On Wednesday morning, both the prosecution and the defense will offer their closing arguments inside Brooklyn’s federal courthouse. Then Judge Edward Korman will hand it over to the trial’s 16 jurors, who could start deciding the fate of the Gottis (born Irving and Christopher Lorenzo) before court is adjourned that same evening. If convicted, the Gottis could be sentenced to up to 20 years behind bars.

Before Ryan took the stand, defense attorneys Gerald Lefcourt and Gerald Shargel sought Korman’s go-ahead to grill Internal Revenue Service agent Francis Mace about statements he’d made both during his grand-jury testimony and in the search-warrant applications that led to the government’s raiding the Inc.’s Manhattan offices back in 2003. More specifically, Lefcourt claims Mace had said McGriff supplied Irv Gotti the capital he’d needed to launch Murder Inc. back in 1999. Lefcourt argued that Mace’s assertions were based on rumors cultivated on the streets.

“Drug dealing was intimately involved with your clients,” Korman said, in his denial. “That’s a fact. [The government] didn’t make that up.”

Ryan, a former IRS special agent, was hired by the defense to examine the Gottis’ financial records and bank statements, as well as those for the Gottis’ various business ventures