Carmine “The Snake” Persico, the locked-up longtime boss of the Colombo crime family, has died, according to his lawyer — who is blaming the partial government shutdown for “accelerating” the elderly wiseguy’s demise.

The 85-year-old was accompanied by a loved one when he passed away Thursday afternoon at Duke University Medical Center.

His lawyer, Benson Weintraub, said Persico died of complications from diabetes stemming from a “rampant infection” in his leg that went untreated while he was behind bars at Butner Federal Correctional Institution — because of the government shutdown.

Weintraub said the elderly wiseguy didn’t get adequate antibiotics to treat the 10-inch wound.

“There was an interruption in antibiotic treatment and we believe that accelerated his demise,” the lawyer said. “It started off as an infection and started destroying all of the muscles in his right leg.”

On Monday, he was transferred from the North Carolina lockup to the hospital and placed in hospice care.

Persico, who was serving a 139-year sentence, was put away in 1986 following his conviction in the landmark “Mafia Commission” case. But he reputedly still ran his crime family from behind bars, making him the longest-reigning mob boss in history.

The federal takedown, led by then-Manhattan US Attorney Rudy Giuliani, also ensnared Lucchese family boss Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo, Genovese boss Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and five others on a slew of racketeering charges.

At the time, prosecutors wrote that the mobsters were “some of the most dangerous, ruthless and heretofore untouchable hoodlums ever to stand before the bar of justice.”

“Carmine Persico was born in August 1933 and killed his first human being in 1951, before his 18th birthday,” they said.

Persico earned his infamous “Snake” nickname from an assassination attempt on his friend and fellow hit man Larry Gallo — a beef that was recreated in “The Godfather, Part II.”

In December, Persico filed a federal lawsuit against a doctor at Butner and prison warden Andrew Mansukhani as he faced “an immediate leg amputation above the knee or insertion of prosthetic ‘stents’ in the legs.”

The court papers indicated he was in poor health and suffering from low blood pressure, chronic kidney disease and glaucoma.

He wrote that the “defendants failed to ensure that plaintiff’s open wounds were not infected and the bandages changed for sterility” while he was in custody.

“Based on deliberate neglect, his death was accelerated by non-treatment,” Weintraub said.