Anthony "Tony" Rotondo

As with Vincent Palermo, everything here comes from the public court record. Anthony Rotondo is alive and this page goes no further than sworn testimony and filed documents.

Rotondo was born in 1955 into the family he would later testify against. His father, Vincent Rotondo, was a DeCavalcante member who was found shot dead in his car in Brooklyn in January 1988, with a parcel of fish on the seat beside him. Anthony was made afterwards and rose to capo.

He was charged in the December 1999 racketeering case, and in 2002 he began cooperating. He testified in 2003.

The Sopranos testimony

On 3 March 1999, two months after the series premiered, an associate wearing a recording device for the FBI captured a conversation between Rotondo and the soldier Joseph Sclafani. Sclafani asked what the programme was and whether it was supposed to be them. Rotondo told him he was in it — that his name had been mentioned.

In May 2003 Rotondo was questioned about that recording on the stand, and described the family working through the show's characters and matching them against people they knew.

It is a small piece of evidence and it does not establish what the series was based on. What it establishes is narrower and stranger: that the men in question watched it, recognised the world, and argued about the casting.