 2011, disqualifying him from representing Colombo gangster Dino Saracino — who was acquitted of the murder of off-duty NYPD cop Ralph Dols but convicted of racketeering.
Cogan said Tuesday that the Liverano case was even more clear-cut.
“Mr.
Corozzo, you are so conflicted in this matter,” Cogan said, adding, “The fact that you are a subject in the ongoing bribery investigation is perhaps the most concerning.”
Last week, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Joan Azrack disqualified Corozzo and his firm from representing Gogic — a former heavyweight boxer from Montenegro who the feds say is linked to Balkan organized crime — after the FBI learned in November of an alleged plot to bribe a juror with $100,000.
Gogic’s trial has since been postponed.
The subsequent investigation into jury tampering also found protected legal documents, including a photo of a witness’s daughter, in Gogic’s cell in the MDC Brooklyn jail, and uncovered detailed instances of apparent witness intimidation, according to federal prosecutors.
Corozzo’s co-counsel Angela Lipsman argued in a letter filed late February that he had no conflict of interest representing Liverano.
“While we need to listen to the recordings the government refers to in order to intelligently respond to the government’s arguments, and while there is never a guarantee of not being arrested without probable cause, we remain utterly unconcerned by the government’s suggestion that Mr.
Corozzo would be implicated in any wrong doing,” she wrote.
“We assure the court that there is nothing that the government can say or do that would keep us from representing our client zealously within the bounds of the law.”
Liverano — whose criminal history spans 40 years and includes a manslaughter conviction for fatally shooting a night security guard at a Bensonhurst diner — is accused of running a loanshark business that used threats of violence to make sure debtors paid up.
He discussed beating one man who owed him money in front of his wife, and talked in a recorded call about beheading the man’s son, according to the feds.
“I’m gonna chop, hold his hair, and I’m gonna chop his head off, and I’m gonna make youse live, and I don’t give a f— about going to jail,” he said in a recorded July 2023 conversation, prosecutors allege.
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