'Boo Bee's T-shirt controversy ensnares 'Mob Wives' family

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NEWS) - Offensive or an innocent play on words? A pre-teen girls' T-shirt featuring two strategically placed bees dressed up as ghosts has drawn a stinging response in West Brighton section of Staten Island. The shirt reads "Boo Bees."

Janine DeTore owns bee-tween boutique, the store that sells the tees. She says it was meant to be something fun for Halloween. She doesn't think it's inappropriate.

Here is where it gets interesting. DeTore's sister is Big Ang Raiola, star of VH1's "Mob Wives." Big Ang's uncle is the late Salvatore Lombardi, a captain in the Genovese crime family.

And now people protesting the sale of the Boo Bees T-shirts tell the New York Post they're afraid to speak out for fear of mob retaliation. DeTore's daughter Jeannie designed the T-shirts. She says her aunt is the "softest person ever" and she wishes that anyone who had a problem with the T-shirts had told them about it.

I talked to Big Ang over the phone. She said she is disappointed about all the trash talk and that her sister has done a lot for the community. She said she can't believe the family is being brought into this whole thing.

DeTore says the store has sold out of the T-shirts and they even just came out with a line of pink Boo Bees shirts and are donating a percentage of the sale to breast cancer research.