Feds eyeing Philly's new "Mob Wife"

BACK IN JANUARY, South Jersey fashionista Alicia DiMichele sounded as if she wanted no part of a Philadelphia spin-off of VH1's "Mob Wives" - even though the hit reality show had reached out to her several times.

"I'm a mother of three kids," DiMichele told the Daily News at the time. "I just don't want to be portrayed as something I'm not."

But DiMichele - a rather attractive mom who happens to be married to a jailed New York mob associate - must have had a change of heart. She subsequently signed a contract to do "Mob Wives." Cameras have been following her in New York, South Philly and Las Vegas.

Now the feds might want in on the action.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn are asking a judge to have DiMichele's financial status reevaluated to determine whether she has the cash to pay a fine as part of her punishment for helping her husband, Edward "Tall Guy" Garofalo Jr., embezzle union funds from a trucking company they ran.

DiMichele, 40, who owns Addiction Boutique, with locations in Cherry Hill and at 12th Street and Passyunk Avenue, has been posting Instagram pics with "Mob Wives" stars, but her lawyer says she isn't profiting from her jailed husband's connections to the Colombo crime family, as prosecutors might suspect.

"They don't quite understand the story line that's being developed through her, which is not what they think," said attorney Steve Zissou (who said he's a huge Bill Murray fan, by the way, but there's no connection to his character in the Wes Anderson film "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou").

"It's not a glorification of mob life. It's actually how a housewife, a mother of three kids from South Jersey, had her life almost completely destroyed by her husband's association with an organized-crime family," Zissou said. "It's more of a cautionary tale, of 'Watch out, this can happen to you.' It's only under those conditions that she agreed to do the show."

The feds are asking probation officials to look into DiMichele's finances, simply because it appears that she has more money now, not because of how she got it, according to a law-enforcement source.

"It happens to be in this interesting way," the source said of "Mob Wives."

VH1 officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

DiMichele, whose sentencing is scheduled for Friday in federal court in Brooklyn but will likely be postponed, sees the reality show as a potential silver lining to her family's legal troubles, her lawyer said.

"She hopes by doing this to be an inspiration to her kids and other women out there," Zissou said. "To not give up, fight back and claw your way back."

- Staff writer Jason Nark

contributed to this report.

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