According to a federal indictment unsealed in Newark, N.J., last week, America's biggest, baddest crime family is paying to play in the Philadelphia underworld. So, what game is the Genovese crime family suiting up for? One hint: It involves pigskin.

A Genovese crew in New Jersey allegedly headed by reputed capo Lawrence "Little Larry" Dentico is charged with running a major sports book out of social clubs, bars and delicatessens in North Jersey and Staten Island. The illegal betting operation got bigger each fall as more and more bettors, eager to wager on the NFL and college football games, found their way to the mob bookies. There were so many gamblers looking for action that the Genovese family expanded into South Jersey and Philadelphia — traditionally the turf of the Philly Cosa Nostra.

Law enforcement sources tell City Paper that criminal associates of the Genovese crew rented a second-floor apartment near 17th and Wolf streets in South Philly and had their bookies install additional telephone lines to take football bets beginning in the fall of 2002. At one point, a law enforcement source says, a random murder in the neighborhood spooked the North Jersey mobsters. When police showed up to investigate the shooting and patrols were increased in the neighborhood, the Genovese crew nervously moved their operation to an apartment a block away.

The police didn't know that the Genovese crime family was in town, but local mobsters did. The Mafia has rules about conducting business in another crime family's backyard. Traditionally, the local Cosa Nostra has to be notified and cut in on the deal or paid a fee, or a tribute payment. Federal prosecutors claim the New Yorkers did just that.

One count of last week's indictment charges that an alleged associate of Little Larry's crew, John Yeswita, traveled here on Dec. 20, 2002 to "meet a high ranking member of the Philadelphia crime family of La Cosa Nostra for the purpose of making a tribute payment."

What's so unusual about this charge is that not so long ago, the Genovese family was ready to murder Joe Ligambi, the reputed Godfather of Philadelphia, and seize the local rackets rather than share criminal proceeds with wiseguys from South Philly.

If tribute was paid, it marks a new phase in the once-contentious relationship between New York and Philly.

During the summer 2001 racketeering trial of former Philly mob boss Joey Merlino, mob-capo-turned-government-witness Peter Caprio testified that he plotted with the Genovese and Gambino crime families to murder Ligambi and two others so that New York could take over the Philly mob.

Caprio was supposed to lure Ligambi and Merlino co-defendants George Borgesi and Stevie Mazzone to Newark, where they would have been whacked and buried in a construction site. (Borgesi is Ligambi's nephew.) Caprio claimed that the Genovese crime family didn't recognize Ligambi as the legitimate boss and didn't want to share money from a gambling operation they planned to set up in Philly.

But last week's federal indictment says that less than a year later, the Genovese leaders not only recognized Ligambi, but also were willing to share the spoils. Now it looks like the Philly Mafia stands to inherit hundreds of local gamblers once serviced by the Genovese crew.

The feds arrested 14 reputed members and associates of the New Jersey faction of the Genovese crime family last week and charged the crew with gambling, loan sharking and shaking down Greek-American business owners in North Jersey. Among them was Dentico, 84, who is supposedly part of a small group of leaders in the Genovese Cosa Nostra called "the administration," which oversees the day-to-day operations while its boss, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, serves time on a racketeering conviction.

While the feds were locking up mobsters in Jersey, an alleged underworld associate from the Poconos pleaded guilty to charges of enterprise corruption in a Queens courtroom last week. Dana Antal of East Stroudsburg was one of 36 people charged in a gambling ring that operated in Queens, the Poconos and Costa Rica. The gambling ring was controlled by the Bonanno crime family — one of the five Mafia groups in New York City. The Poconos are considered part of the criminal territory of the Scranton-Pittston mob allegedly headed by William "Billy" D'Elia, a 6-foot-4-inch, 240-pound giant of a man who is said to be friendly with Ligambi.