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The feds yesterday arrested ten members and associates of the DeCavalcante crime family, said to be the real-life inspiration for the HBO hit series, "The Sopranos." Shown here are several cast members of the show.

(Abbot Genser | AP)

NEWARK — Like many La Cosa Nostra crime families these days, the New Jersey-based DeCavalcantes have seen their mob muscles wither.

Death, prison, turncoats and FBI wiretaps have taken a toll on the family said to have inspired the hit HBO television series, "The Sopranos," experts say.

So, the exchange between alleged DeCavalcante capo Charles Stango, 71, and his son Anthony last month, which federal agents say they captured on tape, was fitting.

The Feb. 23, 2015, chat came after an earlier phone call when Anthony and his father discussed their contempt for a rival gang member who his father wanted dead, federal prosecutors say.

"Wrong thing on that phone, Anthony," Charles Stango tells his 33-year-old son, according to a transcript of the call included in a criminal complaint the FBI filed Thursday in U.S. District Court. "Believe me when I tell you shoulda called me on this (expletive) phone kid! Oh my God, oh my God. You have no idea what you just did. You're gonna put me in the can (jail)."

And then the father added a few choice words for his son, according to the complaint.

"I'm sorry Dad," the son told his father, according to the complaint. "I called you in the heat of the moment."

Anthony and Charles Stango were among 10 alleged members and associates of the DeCavalcante family arrested Thursday following an FBI probe that began in September 2012.

Charles Stango, who lives in Nevada, and two others are accused of plotting to kill a rival they called "The Mutt" by hiring two members of an outlaw biker gang.

Stango, according to the FBI complaint, was caught on tape telling the undercover agent the rival "had to meet death or you gotta maim him or you just gotta put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life or somebody's gotta get a (expletive) jar of acid and throw it in his (expletive) face."

Anthony Stango, of Brick, is accused of plotting to sell cocaine and run a prostitution business.

Their arrests are the latest chapter in the history of a mob family that takes its name from Simone "Sam the Plumber" DeCavalcante.

The FBI once bugged DeCavalcante's office after he took over the leadership in the early 1960's and managed to capture evidence of his extra-marital affairs.

"The DeCavalcantes have been around for more than 100 years, and like the notorious Five Families, they never seem to die," said Jerry Capeci, a veteran New York City journalist who chronicles the mob on his popular website, www.ganglandnews.com.



In the 1980's and 1990's, the feds indicted and convicted more than three dozen DeCavalcante members and associates, including its boss, consigliere and many of the family's top-ranking capos, Capeci says.

Their history has been marked by something of an inferiority complex. John Gotti, the late boss of the powerful Gambino crime family, is reported to have once referred to them as "our farm team.''

The feds say the family remains under the control of the Gambinos -- a shift believed to have taken place in the late 1980s around the time DeCavalcante crime family captain Vincent (Jimmy) Rotondo was gunned down.

His son, Anthony, testified that after his father's death, Gotti swiftly moved in to wrest control of the DeCavalcantes' away from the Genovese family.

Anthony Rotondo, who became a government cooperator, said the takeover occurred after his father's 1988 killing during a funeral home meeting between Gotti and John Riggi, then the alleged boss of the DeCavalcantes.

"When they came out, John Riggi was white as a sheet," Rotondo testified during a 2004 trial in Manhattan Federal Court. "John Gotti told him the DeCavalcante family would now answer to him."

And yet, the family's association with "The Sopranos" appeared to bring a measure of pride.

In 2000, Capeci managed to get a look at FBI transcripts of a March 1999 conversation between Anthony Rotondo and a DeCavalcante family soldier, around the time "The Sopranos" first aired.

"Hey, what's this (expletive) thing, 'Sopranos,' What the (expletive) are they? Is that supposed to be us?," the soldier said, according to the transcripts.

"You are in there, they mentioned your name in there," Rotondo said.

"Yeah, what did they say?," the soldier wondered.

"Every show you watch, more and more you pick up somebody," Rotondo said, according to the transcripts. "Every show."

Thomas Zambito may be reached at tzambito@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomZambito. Find NJ.com on Facebook.