Who

The daughter of deceased crime boss John Gotti, Victoria Gotti achieved C-list celeb status with her A&E series Growing Up Gotti, in which she impressed audiences with her family's grace, decorum, and understated sense of style.

Backstory

Victoria was one of the five children of John Gotti, the head of the Gambino crime family who became a tabloid fixture in the 1980s thanks to the vast criminal empire he ran (racketeering and heroin, mostly), his love of the press, and his flamboyant style. Growing up in Brooklyn, Victoria was exposed to the family business from an early age: When her brother Frank was accidentally killed in a 1980 car accident, the elderly motorist who ran him over was abducted by her dad's pals and never heard from again. Most of Victoria's family members followed in her dad's footsteps and eventually got mixed up in the Mob. Her brother, John, took over the organization after their dad went to prison in the early '90s and has since spent his life in and out of prison. (Only Victoria's youngest brother, Peter, managed to escape the family legacy, which means he's no longer on speaking terms with most members of the Gotti clan.) For her part, while Victoria never slugged anyone to death with a bat or chopped off anyone's fingers (that we know of, at least), her career has consisted entirely of milking her notorious last name with books and various gossip columns in publications like Star and the Post.

Of note

In 2004, Gotti tried to cash in on the public's fascination with mob life, starring in a reality show for A&E that captured the Gotti lifestyle in all its tacky, white-carpeted, gold lamé, hair-gelled glory. The show debuted with the highest-rated premiere in A&E history and had solid ratings for the first few months. But it quickly lost steam and was cancelled a year later. Since then, Gotti has been trying to claw her way back into the public eye with relatively little success. Aside from her various gossip columns, Victoria has also penned five books, including Hot Italian Dish (a cookbook), Superstar, The Senator's Daughter, and the ominously-titled I'll Be Watching You.

The look

On an episode of Growing Up Gotti, Gotti got Botox injections and had her lips pumped full of collagen in preparation for an awkwardly staged blind date. It's clearly the tip of the plastic surgery iceberg for the orange-hued, Barbie doll-maned, inch-long acrylic-nailed, color contact-wearing Gotti. She's reportedly also had cheek and breast implants and a nose job.

Medical file

Gotti informed the press in August 2005 that she'd survived breast cancer; she subsequently admitted she'd in fact only had "precancerous cells," not the fully-developed disease. (The rather shameless PR stunt led to the Post headline, "Gotti's sick cancer scam.") She has suffered some genuine health problems, however. After a "heart incident," Gotti was informed she has mitral valve prolapse syndrome and had a pacemaker implanted.

Personal

In 1984, Gotti married childhood sweetheart Carmine Agnello, whose scrap metal business was raking in $30 million a year until his 2000 arrest for racketeering and arson. Victoria and Agnello have three sons—Carmine Jr., John, and Frank—all three of whom you know well if you watched Growing Up Gotti. Her daughter, Justine, was stillborn in 1985. Gotti lives in a cheesy, seven-bedroom marble-fest in Old Westbury, Long Island, which she put on the market for $4.4 million in April 2005. Remarkably, she had no takers.