Latest / NO FILTER / Joe Rogan Experience _2343 - Joe Pistone

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Joe Rogan Experience _2343 - Joe Pistone · NO FILTER

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The joe rogan experience train.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: By day joe rogan podcast by night all day.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: Nice to meet you my pleasure you always wear sunglasses
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: is that to hide your identity still yeah.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Actually it's it's i have to see number one but
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: where i where i reside now uh my neighbors have
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: no idea that they're living next to Donnie Brasco.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Well, you have a very distinct voice.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: I don't want to ask where you live, but, you know.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: What a wild life you've had, sir.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Well, pretty much, yeah. Never expected it to go like that,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: but it took off.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: So when you first started working, it was with the FBI, correct?
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Well, I was with Naval Intelligence for three years. And
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: then I always wanted to be in law enforcement. And
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I was working in Philadelphia, actually. And you do a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: lot of work with the FBI because, you know, on
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: the government installations, government bases. So I became friendly with
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: some FBI agents. And I figured if I, you know,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: when I get up, when I finish this tour with NIS...
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go into law enforcement, so I might
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: as well try for the best and the best, you know,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the FBI.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: And so how does that lead to you infiltrating the mob?
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I didn't infiltrate the mob right from
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: the get-go, you know. Look, I grew up in Patterson,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: New Jersey. I grew up in an all-Italian neighborhood. Knew
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: wise guys, went to high school with sons are wise guys.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: And when you're in a neighborhood, you know, you know,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: you know who the wise guys are. You hang out
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: at the, you're, they let you hang out at the,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the social clubs because, you know, you're a neighborhood kid.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: They know it. So I knew the streets. Um, so
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: when I went into the FBI, I was, you know,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I was street smart, basically, Joe, that's what it comes
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: down to, you know? Uh, and, uh, My first assignments
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: were bank robberies, fugitives, gambling cases. And I started doing
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: some little undercover work on gambling cases because back then
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the FBI was big into gambling, interstate gambling cases.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: So what was your first undercover work?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: First was infiltrating a gambling house. In Jacksonville, Florida, actually.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: That was my first office.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: What kind of gambling were they doing?
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Craps. I had a regular casino going. And, you know,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I felt comfortable around that stuff because I grew up
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: with that stuff. You know, I grew up, like I say,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. Crap games, card games. It wasn't anything
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: new to me. And being around gangsters was not like.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Intimidating because I wasn't around gangsters growing up. So I
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: didn't have any problem, you know, getting into these games
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and identifying the major players and who was running them,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and that's basically what it was.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: So when you do this, did you have to testify
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: in court with these guys?
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, later on after the case goes down. But most
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: of these guys plead guilty, so you never go to trial.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Because it wasn't where they were facing 15, 20 years.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: They might get a year or two years and then
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: get some time knocked off their sentences. So most of
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: it they plead, and so you never have to appear
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: in a court.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: But was there an issue with you being discovered and
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: then getting found out and worrying about your safety afterwards?
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Well, not too much with these cases, no. Not too
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: much with those cases. And then I worked a lot
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: of stolen art, buying, you know, buying stolen art, buying
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: stocks and bonds, swag, stuff like that.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: So how many years did you do stuff like that
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: before you started being undercover in the mob?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Let's see, probably four or five years. Yeah, yeah.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: So you slowly sort of got acclimated with being undercover,
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: you do a bunch of cases, and then how do
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: they approach you?
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Well, what happened was is that I'm working out in
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: New York, the New York office of the FBI, and
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: there's a big case in Tampa, Florida. They have a
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: case going on guys that were stealing automobiles, high-priced automobiles.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: In other words... You go to them and you say, hey,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I want a Cadillac. Okay, what color you want? All right,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: what model you want? And then they'd go out and
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: hook it. So they grabbed one of the guys and
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: they flipped him. And they grabbed his son. And they said, hey, look,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: you know, you help us and we'll cut your son
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: a break. He said, okay. So he said, look, we
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: want to put an undercover agent in with this crew.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: They operated all up and down the East Coast, from
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Baltimore all the way down to Florida. And the guy
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that was running it was what we call a half-ass
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: wise guy out of Baltimore. So he says, all right.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: So he introduced me to this guy as a car thief.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: But before he introduced me, I said, look, I got
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: to know how to steal cars. So he gave me
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: about a week's lesson on how to steal cars, how
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: to hook cars.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: This is like what year was this?
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: This was in 19, let's see, 1978. Maybe 73, 74.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: So you essentially just pop in the ignition.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Pop in the ignition. Crossing wires. Crossing wires. And some
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: cars had alarm systems. Told me how to get under
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the car. Disarm the alarm system. How to use a
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: slim jim to get in the door. And then how
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: to pop the ignition. And once I learned, you know,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: I figured I could do that. Then he introduced me,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and I got in with this crew. There was a
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: crew of about— he was running like five or six guys.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And I did that for a year and a half.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Stole cars, stole the tractor-trailers. I knew how to drive
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: tractor-trailers because I did that in college. During the summertime,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I drove a tractor-trailer during the summer.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: So you'd take the cars, load them on a tractor-trailer?
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: No, we just stole the cars and I bring them
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: to you. Oh, okay. But, I mean, we stole rigs, too.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Oh, I see.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Because we were dealing with companies, too.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: Got it.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: You know, these guys that own some trucking companies.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: So you have to trust this guy, though, to get
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: you inside, right? You have to trust this guy to
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: not fuck this up and say, hey, this is a
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: car thief.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: That's got to be hair racing.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Well, it is because, you know, the guy's an informant.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: And he's already in trouble.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: He's in trouble. But his basic reason for getting me
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: in was he wanted to get his son out of trouble. So,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: you know, we had him about a short years there that, hey,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: you know, if this goes good, your son is free.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: We're going to cut your son free. So that's what happened.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: So I did that for a year and a half.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And I get back to New York. They make the arrest.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: I went to trial in that case, but that case
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: was in Florida. And a funny story on that case is,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: if you want to hear it. I hooked a Mercedes
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and delivered it to this guy and go to his house.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: And he wasn't home, but his wife was there. So
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I said, hey, you know, I'm delivering this car for
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: your husband. And she says, oh, okay. I give her
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the keys because he had already paid. So me and
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: the other guy, we leave. Fast forward now to court.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I'm going, I'm sitting in the, outside the court getting
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: ready to testify. And there's this lady. She looked familiar.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: It was two ladies. And, uh, So she walks up
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: to me, she says, aren't you Donnie? I said, yeah.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: She said, you delivered a car to my house, right?
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I said, yeah. She said, we know my husband's on
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: trial now. I said, yeah, I know. I'm going in
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: to testify. She says, after he goes to jail, you
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: want to go to dinner?
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Dirty lady.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: I said, no thanks.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: She might poison you.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I get back to New York, and I
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: had a real great supervisor up there. Was she hot?
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: I can't remember, Joe. It was so long ago.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: I would have remembered that part.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: If she was, I would have remembered.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you probably would have remembered.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So I get back to New York, and I had
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: a real good supervisor named Guy Barada. He was an
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Italian guy from the Bronx, good street agent. And he
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: was a supervisor of the truck hijacking squad. And back
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: in the day, they were hijacking, and all these hijackings
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: were orchestrated by the mob. the mafia. And, uh, they
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: were probably doing, you know, eight to 10 hijackings a day,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: which was big time money because they were pharmaceuticals, uh,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: high value, uh, food items like lobsters, coffee, you know,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: you're talking about the 40 some foot trailer. So you're
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: talking a lot of money, but they were all run
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: by the mob. So he, uh, I get back to
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: New York. I get to New York and he says, hey,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about doing this undercover operation. See if, you know,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: we can get something going with these truck hijackers. So
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the idea was, you know, nobody had ever infiltrated the
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: mob before. You know, actually the mafia mafia had some
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: informants in with them, but nobody had actually gotten in.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: So the idea was Let's try to hit the fences.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Fences are the guys that sell the swag and sell
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: the goods. So you need to have a profession. I mean,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: nobody's going to do anything with you without a profession.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: And it has to be one that's attractive to them.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And plus, in the government, if you're going to go undercover,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: your profession can't be one of violence. So who's not violent?
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Jewel thief. So I figured, okay, I'll go in as
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a jewel thief. Well, if you're going to go in
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: as a jewel thief, what do you have to know?
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: You got to know diamonds and precious gems, right? All right,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: so I went to school. I went to diamond school,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: diamond and precious gem school.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, so you have to be able to identify. Yeah,
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: I mean. Use a lens.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Well, that's how you're going to get caught, right? Right, right, right.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Is if. You get into a conversation, you don't know
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: what the hell you're talking about.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: Right, right. How long is the school for?
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I went, I think, for a couple months until I got,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: you know, where I was comfortable. Now, take it another
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: step further. If you're a jewel thief, what else do
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: you have to know? You got to know how to
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: get in places.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: So.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: Pick locks.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I had to learn how to pick locks, right? What
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: else you got to know?
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Crack safes.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: You got to know about safes. You got to know
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: about alarm systems. So I had my guys, when I
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: say my guys, our guys, you know, our tech guys,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: school me on lock picking, different types of safes and
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: alarm systems. So all that took a few months before
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: I felt comfortable, you know. And then I went out
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and on this operation, we didn't do anything with contacts.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: In other words, everything I did, I did under Donnie Brasco.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I rented an apartment, I bought a car, utilities, you know, phones, everything.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Everything as a citizen, in quotes, Donnie Brasco.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: They get you a social security number and the whole deal?
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Social security, everything. I don't want to get into how
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: they do that, but nothing could be... At that time,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: they couldn't uncover anything. So once I got my apartment,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I bought a car. We had all that set up.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And again, you have to know the mafia. You have
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: to know New York City. You don't just walk into
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: a place, you know, and say, hey, you know, I'm
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a jewel thief. Doesn't work that way. You gotta get seen,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: you gotta be around. So I moved out of my residence.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Of course, my family wasn't in New York anyway, but
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I had to move into my apartment. And we had
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: certain bars and restaurants that we knew these fences. and
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: wise guys hung out in. And the idea was just
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: go in, get my face seen, and hopefully get into
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: conversation with somebody.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: How do you go and get your face seen? You
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: just show up by yourself?
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Just show up.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: Is that suspicious, though? A guy shows up by himself,
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: not from the neighborhood?
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: No, well, that's the thing. Because I couldn't say, hey,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I'm from Brooklyn, I'm from Manhattan, I'm from the Bronx,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: because these guys have the contacts everywhere.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: It was up to me if I got into conversation
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: with anybody, my story was, and then again, you have
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: to know your enemy, okay? And the enemy was the mafia.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: So you have to know about the mafia. You have
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: to know if you do get into conversation with these
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: guys and they're trying to check you out, what's your backstory?
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Where are you from? My background was I was an orphan.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: And I moved between Florida and California. Why an orphan?
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Because then I wouldn't have to produce a mother and
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: a father. Because again, if I was lucky enough to
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: get in, they'd say, well, where are your parents at?
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: I couldn't have any siblings that I knew of. I
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: couldn't have been married. So I couldn't have an ex-wife
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: or anything because I would have had to produce somebody
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: right so my backstory was i was an orphan to
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: back it up we found an orphanage that had burnt
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: down and all the records were destroyed so they couldn't
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: they couldn't check that i mean these are all things
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: that that if you're going to send somebody into an
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: undercover operation that is uh deep cover and remember i
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: had no informant bringing me in this was a It
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: had to be a cold entree. So I hung around
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: maybe five, six months. That's all I did. And that's
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: another thing, too. It's a seven-day-a-week job. Because if they
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: see you Monday to Friday, and then they don't see
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: you Saturday and Sunday, where the hell are you Saturday
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and Sunday? So it's seven days a week. It was
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: seven days a week.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Did you have a family at the time?
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I did, yeah.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: But they lived... They lived across country at the time.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: That would be crazy difficult for them.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Very difficult. It was. It was, yeah.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: So you just kind of just hang around restaurants, bars?
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and my only conversation with anybody was what I'll
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: have to drink and what I'll have to eat. And
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I'm not a drinker. I never was a drinker. So, and,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: you know, For young undercovers, you don't have to be
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: a drinker and you don't have to do shit that
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: you think gangsters do. My extent of drinking was, and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: it still is, is a half a bottle of beer
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and maybe a glass of red wine. That's it. And
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I never went outside those boundaries because that's me. I
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: didn't do it. So I used to go to this
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: one place And actually this place wasn't too far from
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: my apartment up in Yorkville. And wise guys would come
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: in there, I don't remember if it was Wednesdays or Thursdays,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I don't remember, with their girlfriends for dinner. And I
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: always would sit at the bar, you know. Never talked
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: to the bartender other than, what do you want, what
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: do you want to eat, what do you want to drink?
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: so one night I go in there and the wise
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: guys are there one of the girlfriends but there's one
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: guy missing but the girl that he was always with
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: was there so I'm at the bar and I guess
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: she gets up she goes to the ladies room she
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: comes by and she says hello and I just said
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: hello Now again, knowing your enemy, know how they operate.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: So the first thing I do is I call the
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: bartender over, right? Now I know his name, but I
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: don't call him him by his name because I was
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: never introduced to him. So I just said, sir, would you,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: you know, I said, I want to go on record.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: That's a mob term. I want to go on record.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't ask that young lady to stop and say hello.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: And he just nods and that's it. Well, fast forward,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: this happens like three or four different times. And they're
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: in there. She's in there. He's not there. About the
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: fourth time, the same thing, you know, she would come
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: over and I would call him over. So finally he says, hey,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: he said, if you want to talk to her, go ahead.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Her boyfriend went bye-bye. He didn't go to Disneyland, Joe.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: They whacked him. So I said, no, I don't have
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: any interest. So now what does this guy know? He
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: knows that I'm a street guy, right? So now he
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: comes over to me, and now we start talking, talking
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: about baseball, talking about how screwed up New York City
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: is at the time. And finally he says, hey, my
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: name is Charlie. I said, my name is Donnie. Now,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: that's another thing. These guys don't introduce themselves like normal people. Like, hey,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: my name is Joe Rogan. Or, hey, my name is
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Donnie Brasco. It's nickname or first name. So that's another
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: notch with him that this kid knows something. So a
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks maybe go by, and then one night
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: he says, hey, you like to gamble? I said, sure,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: why not? He said when I bang up here I'm
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: going to go to an all night game. He said
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: you want to come? I said yeah. So we close
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: up the joint with him and takes me to a
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: game and obviously it's run by the wise guys. You
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: know they got a whole casino set up and doesn't
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: introduce me to anybody but I'm okay because I'm with him, right?
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: So now this is a couple more weeks maybe. So
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: now I figured now, and he don't ask me what
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I do and I don't say anything about jewelry. So,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: but now I figured now I got to try to
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: set the hook. So I come in one night and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I got a packet of diamonds, right? So I put
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: them on a bar And I say, hey, Charlie, I
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: need X amount of money for this envelope. I don't
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: tell him what's in it. I just said I need
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: X amount of money. But I give him a street
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: price where he can make money himself. So he takes it,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: says okay, puts it under the bar. A couple weeks
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: go by. I don't ask him about it. He don't
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: ask me. But, you know, I'm still hanging around with him.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: He comes in one night, puts an envelope on a bar,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: and he said, Donnie, somebody left this for you. I said, okay.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I put it in my sport coat pocket, get back
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to my apartment, and there's the money in it, all right?
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: So now what does he know? He knows I'm a
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: thief because I'm giving him diamonds. I'm not asking him
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: at prices for Tiffany prices, right? Now we get to
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the game, and he introduces me as Don the Jeweler.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: So he introduces me to this Colombo guy. Guy's name
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: was Jilly. So Jilly said, hey, you know, Don, where
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: you from? I said, well, you know, I hung around
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: some in Florida, hung around California. I said, you know,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: just move around a lot. He said, well, why don't
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: you come out to my place on Mount Brooklyn? And
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I said, yeah, okay. So I go out there, and
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I go out to his club, and he has a store,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: you know, all swag. And so he was at the Clumbos.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: So I start hanging out there with the Clumbos, and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I got in with him. I got in with his crew. uh,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: did some stuff with them, you know, because you got
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to do something. Otherwise, right. If you ain't producing, if
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: you ain't producing, you ain't worth it.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: You know, like what kind of, what's the first thing
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: you have to do with them?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Well, they had, uh, they did, they did some hijacking and, uh,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: you know, unloaded some trucks for them and different things. Uh,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: So that went on with the Clumbos, and I was
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: getting good information with these guys. That went on for
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: a couple months, and finally I get to the club
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: one day, and there's two guys there that I didn't know.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: So he introduces them to me as Frankie and Patsy.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: He said, Donnie, you know, Frankie, Patsy. Okay. As it
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: turns out, they just got out of the can They
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: were part of Jilly's crew. One of the guys was
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: a maid guy. Maid guy is a guy that's been
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: officially inducted into a particular mafia family. And these guys
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: were with the Columbo's. I think Patsy was a maid
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: guy and Frankie was an associate. But they had just
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: gone out of the can. So they're looking to set
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: up scores because they've been away for a few years.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: So Jilly tells him, you know, hey, Donnie's a good thief,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: and he knows alarms, he knows locks, he knows safes.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: So they had a couple scores lined up. So we
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: go out, case this place, and I tell him, hey,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I can't bypass that alarm. Because, you know, if you
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: say you can do everything, Nobody can do everything, no
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: matter how good you are. So I said, nah, I
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: can't defeat that alarm. Okay. A few days later, they
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: got another one set up, and it's a safe. We
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: go in. I said, you got to blow this safe.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: You'll wake up the whole neighborhood.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: So now this pisses them off. So a couple days later,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I get to the club, and Jilly, he says, Donnie, let's,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: let's take a walk and talk, I said, okay, so
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: we walk, and we're talking, that's what a walk and
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: talk is, you're walking on the street, and you're talking,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: because they don't think, you know, they don't think the FBI,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: or anybody can hear you, I said, what's the matter, Jilly,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: he said, well, he said, you know, I told, I
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: told Frankie, and Fancy, what, you know, what a great
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: thief you are, and he's And they're pissed off because,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: you know, Patsy's pissed off because you turned down the
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: two scores. I said, well, what do you want me
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: to tell you, Julie? I couldn't bypass the alarm. I'm
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: honest with you. I don't want to blow a safe that,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: you know, you got to blow, blow, blow. So he said, well,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: they want to have a sit down. I said, okay.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: So we go back in the club and then they
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: have a back room. So we go in the back room,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: sit down. They lock the door. And Patsy pulls out a. 38,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: lays it on the table, and said, Donnie, if you
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: don't convince me that you're as good a thief as
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Julie says you are, the only way you're going out
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: of this room is rolled up in that rug.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy. Oh, boy.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So it's crazy what goes through your head. So I
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: look at the rug. I said to myself, I hope
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: it's fucking Persian. If I'm going to go out of here,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I might as well on the $ 50, 000 rug. So we're
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: in there and where are you from, Donnie? Now, you know,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: in these situations, you want to be on the offense.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: You don't want to be on the defense, but I
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: can't really disrespect him because he's a made guy. And,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: you know, if you know anything about the mob, you
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: you can't disrespect the main guy in front of other people.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: So I said, hey, look, you know, I'm an orphan.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not from here. I've traveled the country, you know. Well,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: tell us some people that you stole with. I said,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: no disrespect, but I'm not giving you any names of
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: people that I stole with. I said, why would I
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: do that? Why would I give up anybody that I
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: did scores with, right? So this goes on and on
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: and on. After about four hours, finally, Julie says, hey,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Donnie's been with us for months now. We know what
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: he can do. It's over. It's over. I said, okay.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Now I got a problem. The problem is they just
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: called me out. So in their world, I can't go
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: shake their hand because it's why isn't Donnie pissed off, right?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: My only recourse here is some kind of physical recourse.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: But I can't do anything to Patsy because he's the
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: made guy. I can't touch him. And that's one of
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the rules of the mafia. You don't lay your hands
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: on a made guy. It'll get you killed. It'll get
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: you killed. So the only guy who can hit is Frankie.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: He's not a big guy. So we get up, start
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: to walk out, and I call Cock Frankie.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: Oh, Jesus.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: But that's the only thing that's going to save me
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: because otherwise it's, why isn't Donnie pissed off?
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: So now I'm in a.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: Was Frankie questioning you too?
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But he's not a made guy.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: So he's fair game.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Boy.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: So I hit him. He goes down. Now Patsy's jumping.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's punching the hell out of me, but
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: I can't... You can't hit him back. I can't hit
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: him back. I can just protect myself. But I figure, well,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: you hit me once. I hit Frankie twice.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: So.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It went on. So then finally they broke it up.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: But now I know I can't stay around here. I
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: can't stay with these guys because, you know, you can't
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: get into an altercation with made guys and have it
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: come out. So after everything settled down, I'd say to Jilly, Jilly,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: let's take a walk and talk. So we do. We
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: get outside. I said, Jilly, look, no disrespect to you,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I said, but I can't come around here anymore.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I said, because you know how it's going to end.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: He said, yeah, Donnie, I realize that. He said, but,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you know, no real feelings between you and me. I said, okay.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: So at the card game, I was introduced to a
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Bonanno guy by the name of Tony Mira. I had
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: never done anything with him, but I was introduced to
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: him so I go back I go back with Charlie
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: you know to the card games and I start signing
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: up to this mirror who was a complete psycho case
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a complete fucking psycho case which I find out later
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: on he's a big broly guy and he says you
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: know why don't you come downtown I said, yeah, okay.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: So he was from Little Italy, and that's where he
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: hung out. He had a bus stop luncheonette down at
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Little Italy, but he was psycho. So I started hanging
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: out with him, my first Bonanno guy that brings me around.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: So we're out one night. He was shaking down nightclubs.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I was helping him. When I say helping, I was
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: with him. Shakedown owners at nightclubs and stuff. It's about
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: three or four in the morning, one morning. We go
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: to a diner for breakfast. The eggs come out cold.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: So he starts berating the waitress. And, you know, we
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: were with other wise guys and stuff. So I said, Tony,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I said, you know, I said, she's only doing her job.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I said, why are you taking it out on her?
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: You know, she's here 4 o'clock in the morning waitressing.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: So he tore the shit out of me. He tore
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: into me in front of everybody. But I really can't
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: go back at him. But I have to let him
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: know that, you know, I'm not a pushover, you know.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: So the next day, now this guy, as I had
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: gotten to know him, I had seen him in action.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: So the next day I told him, I said, Tony,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: nobody else is around. So it's my word on his.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I said, don't ever talk to me like that again
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: in front of people. I said, because I'll fucking stab you.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: I said, you won't even know it's coming. I said,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: don't ever embarrass me like that and call me those
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: names in front of other people. And he was like, oof. So,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: but he introduced me to, kept introducing me to other
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Bananos and then he introduced me.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: So even after that?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, after that.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: So after that, did you get his respect by saying
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: you could stab him? I don't think people realize how
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: disgusting the data collection industry really is. Experts say that
• 35:25
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• 35:33
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• 35:37
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• 35:41
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• 35:45
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• 35:49
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• 35:52
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• 36:00
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• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Because he knew that, you know, he knew that I
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: wasn't bullshitting him. I mean, you know, he just beat
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: me down in front of other people. I mean, not physically, but,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: you know, just calling me, you know, and because I
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: was standing up for this waitress. But that was that
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: was him. So he introduces me to a guy by
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: the name of Lefty Ruggiero, another made guy in the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Bananos from downtown, Knickerbocker Village. They all lived in Knickerbocker Village.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: And he introduces me to Lefty. So now Mira had
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: just gotten out of the can. Now they send him back.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: So he goes back to the can. He was a
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: big moneymaker for the Bananos and dope. He was a
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: big narcotics guy for the Bananos. But he had violated
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: his parole, so they sent him back. So I started
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: hanging out with Ruggiero. And what Mira never did and
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: what Ruggiero did is his captain was a guy by
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: the name of Mike Sabella. And Once Rogerio got to
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: know me a little better, he brings me to Mike Sabella,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: who's the captain of the crew. And he said to Mike,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I'm going on record that Donnie's with me. And that's
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: what you do. When you're a made guy, you have
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: an associate, you go to your captain, and you go
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: on the record. So now nobody else could fuck with you.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Nobody else could take you. Mira never did that, even
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: though I I spent a lot of time with Mirror.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: He never went to his captain and said, I'm going
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: on record that Donnie's with me. So I get to
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: know Rogerio pretty good. Start doing stuff with.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: So all told, how much time are you undercover now?
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Now this is probably... Going over a year.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, over a year now. Yeah, yeah.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Now, are you reporting to anybody during this time? Do
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: you have to go back to the FBI? Never.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Once I stepped out of the office, I never went
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: back to the office. What you have is a contact agent, Joe,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: and that's somebody that you, if you have a problem,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: you call him and he helps you solve it.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: So you're totally on your own.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: You're on your own.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I had no surveillance because, you know, you're in New
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: York City.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: You're working seven days a week. You know, my day
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: would go from maybe 11 o'clock in the morning to
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: maybe 3, 4 o'clock the next morning. Seven days a week. So,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: you know, your only lifeline is the phone to your
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: contact agent.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: And so I'm doing a lot of stuff like that.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm gaining all kind of intelligence, though. You know,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: identifying made guys, identifying guys in other families that are made.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: Are you writing this stuff down or do you just
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: keep it all.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: In your head? No, in your head. And what I'd
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: do is I would regurgitate it over the telephone to
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: my contact guy. And he would reduce it to paper. Yeah,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: because these guys would come to my apartment. I couldn't
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: take the shot. And I didn't wear a wire with
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: these guys. Very seldom did I have a wire on.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Most of my recordings... are on the telephone. I wore
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: a wire a couple times when I knew I was
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: gonna get a contract to kill people. And when I
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: had the feeling that I was gonna be told about hits,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: and what I did was I had a mini cassette
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: recorder that I bought at, what's that, Radio Shack? Radio Shack.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: You know, and I just put it in my, I
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: just put it in my sport coat pocket.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: You had to be really worried about getting caught with that.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but at least nobody's tapping. Because once you get
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: in with these guys, when you meet them for the day,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: they all hug each other and they kiss each other
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: on both cheeks. If they kiss you on the lips,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: then you're done. You know that that's the last fucking
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: day you're going to be there.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: So.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I didn't make many body recordings because you're always...
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: They're very touchy-feely guys, you know?
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, when I was with Mirror one time, and
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: he said, hey, pull over, Donnie. I pull over, and
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: he tears my.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: And my car, the dashboard apart. Now, if you saw
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: the movie, that was, they had Lefty do that, but
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: that was, in real life, that was Tony Mirror. I mean,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: you know, so I couldn't have my car wires. Right.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: Does he suspect in you or suspect in somebody else
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: when he's tearing your dashboard?
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Well, it's, well, I'm new, you know.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: You know, nobody could go to anybody and say that
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: they knew somebody, that they knew Donnie.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: Right. You know.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: So that's how they check you out, you know, because
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: they had no other way of checking me out, really. So,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: you know, hanging with Rogerio, doing stuff with him. And
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: now we come to a point where I'm really in
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: with the Bananos. I mean, they're starting to talk. They
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: would talk business with me there. you know, uh, and
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: they felt comfortable with me because, uh, again, reverting back
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: to my, my early years growing up, you know, hanging
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: out and, and at the, at the social clubs in
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood, you know, I knew that if you don't
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: have any interest in, in a conversation, walk away from it.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And that's what I did with these guys is, uh,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: If they started to talk about something, I would get
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: up and walk away because it puts in their mind,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: you know, Donnie's not really interested in, you know what
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: I'm saying? It's not, he doesn't want to get into
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: our real business. So that made them trust me more.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: That made them trust me.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: You knew the protocol.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I knew the protocol, exactly. So... Now what happens
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: is that the FBI had an operation going in Milwaukee,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: undercover operation, against the Milwaukee family, right? The Balistrieri family
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: who's connected to Chicago. Now this will give you a
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: little hint how the mob works. So they're not really
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: going anywhere. They had a vending machine company set up.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: And the undercover was an undercover actually that I knew,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: which is because I had a rule. If I didn't
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: know you, I don't care if you're an FBI agent
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: or not, I'm not introducing you. I'm not vouching for
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: you because I don't know if you're any fucking good
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: or not.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: So they reach out to me and they say, hey,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: we got an operation going in Milwaukee. Yeah. And this
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: is what it is. We got a vending machine company.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: We got trucks. We got a warehouse. We got machines.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: But we're not getting anywhere. You know, the undercover. Who's
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: the undercover? Ty Cobb. That was his. Yeah, that was
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: the agent's real name. I said, Ty's the undercover. They said, yeah.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: I said, okay, now I'll listen to you. Because I
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: know Ty and I had done undercover work in Chicago together.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: I said, okay. So I'm talking, you know, I said, well,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Tell Ty to call me. I want to talk to Ty.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: So he tells me what's going on. He said, you know,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to all these bars and restaurants and they
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: won't take my machines because it's all the mob's machines.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I said, all right. So I said, well, what's the plan? Well,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: maybe you can bring the Bananos out here and we
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: can get a sit down with the Balistreros. I said, well...
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Let me see. So I'm with Rogerio one day, and
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I just dropped a left. You know, I got a
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: call the other day from a guy that I used
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: to steal artwork with down in Baltimore, and he's out
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: in Milwaukee. He said, what the fuck's he doing in Milwaukee?
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I said, he's got a vending machine company, and he
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: wants me to come out and help him. He says,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: is he crazy? He said, they'll blow him up out there.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: He says, he can't do a vending machine business out there.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: That's the mob. I said, well, he doesn't know. He
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't know anything about the mob. And we drop it.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: A couple days later, I says, I left this guy.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Call me again. He needs help. He said, Donnie, what
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: do you think? He said, you can't just go out there.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: And then he looks at me and says, this guy
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: got any money? I said, I don't know. Let me
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: ask him. I said, I'll call him tonight and find
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: out if he's got any money. So I called Ty.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: He was going by the name of Tony. And I said, hey, Tony.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: He said, I said, Lefty wants to know if you
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: got any money. He said, all right. He said, tell
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: him I got $ 200, 000 in the bank. And, you know,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I got a warehouse full of machines. I got everything
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: set up. I said, okay. So I go back to Lefty.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: I said, Lefty, he's got, he told me he's got $ 200, 000
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: in the bank. And he's got this big warehouse set up.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: He says, all right. He said, let me talk to Mike.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Now Mike Cibolo's the captain, right? So Mike said, all right.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: He said, you and Lefty go out there. Just sit
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: down with him and make sure that he has what
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: he says he has. Don't tell anybody you're going. I said, okay.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: So the first thing is call Tony and tell him
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: to send us airplane tickets. Because, you know, wise guys,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: they're not spending their own money. So the Bureau, you know,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Tony puts... gets his two uh plane tickets me and
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: lefty fly out there and uh he takes us to
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the warehouse and he's you know they got a they
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: got the whole operation going on and Lefty said, okay,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: so we go back and report back to Mike. And
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: he said, okay, he says, now here's the story. Tony's
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: been with the Bananos for 10 years. He's been an
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: associate of ours for 10 years because that's what he
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: has to tell Chicago and Milwaukee. Because if they just say,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Donnie just met this guy, they're going to say, well,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: he's not with you. You didn't claim him. So we'll
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: take the whole business. So here's the way it works.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Now we go to our consigliere, the consigliere, the Bananos, right?
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: A guy by the name of Bobby Badheart. You know
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: why they called him Bobby Badheart?
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: Because he had a bad heart?
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Bad heart.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Easy, right?
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: So he goes and Bobby Badhart now has to call Chicago, right?
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: And tell Chicago that, hey, we got a guy that's
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: been with us for 10 years. He's settled now in Milwaukee.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: He's been in Milwaukee for a couple years. And He
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: wants to go into the business and he has machines
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and everything. And we'd like to have a sit down
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: with Balistrieri, the boss of Milwaukee.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Chicago now calls Balistrieri's consigliere and relates the whole story
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: to him. So now we got to wait and see
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: if he wants to have the sit down. A week
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: or so goes by, Chicago calls back and said, okay,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: he'll have a meet with you guys. Who's coming out?
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: It'll be Lefty Ruggiero and Donnie Brasco. Now, lefties are
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: made guys, so, you know. So they say, okay, come
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: on out, check into this hotel and wait for a
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: phone call. So me and Lefty fly out, check into
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: this hotel, and we wait about three or four days,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: just hanging around the hotel. We can't go anywhere because
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: we can't miss the phone call. So we get the
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: phone call. We said, okay, come to Snug's Restaurant. Such
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: and such a day, such and such a time. It's
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: It's Balistrieri's restaurant. He owns a hotel and it's a
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: restaurant in this hotel. So me, Lefty, and Tony, the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: other undercover, we go there. And now if you know
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: the mob, Joe, you don't get to sit down with
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: a boss unless you're another boss. You know what I mean? Guys,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: made guys that are just made guys in other families
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: don't get to sit down with a boss. So now,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: who's there is Balistrieri, the boss, his underboss, his consigliere,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: and his two sons, who are both lawyers, right? So
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: we have a big spread. Why do you want to
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: be here? Well, you know, Tony's been with us this
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: now left. He's doing all the talking cause he's the
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: main guy. Tony's been with us for 10 years, you know,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: him and him and Donnie, uh, they did a lot of, uh,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: art theft together and stuff. And they've all been, they've
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: both been with us. Uh, and Tony, Tony thought he,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: you know, he could get the, he can get the, um,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: business going with the machines and stuff. So after this
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: whole dinner, probably about five or six hours, they said, okay,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: we'll get back to you. All right. So a couple
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: days later, they called, why don't you have dinner at
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: my house? A fucking boss is inviting us to dinner
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: at his house. It doesn't happen. if you know the
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: world of the mafia. Gives us the address, me, Lefty,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: and Tony. And Lefty's like, you gotta know wise guys, right?
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Lefty's like, we're going to the dinner at a mob
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: boss's house, at his house. He's like, you know, I mean,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: we know it's a big deal, but to a wise guy,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: it's a big fucking deal, too. So we go to
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: his house and he's right on the lake. He has
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a big table, you know, like you see in the movies.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: And got the maids serving us and he said, okay,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: he said, we'll go in partners. We'll be 50-50 partners.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Tony does all the work. You know, we'll tell you
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: where to go to. to put your machines in. They'll
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: take your machines. So now, what did we just do?
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: We just married two mafia families together, Bonanos and the
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Balistreros through Chicago. That first, marrying two mafia families to
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: do business together, right? Being left to go back to
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: New York, everything's going good. Tony's meeting with the Suns.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: because that's who, he said, you meet me with my sons, right?
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: After a few months, nothing. They stopped meeting with him.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: Don't know why. They won't take his calls, nothing. So
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I tell, I said, Lefty, they don't, they're not respondent.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: what do you mean they're not responding? I said, they're
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: not taking his calls anymore. He said, well, what'd he do,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: try to, you know? I said, Tony, I said, Lefty,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: this guy's not like that. Make a long story short,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Tony had been a cop in a city outside of
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Milwaukee after he got out of the Marine Corps, before
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: he went into the Bureau and somehow they found out
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: there was a leak somewhere. But they don't tell, we
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: find this out later that this is how they, they
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: don't tell this to Lefty, which saved my ass, because
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: I vouch for Tony. So, we're trying to get in
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: touch with Chicago. Chicago's not, you know, Chicago say, we
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: don't know why they, why they stopped, you know, we
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: don't have any idea. So that goes, now that's, I
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: got that hanging on me. Right? Yeah. So Lefty sends
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: me to Milwaukee, go, you know, Go find out, go
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: search for this guy and blah, blah, blah, blah. And,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I come up with a story. Left, you know,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: I found this car. It's in the parking lot. I mean,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: it's in the parking lot of the airport. Then when
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: I went back, it was gone. So I go and
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: they said, oh, the cops towed it. You know, it's
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: all bullshit, of course, but I got to cover, you know,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: what happened to this guy. So now we got to
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: go tell Mike Sabell, our captain, because, you know, our
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: money source dried up. So we go sit down with Mike.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: This is hard to believe, but, and he's ripping, right?
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: You know, My punishment was?
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: What?
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: I couldn't go to the Christmas party.
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: That's it?
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: That's it. I mean, he was ripped. But he banned
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: me from the Christmas party.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: Because you introduced him to the cop.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Well, he didn't know he was a cop because the
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: operation just shut down and sort of the money wasn't
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: coming in anymore.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: Right. And they don't tell you why? No.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: So I said, well, if that's the best that could happen,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: I don't go to the Christmas party. You know, because
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: each crew has, you know, they have their own party.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: I'm saying to myself, my God, this is what I'm doing.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: So they don't suspect you at all? No. How do
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: they not suspect you? How do they not question you?
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I had been with them so many, I had
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: been with them now, you know, Joe, over two years now.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: And, you know, so, but I'm always on edge because
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know, why aren't the balustraris telling me.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Unless they're too embarrassed. You know what I mean?
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: To this day.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, after we found out that, yeah, to
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: this day, I have no idea why they didn't tell him.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: And whatever happened to Tony?
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, we just shut the operation down.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: They just shut it down. You know? So I'm going
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: on again. We're going on. nice cup.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: You want it? You can have it.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: No, thank you. I got some swag coming for you.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: Well, I got swag too. You can have one of
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: them JRE cups.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: But I mean, I got a lot of Donnie Brasco
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: swag that I'm going to mail to you.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: All right, cool.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: It was supposed to be at the hotel. It never
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: made it, so.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: But this has to be hair raising.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: It is, because now I'm like, and Lefty said, you know,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: now he's, he's grilling me again about my relationship with
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: with Tony.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Uh, but I got to stick to the story, you know? Um, so, um,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: so I, I, I kind of, uh, squared things, uh,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: squared things around with him and because I, you know, um,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: and Mike. So now what happens is that, um, At
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: the time, Carmen Galente was the boss of the Bananos,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: all right? And they killed Galente. They whack him, all right?
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Because there's kind of a beef within the family, and
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: one side didn't like Galente, so they whack him. Mike
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Sabella now was associated with Galente. So they tell Mike, Mike,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: either step down or we're going to whack you too.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: So he gives up his captainship and just becomes a
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: regular soldier again. Right? So one of the originators, when
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: I say originators, instigators, whatever, is a guy by the
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: name of Sonny Black Napolitano. He was out in Brooklyn.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: So they put me in... Remember, we were with Mike Sabella.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: So they put me and Lefty now under Sonny Black.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Sonny Black becomes a captain. They put me and Lefty
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: under Sonny Black out in Brooklyn. So that's who we
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: report to every day. And you have to check in
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: with your captain every day. So every day... Me and
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Lefty would report out the motion lounge. It's on Graham
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: and Withers Street in Brooklyn. Sonny's our new captain. So,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: and again, you know, the intelligence information I'm gathering is like,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: no other than anybody else can get because, you know,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: informants are going to give you all this stuff. And I'm,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: I'm meeting different people. Again, I'm meeting people from, uh,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: different families through these guys. So I'm rocking out there in, in, uh,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, uh, under Sonny Black. And I get another call, uh,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: The headquarters wants to talk to you. About what? Well,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: we got another cover operation going in Tampa, Florida. Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: We want to see if you can bring your bananas in.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: I says, hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: I just went through this in Milwaukee. Well, the supervisor
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: wants to talk to you. I knew the supervisor. The
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: supervisor's a good guy. So I called him. I said, Tony,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: what's up? He said, we got a nightclub. And it's pretty,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty good, but we can't get into
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Santo Trafficante. And maybe, you know, maybe you can do
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the same thing you did in Milwaukee. I said, I
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: don't know, man. I said, if I do it, number one,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: who's the undercovers? Because they had two undercovers running a nightclub.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: And they said, well, one of them is an agent
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: by the name of Sal Mary, Steve. I said, okay.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: I said, I know Steve. I did undercover work with
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: him too. I said, I got no problem with Steve.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: And They gave me the other guy. And the other
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: guy I knew, but I never worked with him. I said,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: but as long as Steve is involved, I'll see what
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: I can do. But I don't know how long it's
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: gonna take, so you gotta just let me think about this,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: all right? Because I don't wanna come up, you know,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not coming up with a story, hey, I got
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: a call from a guy that I used to fuck
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: a thief with.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: Right, right, right.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: So I figure, okay, after a while, okay, here's what
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: we'll do. We used to go to Miami a lot.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: When I say we, I'm talking about me, Lefty, the
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: wise guys. We'd fly to Miami for a long weekend.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: We had a hotel down there that put us on
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: down the arm, right? Give us the sweets and stuff
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: and stay for the weekend. So, I says, okay, here's
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: what we'll do. The next time we go to Miami, right,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: you guys go down there, and whenever we go to
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: a restaurant, I'll let you know what restaurant we're going
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: to go to, and you guys just happen to be
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: in a restaurant, and you.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Steve Salmeri, who was going by Chico, I said, Chico
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: just happens to notice me and comes over to the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: table and, hey, Donnie, how you been? So it's like
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: a bump, right? It's not like. Right, right, right. So
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: that's what we did. So we're out at this restaurant
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: and we set that deal up and Chico comes over and, Donnie, hey,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen you in years. How you doing? What
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: are you doing down here? Well, we got a nightclub.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: You got a nightclub where? It's outside of Tampa, up
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: in Tampa, Florida. No kidding. How long you been down there?
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Three, four years. What are you doing?
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: Nothing.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: It's a nice club. Why don't you come by? Now, again,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: you're talking about a nightclub. So everything is dollar signs. So...
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: I said, Lef, do you want to take a ride
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: up one day? He said, yeah. So when they leave,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: he says, you know these guys? I said, well, I
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: know Chico. I said, I don't know the other guy.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: I said, but, you know, Chico, he was a good thief,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: you know. I said, I haven't seen him in a while.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen him in like maybe five years, but
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: he's always was, you know, he's always a good thief.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: So I said, all right, let's take a ride up.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: So we take a ride up and it's a nice nightclub.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: It's on like five acres. They got tennis courts. We
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: hang out. A lot of business, you know. It was
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: open from, I don't know, nine o'clock. It was open
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: all night. So he said, nice place. He said, we
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: have to tell Sonny about it when we go back
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: to Brooklyn. Okay. So we go back to Brooklyn and
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: tell Sonny about it. Now I'm like in my fourth
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: year with these guys. Wow. So we go back to
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn and tell Sonny he left us. Hey, we ran
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: into one of Donnie's old friends. Boy, they got a
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: nice club there.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah?
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe we'll go down to the city.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: It.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: So we go down, and they see a lot of potential.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: But now they can't operate anything illegal because Santo Trafficante
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: owns Florida. So now we got to go through the
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: same routine. The consigliere has to call Traficanti's guy and say, hey,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: we got, you know, one of our guys has a
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: club down there who hasn't been with us for, you know,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Chico hasn't been, had to be with the Bananos again
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: for five, six years. Excuse me. So we go through
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: that same routine And finally, you know, this takes a while.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: It's not like overnight. So we go through the routine,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: and he says, okay. His guy says, all right, Santo
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: will meet you at such and such a hotel on
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: such and such a day. Get to meet another fucking
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: boss of a Florida Me and Sonny meet him. We actually,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: oh no, the first time we met him was at
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: a restaurant in, right outside of Tampa, that Greek fishing village.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: I've drawn a blank, but at any rate, we meet
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: him in a restaurant, and actually it was Pappas' Restaurant.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: That was the name of it. And Sonny had never
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: met him before. but you know he'd go through all
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: the niceties and Sonny tells him you know we got
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: a nightclub and we want to start running gambling out
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: of it you know so he said okay I'll meet
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: you I'll come up and look at it I'll meet
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: you so I don't know if we met him the
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: next week or next couple weeks we meet him again
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: now this time it's in a hotel room he comes
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: to Sonny's hotel room and sets everything up, right? Forms
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: the marriage. Again, this is the second time we married
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: two fucking mafia families together. So he said, all right,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: you want to do a casino night? Yeah. He said,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to send my two guys up. Okay. A
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: couple days later, Two guys come up from Miami. Card sharks.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: I sat in a hotel with these room guys, Joe,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: and they were marking all the decks of cards. I
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: could not, after they get done, I had no idea
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: how they marked these cards. They were for blackjack and stuff, right?
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: We had craps tables. The dice were fixed. I mean,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: it was like, everything was, you know. So we set
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: the club up and we were advertising Casino Night for
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: the Veterans of Foreign War. We even had a certificate
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: and everything, right? Yeah. We're paying off somebody in the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: sheriff's department to protect us. Well, we got the game
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: going and doing pretty good, doing pretty good. And the
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: place is jammed. So what happens is that all of
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: a sudden, knock on the door. One of the doormen
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: slides in. He comes to me, said, Donnie, there's a
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: bunch of sheriff's deputies outside. Whoa. So right away, I
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: get on the phone. I can't get our contact in
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: the sheriff's department. He's not answering his phone. And we
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: had just paid him that day. All right. So... I said,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: all right, clear all the money off the table so
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: we get all the money off the tables and put
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: chips back on the tables. I said, all right, let
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: them in. Because we had the certificate, we had everything.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: And what we had done was every so often we
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: collect the money and we stash it in the furnace room.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: There was a lot of money stashed. What we had
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: was an old-time one-armed bandit, right? The thing had to
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: be 100 years old. Nobody ever put money in it.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: It was just there. So they come in, and they
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: don't see any money. One of the deputies puts a,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know, nickel, dime, pulls a handle, and what
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: do you think happens? He fucking wins.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: Ha!
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: You're running a gambling operation. Said nobody's ever played that thing, right? Well,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: they wrecked the joint. We all get arrested.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: Why did he get arrested? Because I don't understand.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: It was a gambling charge.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: They arrest us.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, but why? Because of the one-armed bandit?
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: Because they won and they said that that was gambling.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: That was gambling. Nobody even knew there was any money
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: in it or anything. It was just there as a decoration.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: You know, it was an antique.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: So they just used it as an excuse.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just used it as an excuse because we were
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: the mafia guineas from New York.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: That's what we were.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: So they throw us in a can.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: Just for the one-armed bandit. Yeah. They never find the money.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: We didn't, but somebody did.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: Somebody did.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: How much money?
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: Uh, there was over 30 grand that, that I know
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: that was stashed.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: So they swiped that. Oh, I don't know.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: Somebody did.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: Probably.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Somebody did.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: So we had traffic, can't these lawyer when he gave
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: us a, I don't know who it was. So we
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: call the lawyer and he gets us out of the
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: can the next day. Uh, and now, now I'm in
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: another fucking bind because now we got busted and we did,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: you know, we were paying the guy off.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: And what happened to the guy you paid off?
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: He committed suicide later on.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: Oh, how convenient.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: Did he really commit suicide?
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: Because, uh, when, uh, he got a subpoena.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, he knew they were coming for him.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oy. So that, uh, That kind of
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: screwed that thing up. But, you know, Sonny knew that
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: we were paying the guy off and everything, so, you know,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: it was just a... Hazards of doing business. Hazards of
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: doing business as a mob, you know. But when we
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: got back to the club, like I say, the statue
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: was gone with the money. Somebody took it. And so
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: we go back to New York. And again now, there's
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: another beef in the Bonanno family. Because after they whack Galente,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: they make Rusty Rustelli the boss of the family. But
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: Rusty's in a can. He's in a can. So Sonny
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: Black is running the family along with another capo. And
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: then there's a Sicilian faction of the Bonanno family. And
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: they're running their faction. All right? Now there's a faction
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: of three capos that are against Rusty Rustelli. And they're
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: against Sonny and the other capos. So now there's more
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: friction in the Bananos. So in order to solve this, they...
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: They call a sit-down. Sonny Black, the guys on his side,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: the capos on his side, call a sit-down for the
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: other three capos to straighten this out. Well, the deal is,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: when these other three capos get to the sit-down, they're
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: going to whack them. They're going to whack them. So...
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: I was supposed to be in on that, but they
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: cut me out at the last minute. I was supposed
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: to be in on the hit, but they cut me
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: out the last minute. And then I was supposed to
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: be on the cleanup crew, but they cut me out
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: at the last minute.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: Why'd they cut you out?
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Because
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: I wasn't told until after, you know?
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: So they whacked these three guys. And the next day,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: Sonny calls me into the club, and he said, Bruno
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: never showed up. That was the fourth guy. One of
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: the capos in Delicato, his son was supposed to come,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: and he didn't show. So he gave me the contract
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: to kill him. So he said, we think he's in Florida.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: So he sends me to Florida to look for him,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: but he wasn't down there. And the deal was that
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: if I did find them, I'd call the FBI and
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: they would snatch them and we'd stage a hit. Or
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: if they found them, you know, we'd do the reverse.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: They'd stage a hit, but we never found them. So now,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: all this time I never carried a gun. I never
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: carried a gun in this whole operation. Really? Yeah.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: Was that unusual?
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: No, because these guys don't carry guns on a daily basis,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: the mafia guys.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: They don't?
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: No, no, because they're always getting rousted by the cops.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: Got it. Right?
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: The only time they carry a piece is when they're
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: going to go do some work.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: You know? So.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: Did you see guys get killed? No. I don't believe you.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: That was the sneakiest no I've ever heard in my life.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: So we, let's move on. Yeah, let's move on. You
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: made me lose my train of thought, Joe. Sorry, sorry, sorry. No.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: So we're in the club. So I get the contract
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: for Bruno, but obviously I can't find him. Bureau can't
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: find him.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: Did anybody ever find him?
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what happens is we're in a
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: club one day in the Motion Lounge. And Sonny gets
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: a phone call and he says, hey, Donnie, he said,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: we think Bruno's at such and such a place. But
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: it was bad info. It was bad info. So I
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: was asked, well, what would you do if he was there?
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: I said, I hate to say, but Bruno probably was
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: a dead man. And how could you say that? Well,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: because when you're given a contract, it's your responsibility that
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: guy gets killed. And if you refuse the contract....
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: You get killed.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: You're going to get whacked.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: So would you have had to do it?
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: If you found him?
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: I could have given it to one of the other
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: guys to do it, but it's my responsibility.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: You know? And my whole... Look... My mindset in undercover
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: is I'm not dying for a gangster.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: I'll die for a citizen. I'll take a beating for
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: a citizen, but not for a gangster. You know, that's.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: He's going to get whacked either way.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: He's going to go either way.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: So I'll take my shot with the government. Right. It's,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not, you know, a lot of people
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: can't deal with that, but.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: I get it.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: You know, so.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: It's the job.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: That's the job. You know, I mean, look, I'm there
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: to put you in jail. I'm not there to get
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: you killed. I'm not there to kill you. I'm there
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: to arrest you. and try to, you know, hopefully send
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: you to jail. But I'm not going to die for you.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: I'm not, you know.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: So it's a situation where your back is against the wall.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: Got it.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: So, but, you know, that didn't happen.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: Did they ever find him?
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they found him. They found him actually, I
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: don't know if it was a year or so later.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not too sure. But, yeah, he eventually got arrested.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: He was a Coke, you know, he used Coke. So, um, sloppy.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: So now, you know, now with the war going on,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: the Bureau decides that, uh, well, we gotta, we gotta
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: shut the operation down. Uh, so those hits took place
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: on May 5th. So, and prior to that, I had
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: a sit down with Sonny Black and he said, Donnie,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: he said, uh, the books on the mafia are opening
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: up in December. He said, and I already proposed you
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: for membership into the Bonanno family. So you're going to
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: get inducted into the family in December. He said, so
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: I congratulated him, thanked him, kissed him on both cheeks,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: So you were going to be a made guy.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to be a made guy, yeah.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: How attractive is that life when you're in it?
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, forget it.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: Must be so much fun. Yeah. It's part of the problem, right?
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: So, no. Waking up every day to think is today,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: the day I go to jail or today I get whacked. No,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't, uh, Joe, I didn't find it that fucking attractive.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: Believe me. I mean, it's all right. They flash, they cash,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, You walk into a restaurant, they know
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: who you are. You get the VIP treatment. You don't
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: order off the menu. So there's perks. There's those perks.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: Too scary.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to wake up every day saying, do
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: I go to jail or do I get whacked today?
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: That's their mindset. It's crazy.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: It is crazy.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: But I've talked to guys in that life, and they
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: love it.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: That's what's crazy about it.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I know guys that became informants and, you know,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: they wish they could go back. Yeah.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: You know. No.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to, you know.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: But that is a problem with guys who do undercover work, right?
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Some of them fall in love with it. Yeah.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: They fall in love with the undercover aspect. And I
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: think the reason that that I was successful in all
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: my cases and that I'm still 98% sane is I
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: didn't fall in love with it. And I grew up
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: on the streets. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, I grew up in that environment and I
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: was never attracted to it as a kid.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: Right. Um, Did you ever run the risk of running
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: into someone that you knew who knew you as Joe Pistone?
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you see the movie?
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: I did, but I don't remember.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: In the airport?
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's right.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: With the lawyer?
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's right.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: So that really happened?
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: How did that go down?
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: Well, I saw, you know, we saw, made eye contact, and,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I just clocked him. Oh, wow. And Sonny says, Donnie,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: why'd you do that? I said, Sonny, you guys are
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: looking at my prick. What do you want me to do? Oh.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: You know? But no, I never got attracted to the
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: life other than as a job. And I think another reason, too, Joe,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: where a lot of undercovers go wrong is they think
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: they have to act like gangsters.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: They change their personalities.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: And you can't be A, in the daytime, and B,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: at night.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: I never changed my personality.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: You know? And a lot of undercovers are extroverts. And
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: I'm the exception to that rule when I'm really an introvert.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: So you didn't need the attention.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't need the attention.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: You didn't thrive on it.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: I don't... And I never changed my values. Like I
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: mentioned before, I'm not a drinker. I never was a drinker.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: I worked in bars as a bartender during my college
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: years when I got out. And I wasn't going to
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: become a drinker just because I was working undercover. I mean,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: I had guys say, Donnie. You never finish a beer
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: because I can't. I only can drink half a bottle
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: of beer. That's all I can drink.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: Probably lucky.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: Probably.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Or, you know, you never have more than one glass
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: of wine. That's all I can ingest is one glass.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: And see, too many undercovers think, oh, oh, oh. bad
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: guys are drinkers, all bad, you know. Donnie, I never
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: do drugs.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: The coke is a real problem with guys who go undercover, right?
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: Because they have to do it with everybody.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, look.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: Or they think they do.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: They think they do. I mean, I was in a
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: nightclub in Miami once. And the guy offers me Coke
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: and I slapped his hand, you know, fucking Coke is
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: all over the place. And I said, don't ever offer
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: me that shit. I said, I make money off of that.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: I don't put that stuff in my body. I go
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: to the gym every day. Why would I do that shit?
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: I said, to me, it's a moneymaker. See, but too
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: many young undercovers think, oh, you know, I got a drink,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: you know. I got to do this. I got to
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: do that. I got to act tough.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: You don't have to. All you do is you have
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: to be yourself. That's all.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: That way you don't have to ever change it up.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right. You never have to change it. You
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: never get caught. You never get caught.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: Because you're always yourself.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: And you don't have to act tough. You don't have
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: to talk tough. You just got to back up what
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: you say. And that's it. Never say anything that you
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: can't back up. And that was always my motto. I
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: never promised anything that I couldn't do. I never let
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: anybody back me against a wall. And I never got
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: into anybody's face to make myself look tough. And that's
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: where a lot of young undercovers go wrong, that they think,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: They watch too much television. Be honest with you. The
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: only time I screwed up, I'll tell you, we're in Miami, right?
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: And I'm in another undercover's car. So, It might have
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: been Chico's, I don't remember. So there's three bad guys,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: you know, and he had his car wired up. So
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: we're riding by and it's a strip club. And it
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: said 22... naked dancing girls. And I said, 44 nipples.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: That's all I said. Well, that came out at trial
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: by the defense attorney. And I had to explain why
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: I was such an expert on female nipples.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: That's just simple math.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is, you know.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: So somebody remembered you saying that?
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Well, it was on the tape.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: On the tape. On the tape. So they were trying
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: to use that against you?
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was, you know, my character was, you know,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: was questioned. But, you know, it goes back to what
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: I say is that I would not normally say that.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: Right. You know what I mean? Right, right, right, right.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: It was just a dumb statement, but it's always going
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: to come back to bite you in the ass.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: Right, right, right.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: I got you.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you just got caught up in it.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: So what happened when they opened up the books?
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: Well, they closed the case down. So I got them
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: to postpone it to July because we had one more
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: meeting with Traffic Candy set up. So I got them
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: to postpone it until after that meeting. But I couldn't
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: get them to wait until after I got inducted into
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: the family. They wouldn't wait.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: So they closed the operation July 27th. Yeah. Yeah. And
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: six years undercover, seven years of testifying.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: But I was lucky enough that after that case, I
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: did undercover work overseas. I did undercover work for Scotland Yard.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, really?
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: What'd you do over there?
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: I have one case. And so they had two Scotland
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: Yard detectives who I knew. I did a lot of
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: work with their undercover unit. And so they were into
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: the Chinese triads. And there's stuff I can't disclose, but
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: they were.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: They were manufacturing credit cards. And I won't say which companies.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: And you can bang them out for like 50,000 before
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: they were discovered. Because they had the numbers.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew a guy who did that.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they had the legit numbers.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was back when they had like the carbons, right?
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so Scotland Yard was trying to get to the
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: location in another country right where they were actually everything
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: was going down so they were meeting with the number
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: two triad in London so they said hey look our
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: guy from New York mafia guy from New York who's
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: the money man wants to have a sit down with
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: you he says okay So I fly over to London
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: and I knew this Gottlieb Yard guy because I had
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: done other stuff with them. So they introduced me to
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: the supervisor of the serious crime squad. He was the
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: guy that was running this case. So I would break
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: his chops. You know, you can't, they don't carry guns
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: or anything. You know, even the undercovers don't, they don't,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: They don't carry guns. So I'm sitting down with them.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: And I said, I got my gun, but I didn't
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: bring any bullets. You got any bullets? The guy goes,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: ape shit. You can't carry. I said, calm down. I'm
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: just breaking your chops, right? So then he says to me,
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: what are you wearing to this meeting? I said, I'm
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: wearing slacks, sport coat, and a shirt. He said, no, no,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: you got to wear a suit. I said, why do
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: I have to wear a suit? He said, because all
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: these triad guys wear suits all the time. I said,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: what's that got to do with me? He said, no, no,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: you got to wear a suit. I said, well, I
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: don't have a suit. I said, I'm telling you, I
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: got slacks, a sport coat, dress shirts, that's what I'm wearing.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: So he turns to the undercover guy from Scotland Yard,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: And he turns around, opens his safe, pulls out money, says,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: go buy him a suit. I said, you're going to
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: buy me a suit? He said, yeah. I said, what
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: do I do with the suit when I'm done with it?
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: He said, you keep it. I said, all right. So
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: me and Graham, we go. I buy two suits, one
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: for me and one for Graham, right? So we go
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: to the meeting, and I'm wearing his suit. So there's me,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: the two Scotland Yard guys on the cover guys, and
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: the triad. So now before we go to the meeting,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: the supervisor's telling me, look, you can't insult this guy.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: You've got to be nice to him because he's the
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: number two guy. So I says, hey, look, I said,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: I don't tell you how to run your serious crime squad.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: Don't tell me how to work undercover. I says, whatever
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: you need, I'll get. I said, well, don't tell me
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: how to do it. So he's all nervous. So we're
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: in a resort. They rented a suite, big suite in
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: a resort and they're next door. So they got the
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: suite where we are. They got it wired, audio, video, right?
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: So we go in and we're sitting there and We
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: get through all the niceties with the triad. So the
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: guy keeps fucking interrupting me. So finally he says, hey Chin.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: I said, why do your sentences always start in the
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: fucking middle of mine? And he looks at me. And
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: you can hear there's dead silence, right? Then he says, oh, Mr. Joe.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: I was going by Joe Marino at the time. He said, oh, Mr. Joe,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: I apologize. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Graham tells me, he says,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: when you said that, he thought the supervisor was going
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: to have a heart attack. He said. just blew it.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: He just blew it.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: It's over.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: After that, the guy gave us everything. The location of
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: the factory, the whole McGill.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 3: Do you feel like you had to do that to
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: have his respect? Of course.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a mob guy. What do I know
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: about the triads?
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? So, if I would have
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: let him kept stepping on me.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: He's gonna... That would have been out of character. Yeah. Right.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: So, yeah.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: That ought to be fucking scary.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the triads are, you know.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: They're scary.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are. They are. And he was the number two.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: And I give these guys credit. I mean, he got
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: to the number two guy, but they couldn't get, you know.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: So, but... What a life. Yeah.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 3: How do you stay calm in these situations?
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: Me, Joe, I just stay who I am. You know,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: I get that Sicilian in me. And, you know, you
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: go at it when you have to. And if you don't,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: If you don't, it probably seems off.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: But that's got to be just fucking nerve wracking. I,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: you know, it is because what's nerve wracking is you
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: always have to be on.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: You know, you can never be off.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 3: You never relax. No.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, and I mean, not many guys could say
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: that they had sit downs with two mafia bosses of
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: different families.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: I used to stay at Sonny Black's apartment with him in,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. And this guy was running the Bonanno family.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: He was one of the top capos in the Bonanno family. But,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: the difference, Sonny, I don't know how many hits he had. Now,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: all these guys I dealt with, don't forget, all these
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: guys had hits under their belt. These weren't, these weren't, uh,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: novice guys. I mean, they all had, you know, five, six, 10,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: 15 hits under their belt. You know, uh, I mean,
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: I got into a fight one time in a bar
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: with Tony Mira. I mean, me and him against three guys. And,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, he grabbed a beer bottle, broke it on
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: the bar, and just, boom, raked the guy's face, you know. Now,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: there's another guy, you know, I always bring this up
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: to young undercovers, is that this was probably the, the
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: meanest guy I ever fucking met. I mean, flat out mean.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: You know, these other guys were mean, you know, because
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: they killed people, but I mean, he was just a
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: mean guy. The other guys, the other gangsters didn't like him.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: I never saw him, I never saw him overindulge in
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: any liquor.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 3: Never, never.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: And he would stab you as soon as he looked
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: at you. And after that incident, I told you when
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: I had to go around with him, I always made
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: sure I was an arm's length away from him.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: What was his name?
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: Tony Mirror. Oh, okay. Now, after it was over and
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: they found out who I was, they killed Mirror. His
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: own nephew killed him, actually.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: Because he introduced me to all the Bananos.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Lefty was on his way to get killed, but
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: the FBI picked it up on the wiretap, so they
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: snatched him, you know, surveillance team snatched him off the street.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: They killed Sonny Black. Sonny Black got killed. Yeah, he
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: got killed, yeah.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 3: So all the people that had let you in.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Tell you how Sonny Black got killed. You
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: talk about a gangster. When it came out that I
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: was undercover, in the beginning, the mob didn't believe I
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: was an FBI undercover agent. They thought the FBI had
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: kidnapped me and was trying to turn me. Because we
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: picked it up on the wiretaps and informants. But once
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: their lawyers told them, hey, he really is an undercover agent,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: he was like... So Sonny Black gets a call. You
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: got to go to a sit down. So he walks
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: into the motion lounge. He had a diamond ring. Takes
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: off his diamond ring. All right. Takes his money out
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: of his pocket. Takes all his keys except his car keys.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: puts him on the counter, says to the bartender, I
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: just got called to a sit-down. I'm probably not coming back.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: Is that a gangster?
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: Calls his girlfriend. And this is how we found this out.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Calls his girlfriend and tells her the same thing. So
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: what happens is that.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: After they find his body and everything, his girlfriend calls
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: the FBI. And she says, I'd like to have a
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: meeting with Donnie Brasco. And I said, why? She said,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: because I got something to tell him that Sonny Black,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: she calls him Sonny, she didn't call him Sonny Black.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: She said that Sonny wanted me to give him a message.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: They said, okay. So they fly her down to DC
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: and myself and the agents, the other agents, go out
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: to a restaurant and she said, Sonny wanted me to
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: tell you this is what happened. She said, this is
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: what happened. He got called to a sit down and
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: he goes into the motion lounge gives his ring, his money,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: his car keys to the bartender and tells the bartender,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I got called to sit down and I'm
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: probably not coming back. And then he calls me and
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: he says her name and he said, if I don't
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: come back, he said, I want you to get in
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: touch with Donnie And tell him I loved him. Whoa.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: And he was just better than we were. I don't
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: hold anything against him.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: Is that a gangster or what?
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: That's a guy that's living that life.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: Is that a gangster?
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 3: That's crazy. How did that make you feel?
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: Well, it kind of threw me for a loop. I mean,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: I had a good relationship with him. And like I said,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to see anybody get killed, you know.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: Even Mira, I don't want to see him get killed.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: Although I might have fucking done it myself. That guy
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: was just plain mean, but that's not my job. My
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: job is to gather evidence, bring you to trial, and
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: hopefully you get convicted. But yeah, Sonny was, Sonny, you know,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: the difference between me and Sonny, We could sit just
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: like we're having this conversation. He wasn't 24-7 gangster. You
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: know what I mean?
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: We'd break chops. We'd break balls. Rogerio was 24-7 gangster.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: I couldn't... I liked him because he was a great cook.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: He was, man. Boy, I'll tell you, Joe, he could cook.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: But you always, there was always something you know he
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: was digging for, you know. But like Sonny, look, I'm
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: staying over at the main capo in the family, one
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: of the two main capos in the family's apartment. He'd
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: get up in the morning, I sleep on his couch,
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: we'd get up in the morning, he'd go, here's a
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: guy that's running a goddamn business Bonanno family. He'd go
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: out to get coffee and hard rolls and butter and
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: bring them back. And me and him would sit there
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: in our shorts and watch cartoons on television. I tell
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: that to the guys at the FBI and he's like, no,
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you. And then he had a weight bench
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: in his apartment. And back in the day, I used
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: to lift pretty good. You can't tell me now. Of course,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: I'm old now. And I was pretty good at hand wrestling.
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, arm wrestling. And he could never beat me.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: And he was built like you. I mean, he was built, right?
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: He's about your size and everything and big arms like
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: you got. But he could never beat me in arm wrestling.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: And I don't know what it was. So one day
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: he says to me, Donnie, he says, I'm going to
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: beat you today in arm wrestling. I said, Sonny, you'd
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: never fucking beat me. Why today? He said, I'm going
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: to beat you. I said, okay. So the day goes on.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: So then he says, all right, let's go. We're going on.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: He spits in my eye.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 3: Boom.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: He said, I told you I'd beat you. But I mean,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of guy he was. And I couldn't
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: get P.O.ed at him. But with Lefty, you couldn't joke
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: around like that.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, he was something else, man. He
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: couldn't stand air conditioning.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: Never. We'd be in the car in Miami. The windows
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: would be up, and he'd be smoking English Ovals with
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: no air conditioning.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 3: Jeez.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm dying. I'm dying. I put the window down.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: Donnie put that window up. He turned the air conditioner off.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: He couldn't stand the air conditioner.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. He had cancer. Maybe
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: it was, I don't know.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 3: Oh, he had cancer at the time while he was
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 3: smoking with the windows rolled up?
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but he had been cured of that, you know.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: He had been cured. He had testicle cancer years before.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: He eventually died of lung cancer. He used to smoke
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: English ovals. We'd go in the hotel room, and we
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: always had a big suite, so, you know, we didn't
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: have different rooms. We'd have a suite with two bedrooms.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: He'd turn the air off. He'd turn the air off. So,
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: you know, you have to do things to keep your
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: sanity sometimes, right? So we're down in Miami, so I figured,
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: son of a bitch, I'm going to get you today,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: all right? So I said, left, I got to go
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: to the head. I'm going up to the room. I
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: go up, I take the cover off the air conditioning.
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: I crank it where you could hang meat in there, right?
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: And I put the cover back on and I put
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: a thing in there. So, you know, if you move
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: the thing back up here, we get upstairs. I mean,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: it was freezing. So we get in that room, we
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: get in that suite and he's like, Ani, turn that
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: air conditioning off. So I go over there and I said, left,
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know, something's wrong, I don't know. He said,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: call the front desk, get maintenance up here. So I
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: pick up the phone, but I don't, I make believe
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: I'm talking. I said, yeah, this is room so-and-so. Our
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: air conditioner's broke, could you send somebody up? But I'm
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: not talking to anybody. Because I want him to freeze
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: as long as he can freeze. So after a while,
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: did you call that? I said, Left, you saw me
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: call him. Call him again. And I do the same thing.
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: And now he's calling me, Joe, every name in the book.
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: It's your fault. You did this. You broke it. I said, Left,
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't do a thing. I don't know nothing about
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: air conditioning, right? So finally, after about a half an hour,
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: I do call. Now I'd call and I'd say, hey,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: your air conditioning. So they send somebody up and the
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: guy takes it. Okay, there it is. But he blamed me, but,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: you know. But that's how you keep your sanity sometimes,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: you know. God.
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 3: What is it like to experience all that and then
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 3: see it in a movie? Like what is it like
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 3: to see a guy like Johnny Depp play you in
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 3: a movie?
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, God, what an experience that was.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 3: It has to be so weird.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: It was. And you know Johnny Depp?
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know him.
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: I love that boy.
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 3: He's a great guy.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: I could cry, I'm telling you. I mean, what he's
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: done for my family. Excuse me.
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 3: It's all right. He's a sweetheart of a guy. Like, genuinely.
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 3: I've hung out with him a few times at the
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 3: comedy store.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he's a.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: Very, very nice guy.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: I love him. He loved my wife. Yeah. He just
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: flew in in January to have dinner with my whole family.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: and my grandkids flew in from Spain and my wife
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: couldn't make the dinner. So the next day, he went
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: and spent almost five hours with her. Yeah. And then
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: she passed away a little while after that. Yeah. He's
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: a great guy.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 3: He really is.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's genuine.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 3: He's genuine. And it's odd. It's odd for a movie star.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 3: You know, I meet movie stars and I always have
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 3: this wall up because I always feel like, okay, I'm
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 3: just going to talk to some bullshit person. You know
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 3: what I mean? Like, I've met a bunch of them
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 3: and they're not really there.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 3: But when you meet one and they're really there, it's amazing.
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 3: You know? Like, you realize, oh, they're just human beings.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 3: who are in this very unusual position where they're incredibly
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 3: famous and, you know, they're famous in a very weird way.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 3: They're famous for pretending to be other people and acting
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 3: in films and, you know, you know them so well as,
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 3: you know, a fucking pirate or whatever. Or you.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: We met in 96 and have stayed friends up until... Wow.
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: Up until now. And he has stayed friends with my girls,
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: my grandkids that he knew since they were, you know. Yeah.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: And now as adults. I mean, he takes phone calls
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: from my one granddaughter.
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's a genuinely good guy. Before his
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 3: trial was going on, I had a conversation with him
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 3: for half an hour on the phone in Hawaii. I
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 3: was in Hawaii drinking margaritas in a lounge chair. And
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 3: my friend Doug, Doug Stanhope, calls me up. He says, hey,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 3: Johnny wants to talk to you. And me and Johnny
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 3: were on the phone for like a fucking half an hour.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I used to keep in contact with him when
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: he was in trial.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 3: But that trial showed you who he really is and
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 3: who she really is too and it just shows you.
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: I didn't know her you're lucky I'll tell you a
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: funny story do you know Vanessa? no this is when
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: excuse me I met Johnny he was first going out
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: with Kate Moss and they all love my wife So
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: then he was, one day he calls me and he says, hey,
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be in Joe's Stone Crab. I'm going
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: to be in Miami. He said, meet us at Joe's
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: Stone Crab. I said, okay. So me and my wife
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: go down there and there's Johnny, his father. His father's
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: a great guy. You know his father?
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: His father's a great guy too. Really good guy. And
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: I had met his father during the shooting and the
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: movie and everything, right? We hung out. So he introduces
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: us to Vanessa, right? You know who she is, right?
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: His ex? Who's Vanessa?
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: She's the French singer. That's the one whose kids are by.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, now, my wife wouldn't, when she ate,
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: she would not touch anything. She had to eat with
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: a knife and fork, you know. I really might have gone, right?
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: Irish.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: So, you know, you had Joe Stonecraft. What are you
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: going to do? You're going to eat, you know, you're
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: going to break, you're going to touch him. So Vanessa says, Maggie,
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: you don't like them? She says, oh, I like them,
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: but I don't like to touch them. She broke all
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: the claws, everything, took all the meat out so my
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: wife could eat them.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 3: With a fork?
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: With a fork. I'd say, only you could do that,
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: you know. Only you could get somebody to, you.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 3: Know, How long did you know him before he played
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 3: you in the movie?
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 3: You didn't know him at all?
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 3: Did you get to meet him before he played you? Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 3: We met....
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: I guess we met maybe three or four months before
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: we started shooting.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 3: Did he want to talk to you about the life?
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I spent time with him. What's amazing about him, Joe,
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: is that.
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 3: He just.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: It's like a sponge. We would just go out, go
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: to dinner, go to lunch, hang out. And the next
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: thing you know, he's talking like me. He has the
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: same rhythms. Every once in a while, I clear my throat.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: He's clear. He was walking. We were on set one day.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: My mother happened to be on set. And Johnny's walking away.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: And she's calling me.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: Because.
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 3: The way he walked.
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: The way he had that little gimp.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's just amazing, you know. And he doesn't, like,
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: prod you about stuff. He just absorbs it. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: He's something. But I've stayed in touch. I've stayed friends
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: with Chrissy, his sister. You know, I've stayed in the
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: whole family, basically.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 3: How strange was it to watch the finished product? to
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 3: watch this version of your life, of your story.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. Now, for you and your audiences, I
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: just want you to know in that movie, I never
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: slapped my wife in real life.
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 3: Why'd they add that in there?
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: Ask the director.
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 3: Those motherfuckers.
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: Because that wasn't in the script. Oh, Jesus Christ. Ask
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: the director. I went bullshit when I.
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because Johnny used to pick me
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: up every morning to go to work. And here's the
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: kind of guy, I tell you the kind of guy,
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: we'd stop at a bodega and he'd run in and
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: get the coffee and hard rolls. I said, no, I'll
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: go in. I mean, you know, to get to just
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: a regular guy.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: And that day he was kind of like wasn't himself
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: on the ride in. And then I saw them rehearsing
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: that scene. I went ballistic, man. I went ballistic. But,
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: you know, you know that the director's the captain of
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: that ship, you know.
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 3: They always have to do something like that. Yeah. They
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 3: always have to add some bullshit that didn't really happen. Yeah.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 3: It drives me nuts.
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, but what are you going to do?
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah. so how after the case is closed what is
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 3: life like for you like how do you I mean
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 3: you had to be worried about your life.
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah well what happened is once they found out the
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: commission put a $ 500, 000 contract on me and the New
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: York office of the FBI went to every boss and
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: told them they better not think of you know trying
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: to cash in on that you know um so um
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: I was working at a at a Washington at a
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: Quantico and um families moved I think we got like
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: five or six moves since then you know you try
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: to back everything right uh the bureau was good about
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: that um But, you know, what's in the back of
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: your mind is not the legitimate, legitimate gangster. You know,
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: it's some cowboy that thinks, hey, you know, God.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Get on their good side.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: There's Donnie Brasco. You know, if I take him out,
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: we're in.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: And I don't think anybody was going to pay anybody $ 500, 000.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: Probably not. You think the mob is. They don't use
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: their own money for. you know, for squat, so. Yeah.
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: But that's the only thing that you worry about is,
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: you know, some cowboy, you know.
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 3: How long was it before you stopped worrying about that?
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: Well, you never really do. I mean, you know.
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 3: Even to this day?
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know. Because there's always somebody that thinks they're,
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: you know, they're gonna be famous about doing something.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 3: You know that.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: But it was more prevalent back in the day. Most
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: of my guys now are, I don't know any of
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: them that are alive actually.
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 3: Did you keep in touch with any of those guys?
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: No. My whole thing in undercover, Joe, was I never
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: arrested anybody that I worked against. My whole thing was
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: I did the undercover. You make the arrest, I'll see
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: him in court. I'll see him in court. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: It was funny. You know, you always sit down after
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: the case is over and you sit down with the
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: profilers and everything and they say, well, we think this
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: guy will turn this guy. Not one of my guys,
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: when I say my guys, ever became an informant.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 3: Never.
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: One of the prosecutors in Milwaukee, he said, I think
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: we should go talk to Rogerio. I said, are you
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: fucking crazy? I said, you walk in there and mention
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: my name, he'll go crazy. He said, exactly what happened.
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: Exactly what happened.
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: He did 15. He did 15. Never cracked. The only
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: reason they let him out was he had, they found
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: out he had I don't know if it was gum
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: cancer or whatever. And then he had one lung taken out.
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: And then he had cancer in the other lung. So
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: he had like three or four months to live. So
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: he was such a pain in the ass for the
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: Department of Corrections that they let him out. He died
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: at home. Yeah.
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: But he didn't crack. Of course, Sonny had a shot.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: He He said, no, none of them, none of them.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 3: They tried to turn all of them, huh?
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. They all went to the can. They all
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: did like 15, 20 years, yeah.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 3: Wild.
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: Wild is right. I mean, now, as soon as they
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: put the last click on the handcuffs, they all want
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: to talk, right?
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, now.
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, they all, They all got hits under
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: their belt, but as soon as they put those cuffs
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: on them, you know, some of the guys, they'd do
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: their time, but eventually they turned. None of those guys
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: became snitches.
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 3: What do you think happened to the culture of the
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 3: mob where these guys started snitching?
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: They didn't want to do the time. I mean, some
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: of them did time. Some of them did seven, eight years,
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: you know. But then I think when they still, when
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: they kept getting beat over the head, you know, they
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: figured what good is it. You know what, the culture
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: of the mob has changed too. I found near the end,
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: these guys didn't, to the old days, this was like
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: their life, you know? They were really committed to it.
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: It was... The younger guys, it's a me generation, just
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: like normal citizens. They want it now. They don't want to...
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know.
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: Like the old timers, they could cultivate politicians. They could
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: cultivate law enforcement. These guys today, you know, they can't
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: cultivate politicians and judges like the old timers did. You know,
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: and drugs is a big downfall of the mob because
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: now the guys start... Some of them start using it.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 3: But it's also... You can't keep secrets anymore. No.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: The only secret is when one guy's alive.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Especially with cell phones. Yeah. Internet.
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 3: Surveillance. Surveillance is so easy now. Everything you do is surveilled.
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 3: Every phone call you make.
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: You're on camera.
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 3: All day long.
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: I read somewhere or heard where the average individual is
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: on the camera over 500 times a day. Just walking around.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 3: Just walking around.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: Wherever you go.
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 3: And then your phone's listening to everything you say. Everything. Yeah.
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 3: And everybody has a phone.
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: Everybody.
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: Everybody. Today, and that's what's tough and undercover today is
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: building your legend because it's hard to do 100% backstopping. Right.
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 3: How can you?
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: With the internet.
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 3: Right. Also, Google image search.
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 3: Put your face up there. Oh, that's that guy.
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Instantly.
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: So I don't know.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 3: I mean. How much of the mob even exists now?
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: It's still there, but they don't control what they did.
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: They don't control every oil label. When I was in it,
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: they controlled everything. I mean, they controlled unions. They controlled
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: every bit of.
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 3: Vegas. Vegas.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: They controlled every bit of commodity that ran. In fact,
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: when I was in it, they still had the skim
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: out of Vegas and... Balistrieri had offered me, with Lefty,
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: he had offered me the job of running the skim
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: from there to Kansas City.
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's how tight I was with
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: the Badanos. That was before the thing went south.
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 3: That's so crazy that you got in that deep. Yeah.
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 3: Were you the deepest that anybody had ever infiltrated the mob?
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: And everybody else that, that went in, you know, they
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: had an informant. I had no informant.
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 3: You just made your way in slowly. Yeah. Wow.
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: And I wasn't, I wasn't a mark, you know, where
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't have all this money.
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 3: Right. Where they could exploit you.
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: So, you know, uh, Yeah.
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 3: Crazy life, Joe.
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 3: When you look back on it now, does it seem real?
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 3: It must seem insane.
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, sometimes I think I can't believe I
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: did that. Right.
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 3: That's what I mean. Yeah.
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then other times, you know, I say as
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: deep as I got, I could have done more.
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 3: Like how?
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if I would have got made.
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 3: Right, right, right. Do you wish they had gotten you made?
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: Only because I had spent so much time. I spent
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: six years, you know, and then to cap it off
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: with getting inducted. And not only that, think of the
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: feather in the cap of the FBI.
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The mafia inducted one of our own, you know.
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, that would have really kicked their ass.
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: But, you know.
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 3: It's funny that you think back and that's the thing
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 3: that you wish, you know? It's kind of crazy.
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but still in all, I mean, you know, it's like.
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 3: It's the ultimate fuck you.
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right?
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, you fucking.
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, we pretty much decimated them anyway.
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: You know, but.
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 3: It is kind of crazy when you think about the
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 3: chokehold that the mob had and that.
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: It's kind of. Nothing moved in this country without them
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: getting a cut of it.
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: It's crazy, right?
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 3: Did that all come about because of Prohibition? Is that
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 3: when it all started? Is that when they really got
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 3: a stranglehold in this country?
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 3: Isn't that crazy?
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: Pretty much, yeah.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 3: Because that's exactly what's happening right now with the cartels.
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 3: It's the same fucking thing. Yeah. And it's like we
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 3: never learn.
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: No. Yeah, it's history repeats itself, right? Yeah.
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think our problem is we don't
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: study our enemy. Remember what I said before? Anybody I
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: went against, I always knew who they were. I wanted
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: to know your structure. I wanted to know how you
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: treated each other. I want to know all the crimes
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: you're involved in. I want to know how violent you
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: are and who your violence is against, you know. I
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: want to know your history, how you became what you
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: are as far as a criminal organization. And we don't
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: do that. I mean, I'm talking about as a whole,
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: you know. you know, I don't want to get into politics, but,
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: you know, you got to study your enemy. You got
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: to know your enemy. The art of war, right?
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: The art of war. And I tell all my, in
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: any undercover class, you got to read that book, The
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: Art of War, because it was written thousands of years ago,
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: but it's, it'll serve you today.
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of crazy when you think that.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 3: People don't change that much over time. No. Human nature
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 3: is still the same. Yeah. And the same strategies apply. Yeah.
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's nuts. And, you know, and like I said before,
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: the only thing that's changed in undercover is building your
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: legend because of the Internet.
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: Nothing else has changed.
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 3: Now it's got to be almost impossible.
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: You ingratiate yourself the same way. Yeah. You know, you
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: do all that shit the same way.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 3: Well, especially if someone had any kind of social media
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 3: before they got in the bureau. Yeah.
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: Or become a cop.
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everybody's kind of ratting on themselves.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: It's nuts.
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: But....
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 3: But there's other ways they catch people now, obviously. With
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 3: all the surveillance. Did you make a bunch of notes?
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: No, I just wanted to.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 3: Did you make sure you covered everything? Yeah.
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention my grandkids set me up
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: with an Instagram. And they said, make sure you mention this.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 3: Did they run it?
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe, forget it. I just about could
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: turn my phone on, to be honest with you. And
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: the real Donnie Brasco. And then a cameo page.
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 3: You have a cameo page where you send people cameos?
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: Joppa Stone. You just go into Joppa Stone. Yeah. The
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: real Donnie Brasco.
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 3: How do you spend your time these days? There it is.
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 3: The real Donnie Brasco.
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's from January, Joe, when he flew in for
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: the dinner. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 3: That's great. Yeah.
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm kind of... Right now, I'm writing... I
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: got another book I'm writing on the Bananos.
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 3: And.
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: I spent time with... helping out with that Southern California
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: gang conference I mentioned. It's really, you know, like I said,
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: I've been with them for 14 years. I've actually been
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: doing it 12. One year COVID and one year I
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: was sick. And these guys are, these coppers that run it,
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: they all do it on their own time. There's no administrative.
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: Nobody gets paid. Nobody gets paid. They do it all
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: on their own time. And the conference usually gets between
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: 700 and 800 people at each conference. And like I say,
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: it's held once a year. It's held in San Diego,
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: but it's the Southern California Gang Conference. And if anybody's interested...
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: And you have to be a police officer or in
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: law enforcement, you can be Department of Corrections. Their email
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: is scgc.inquiry at gmail.com. Go on and get information about it.
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: Or if they want to attend it, you know, that's
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: how you can sign up.
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: And they have great speakers every year. And, uh, yeah, I, uh, uh, and, uh,
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: some of my merchandise, uh, you can see, I have
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: a shirt here. It says, uh, Southern California gang conference,
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: Donnie Brasco. We sell these shirts. I give a hundred
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: percent to the, uh, to the organization. I don't, don't
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: keep any. And, uh, uh, the mugs we sell and stuff. I,
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: I donate my books. I, I, I, uh, sign books
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: there and I give all the money to the organization.
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't take anything either because he's, because
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: he's a police officers don't take any, you know, their
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: time is donated. So, yeah, it's, you know, who's there
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: to help you when you're, when your spouse or your,
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: You know, one or the other dies in the line
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: of duty. So, yeah.
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 3: So you were telling me before the show that all
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 3: that money gets donated to the spouses of people who
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 3: were killed in the line of duty.
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, to help them
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: get started after.
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And it's a great conference. Like I said,
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: they get between 700 and 800, either police officer or
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: Department of Corrections, you know, anybody that's in law enforcement.
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: is eligible to attend it. And it's a week since
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: San Diego. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 3: Well, Joe, thank you very much for being here. I
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 3: really appreciate it. Hey. What a crazy life you've had.
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. I'm really excited to get the invite.
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: And my grandkids were, whoa, you're going on Joe Rogan?
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: They all love you, man.
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 3: Well, tell them I said thank you.
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: They all love you, man.
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 3: And thank you for being here.
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: Well, my pleasure.
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 3: It was my pleasure, too. Thank you very much.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: Thanks, partner.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. Bye, everybody.