ALBANY – Robert De Niro. Joe Pesci. Al Pacino.

Senior U.S. District Judge Gary L. Sharpe?

The three famous actors play the main characters in Martin Scorsese’s film “The Irishman.” which tracks the life of mafia hitman Frank Sheeran and his somewhat debatable role in the demise of Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa.

Sharpe, who has presided over some of Albany's highest-profile federal trials, played an unquestionably real role prosecuting actual members of the Bufalino crime family, the crime syndicate depicted in the film.

In “The Irishman,” Pesci plays Russell Bufalino, Pacino plays Hoffa, while De Niro plays Sheeran, a former truck driver who's brought into the underworld by Bufalino, whose crime family was based in northeastern Pennsylvania and operated in Binghamton, central New York and the Southern Tier.

In April 1990, Sharpe, then an up-and-coming assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District, won the jury conviction of Bufalino capo Anthony F. “Guv” Guanieri of Endicott and Anthony Mosco Sr., a soldier in the family.

Guarnieri, 79 at the time, was sentenced the following August to 30 years in prison for racketeering crimes that included attempted murder, bribery of union officials, shaking down businesses and defrauding truckers working on highway construction projects.

"It means he won't be eligible for parole until he's 109 years old," Sharpe said at the time, according to a report in the Syracuse Post-Standard. "If he lives beyond that, he'll be back. If not, he'll spend the rest of his life in prison. That is a hefty, hefty sentence. We're very pleased.''

It was far from the only silver-screen-worthy moment for Sharpe, a Vietnam veteran and Cortland native. During a trial against members of the Hell's Angels, many of the bikers set up a gauntlet in a courthouse lobby to intimidate government witnesses, former federal prosecutor Gregory West told the Syracuse Herald-Journal in 1991. He recalled Sharpe sitting beside the bikers, relaxed with his arms stretched out.



"He had gone in there and just sat down right in the middle of them, and he was going to show them that he wasn't the least bit intimidated by their presence,'' West said at the time. "And it worked.''

Now-Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy, who is very much still on the bench, sentenced Guarnieri and Mosco. The latter received 17 1/2 years in prison for tax evasion, embezzling union money, extorting cash from businesses and truck drivers, and defrauding truckers of wages on highway construction jobs.

Sharpe was able to prove that Guarnieri arranged a hit on mob associate Joseph N. Maruca, who survived being shot five times in a barn in Agawam, near Springfield, Mass., in 1981. A mob associate, John "Jake" Nettis, was later convicted of the botched hit. A co-defendant, Adolfo "Big Al" Bruno, a mobster in the Springfield faction of New York's Genovese crime family, was acquitted of the attempted killing. FBI records show Bruno later tried to orchestrate the takeover of gambling rackets in the Capital Region, which led to a criminal case in Albany.

Like more than one character in "The Irishman," Bruno's life met a violent end. On Nov. 23, 2003, the 57-year-old was leaving a Springfield social club when a man approached and said, "Hey, Al — I heard you were looking for me."

He fired six shots into Bruno from a .45-caliber handgun.