Goodfellas actor sues Fox for $250m

Frank Sivero, the actor who played a mobster in the Martin Scorsese classic Goodfellas is suing Fox television show The Simpson for $250m (€197m), alleging that his likeness has been used for more than a decade without him being paid.

Now, he’s put a hit on the show that’s bigger than the infamous “Lufthansa heist” that was focus of the gangster movie. Sivero, now 62, is seeking the damages, according to gossip site TMZ, which obtained a copy of the court papers.

That blows away the Goodfellas heist.

In contrast, the gangsters who robbed a Lufthansa airliner at JFK airport in New York netted about $5m in cash, or $18.1m today, adjusted for inflation. In addition the robbers grabbed $875,000 in jewelleey ($3.2m today). It was the largest heist in US history up until that time and was a key element of the plot in the Scorsese film.

Sivero played Frankie Carbone, a minor part in the 1990 movie. A remarkable likeness of his character named Louie first appeared on The Simpsons in the October 1991 episode Bart the Murderer. Louie is Fat Tony’s henchman, akin to Sivero’s Goodfellas role and a small role he had as mobster in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II.

Sivero charges the character appeared in at least 15 more episodes, with the most recent airing in April this year. That works out to $6.25m per episode, the site says.

Sivero claims he and some Simpsons writers lived in the same apartment in the late 80s, and were aware of the mobster roles he created.