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Mob Wives star sues Rockstar for using her story

Mob Wives star sues Rockstar for using her story

Mob Wives star sues Rockstar for using her story
27 February 2014

In the (paraphrased) words of Sonny Corleone, "Goddamn Rockstar don't respect nothin'".

That's the opinion of Karen Gravano, former star of reality TV show Mob Wives, who has filed a $40 million lawsuit against Rockstar Games for illegally imitating her life.

Gravano, whose father Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano turned his back on the Gambino crime family to help take down mobster John Gotti, claims that the GTA V character Antonia Bottino rips off her life story.

In the course of the mission 'Burial', players find Bottino bound and ready to be buried alive. Upon helping her, she reveals she's the daughter of the retired Gambetti crime family underboss Sammy Bottino, who - similar to Sammy the Bull - quit his life gangster ways and took up a government plea bargain. To lend further weight to Garvano's case, the Gambettie character refuses to allow his daughter to appear in a show called Wise Bitches.

The lawsuit states, "Notwithstanding the fact that plaintiff has the utmost respect for the writers and creators of the Grand Theft Auto 5 video game, [Gravano's] story is unique and is hers to tell", suggesting that Rockstar could have approached her to licence her story "with relative ease, which may have (averted) this action."

Gravano, who is about to publish a book containing "not-so known aspects" of her life story, follows in the steps of Lindsay Lohan, a former dancer for Cypress Hill and an LA strip club in attempting to make Rockstar cough up cash for 'borrowed' stories. None of the former claimants were successful.

(Via: New York Daily News)

(Image: Rex)