The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2343

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Drain my day, Joe Rogan podcast by night!

00:00:09.000 All day!

00:00:14.000 Nice to meet you.

00:00:15.000 My pleasure.

00:00:16.000 You always wear sunglasses.

00:00:17.000 Is that to hide your identity still?

00:00:19.000 Force the habit?

00:00:20.000 Actually, it's, I have to see, number one.

00:00:24.000 But where I reside now, my neighbors have no idea that they're living next to Donny Brasco.

00:00:32.000 Well, you have a very distinct voice.

00:00:34.000 Yeah, I know.

00:00:36.000 I don't want to ask where you live, but, you know.

00:00:40.000 What a wild life you've had, sir.

00:00:42.000 Well, pretty much.

00:00:43.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:00:46.000 Never expected it to go like that, but it took off.

00:00:51.000 So when you first started working, it was with the FBI, correct?

00:00:56.000 Well, I was with Naval Intelligence for three years.

00:00:59.000 And then I always wanted to be in law enforcement.

00:01:05.000 And I was working in Philadelphia, actually.

00:01:08.000 And you do a lot of work with the FBI because, you know, on the government installations, government basis.

00:01:16.000 So I became friendly with some FBI agents.

00:01:19.000 And I figured if I, you know, when I get up, when I finish this tour with NIS, I'm going to go into law enforcement, so I might as well try for the best and the best of, you know, the FBI.

00:01:34.000 And so how does that lead to you infiltrating the mob?

00:01:41.000 Well, you know, I didn't infiltrate the mob right from the get-go.

00:01:47.000 Look, I grew up in Paterson, New Jersey.

00:01:50.000 I grew up in an all-Italian neighborhood.

00:01:54.000 Knew wise guys, went to high school with sons of wise guys.

00:01:59.000 And when you're in a neighborhood, you know who the wise guys are.

00:02:03.000 You hang out at the, they let you hang out at the social clubs because, you know, you're a neighborhood kid.

00:02:11.000 They know it.

00:02:12.000 So I knew the streets.

00:02:15.000 So when I went into the FBI, I was street smart, basically, Joe.

00:02:20.000 That's what it comes down to, you know.

00:02:24.000 And my first assignments were bank robberies, fugitives, gambling cases.

00:02:33.000 And I started doing some little undercover work on gambling cases because back then the FBI was big into gambling, interstate gambling cases.

00:02:45.000 So what was your first undercover work?

00:02:47.000 First was infiltrating a gambling house in Jacksonville, Florida, actually.

00:02:55.000 That's what was my first office.

00:02:56.000 What kind of gambling were they doing?

00:02:58.000 Craps.

00:03:00.000 I had a regular casino going.

00:03:03.000 And, you know, I felt comfortable around that stuff because I grew up with that stuff.

00:03:07.000 You know, I grew up, like I say, in the neighborhood, crap games, card games.

00:03:14.000 It wasn't anything new to me.

00:03:16.000 And being around gangsters was not like intimidating because I was around gangsters growing up.

00:03:24.000 So I didn't have any problem, you know, getting into these games and identifying the major players and who was running them.

00:03:36.000 And that's basically what it was.

00:03:38.000 So when you do this, did you have to testify in court with these guys?

00:03:42.000 Yeah, later on, after the case goes down.

00:03:45.000 But most of these guys plead guilty, so you never go to trial because it wasn't where they were facing, you know, 15, 20 years.

00:03:56.000 You know, they might get a year or two years and then, you know, get some time knocked off their sentences.

00:04:04.000 So most of it, they plead, and so you never have to appear in the court.

00:04:09.000 But was there an issue with you being discovered and then getting found out and worrying about your safety afterwards?

00:04:18.000 Well, not too much with these cases.

00:04:20.000 No, not too much with those cases.

00:04:22.000 And then I worked a lot of stolen art, buying stolen art, buying stocks and bonds, swag, stuff like that.

00:04:32.000 So how many years did you do stuff like that before you started being undercover in the mob?

00:04:38.000 Let's see, probably four or five years.

00:04:45.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:46.000 So you slowly sort of got acclimated with being undercover, you do a bunch of cases, and then how do they approach you?

00:04:54.000 Well, what happened was that I'm working out in New York, the New York office of the FBI, and there's a big case in Tampa, Florida.

00:05:05.000 They have a case going on guys that were stealing automobiles, high-priced automobiles.

00:05:14.000 In other words, you go to them and you say, hey, I want a Cadillac.

00:05:21.000 Okay, what color you want?

00:05:25.000 All right.

00:05:26.000 What model you want?

00:05:27.000 And then they'd go out and hook it.

00:05:30.000 So they grabbed one of the guys and they flipped him.

00:05:38.000 And they grabbed his son.

00:05:41.000 And they said, hey, look, you know, you help us and we'll cut your son a break.

00:05:49.000 He said, okay.

00:05:52.000 So he said, look, we want to put an undercover agent in with this crew.

00:05:57.000 They operated all up and down the East Coast, from Baltimore all the way down to Florida.

00:06:04.000 And the guy that was running it was what we call a half-assed wise guy out of Baltimore.

00:06:11.000 So he says, all right, so he introduced me to this guy as a car thief.

00:06:18.000 But before he introduced me, I said, look, I got to know how to steal cars.

00:06:25.000 So he gave me about a week's lesson on how to steal cars, How to hook cars.

00:06:31.000 The hot wire.

00:06:32.000 This is like what year was this?

00:06:34.000 This was in 19, let's see, 1973, 74.

00:06:44.000 So you essentially just pop in the ignition, popping the ignition, crossing wires, crossing wires.

00:06:52.000 And some cars had alarm systems, taught me how to get under the car, disarm the alarm system, how to use a slim gym to get in the door, and then how to pop the ignition.

00:07:08.000 And once I learned, you know, I figured I can do that.

00:07:11.000 Then he introduced me and I got in with this crew.

00:07:13.000 There was a crew of about, he was running like five or six guys.

00:07:19.000 And I did that for a year and a half.

00:07:22.000 Stole cars, stole the tractor trailers.

00:07:27.000 I knew how to drive tractor trailers because I did that in college.

00:07:33.000 During the summertime, I drove a tractor trailer during the summer.

00:07:37.000 So you take the cars, load them on a tractor trailer?

00:07:39.000 No, we just stole the cars and I bring them to you.

00:07:41.000 Oh, okay.

00:07:42.000 But I mean, we stole rigs, too.

00:07:45.000 Oh, I see.

00:07:46.000 Because we were dealing with companies, too.

00:07:48.000 Got it.

00:07:49.000 You know, these guys that own some trucking companies.

00:07:53.000 So you have to trust this guy, though, to get you inside.

00:07:57.000 You have to trust this guy to not fuck this up and say, hey, this is a car thief.

00:08:02.000 Exactly.

00:08:03.000 That's got to be hair raising.

00:08:04.000 Well, it is because, you know, the guy's an informant.

00:08:07.000 And he's already in trouble.

00:08:08.000 He's in trouble.

00:08:11.000 But his basic reason for getting me in was he wanted to get his son out of trouble.

00:08:17.000 So, you know, we had him by the short hairs there that, hey, you know, if this goes good, your son is free.

00:08:27.000 We're going to cut your son free.

00:08:28.000 So that's what happened.

00:08:30.000 So I did that for a year and a half.

00:08:32.000 And I get back to New York.

00:08:37.000 They make the arrest.

00:08:40.000 I went to trial in that case, but that case was in Florida.

00:08:46.000 And a funny story on that case is, if you want to hear it, I hooked a Mercedes and delivered to this guy and go to his house and he wasn't home, but his wife was there.

00:09:05.000 So I said, hey, you know, I'm delivering this car for your husband.

00:09:08.000 And she says, oh, okay.

00:09:11.000 And give her the keys.

00:09:12.000 And because he had already paid.

00:09:15.000 So me and the other guy, we leave.

00:09:18.000 Fast forward now to court.

00:09:21.000 I'm going, I'm sitting in the outside the court getting ready to testify.

00:09:26.000 And there's this lady.

00:09:29.000 She looked familiar.

00:09:31.000 It was two ladies.

00:09:33.000 And so she walks up to me.

00:09:36.000 She says, aren't you Donnie?

00:09:42.000 I said, yeah.

00:09:45.000 She said, you delivered a car to my house, right?

00:09:50.000 I said, yeah.

00:09:51.000 She said, well, you know, my husband's on trial now.

00:09:54.000 I said, yeah, I know.

00:09:56.000 I'm going in to testify.

00:09:58.000 She says, after he goes to jail, you want to go to dinner?

00:10:04.000 Dirty lady.

00:10:05.000 I said, no, thanks.

00:10:08.000 She might poison you.

00:10:10.000 Yeah.

00:10:11.000 So I get back to New York, and I had a real great supervisor up there.

00:10:17.000 Was she hot?

00:10:19.000 I can't remember, Joe.

00:10:20.000 It was so long ago.

00:10:21.000 I would have remembered that part.

00:10:23.000 If she was, I would have remembered.

00:10:25.000 Yeah, you probably remember it.

00:10:27.000 So I get back to New York, and I had a real good supervisor named Guy Barato.

00:10:32.000 He was an Italian guy from the Bronx, good street agent.

00:10:38.000 And he was a supervisor of the truck hijacking squad.

00:10:42.000 And back in the day, they were hijacking, and all these hijackings were orchestrated by the mob, the mafia.

00:10:50.000 And they were probably doing, you know, eight to ten hijackings a day, which was big-time money because they were pharmaceuticals, high-value food items like lobsters, coffee.

00:11:08.000 You know, you're talking about 40-something-foot trailers, so you're talking a lot of money.

00:11:13.000 But they were all run by the mob.

00:11:16.000 So I get back to New York.

00:11:20.000 I get to New York, and he says, hey, I'm thinking about doing this undercover operation, seeing if we can get something going with these truck hijackers.

00:11:32.000 So the idea was, nobody had ever infiltrated the mob before.

00:11:38.000 Actually, the mafia mafia had some informants in with them, but nobody had actually gotten in.

00:11:46.000 So the idea was, let's try to hit the fences.

00:11:52.000 Fences are the guys that sell the swag and sell the goods.

00:12:00.000 So you need to have a profession.

00:12:03.000 I mean, nobody's going to do anything with you without a profession, and it has to be one that's attractive to them.

00:12:09.000 And plus, in the government, if you're going to go undercover, your profession can't be one of violence.

00:12:14.000 So who's not violent?

00:12:17.000 Jewel thief.

00:12:19.000 So I figure, okay, I'll go in as a jewel thief.

00:12:24.000 Well, if you're going to go in as a jewel thief, what do you have to know?

00:12:29.000 You got to know diamonds and precious gems, right?

00:12:34.000 All right, so I went to school.

00:12:36.000 I went to diamond school, diamond and precious gems school.

00:12:40.000 Oh, so you have to be able to identify the lens.

00:12:44.000 Well, that's how you're going to get caught, right?

00:12:47.000 Right, right, right.

00:12:48.000 Is if you get in a conversation, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

00:12:51.000 Right, right.

00:12:52.000 How long is it the school for?

00:12:53.000 I went, I think, for a couple months until I got, you know, where I was comfortable.

00:12:59.000 Now, take it another step further.

00:13:01.000 If you're a jewel thief, what else do you have to know?

00:13:04.000 You got to know how to get in places.

00:13:06.000 Right.

00:13:07.000 So.

00:13:07.000 Pick locks.

00:13:08.000 I had to learn how to pick locks.

00:13:10.000 Right.

00:13:12.000 What else you got to know?

00:13:13.000 Crack safes.

00:13:14.000 You got to know about safes.

00:13:16.000 Yeah.

00:13:16.000 You got to know about alarm systems.

00:13:19.000 So I had my guys, when I say my guys, our guys, you know, our tech guys school me on lock picking, different types of safes and alarm systems.

00:13:32.000 So all that took a few months before I felt comfortable, you know.

00:13:37.000 And then I went out and on this operation, we didn't do anything with contacts.

00:13:47.000 In other words, everything I did, I did under Donny Brasco.

00:13:52.000 I rented an apartment.

00:13:55.000 I bought a car, utilities, you know, phones, everything.

00:14:03.000 Everything as a citizen, in quotes, Donnie Brasco.

00:14:09.000 They get you a social security number and the whole deal?

00:14:11.000 Social security, everything.

00:14:13.000 But, you know, I don't want to get into how they do that, but, you know, nothing could be at that time, they couldn't uncover anything.

00:14:27.000 So once I got my apartment, I bought a car, had all that set up.

00:14:33.000 And again, you have to know the mafia, you have to know New York City.

00:14:39.000 You don't just walk into a place and say, hey, I'm a jewel thief.

00:14:46.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:14:50.000 You got to get seen.

00:14:51.000 You got to be around.

00:14:54.000 So I moved out of my residence.

00:14:58.000 Of course, my family wasn't in New York anyway.

00:15:02.000 But I had to move into my apartment.

00:15:07.000 And we had certain bars and restaurants that we knew these fences and wise guys hung out in.

00:15:15.000 And the idea was just go in, get my face seen, and hopefully get into conversation with somebody.

00:15:22.000 How do you go and get your face seen?

00:15:24.000 You just show up by yourself?

00:15:25.000 Just show up.

00:15:26.000 Is that suspicious, though?

00:15:28.000 A guy shows up by himself, not from the neighborhood?

00:15:30.000 No, well, that's the thing.

00:15:32.000 Because I couldn't say, hey, I'm from Brooklyn.

00:15:34.000 I'm from Manhattan.

00:15:35.000 I'm from the Bronx because these guys have the contacts everywhere.

00:15:40.000 So it was up to me if I got into conversation with anybody.

00:15:45.000 My story was, and then again, you have to know your enemy.

00:15:53.000 The enemy was the mafia.

00:15:56.000 So you have to know about the mafia.

00:15:59.000 You have to know if you do get into conversation with these guys and they're trying to check you out, what's your backstory?

00:16:07.000 Where are you from?

00:16:09.000 My background was, I was an orphan.

00:16:13.000 Okay?

00:16:14.000 And I moved between Florida and California.

00:16:20.000 Why an orphan?

00:16:22.000 Because then I wouldn't have to produce a mother and a father.

00:16:25.000 Because again, if I was lucky enough to get in, they'd say, well, where are your parents at?

00:16:34.000 I couldn't have any siblings that I knew of.

00:16:37.000 I couldn't have been married.

00:16:39.000 So I couldn't have an ex-wife or anything because I would have had to produce somebody.

00:16:45.000 So my backstory was I was an orphan.

00:16:49.000 To back it up, we found an orphanage that had burnt down and all the records were destroyed, so they couldn't check that.

00:17:02.000 I mean, these are all things that if you're going to send somebody into an undercover operation that is deep cover, and remember, I had no informant bringing me in.

00:17:13.000 It had to be a cold entree.

00:17:17.000 So I hung around maybe five, six months.

00:17:22.000 That's all I did.

00:17:23.000 And that's another thing, too.

00:17:25.000 It's a seven-day a week job.

00:17:27.000 Because if they see you Monday to Friday and then they don't see you Saturday and Sunday, where the hell are you Saturday and Sunday?

00:17:34.000 Right.

00:17:35.000 So it's seven days a week.

00:17:37.000 It was seven days a week.

00:17:38.000 Did you have a family at the time?

00:17:40.000 I did, yeah.

00:17:40.000 But they lived across country at the time.

00:17:44.000 That would be crazy difficult for them.

00:17:47.000 Very difficult.

00:17:48.000 It was.

00:17:48.000 It was, yeah.

00:17:53.000 So you just kind of just hang around restaurants, bars?

00:17:56.000 Yeah, and my only conversation with anybody was, is what I'll have to drink and what I'll have to eat.

00:18:04.000 And I'm not a drinker.

00:18:05.000 I never was a drinker.

00:18:07.000 So, and, you know, for young undercovers, you don't have to be a drinker and you don't have to do shit that, you know, that you think gangsters do.

00:18:19.000 My extent of drinking was, and it still is, is a half a bottle of beer and maybe a glass of red wine.

00:18:26.000 That's it.

00:18:27.000 And I never went outside those boundaries because that's me.

00:18:34.000 I didn't do it.

00:18:37.000 So I used to go to this one place, and actually this place wasn't too far from my apartment up in Yorkville.

00:18:47.000 And wise guys would come in there, I don't remember if it was Wednesdays or Thursdays, I don't remember, with their girlfriends for dinner.

00:18:58.000 And I always would sit at the bar, you know, never talk to the bartender other than, what do you want?

00:19:07.000 What do you want to eat?

00:19:07.000 What do you want to drink?

00:19:12.000 So one night I go in there and the wise guys are there.

00:19:20.000 One of the girlfriends, but there's one guy missing.

00:19:23.000 But the girl that he was always with was there.

00:19:28.000 So I'm at the Bar, and I guess she gets up, she goes to the lady's room, she comes by and she says hello.

00:19:37.000 And I just said, Hello.

00:19:40.000 Now, again, knowing your enemy, know how they operate.

00:19:43.000 So, the first thing I do is I call a bartender over, right?

00:19:47.000 Now, I know his name, but I don't call him by his name because I was never introduced to him.

00:19:53.000 So I just said, sir, would you, you know, I said, I want to go on record.

00:19:58.000 That's a mob term.

00:20:00.000 I want to go on record.

00:20:02.000 I didn't ask that young lady to stop and say hello.

00:20:05.000 And he just nods, and that's it.

00:20:09.000 Well, fast forward, this happens like three or four different times.

00:20:14.000 And they're in there.

00:20:17.000 She's in there.

00:20:18.000 He's not there.

00:20:19.000 About the fourth time, the same thing, you know, she would come over and I would call him over.

00:20:26.000 So finally he says, hey, he said, if you want to talk to her, go ahead.

00:20:31.000 Her boyfriend went bye-bye.

00:20:34.000 He didn't go to Disneyland, Joe.

00:20:37.000 They whacked him.

00:20:38.000 So I said, no, I don't have any interest.

00:20:43.000 So now what does this guy know?

00:20:45.000 He knows that I'm a street guy.

00:20:47.000 All right?

00:20:48.000 So now he comes over to me and now we start talking.

00:20:56.000 Talking about baseball, talking about how screwed up New York City is at the time.

00:21:03.000 And finally he says, hey, my name is Charlie.

00:21:08.000 I said, my name is Donnie.

00:21:10.000 Now that's another thing.

00:21:11.000 These guys don't introduce themselves like normal people, you know, like, hey, my name is Joe Rogan.

00:21:17.000 Or, hey, my name is Donny Brasco.

00:21:19.000 It's nickname or first name.

00:21:21.000 So that's another notch with him that this kid knows something.

00:21:28.000 So a couple of weeks maybe go by, and then one night he says, hey, you'd like to gamble?

00:21:35.000 I said, sure, why not?

00:21:37.000 He said, when I bang up here, I'm going to go to an all-night game.

00:21:41.000 He said, you want to come?

00:21:43.000 I said, yeah.

00:21:45.000 So we close up the joint with him and takes me to a game.

00:21:54.000 And obviously it's run by the wise guys.

00:21:57.000 You know, they got a whole casino set up.

00:22:01.000 And doesn't introduce me to anybody, but I'm okay because I'm with him.

00:22:12.000 So now, this is a couple more weeks maybe.

00:22:16.000 So now I figured now, and he don't ask me what I do, and I don't say anything about jewelry.

00:22:25.000 But now I figured now I got to try to set the hook.

00:22:29.000 So I come in one night and I got a packet of diamonds.

00:22:35.000 So I put them on a bar and I say, hey, Charlie, I need X amount of money for this envelope.

00:22:42.000 I don't tell him what's in it.

00:22:43.000 I just said, I need X amount of money.

00:22:46.000 But I give him a street price where he can make money himself.

00:22:52.000 So he takes it, says, okay, puts it under the bar.

00:22:58.000 A couple weeks go by.

00:22:59.000 I don't ask him about it.

00:23:01.000 He don't ask me.

00:23:02.000 But I'm still hanging around with him.

00:23:06.000 He comes in one night, puts an envelope on the bar, and he said, Donnie, somebody left this for you.

00:23:12.000 I said, okay.

00:23:13.000 I put it in my sport coat pocket.

00:23:16.000 Get back to my apartment, and there's the money in it.

00:23:20.000 So now what does he know?

00:23:22.000 He knows I'm a thief because I'm giving him diamonds.

00:23:28.000 I'm not asking them at prices for Tiffany prices.

00:23:34.000 Now we get to the game, and he introduces me as Don the Jeweler.

00:23:42.000 So he introduces me to this Columbo guy.

00:23:46.000 The guy's name was Jilly.

00:23:49.000 So Jilly said, hey, you know, Don, where are you from?

00:23:53.000 I said, well, you know, I hung around in, hung around Summit, Florida, hung around, you know, California.

00:24:05.000 I said, you know, I just move around a lot.

00:24:11.000 He said, well, why don't you come out to my place?

00:24:13.000 I'm out in Brooklyn.

00:24:15.000 I said, yeah, okay.

00:24:17.000 So I go out there and I go out to his club and he has a store, you know, all swag.

00:24:24.000 And so he was at the Columbos.

00:24:29.000 So I started hanging out there with the Columbos.

00:24:31.000 And I got in with him.

00:24:32.000 I got in with his crew.

00:24:37.000 Did some stuff with them, you know, because you got to do something.

00:24:41.000 Otherwise, if you ain't producing, you ain't worth it.

00:24:46.000 What's the first thing you have to do with them?

00:24:48.000 Well, they did some hijacking and, you know, unloaded some trucks for them and different things.

00:25:03.000 So that went on with the Columbos, and I was getting good information with these guys.

00:25:09.000 That went on for a couple months.

00:25:12.000 And finally, I get to the club one day, and there's two guys there that I didn't know.

00:25:20.000 So he introduces them to me as Frankie and Patsy.

00:25:26.000 He said, Donnie, you know, Frankie, Patsy, okay.

00:25:31.000 As it turns out, they just got out of the can.

00:25:33.000 They were part of Jilly's crew.

00:25:37.000 One of the guys was a made guy.

00:25:40.000 Made guy is a guy that's been officially inducted into a particular mafia family.

00:25:45.000 And these guys were with the Columbos.

00:25:49.000 I think Patsy was a made guy and Frankie was an associate.

00:25:54.000 But they had just gone out of the can.

00:25:57.000 So they're looking to set up scores because they've been away for a few years.

00:26:04.000 So Jilly tells them, you know, hey, Donnie's, you know, Donnie's a good thief, and he knows alarms, he knows locks, he knows safes.

00:26:16.000 So they had a couple scores lined up.

00:26:21.000 So we go out, case this place, and I tell them, hey, I can't bypass that alarm.

00:26:29.000 Because, you know, if you say you can do everything, nobody can do everything, no matter how good you are.

00:26:36.000 So I said, no, I said, I can't defeat that alarm.

00:26:40.000 Okay.

00:26:42.000 A few days later, they got another one set up, and it's a safe.

00:26:48.000 We go in.

00:26:51.000 I said, you got to blow this safe.

00:26:53.000 You know, you'll wake up the whole neighborhood.

00:26:56.000 You know.

00:26:58.000 Okay.

00:26:58.000 So now this pisses them off.

00:27:02.000 So a couple days later, I get to the club and Jilly, he says, Donnie, let's take a walk and talk.

00:27:11.000 I said, okay.

00:27:13.000 So we walk and we're talking.

00:27:16.000 That's what a walk and talk is.

00:27:17.000 You're walking on the street and you're talking because they don't think the FBI or anybody can hear you.

00:27:23.000 I said, what's the matter, Jilly?

00:27:26.000 He said, well, he said, you know, I told Frankie and Fatsy what a great thief you are.

00:27:34.000 And they're pissed off because Fatsy's pissed off because you turned down the two scores.

00:27:42.000 I said, well, what do you want to tell you, Jilly?

00:27:44.000 I couldn't bypass the alarm.

00:27:46.000 I'm honest with you.

00:27:48.000 I don't want to blow a safe.

00:27:49.000 You've got to blow, blow, blow.

00:27:52.000 So he said, well, they want to have a sit-down.

00:27:57.000 I said, okay, so we go back in the club, and then they have a back room.

00:28:03.000 So we go in the back room, sit down.

00:28:05.000 They lock the door.

00:28:08.000 And Patsy pulls out a 38, lays it on the table, and said, Donnie, if you don't convince me that you're as good a thief as Jilly says you are, the only way you're going out of this room is rolled up in that rug.

00:28:27.000 Oh, boy.

00:28:28.000 Oh, boy.

00:28:29.000 So it's crazy what goes through your head.

00:28:31.000 So I look at the rug.

00:28:33.000 I said to myself, I hope it's fucking Persian.

00:28:37.000 If I'm going to go out of here, I might as well go out in the $50,000 rug.

00:28:41.000 So we're in there and where you from, Donnie?

00:28:48.000 Now, you know, in these situations, you want to be on the offense.

00:28:51.000 You don't want to be on the defense.

00:28:53.000 But I can't really disrespect him because he's a made guy.

00:28:59.000 And, you know, if you know anything about the mob, you can't disrespect a made guy in front of other people.

00:29:06.000 So I said, hey, look, you know, I'm an orphan.

00:29:10.000 I'm not from here.

00:29:12.000 I travel the country.

00:29:14.000 You know, well, tell us some people that you stole with.

00:29:19.000 I said, no disrespect, but I'm not giving you any names of people that I stole with.

00:29:24.000 I said, why would I do that?

00:29:26.000 Why would I give up anybody that I did scores with?

00:29:30.000 Right?

00:29:33.000 So this goes on and on and on.

00:29:36.000 After about four hours, finally Jilly says, hey, Donnie's been with us for months now.

00:29:46.000 We know what he can do.

00:29:49.000 It's over.

00:29:50.000 It's over.

00:29:51.000 I said, okay.

00:29:52.000 Now I got a problem.

00:29:55.000 The problem is they just called me out.

00:29:59.000 So in their world, I can't go shake their hand because it's why isn't Donnie pissed off?

00:30:06.000 All right?

00:30:08.000 My only recourse here is some kind of physical recourse.

00:30:15.000 But I can't do anything to Patsy because he's the made guy.

00:30:22.000 I can't touch him.

00:30:23.000 And that's one of the rules of the mafia.

00:30:26.000 You don't lay your hands on a made guy.

00:30:28.000 It'll get you killed.

00:30:29.000 It'll get you killed.

00:30:32.000 So the only guy I can hit is Frankie.

00:30:38.000 He's not a made guy.

00:30:42.000 So we get up, start to walk out, and I call Cock Frankie.

00:30:49.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:30:51.000 But that's the only thing that's going to save me because otherwise it's, why isn't Donnie pissed off?

00:30:57.000 So now I'm Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

00:31:02.000 But he's not a main guy.

00:31:04.000 Right.

00:31:04.000 So he's fair game.

00:31:06.000 Boy.

00:31:07.000 So I hit him.

00:31:08.000 He goes down.

00:31:10.000 Now Patsy's jumping on me and he's punching the hell out, but I can't hit him back.

00:31:15.000 I can't hit him back.

00:31:16.000 I can just protect myself.

00:31:19.000 But I figure, well, you hit me once.

00:31:24.000 I hit Frankie twice.

00:31:27.000 So it went on.

00:31:29.000 So then finally they broke it up.

00:31:32.000 But now I know I can't stay around here.

00:31:34.000 I can't stay with these guys because, you know, you can't get into an altercation with me guys and have it come out.

00:31:44.000 So after everything settled down, I'd say to Jilly, Jilly, let's take a walk and talk.

00:31:52.000 So we do.

00:31:53.000 We get outside.

00:31:54.000 I said, Jilly, look, no disrespect to you.

00:31:58.000 I said, but I can't come around here anymore.

00:32:02.000 I said, because you know how it's going to end.

00:32:04.000 He says, yeah, Donnie, I realize that.

00:32:07.000 He said, but, you know, no real feelings between you and me.

00:32:12.000 I said, okay.

00:32:15.000 So at the card game, I was introduced to a banano guy by the name of Tony Mirror.

00:32:25.000 I had never done anything with him, but I was introduced to him.

00:32:29.000 So I go back with Charlie, you know, to the card games, and I start siding up to this Mirror, who was a complete psycho case, a complete fucking psycho case, which I find out later on.

00:32:45.000 He's a big brawly guy.

00:32:49.000 And he says, you know, why don't you come downtown?

00:32:57.000 I said, yeah, okay.

00:32:59.000 So he was from Little Itley, and that's where he hung out.

00:33:05.000 He had a bus stop luncheon at down at Little Itley.

00:33:11.000 But he was psycho.

00:33:13.000 So I started hanging out with him at my first bonano guy that brings me around.

00:33:23.000 So we're out one night, and he was shaking down nightclubs.

00:33:28.000 And I was helping him, when I say help him, I was with him, you know, shakedown owners at nightclubs and stuff.

00:33:39.000 So it's about three or four in the morning one morning, and we go to a diner for breakfast.

00:33:49.000 And the eggs come out cold.

00:33:54.000 So he starts berating the waitress.

00:33:58.000 And there's other, you know, we were with other wise guys and stuff.

00:34:02.000 So I said, Tony, I said, you know, I said, she's only doing her job.

00:34:07.000 I said, why are you taking it out on her?

00:34:10.000 You know, she's here four o'clock in the morning waitressing.

00:34:14.000 So he tore this shit out of me.

00:34:16.000 He tore into me in front of everybody.

00:34:19.000 But I really can't go back at him.

00:34:23.000 But I have to let him know that, you know, I'm not a pushover.

00:34:32.000 So the next day, now this guy, as I had gotten to know him, I had seen him in action.

00:34:41.000 So the next day I told him, I said, Tony, nobody else is around, so it's my word on his.

00:34:47.000 I said, don't ever talk to me like that again in front of people.

00:34:50.000 I said, because I'll fucking stab you.

00:34:53.000 I said, you won't even know it's coming.

00:34:55.000 I said, don't ever embarrass me like that and call me those names in front of other people.

00:35:01.000 And he was like, ooh.

00:35:04.000 but he introduced me to kept introducing me to other bananas and then he introduced me Yeah, after that.

00:35:16.000 So after that, did you get his respect by saying you stab him?

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00:36:48.000 Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:49.000 Because he knew that, you know, he knew that I wasn't bullshitting him.

00:36:54.000 I mean, you know, he just beat me down in front of other people.

00:36:57.000 I mean, not physically, but, you know, just calling me, you know, and because I was standing up for this waitress.

00:37:06.000 But that was him.

00:37:09.000 So he introduces me to a guy by the name of Lefty Ruggerio, another maid guy in the bananos from downtown, Knickerbocker Village.

00:37:20.000 They all lived in Knickerbocker Village.

00:37:23.000 And he introduces me to Lefty.

00:37:26.000 So now Mira had just gotten out of the can.

00:37:29.000 Now they send him back.

00:37:32.000 So he goes back to the can.

00:37:35.000 He was a big moneymaker for the bananos and dope.

00:37:39.000 He was a big narcotics guy for the bananos.

00:37:43.000 But he had violated his parole, so they sent him back.

00:37:47.000 So I started hanging out with Ruggio.

00:37:52.000 And what Mira never did and what Ruggio did is his captain was a guy by the name of Mike Sabella.

00:38:06.000 And once Ruggiero got to know me a little better, he brings me to Mike Sabella, who's the captain of the crew.

00:38:17.000 And he said to Mike, I'm going on record that Donnie's with me.

00:38:24.000 And that's what you do.

00:38:25.000 When you're a made guy, you have an associate.

00:38:28.000 You go to your captain and you go on record.

00:38:31.000 So now nobody else could fuck with you.

00:38:35.000 Nobody else could take you.

00:38:36.000 Mira never did that.

00:38:37.000 Even though I spent a lot of time with Mira, he never went to his captain and said, I'm going on record that Donnie's with me.

00:38:48.000 So I get to know Jerio pretty good.

00:38:52.000 Start doing stuff with Jerry.

00:38:54.000 So all told, how much time are you undercover now?

00:38:57.000 Now, this is probably Going over a year.

00:39:08.000 Wow.

00:39:08.000 Yeah, over a year now.

00:39:10.000 Yeah.

00:39:11.000 Now, are you reporting to anybody during this time?

00:39:13.000 Do you have to go back to the FBI?

00:39:15.000 Never.

00:39:15.000 Once I stepped out of the office, I never went back to the office.

00:39:19.000 I had what you have is a contact agent, Joe, and that's somebody that you, if you have a problem, you call them and he helps you solve it.

00:39:28.000 So you're totally on your own.

00:39:29.000 You're on your own.

00:39:30.000 I had no surveillance because, you know, you're in New York City.

00:39:35.000 You're working seven days a week.

00:39:38.000 You know, my day would go from maybe 11 o'clock in the morning to maybe 3, 4 o'clock the next morning, seven days a week.

00:39:50.000 So, you know, your only lifeline is the phone to your contact agent.

00:39:57.000 Yeah.

00:39:58.000 Wow.

00:39:59.000 And so I'm doing a lot of stuff like that.

00:40:05.000 I'm gaining all kind of intelligence, though.

00:40:07.000 You know, identifying made guys, identifying guys in other families that are made.

00:40:13.000 Are you writing this stuff down?

00:40:14.000 Do you just keep it all in your head?

00:40:16.000 No, in your head.

00:40:17.000 And what I do is I would regurgitate it over the telephone to my contact guy.

00:40:25.000 And he would reduce it to paper.

00:40:28.000 Yeah, because like, you know, these guys would come to my apartment.

00:40:33.000 I couldn't take the shot of, you know, and I didn't wear a wire with these guys.

00:40:40.000 You know, very seldom did I have a wire on.

00:40:42.000 Most of my recordings are on the telephone.

00:40:49.000 I wore a wire a couple of times when I knew I was going to get a contract to kill people.

00:40:55.000 And when I had the feeling that I was going to be told about hits.

00:41:02.000 And what I do was I had a mini cassette recorder that I bought at Radio Shack.

00:41:11.000 Oh, wow.

00:41:12.000 You know, and I just put it in my sport coat pocket.

00:41:17.000 You got to be real worried about getting caught with that.

00:41:20.000 Yeah, but at least, you know, nobody's tapping, you know, because once you get in with these guys, when you meet them for the day, they all hug each other and they kiss each other on both cheeks.

00:41:35.000 If they kiss you on the lips, then you're done.

00:41:37.000 You know that that's the last fucking day you're going to be there.

00:41:40.000 So, yeah, so I didn't make many body recordings because you're always— I mean, when I was with Mirror one time, and he said, hey, pull over, Donnie.

00:42:03.000 I pull over.

00:42:05.000 And he tears my car, the dashboard apart.

00:42:15.000 Now, if you saw the movie, they had Lefty do that, but that was in the real life.

00:42:19.000 That was Tony Mirror.

00:42:21.000 I mean, you know, so I couldn't have my car wired.

00:42:24.000 Right.

00:42:27.000 Does he suspecting you or suspecting somebody else when he's tearing your dash apart?

00:42:31.000 Well, it's, well, I'm new, you know.

00:42:34.000 You know, nobody could go to anybody and say that they knew Donnie.

00:42:39.000 Right.

00:42:40.000 You know.

00:42:41.000 So that's how they check you out, you know, because they had no other way of checking me out, really.

00:42:50.000 So, you know, hanging with Ruggerio, doing stuff with him.

00:42:56.000 And now we come to a point where I'm really in with the bananos.

00:43:02.000 I mean, they're starting to talk.

00:43:08.000 They would talk business with me there, you know, and they felt comfortable with me because, again, reverting back to my early years growing up, you know, hanging out at the social clubs in the neighborhood, you know, I knew that if you don't have any interest in the conversation, walk away from it.

00:43:36.000 And that's what I do with these guys, is if they started to talk about something, I would get up and walk away because it puts in their mind, you know, Donnie's not really interested.

00:43:53.000 You know what I'm saying?

00:43:54.000 It's not, he doesn't want to get into our real business.

00:44:00.000 So that made them trust me more.

00:44:04.000 That made them trust me more.

00:44:05.000 You knew the protocol.

00:44:06.000 Yeah, I knew the protocol, exactly.

00:44:10.000 So now what happens is that the FBI had an operation going in Milwaukee, undercover operation, against the Milwaukee family, right?

00:44:25.000 The Balestray family who's connected to Chicago.

00:44:30.000 Now this will give you a little hint how the mob works.

00:44:36.000 So they're not really going anywhere.

00:44:41.000 They had a vending machine company set up.

00:44:45.000 And the undercover was an undercover actually that I knew, which is, because I had a rule, if I didn't know you, I don't care if you're an FBI agent or not, I'm not introducing you.

00:45:00.000 I'm not vouching for you.

00:45:02.000 Because I don't know if you're any fucking good or not.

00:45:05.000 You know?

00:45:08.000 So they reach out to me and they say, hey, we got an operation going in Milwaukee.

00:45:14.000 Yeah.

00:45:15.000 And this is what it is.

00:45:17.000 We got a vending machine company.

00:45:20.000 We got trucks.

00:45:23.000 We got a warehouse.

00:45:24.000 We got machines.

00:45:26.000 but we're not getting anywhere.

00:45:27.000 You know, the undercover...

00:45:33.000 Ty Cobb.

00:45:35.000 That was his, yeah, that was the agent's real name.

00:45:42.000 I said, Ty's the undercover.

00:45:44.000 They said, yeah.

00:45:45.000 I said, okay, now you can, now I'll listen to you.

00:45:48.000 Because I know Ty and I had done undercover work in Chicago together.

00:45:55.000 I said, okay.

00:45:58.000 So I'm talking, you know, I said, well, tell Ty to call me.

00:46:04.000 I want to talk to Ty.

00:46:06.000 So he tells me what's going on.

00:46:09.000 He said, you know, I'm going to all these bars and restaurants, and they won't take my machines because the mob, it's all the mob's machines.

00:46:20.000 I said, all right.

00:46:22.000 So I said, well, what's the plan?

00:46:23.000 Well, maybe you can bring the bananos out here and we can get a sit-down with the balustraris.

00:46:32.000 I said, well, let me see.

00:46:36.000 So I went with Jerio one day and I dropped a, hey, Left, you know, I got a call the other day from a guy that I used to steal artwork with down in Baltimore.

00:46:54.000 And he's out in Milwaukee.

00:46:56.000 He said, what the fuck's he doing in Milwaukee?

00:46:59.000 I says, he's got a vending machine company, and he wants me to come out and help him.

00:47:04.000 He says, is he crazy?

00:47:06.000 He said, they'll blow him up out there.

00:47:08.000 He says, he can't do a vending machine business out there.

00:47:11.000 That's the mob.

00:47:13.000 I said, well, he doesn't know.

00:47:15.000 He doesn't know anything about the mob.

00:47:18.000 We drop it.

00:47:20.000 A couple days later, I says, they left this guy call me again.

00:47:25.000 He needs help.

00:47:27.000 He said, Donnie, what do you think?

00:47:29.000 He said, you can't just go out there.

00:47:35.000 And then he looks at me, this guy got any money?

00:47:39.000 I said, I don't know.

00:47:40.000 Let me ask him.

00:47:42.000 I said, I'll call him tonight and find out if he's got any money.

00:47:48.000 So I called Ty.

00:47:52.000 He was going by the name of Tony.

00:47:56.000 And I said, hey, Tony.

00:48:01.000 He said, I said, Lefty wants to know if you got any money.

00:48:05.000 He said, all right, he said, tell him I got $200,000 in the bank.

00:48:09.000 And, you know, I got a warehouse full of machines.

00:48:14.000 I got everything set up.

00:48:16.000 I said, okay.

00:48:18.000 So I go back to Lefty.

00:48:19.000 I said, Lefty, he's told me he's got $200,000 in the bank.

00:48:23.000 And he's got this big warehouse set up.

00:48:27.000 He says, all right.

00:48:28.000 He said, let me talk to Mike.

00:48:30.000 Now, Mike Sabello is the captain, right?

00:48:33.000 So Mike said, all right.

00:48:35.000 He said, you and Lefty go out there.

00:48:38.000 Just sit down with him and make sure that he has what he says he has.

00:48:42.000 Don't tell anybody you're going.

00:48:44.000 I said, okay.

00:48:47.000 So the first thing is call Tony and tell him to send us airplane tickets.

00:48:54.000 Because, you know, wise guys, they're not spending their own money.

00:48:59.000 So the Bureau, you know, Tony gets us two plane tickets.

00:49:04.000 Me and Lefty fly out there.

00:49:06.000 And he takes us to the warehouse.

00:49:08.000 And, you know, they got the whole operation going on.

00:49:14.000 And Lefty said, okay, so we go back and report back to Mike.

00:49:20.000 And he said, okay, he says, now here's the story.

00:49:25.000 Tony's been with the Bonanos for 10 years.

00:49:30.000 He's been an associate of ours for 10 years because that's what he has to tell Chicago and Milwaukee.

00:49:39.000 Because if they just say, Donnie just met this guy, they're going to say, well, he's not with you.

00:49:46.000 You didn't claim him.

00:49:47.000 So we'll take the whole business.

00:49:50.000 Right.

00:49:51.000 So here's the way it works.

00:49:52.000 Now we go to our Kinseigli area, the Kinsegli area of the bananos.

00:50:01.000 Guy by the name of Bobby Badheart.

00:50:04.000 You know why they called him Bobby Badheart?

00:50:06.000 Because he had a bad heart.

00:50:07.000 A bad heart?

00:50:09.000 Easy, right?

00:50:12.000 So he goes and Bobby Badheart now has to call Chicago, right?

00:50:22.000 And tell Chicago that, hey, we got a guy that's been with us for 10 years.

00:50:28.000 He's settled now in Milwaukee.

00:50:31.000 He's been in Milwaukee for a couple years.

00:50:34.000 And he wants to go into the business and he has machines and everything.

00:50:41.000 And we'd like to have a sit-down with Belastrari, the boss of Milwaukee.

00:50:47.000 Okay.

00:50:48.000 Chicago now calls Belastrari's concigliary and relates the whole story to him.

00:51:00.000 So now we've got to wait and see if he wants to have the sit-down.

00:51:05.000 A week or so goes by.

00:51:07.000 Chicago calls back and said, okay, he'll have a meet with you guys.

00:51:16.000 Who's coming out?

00:51:18.000 It'd be Lefty Ruggerio and Donny Brasco.

00:51:21.000 Now, Lefty's are made guys, so, you know.

00:51:27.000 So they say, okay, come on out, check into this hotel and wait for a phone call.

00:51:35.000 So me and Lefty fly out, check into this hotel, and we wait about three or four days, just hanging around the hotel.

00:51:47.000 We can't go anywhere because we can't miss the phone call.

00:51:52.000 So we get the phone call.

00:51:54.000 He says, okay, come to Snugg's restaurant.

00:52:01.000 Such and such a day, such and such a time.

00:52:04.000 It's Balasteri's restaurant.

00:52:06.000 He owns a hotel, and it's a restaurant in his hotel.

00:52:10.000 So, me, Lefty, and Tony, the other undercover, we go there.

00:52:18.000 And now, if you know the mob, Joe, you don't get to sit down with a boss unless you're another boss.

00:52:29.000 You know what I mean?

00:52:30.000 Guys, made guys that are just made guys in other families don't get to sit down with a boss.

00:52:36.000 So now, who's there is Belastre, the boss, his under boss, his consiglieri, and his two sons, who are both lawyers.

00:52:51.000 So we have a big spread.

00:52:54.000 Why do you want to be here?

00:52:58.000 Well, you know, Tony's been with us.

00:53:00.000 Now, Lefty's doing all the talking because he's the main guy.

00:53:05.000 Tony's been with us for 10 years, you know, him and Donnie.

00:53:11.000 They did a lot of art theft together and stuff, and they've both been with us.

00:53:21.000 And Tony thought he can get the business going with the machines and stuff.

00:53:36.000 So after this whole dinner, probably about five or six hours, I said, okay, we'll get back to you.

00:53:44.000 All right.

00:53:46.000 So a couple days later, he called, why don't you have dinner at my house?

00:53:54.000 A fucking boss is inviting us to dinner at his house.

00:53:57.000 It doesn't happen if you know the world of the mafia.

00:54:05.000 He gives us the address.

00:54:08.000 Me, Lefty, and Tony.

00:54:09.000 And Lefty's like, you got to know wise guys, right?

00:54:13.000 Lefty's like, we're going to the dinner at a mob boss's house, at his house.

00:54:21.000 He's like, you know, I mean, we know it's a big deal, but to a wise guy, it's a big fucking deal, too.

00:54:31.000 So we go to his house, and he's right on the lake.

00:54:36.000 He has a big, big table, you know, like you see in the movies.

00:54:43.000 And got the maids serving us.

00:54:46.000 And he said, okay, he said, we'll go in partners.

00:54:51.000 We'll be 50-50 partners.

00:54:54.000 Tony does all the work.

00:54:57.000 You know, we'll tell you where to go to put your machines in.

00:55:04.000 They'll take your machines.

00:55:07.000 So, now, what do we just do?

00:55:09.000 We just marry two mafia families together, Bonanos and the Belastraris through Chicago.

00:55:17.000 First, marrying two mafia families to do business together.

00:55:23.000 Me and Left to go back to New York.

00:55:27.000 Everything's going good.

00:55:30.000 Tony's meeting with the sons, because that's who he said, you meet me with my sons.

00:55:38.000 After a few months, nothing.

00:55:41.000 They stopped meeting with him.

00:55:46.000 Don't know why.

00:55:47.000 They won't take his calls, nothing.

00:55:55.000 So I said, Lefty, they're not responding.

00:56:01.000 What do you mean they're not responding?

00:56:04.000 I said, they're not taking his calls anymore.

00:56:09.000 He said, well, what do you do?

00:56:11.000 Try to, you know, I said, Lefty, this guy's not like that.

00:56:18.000 Make a long story short, Tony had been a cop in a city outside of Milwaukee after he got out of the Marine Corps, before he went into the Bureau.

00:56:32.000 And somehow they found out there was a leak somewhere.

00:56:38.000 But they don't tell, we find this out later that this is how they don't tell this to Lefty, which saved my ass.

00:56:49.000 Because I vouch for Tony.

00:56:52.000 Right.

00:56:56.000 So we're trying to get in touch with Chicago.

00:57:03.000 Chicago's not, you know, Chicago's, hey, we don't know why they stopped.

00:57:10.000 You know, we don't have any idea.

00:57:11.000 So that goes...

00:57:19.000 Right?

00:57:20.000 Yeah.

00:57:22.000 So Lefty sends me to Milwaukee, go find out, go search for this guy and blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:57:33.000 And, you know, I come up with a story, left, you know, I found this car.

00:57:38.000 It's in the parking lot.

00:57:39.000 I mean, it's in the parking lot of the airport.

00:57:46.000 Then when I went back, it was gone.

00:57:51.000 So I go and they said, though, the cops towed it.

00:57:54.000 You know, it's all bullshit, of course, but I got to cover, you know, what happened to this guy.

00:58:03.000 So now we've got to go tell Mike Sabella, our captain, because, you know, our money source dried up.

00:58:11.000 So we go sit down with Mike.

00:58:15.000 This is hard to believe, and he's ripping, right?

00:58:22.000 You know, my punishment was?

00:58:25.000 What?

00:58:25.000 I couldn't go to the Christmas party.

00:58:29.000 That's it?

00:58:30.000 That's it.

00:58:32.000 he was ripped, but he banned me from the Christmas party.

00:58:38.000 Because you introduced him to the cop.

00:58:40.000 Well, he didn't know he was a cop because the operation just shut down, and so the money stopped, wasn't coming in anymore.

00:58:50.000 Right.

00:58:50.000 And they don't tell you why.

00:58:52.000 No.

00:58:53.000 So I said, well, if that's the best that could happen, I don't go to the Christmas party.

00:58:58.000 You know, because each crew has a, you know, they have their own party and shit.

00:59:02.000 You know, I'm saying to myself, my God, this is what I'm suspecting.

00:59:07.000 So they don't suspect you at all?

00:59:10.000 No.

00:59:11.000 No.

00:59:12.000 How do they not suspect you?

00:59:13.000 How do they not question you?

00:59:14.000 Well, I had been with them so many, I have been with them now, you know, Joe, over two years now.

00:59:20.000 Right.

00:59:20.000 And, you know, so, but I'm always on edge because I don't know why aren't the Balestraris telling Ruggerio unless they're too embarrassed.

00:59:35.000 You know what I mean?

00:59:36.000 Right.

00:59:37.000 I don't know.

00:59:38.000 To this day.

00:59:39.000 Well, I mean, after we found out that, yeah, to this day, I have no idea why they didn't tell him.

00:59:46.000 And whatever happened to Tony?

00:59:48.000 Oh, we just shut the operation down.

00:59:51.000 They just shut it down.

00:59:53.000 You know?

00:59:55.000 So I'm going on again.

00:59:59.000 We're going on.

01:00:02.000 Nice cup.

01:00:03.000 Want it?

01:00:04.000 You can have it?

01:00:04.000 No, thank you.

01:00:06.000 I got some swag coming for you.

01:00:08.000 All right.

01:00:08.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:00:09.000 Well, I got swag too.

01:00:10.000 You can have one of them, JRE cups.

01:00:11.000 But I mean, I got a lot of Donny Brasco swag that I'm going to mail to you.

01:00:15.000 All right, cool.

01:00:16.000 It was supposed to be at the hotel.

01:00:18.000 It never made it.

01:00:20.000 But this has to be hair raising.

01:00:22.000 It is, because now I'm like, and Lefty said, you know, now he's grilling me again about my relationship with Tony.

01:00:32.000 Right.

01:00:32.000 But I got to stick to the story, you know.

01:00:36.000 So I kind of squared things around with him.

01:00:51.000 And Mike.

01:00:52.000 So now what happens is that at the time, Carmen Galenti was the boss of the Bananos.

01:01:01.000 All right.

01:01:03.000 And they kill Galenti.

01:01:07.000 They whack him.

01:01:10.000 All right.

01:01:11.000 Because there's kind of a beef within the family.

01:01:15.000 And one side didn't like Galenti, so they whack him.

01:01:21.000 Mike Zabella now was associated with Galenti.

01:01:26.000 So they tell Mike, Mike, either step down or we're going to whack you too.

01:01:34.000 So he gives up his captainship and just becomes a regular soldier again.

01:01:39.000 Right?

01:01:41.000 So one of the originators, when I say originators, instigators, whatever, was a guy by the name of Sonny Black, Naplitano.

01:01:56.000 He was out in Brooklyn.

01:01:59.000 So they put me and, remember we were with Mike Zabella.

01:02:03.000 So they put me and Lefty now with under Sonny Black.

01:02:09.000 Sonny Black becomes a captain.

01:02:12.000 They put me and Lefty under Sonny Black out in Brooklyn.

01:02:17.000 So that's who we report to every day.

01:02:19.000 And you have to check in with your captain every day.

01:02:23.000 So every day, me and Lefty would report out the motion lounge.

01:02:33.000 It's on Graham and Wither Street in Brooklyn.

01:02:36.000 Sonny's our new captain.

01:02:42.000 So, and again, you know, the intelligence information I'm gathering is like no other than anybody else can get because, you know, informants aren't going to give you all this stuff.

01:02:59.000 And I'm meeting different people again.

01:03:01.000 I'm meeting people from different families through these guys.

01:03:08.000 So I'm rocking out there in Brooklyn under Sunny Black.

01:03:18.000 And I get another call.

01:03:20.000 And when I, Headquarters wants to talk to you about what?

01:03:30.000 Well, we got another cover operation going in Tampa, Florida.

01:03:35.000 Yeah.

01:03:37.000 And we want to see if you can bring your bananas.

01:03:40.000 I said, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute.

01:03:46.000 I just went through this in Milwaukee.

01:03:51.000 Well, the supervisor wants to talk to you.

01:03:55.000 I knew the supervisor.

01:03:57.000 Supervisor's a good guy.

01:04:00.000 So I call him.

01:04:01.000 I said, Tony, what's up?

01:04:04.000 He says, we've got a nightclub.

01:04:07.000 And it's pretty good, but we can't get into Santo Trafficante.

01:04:17.000 And maybe you can do the same thing you did in Milwaukee.

01:04:23.000 I said, I don't know, man.

01:04:26.000 I said, if I do it, number one, who's the undercovers?

01:04:31.000 Because they had two undercovers running a nightclub.

01:04:36.000 And they said, well, one of them is an agent by the name of Sal Mary, Steve.

01:04:46.000 I said, okay.

01:04:47.000 I said, I know Steve.

01:04:49.000 I did undercover work with him, too.

01:04:51.000 I said, I got no problem with Steve.

01:04:53.000 And they gave me the other guy.

01:04:55.000 The other guy I knew, but I never worked with him.

01:04:57.000 I said, but as long as Steve is involved, I'll see what I can do.

01:05:04.000 But I don't know how long it's going to take.

01:05:08.000 So you got to just let me think about this.

01:05:12.000 All right?

01:05:12.000 Because I don't want to come up, you know, I'm not coming up with a story.

01:05:17.000 Hey, I got a call from a guy that I used to fucking thieve with.

01:05:21.000 Right, right, right.

01:05:23.000 So I figure, okay, after a while, okay, here's what we'll do.

01:05:30.000 We used to go to Miami a lot.

01:05:32.000 When I say we, I'm talking about me, Lefty, the wise guys.

01:05:38.000 We'd fly to Miami for a long weekend.

01:05:41.000 We had a hotel down there that put us on the arm, right?

01:05:47.000 Give us the sweets and stuff and stay for the weekend.

01:05:52.000 So I says, okay, here's what we'll do.

01:05:56.000 The next time we go to Miami, right, you guys go down there and whenever we go to a restaurant, I'll let you know what restaurant we're going to go to.

01:06:12.000 And you guys just happen to be in the restaurant and you Steve Salmieri, who was going by Chico, I said, Chico just happens to notice me and comes over to the table.

01:06:30.000 And hey, Donnie, how you been?

01:06:32.000 So it's like a bump, right?

01:06:33.000 It's not like.

01:06:34.000 Right, right, right.

01:06:36.000 So that's what we did.

01:06:40.000 So we're out at this restaurant and we set that deal up.

01:06:44.000 And Chico comes over.

01:06:46.000 And Donnie, hey, I haven't seen you in years.

01:06:48.000 How you doing?

01:06:50.000 What are you doing down here?

01:06:51.000 Well, we got a nightclub.

01:06:54.000 You got a nightclub?

01:06:55.000 Where?

01:06:56.000 It's outside of Tampa, up in Tampa, Florida.

01:07:00.000 No kidding.

01:07:02.000 How long have you been down there?

01:07:05.000 I don't know, three, four years, you know.

01:07:08.000 What are you doing?

01:07:09.000 And I think it's a nice club.

01:07:10.000 Why don't you come by?

01:07:12.000 Now that, you know, again, you talk about a nightclub and, you know, so everything is dollar signs.

01:07:20.000 So I said, Left, do you want to take a ride up one day?

01:07:26.000 He said, yeah.

01:07:27.000 So when they leave, he says, you know these guys?

01:07:30.000 I said, well, I know Chico.

01:07:32.000 I said, I don't know the other guy.

01:07:34.000 I said, but, you know, Chico, he was a good thief, you know.

01:07:40.000 I said, I haven't seen him in a while.

01:07:42.000 I haven't seen him in like maybe five years, but he's always was, you know, he's always a good thief.

01:07:51.000 So he said, all right, so let's take a ride up.

01:07:56.000 So we take a ride up, and it's a nice nightclub.

01:07:59.000 It's on like five acres.

01:08:00.000 They got tennis courts.

01:08:02.000 We hang out.

01:08:05.000 A lot of business, you know.

01:08:09.000 It was open from, I don't know, 9 o'clock.

01:08:19.000 It was open all night.

01:08:22.000 So he said, nice place.

01:08:26.000 He said, we have to tell Sonny about it when we go back to Brooklyn.

01:08:32.000 Okay.

01:08:33.000 So we go back to Brooklyn and tell Sonny about it.

01:08:39.000 Now I'm like in my fourth year with these guys.

01:08:44.000 So we go back to Brooklyn and tell Sonny, lefty, hey, we ran into one of Donnie's old friends.

01:08:54.000 Boy, they got a nice club.

01:08:56.000 Oh, yeah.

01:08:58.000 Well, maybe we'll go down and see it.

01:09:03.000 So we go down and they see a lot of potential.

01:09:08.000 But now they can't operate anything illegal because Santo Trafficante owns Florida.

01:09:16.000 So now we got to go through the same routine.

01:09:20.000 All right.

01:09:24.000 Gensiglieri has to call Trafficante's guy and say, hey, we got, you know, one of our guys has a club down there who hasn't been with us for, you know, Chico has had to be with the bananos again for five, six years.

01:09:47.000 Excuse me.

01:09:48.000 So we go through that same routine.

01:09:52.000 And finally, you know, this takes a while.

01:09:58.000 It's not like overnight.

01:10:01.000 So we go through the routine and he says, okay.

01:10:07.000 His guy says, all right, Santo will meet you at such and such a hotel on such and such a day.

01:10:18.000 Get to meet another fucking boss of a Florida.

01:10:23.000 Me and Sonny meet him.

01:10:26.000 Oh no, the first time we met him was at a restaurant in right outside of Tampa, that Creek fishing village.

01:10:38.000 I've drawn a blank, but at any rate, we meet him in a restaurant.

01:10:44.000 And actually, it was Pappas' restaurant.

01:10:46.000 That was the name of it.

01:10:48.000 And Sonny had never met him before.

01:10:54.000 But, you know, they go through all the niceties.

01:10:57.000 And Sonny tells him, you know, we got a nightclub and we want to start running gambling out of it.

01:11:04.000 You know.

01:11:06.000 So he says, okay, I'll meet you.

01:11:10.000 I'll come up and look at it.

01:11:12.000 I'll meet you.

01:11:13.000 So I don't know if we met him the next week or next couple weeks.

01:11:17.000 We meet him again.

01:11:18.000 Now, this time it's in a hotel room.

01:11:21.000 He comes to Sonny's hotel room and sets everything up, right?

01:11:29.000 Forms the marriage.

01:11:31.000 Again, this is the second time we married two fucking mafia families together.

01:11:37.000 So he said, all right, he said, you want to do a casino night?

01:11:44.000 Yeah.

01:11:45.000 He said, I'm going to send my two guys up.

01:11:48.000 Okay.

01:11:51.000 A couple days later, two guys come up from Miami card sharks.

01:12:01.000 I sat in a hotel with these room guys, Joe, and they were marking all the decks of cards.

01:12:10.000 I could not, after they get done, I had no idea how they marked these cards.

01:12:20.000 They were for blackjack and stuff, right?

01:12:26.000 Had craps tables.

01:12:28.000 The dice were fixed.

01:12:30.000 I mean, it was like everything was, you know.

01:12:34.000 So we set the club up and we're advertising a casino night for the veterans of foreign war.

01:12:46.000 We even had a certificate and everything.

01:12:54.000 We're paying off somebody in the sheriff's department to protect us.

01:13:01.000 Well, we got the game going and doing pretty good.

01:13:10.000 Doing pretty good.

01:13:13.000 And the place is jammed.

01:13:18.000 So what happens is that all of a sudden knock on the door, one of the doormen slides.

01:13:26.000 He comes to me, he says, Donnie, there's a bunch of sheriff's deputies outside.

01:13:31.000 Whoa.

01:13:32.000 So right away I get on the phone.

01:13:36.000 I can't get our contact in the sheriff's department.

01:13:39.000 He's not answering his phone.

01:13:41.000 And then we had just paid him that day.

01:13:47.000 So I said, all right, clear all the money off the table.

01:13:52.000 So we get all the money off the tables and put chips back on the tables.

01:13:58.000 I said, all right, let him in.

01:14:02.000 Because we had the certificate, we had everything.

01:14:06.000 And what we had done was every so often we collect the money and we stash it in the furnace room.

01:14:15.000 There was a lot of money stashed.

01:14:19.000 What we had was an old-time one-arm bandit.

01:14:23.000 The thing had to be 100 years old.

01:14:26.000 Nobody ever put money in it.

01:14:28.000 It was just there.

01:14:30.000 So they come in and they don't see any money.

01:14:37.000 One of the deputies puts a, I don't know, nickel, dime, pulls a handle, and what do you think happens?

01:14:45.000 He fucking wins.

01:14:48.000 You're running a gambling operation.

01:14:50.000 He said, nobody's ever played that thing, right?

01:14:53.000 Well, they wrecked the joint.

01:14:55.000 We all get arrested.

01:14:58.000 Why did he get arrested?

01:14:59.000 I don't understand.

01:15:00.000 It was a gambling charge.

01:15:03.000 They arrest us.

01:15:04.000 Oh, because why?

01:15:06.000 Because of the war-armed bandit?

01:15:08.000 Because they won, and they said that that was gambling.

01:15:12.000 Oh.

01:15:14.000 Nobody even knew there was any money in it or anything.

01:15:18.000 It was just there as a decoration.

01:15:20.000 Oh, boy.

01:15:21.000 You know, it was an antique.

01:15:25.000 So they just used it as an excuse?

01:15:26.000 Yeah, just used it as an excuse because we were the mafia guineas from New York.

01:15:34.000 Right.

01:15:34.000 That's what we were.

01:15:36.000 Right?

01:15:36.000 So if they throw us in a can and just for the one-armed bandit.

01:15:41.000 Yeah.

01:15:41.000 They never find the money.

01:15:44.000 We didn't, but somebody did.

01:15:45.000 Oh, boy.

01:15:47.000 Somebody did.

01:15:48.000 How much money?

01:15:52.000 There was over 30 grand that I know that was stashed.

01:15:57.000 So they swiped that?

01:15:58.000 Well, I don't know.

01:15:59.000 Somebody did.

01:16:00.000 Probably.

01:16:00.000 Somebody did.

01:16:01.000 Yeah.

01:16:02.000 So we had Traffic Canty's lawyer.

01:16:06.000 He gave us, I don't know who it was, so we call the lawyer and he gets us out of the can the next day.

01:16:17.000 And now I'm in another fucking bide because now we got busted.

01:16:22.000 And we did, you know, we were paying the guy off.

01:16:26.000 And what happened to the guy you paid off?

01:16:29.000 He committed suicide later on.

01:16:31.000 Oh, convenient.

01:16:33.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:16:34.000 Did he really commit suicide?

01:16:35.000 Yeah, he did, really.

01:16:36.000 Because when he got his subpoena.

01:16:40.000 Oh, he knew they were coming for him.

01:16:42.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:16:45.000 So that kind of screwed that thing up.

01:16:53.000 But, you know, Sonny knew that we were paying the guy off and everything.

01:16:59.000 So, you know, it was just a hazards of doing business as a mob.

01:17:07.000 But when we got back to the club, like I say, the satchel was gone with the money.

01:17:12.000 Somebody took it.

01:17:15.000 And so we go back to New York.

01:17:18.000 And again, now there's another beef in the Bonano family.

01:17:23.000 Because after they whack Galenti, they make Rusty Rostelli the boss of the family.

01:17:29.000 But Rusty's in a can.

01:17:30.000 He's in a can.

01:17:32.000 So Sonny Black is running the family along with another capo.

01:17:40.000 And then there's a Sicilian faction of the Bonanno family.

01:17:44.000 And they're running their faction.

01:17:48.000 All right.

01:17:50.000 Now there's a faction of three capos that are against Rusty Rostelli.

01:17:56.000 And they're against Sonny and the other capos.

01:18:01.000 So now there's more friction in the bananos.

01:18:06.000 So in order to solve this, they call a sit-down.

01:18:15.000 Sonny Black, the guys on his side, the capos on his side, call a sit-down for the other three capos to straighten this out.

01:18:28.000 Well, the deal is, when these other three capos get to the sit-down, they're going to whack them.

01:18:33.000 Oh, yeah.

01:18:34.000 They're going to whack them.

01:18:38.000 So I was supposed to be in on that, but they cut me out at the last minute.

01:18:46.000 I was supposed to be in on the hits, but they cut me out at the last minute.

01:18:50.000 And then I was supposed to be on the cleanup crew, but they cut me out at the last minute.

01:18:58.000 Why'd they cut you out?

01:18:59.000 I don't know.

01:19:02.000 Because I wasn't told until after, you know?

01:19:05.000 Right.

01:19:07.000 So they whacked these three guys.

01:19:10.000 And the next day, Sonny calls me into the club.

01:19:14.000 And he said, Bruno never showed up.

01:19:20.000 That was the fourth guy.

01:19:22.000 One of the capos in Delicato, his son was supposed to come, and he didn't show.

01:19:29.000 So he gave me the contract to kill him.

01:19:32.000 So he said, we think he's in Florida.

01:19:35.000 So he sends me to Florida to look for him, but he wasn't down there.

01:19:40.000 And the deal was that if I did find him, I'd call the FBI, and they would snatch him, and we'd stage a hit.

01:19:49.000 Or if they found him, you know, we'd do the reverse.

01:19:53.000 They'd stage a hit, but we never found them.

01:19:57.000 So now, all this time I never carried a gun.

01:20:03.000 I never carried a gun in this whole operation.

01:20:05.000 Really?

01:20:06.000 Yeah.

01:20:06.000 Was that unusual?

01:20:07.000 No, because these guys don't carry guns on a daily basis, the mob, you know, mafia guys.

01:20:13.000 They don't?

01:20:14.000 No, no, because they're always getting rousted by the cops.

01:20:17.000 Got it.

01:20:18.000 The only time they carry a piece is when they're going to go do some work.

01:20:22.000 Right.

01:20:22.000 You know?

01:20:25.000 So.

01:20:26.000 Did you see guys get killed?

01:20:28.000 No.

01:20:30.000 I don't believe you.

01:20:33.000 So.

01:20:35.000 That was the sneakiest no I've ever heard in my life.

01:20:38.000 So we let's move on.

01:20:43.000 Yeah, let's move on.

01:20:47.000 You made me lose my trade at Twitch.

01:20:49.000 Sorry, sorry.

01:20:51.000 No.

01:20:51.000 So we're in the club.

01:20:54.000 So I get the contract for Bruno, but obviously I can't find him.

01:20:58.000 Bureau can't find him.

01:21:00.000 Did anybody ever find him?

01:21:02.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:21:03.000 So what happens is we're in the club one day in the motion lounge, and Sonny gets a phone call, and he says, hey, Donnie, he said, I would think Bruno's at such and such a place.

01:21:25.000 But it was bad info.

01:21:27.000 It was bad info.

01:21:29.000 So I was asked, well, what would you do if he was there?

01:21:33.000 I said, I hate to say it, but Bruno probably was a dead man.

01:21:39.000 And how could you say that?

01:21:42.000 Well, because when you're given a contract, it's your responsibility that a guy gets killed.

01:21:48.000 And if you refuse the contract, you get killed.

01:21:55.000 You're going to get whacked.

01:21:56.000 So would you have had to do it?

01:21:58.000 Well, if you found him?

01:22:00.000 I could have given it to one of the other guys to do it, but it's my responsibility.

01:22:05.000 Right.

01:22:06.000 You know, and my whole look, my mindset in undercover is I'm not dying for a gangster.

01:22:16.000 I'll die for a citizen.

01:22:18.000 I'll take a beating for a citizen, but not for a gangster.

01:22:24.000 He's going to get whacked either way.

01:22:26.000 He's going to go either way.

01:22:28.000 So I'll take my shot with the government.

01:22:30.000 Right.

01:22:30.000 It's, you know, it's not, you know, A lot of people can't deal with that, but that's the job.

01:22:46.000 I mean, look, I'm there to put you in jail.

01:22:50.000 I'm not there to get you killed.

01:22:53.000 I'm not there to kill you.

01:22:55.000 I'm there to arrest you and try to hopefully send you to jail.

01:23:00.000 But I'm not going to die for you.

01:23:02.000 Right.

01:23:04.000 I'm not putting, you know.

01:23:05.000 So it's a situation where your back is against the wall.

01:23:07.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:23:08.000 Got it.

01:23:10.000 But, you know, that didn't happen.

01:23:12.000 Did they ever find him?

01:23:14.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:15.000 They found him.

01:23:17.000 They found him actually, I don't know if it was a year or so later.

01:23:21.000 I'm not too sure.

01:23:22.000 But yeah, he eventually got arrested.

01:23:25.000 Yeah.

01:23:25.000 He was a Coke.

01:23:26.000 He used Coke.

01:23:30.000 Sloppy.

01:23:31.000 Yeah.

01:23:32.000 So now with the war going on, the Bureau decides that we got to shut the operation down.

01:23:42.000 So those hits took place on May 5th.

01:23:48.000 And prior to that, I had a sit-down with Sonny Black.

01:23:53.000 And he said, Donnie, he said, the books on the mafia are opening up in December.

01:24:02.000 He said, and I already proposed you for membership into the Bonano family.

01:24:06.000 So you're going to get inducted into the family in December.

01:24:11.000 He said, so I congratulated him, thanked him, kissed him on both cheeks, you know.

01:24:20.000 So you were going to be a made guy.

01:24:22.000 Yeah, I was going to be a made guy.

01:24:23.000 Yeah.

01:24:24.000 How attractive is that life when you're in it?

01:24:27.000 Oh, forget it.

01:24:28.000 Must be so much fun.

01:24:31.000 It's part of the problem, right?

01:24:32.000 So, no.

01:24:34.000 Wake it up every day to think is today, the day I go to jail or today I get whacked?

01:24:40.000 No, I didn't Joe, I didn't find it that fucking attractive.

01:24:45.000 Believe me.

01:24:46.000 I mean, it's all right.

01:24:48.000 They flash the cash.

01:24:50.000 You know, you walk into a restaurant, they know who you are.

01:24:54.000 You know, you get the VIP treatment.

01:24:58.000 You get the VIP treatment.

01:24:59.000 You don't order off the menu.

01:25:02.000 You know.

01:25:03.000 Yeah.

01:25:05.000 There's perks.

01:25:06.000 There's those perks, but you know.

01:25:07.000 Tootscape.

01:25:08.000 I didn't want to wake up every day saying, do I go to jail or do I get whacked today?

01:25:12.000 That's their mindset.

01:25:14.000 It's crazy.

01:25:15.000 It is crazy.

01:25:15.000 It's crazy.

01:25:17.000 But I've talked to guys in that life, and they love it.

01:25:19.000 Yeah.

01:25:20.000 That's what's crazy about it.

01:25:21.000 Yeah.

01:25:22.000 I know guys that became informants and they wish they could go back.

01:25:31.000 I say, yeah, you know, no, I wouldn't want to, you know.

01:25:39.000 But that is a problem with guys who do undercover work, right?

01:25:42.000 Yeah.

01:25:43.000 Some of them fall in love with it.

01:25:44.000 Yeah.

01:25:44.000 They fall in love with the undercover aspect.

01:25:47.000 And I think the reason that I was successful in all my cases and that I'm still 98% sane is I didn't fall in love with it.

01:26:04.000 And I grew up on the streets.

01:26:08.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:26:09.000 I mean, I grew up in that environment.

01:26:13.000 And I was never attracted to it as a kid.

01:26:15.000 Right.

01:26:16.000 You know?

01:26:17.000 Right.

01:26:18.000 Did you ever run the risk of running into someone that you knew who knew you as Joe Stone?

01:26:25.000 Yeah, did you see the movie?

01:26:27.000 I did, but I don't remember.

01:26:28.000 In the airport?

01:26:29.000 Oh, that's right.

01:26:30.000 With the lawyer.

01:26:32.000 Oh, that's right.

01:26:33.000 Yeah.

01:26:33.000 That's what really happened.

01:26:35.000 Yeah.

01:26:35.000 How did that go down?

01:26:38.000 Well, I saw, you know, we saw, made eye contact, and, you know, I just clocked him.

01:26:47.000 Oh, wow.

01:26:48.000 And Sonny says, Donnie, why'd you do that?

01:26:50.000 I said, Sonny, you guys are looking at my prick.

01:26:52.000 What do you want me to do?

01:26:54.000 Oh.

01:26:57.000 But no, I never got attracted to the life other than as a job.

01:27:02.000 And I think another reason, too, Joe, where a lot of undercovers go wrong is they think they have to act like gangsters.

01:27:17.000 They change their personalities.

01:27:19.000 Right.

01:27:20.000 And you can't be A in the daytime and B at night.

01:27:25.000 Right.

01:27:25.000 I never changed my personality.

01:27:27.000 Right.

01:27:28.000 You know.

01:27:30.000 And a lot of undercovers are extroverts.

01:27:35.000 And I'm the exception to that rule when I'm really an introvert.

01:27:41.000 So you didn't need the attention.

01:27:42.000 I didn't need the attention.

01:27:43.000 You didn't thrive on it.

01:27:45.000 I don't, you know, and I never changed my values.

01:27:53.000 Like I mentioned before, I'm not a drinker.

01:27:56.000 I never was a drinker.

01:27:59.000 I worked in bars as bartender, you know, during my college years when I got out.

01:28:07.000 And I wasn't going to become a drinker just because I was working undercover.

01:28:13.000 You know, I mean, I had guys say, Donnie, you never finish a beer because I can't.

01:28:21.000 I only can drink half a bottle of beer.

01:28:24.000 That's all I can drink.

01:28:26.000 Probably lucky.

01:28:27.000 Probably.

01:28:28.000 Yeah.

01:28:29.000 Or, you know, you never have more than one glass of wine.

01:28:34.000 That's all I can ingest, is one glass.

01:28:37.000 And see, too many undercovers think, oh, all bad guys are drinkers.

01:28:43.000 Donnie, I never do drugs.

01:28:45.000 The Coke is a real problem with guys who go undercover, right?

01:28:48.000 Yeah.

01:28:49.000 Because they have to do it with everyone else.

01:28:51.000 Well, you know, they think they do.

01:28:53.000 I mean, I was in a nightclub in Miami, and the guy offers me Coke, and I slapped his hand.

01:29:01.000 You know, fucking Coke is all over the place.

01:29:04.000 And I said, don't ever offer me that shit.

01:29:07.000 I said, I make money off of that.

01:29:10.000 I don't put that stuff in my body.

01:29:12.000 I go to the gym every day.

01:29:14.000 Why would I do that shit?

01:29:18.000 I said, to me, it's a moneymaker.

01:29:20.000 See, but too many young undercovers think, oh, you know, I got to drink.

01:29:25.000 Right.

01:29:26.000 You know, I got to do this.

01:29:27.000 I got to do that.

01:29:28.000 I got to act tough.

01:29:30.000 Right.

01:29:32.000 You don't have to.

01:29:33.000 All you do is you have to be yourself.

01:29:37.000 That's all.

01:29:38.000 That way you don't have to ever change it up.

01:29:41.000 That's exactly right.

01:29:42.000 You never have to.

01:29:42.000 You never get caught.

01:29:43.000 You never get caught yourself.

01:29:44.000 And you don't have to act tough.

01:29:46.000 You don't have to talk tough.

01:29:47.000 You just got to back up what you say.

01:29:53.000 And that's it.

01:29:53.000 Never say anything that you can't back up.

01:29:56.000 And that was always my motto.

01:29:58.000 You know, I never promised anything that I couldn't do.

01:30:02.000 I never let anybody back me against the wall.

01:30:06.000 You know.

01:30:08.000 And I never got into anybody's face to make myself look tough.

01:30:15.000 Right.

01:30:16.000 You know, I mean, and that's where a lot of young undercovers go wrong, that they think, you know, they watch too much television.

01:30:24.000 Be honest with you.

01:30:30.000 The only time I screwed up, I tell you, we're in Miami.

01:30:38.000 All right.

01:30:39.000 And I'm in another undercovers car.

01:30:46.000 So it might have been Chico's, I don't remember.

01:30:53.000 So there's the three bad guys, you know, and he had his Car wired up.

01:31:04.000 So we're riding by, and it's a strip club, and it said 22 naked dancing girls.

01:31:23.000 And I said, 44 nipples.

01:31:28.000 That's all I said.

01:31:31.000 Well, that came out at trial by the defense attorney.

01:31:38.000 And I had to explain why I was such an expert on female nipples.

01:31:45.000 That's just simple math.

01:31:48.000 But what I'm saying is, you know.

01:31:52.000 So somebody remembered you saying that?

01:31:54.000 Well, it was on the tape.

01:31:55.000 On the tape.

01:31:56.000 On the tape.

01:31:57.000 So they were trying to use that against you?

01:31:59.000 Yeah, that was, you know, my character was, you know, was questioned.

01:32:07.000 But, you know, it goes back to what I say is that I would not normally say that.

01:32:14.000 Right.

01:32:14.000 You know what I mean?

01:32:15.000 Right, right, right, right.

01:32:16.000 It was just a dumb statement, but it's always going to come back to bite you in the ass.

01:32:21.000 Right, right, right.

01:32:24.000 Yeah, you just got caught up in it.

01:32:25.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:32:27.000 So what happened when they opened up the books?

01:32:30.000 Well, they closed the case down.

01:32:33.000 So I got them to postpone it till July because we had one more meeting with Trappicani set up.

01:32:41.000 So I got them to postpone it until after that meeting, but I couldn't get him to wait until after I got inducted into the family.

01:32:51.000 They wouldn't wait.

01:32:52.000 Wow.

01:32:53.000 So they closed the operation July 27th.

01:32:58.000 Yeah.

01:33:00.000 Yeah.

01:33:01.000 And six years undercover, seven years of testifying.

01:33:06.000 Wow.

01:33:07.000 But I was lucky enough that after that case, I did undercover work overseas.

01:33:13.000 I did undercover work for Scotland Yard.

01:33:15.000 Oh, really?

01:33:16.000 Yeah.

01:33:16.000 What did you do over there?

01:33:19.000 I had one case.

01:33:22.000 And so they had two Scotland Yard detectives who I knew.

01:33:28.000 I did a lot of work with their undercover unit.

01:33:32.000 And so they were into the Chinese triads.

01:33:38.000 And their stuff I can't disclose, but they were manufacturing credit cards.

01:33:48.000 And I won't say which companies.

01:33:52.000 And you can bang them out for like $50,000 before they were discovered.

01:33:59.000 Because they had the numbers.

01:34:01.000 Yeah, I knew a guy who did that.

01:34:02.000 Yeah, they had the legit numbers.

01:34:04.000 Yeah.

01:34:05.000 That's back when they had the carbons, right?

01:34:07.000 Yeah, so Scotland Yard was trying to get to the location in another country, right?

01:34:19.000 Where they were actually, everything was going down.

01:34:23.000 So they were meeting with the number two triad in London.

01:34:28.000 So they said, hey, look, our guy from New York, mafia guy from New York, who's the money man, wants to have it sit down with you.

01:34:40.000 He says, okay.

01:34:41.000 So I fly over to London.

01:34:44.000 And I knew the Scotland Yard guys, because I had done other stuff with them.

01:34:50.000 So they introduced me to the supervisor of the Serious Crime Squad.

01:34:54.000 He was the guy that was running this case.

01:35:03.000 So I would break just chops.

01:35:07.000 They don't carry guns or anything.

01:35:09.000 Even the undercovers don't carry guns.

01:35:14.000 So I'm sitting down with him, and I said, I said, I got my gun, but I didn't bring any bullets.

01:35:22.000 You got any bullets?

01:35:23.000 The guy goes, apeshit.

01:35:25.000 You can't carry.

01:35:26.000 I said, calm down.

01:35:28.000 I'm just breaking your chops.

01:35:31.000 And he says to me, what are you wearing to this meeting?

01:35:35.000 I said, I'm wearing slacks, sport coat, and a shirt.

01:35:39.000 He said, no, no, you've got to wear a suit.

01:35:43.000 I said, why do I have to wear a suit?

01:35:45.000 He said, because all these triad guys wear suits all the time.

01:35:50.000 I said, what's that got to do with me?

01:35:53.000 He said, no, no, you've got to wear a suit.

01:35:55.000 I said, well, I don't have a suit.

01:35:57.000 I said, I'm telling you, I got slacks, a sport coat, dress shirts, and that's what I'm wearing.

01:36:04.000 So he turns to the undercover guy from Scotland Yard, and he turns around, opens his safe, pulls out money, says, go buy him a suit.

01:36:20.000 I said, you're going to buy me a suit?

01:36:22.000 He said, yeah.

01:36:23.000 I said, what do I do with the suit when I'm done with it?

01:36:26.000 He says, you keep it.

01:36:28.000 I said, all right.

01:36:32.000 So me and Graham, we go.

01:36:33.000 I buy two suits, one for me and one for Graham.

01:36:37.000 Right?

01:36:39.000 So we go to the meeting and I'm wearing his suit.

01:36:43.000 So it's me, the two Scotland Yard guy undercover guys and the triad.

01:36:50.000 So now before we go to the meeting, the supervisor's telling me, look, you can't insult this guy.

01:36:57.000 You've got to be nice to him because he's the number two guy.

01:37:01.000 So I says, hey, look, I said, I don't tell you how to run your serious crime squad.

01:37:06.000 Don't tell me how to work undercover.

01:37:10.000 I says, whatever you need, I'll get.

01:37:14.000 I said, well, don't tell me how to do it.

01:37:17.000 So he's all nervous.

01:37:19.000 So we're in a resort.

01:37:23.000 They rented a suite, a big suite in a resort.

01:37:29.000 And they're Next door.

01:37:31.000 So they got the suite where we are.

01:37:33.000 They got it.

01:37:34.000 Wired audio, video.

01:37:36.000 Right?

01:37:38.000 So we go in and we're sitting there and we get through all the niceties with the triad.

01:37:49.000 So the guy keeps fucking interrupting me.

01:37:53.000 So finally he says, hey, Chin, I said, why do your sentences always start in the fucking middle of mine?

01:38:03.000 And he looks at me.

01:38:07.000 And you can hear it.

01:38:08.000 There's dead silence, right?

01:38:11.000 Then he says, oh, Mr. Joe, I was going by Joe Marino at the time.

01:38:16.000 He said, oh, Mr. Joe, I apologize.

01:38:19.000 I'm sorry.

01:38:23.000 Graham tells me, he says, when you said that, he thought the supervisor was going to have a heart attack.

01:38:29.000 He just blew it.

01:38:31.000 He just blew it.

01:38:32.000 It's over.

01:38:36.000 After that, the guy gave us everything.

01:38:39.000 The location of the factory, the whole McGillow.

01:38:43.000 Do you feel like you had to do that to have his respect?

01:38:45.000 Of course.

01:38:46.000 I mean, I'm a mob guy.

01:38:47.000 What do I know about the triads?

01:38:50.000 You know what I mean?

01:38:51.000 So if I would have let him kept stepping on me, he should have been out of character.

01:38:56.000 Yeah.

01:38:57.000 So, yeah.

01:38:59.000 That ought to be fucking scary.

01:39:00.000 Yeah.

01:39:01.000 Well, the triads are, you know.

01:39:02.000 They're scary.

01:39:03.000 Yeah, they are.

01:39:04.000 They are.

01:39:05.000 And he was the number two.

01:39:06.000 And I give these guys credit.

01:39:08.000 I mean, he got to the number two guy, but they couldn't get, you know.

01:39:11.000 Right.

01:39:11.000 So, but.

01:39:13.000 What a life.

01:39:15.000 Yeah.

01:39:16.000 How do you stay calm in these situations?

01:39:21.000 I, me, Joe, I just stay who I am.

01:39:26.000 You know, I get that Sicilian in me.

01:39:29.000 And, you know, you go at it when you have to.

01:39:36.000 And if you don't, you know.

01:39:41.000 If you don't, it probably seems off.

01:39:43.000 Yeah.

01:39:45.000 So.

01:39:46.000 But that's got to be just fucking nerve-wracking.

01:39:51.000 I, you know, it is, because what's nerve-wracking is you always have to be on.

01:39:58.000 Right.

01:39:58.000 You know, you can never be off.

01:40:01.000 You never relax.

01:40:02.000 No.

01:40:03.000 I mean, and I mean, not many guys could say that they had sit-downs with two mafia bosses of different families.

01:40:17.000 Right.

01:40:18.000 I used to stay at Sonny Black's apartment with him in Brooklyn.

01:40:24.000 And this guy was running the Bonano family.

01:40:26.000 He was one of the top capos in the Bonano family.

01:40:29.000 But Sonny, I don't know how many hits he had.

01:40:33.000 Now, all these guys I dealt with, don't forget all these guys had hits under their belt.

01:40:38.000 These weren't novice guys.

01:40:41.000 I mean, they all had, you know, five, six, ten, fifteen hits under their belt.

01:40:47.000 You know.

01:40:50.000 I mean, I got into a fight one time in a bar with Tony Mira.

01:40:55.000 I mean, me and him against three guys.

01:41:01.000 And, I mean, he grabbed a beer bottle, broken on the bar, and just boom, raked the guy's face, you know.

01:41:12.000 Now, there's another guy, you know, I always bring this up to Young Undercovers is that this was probably the meanest guy I ever fucking met.

01:41:25.000 I mean, flat out mean.

01:41:27.000 You know, these other guys were mean, you know, because they killed people, but I mean, he was just a mean guy.

01:41:33.000 The other guys, the other gangsters didn't like him.

01:41:35.000 I never saw him...

01:41:41.000 I never saw him overindulge in any liquor.

01:41:45.000 Never.

01:41:46.000 Never.

01:41:49.000 And he would stab you as soon as look at you.

01:41:52.000 And after that incident I told you when I had to go around with him, I always made sure I was an arm's length away from him.

01:42:02.000 What was his name?

01:42:03.000 Tony Mirror.

01:42:04.000 Oh, okay.

01:42:05.000 That was his name.

01:42:06.000 Now, after it was over and they found out who I was, they killed Mira.

01:42:10.000 His own nephew killed him, actually.

01:42:12.000 Wow.

01:42:13.000 Because he introduced me to all the bananos.

01:42:16.000 Wow.

01:42:17.000 Yeah.

01:42:18.000 Lefty was on his way to get killed, but the FBI picked it up on the wiretap, so they snatched him, you know, surveillance team snatched him off the street.

01:42:31.000 They killed Sonny Black.

01:42:32.000 Sonny Black got killed.

01:42:36.000 Yeah, he got killed.

01:42:37.000 Yeah.

01:42:38.000 So all the people that had let you in?

01:42:40.000 The, yeah, yeah.

01:42:42.000 Tell you how Sonny Black got killed.

01:42:46.000 You talk about a gangster, right?

01:42:52.000 When it came out that I was undercover, in the beginning, the mob didn't believe I was an FBI undercover agent.

01:43:00.000 They thought the FBI had kidnapped me and was trying to turn me.

01:43:05.000 Because we picked it up on the wiretaps and informants.

01:43:10.000 But once their lawyers told them, hey, he really is an undercover agent.

01:43:19.000 So Sonny Black gets a call.

01:43:22.000 You got to go to a sit-down.

01:43:28.000 So he walks into the motion lounge.

01:43:32.000 He had a diamond ring.

01:43:34.000 He takes off his diamond ring.

01:43:39.000 Takes his money out of his pocket.

01:43:44.000 Takes all his keys except his car keys.

01:43:49.000 Puts him on the counter.

01:43:52.000 He says to the bartender, I just got called to a sit-down.

01:43:55.000 I'm probably not coming back.

01:43:59.000 Is that a gangster?

01:44:01.000 Wow.

01:44:03.000 Calls his girlfriend.

01:44:07.000 And this is how we found this out.

01:44:09.000 Calls his girlfriend and tells her the same thing.

01:44:15.000 So what happens is that after they find his body and everything, his girlfriend calls the FBI and she says, I'd like to have a meeting with Donny Brasco.

01:44:38.000 And I said, why?

01:44:40.000 I said, because I got something to tell him that Sonny Black, she calls him Sonny.

01:44:46.000 She didn't call him Sonny Black.

01:44:48.000 She said that Sonny wanted me to give him a message.

01:44:55.000 They said, okay.

01:44:58.000 So they fly her down to D.C. And myself and the agents, the other agents, go out to a restaurant.

01:45:08.000 And she said, Sonny wanted me to tell you, this is what happened.

01:45:15.000 She said, this is what happened.

01:45:16.000 He got called to a sit-down, and he goes into the motion lounge, gives his ring, his money, his car keys to the bartender, and tells the bartender, you know.

01:45:34.000 I got called to a sit-down and I'm probably not coming back.

01:45:38.000 And then he calls me and he says her name and he said, if I don't come back, he said, I want you to get in touch with Donnie and tell him I loved him.

01:45:57.000 And he was just better than we were.

01:46:00.000 I don't hold anything against him.

01:46:01.000 Wow.

01:46:05.000 Is that a gangster?

01:46:07.000 That's a guy that's living that life.

01:46:10.000 Wow.

01:46:11.000 Is that a gangster?

01:46:12.000 That's crazy.

01:46:13.000 How did that make you feel?

01:46:15.000 Well, it kind of threw me for a loop.

01:46:18.000 I mean, I had a good relationship with him.

01:46:20.000 And like I said, I didn't want to see anybody get killed.

01:46:23.000 Even Mira.

01:46:24.000 I didn't want to see him get killed.

01:46:25.000 I mean, although I might have fucking done it myself.

01:46:30.000 I mean, the guy was just plain mean.

01:46:33.000 But, you know, that's not my job.

01:46:35.000 My job is to gather evidence, bring you to trial, and hopefully you're convicted.

01:46:42.000 But, yeah, Sonny was, Sonny, you know, the difference, me and Sonny, we could sit just like we're having this conversation.

01:46:55.000 He wasn't 24-7 gangster.

01:46:59.000 You know what I mean?

01:47:00.000 We'd break chops.

01:47:02.000 We'd break balls.

01:47:04.000 Ruggerio was 24-7 gangster.

01:47:10.000 I couldn't, I liked him because he was a great cook.

01:47:18.000 He was bad.

01:47:20.000 Boy, I'll tell you, Joe, he could cook.

01:47:22.000 But you always, there was always something you know he was digging for, you know.

01:47:31.000 But like, Sonny, look, I'm staying over at the main capo in the family, one of the two main capos in the family's apartment.

01:47:44.000 He'd get up in the morning.

01:47:45.000 I sleep on his couch.

01:47:47.000 We'd get up in the morning.

01:47:49.000 He'd go, here's a guy that's running a goddamn banano family.

01:47:56.000 He'd go out to get coffee and hard rolls and butter and bring him back.

01:48:02.000 And me and him would sit there in our shorts and watch cartoons on television.

01:48:11.000 I tell that to the guys of the FBI, and they'd say, no, I'm telling you this.

01:48:16.000 And then he had a weight bench in his apartment.

01:48:22.000 And back in the day, I used to lift pretty good.

01:48:25.000 I mean, you can't tell me now, of course, I'm old now.

01:48:31.000 And I was pretty good at hand wrestling.

01:48:35.000 I mean, arm wrestling, right?

01:48:37.000 And he could never beat me.

01:48:38.000 And he was built like you.

01:48:40.000 I mean, he was built, right?

01:48:43.000 He's about your size and everything and big arms like you got.

01:48:47.000 But he could never beat me in arm wrestling.

01:48:50.000 And I don't know what it was.

01:48:52.000 So one day he says to me, Donnie, he says, I'm going to beat you today in arm wrestling.

01:48:57.000 I said, sonny, you never fucking beat me.

01:49:00.000 Why today?

01:49:02.000 I'm going to beat you.

01:49:04.000 I said, okay.

01:49:05.000 So the day goes on.

01:49:07.000 So then he says, all right, let's go.

01:49:10.000 Right?

01:49:14.000 We're going on.

01:49:15.000 He spits in my eye.

01:49:20.000 Boom.

01:49:21.000 He said, I told you I'd beat you.

01:49:24.000 But I mean, that's the kind of guy he was.

01:49:26.000 You know?

01:49:28.000 And I couldn't get P.O.'d at him.

01:49:30.000 Right.

01:49:31.000 You know.

01:49:32.000 But with Lefty, you couldn't joke around like that.

01:49:38.000 Right.

01:49:38.000 You know, I mean, he was something else, man.

01:49:47.000 He couldn't stand air conditioning.

01:49:50.000 Really?

01:49:51.000 Never.

01:49:52.000 We'd be in the car in Miami.

01:49:56.000 The windows would be up, and he'd be smoking English ovals with no air conditioning.

01:50:02.000 Jesus.

01:50:03.000 And I'm dying.

01:50:05.000 I'm dying.

01:50:06.000 I put the window down.

01:50:08.000 Donnie put that window up.

01:50:11.000 He turned the air conditioning off.

01:50:13.000 He couldn't stand air conditioning.

01:50:14.000 Why?

01:50:15.000 I don't know.

01:50:16.000 I don't know.

01:50:17.000 He had cancer.

01:50:18.000 Maybe it was.

01:50:19.000 I don't know.

01:50:20.000 Oh, he had cancer at the time while he was smoking with the windows rolled up?

01:50:24.000 Yeah, but he had been cured of that.

01:50:28.000 He had testicle cancer Years before.

01:50:33.000 He eventually died of lung cancer.

01:50:36.000 He used to smoke English ovals.

01:50:39.000 We go in the hotel room and we always had a big suite, so you know, we didn't have different rooms.

01:50:43.000 We'd have a suite with two bedrooms.

01:50:49.000 He'd turn the air off.

01:50:52.000 He'd turn the air off.

01:50:55.000 So, you know, you have to do things to keep your sanity sometimes, right?

01:50:59.000 So we're down in Miami.

01:51:02.000 So I figured, son of a bitch, I'm going to get you today, right?

01:51:08.000 So I said, left, I got to go to the head.

01:51:11.000 I'm going up to the room.

01:51:13.000 I go up.

01:51:15.000 I take the cover off the air conditioning.

01:51:17.000 I crank the word.

01:51:18.000 You could hang meat in there.

01:51:21.000 And I put the cover back on.

01:51:25.000 And I put a thing in there.

01:51:27.000 So, you know, if you move the thing back up here, we get upstairs.

01:51:31.000 I mean, it was freezing.

01:51:34.000 So we get in that room.

01:51:36.000 We get in that suite.

01:51:37.000 And he's like, Donnie, turn that air conditioning off.

01:51:42.000 So I go over there.

01:51:43.000 And I said, Left, I don't know if something's wrong.

01:51:46.000 I don't know.

01:51:46.000 He said, call the front desk, get maintenance up here.

01:51:51.000 So I pick up the phone, but I don't, I make believe I'm talking.

01:51:55.000 I said, yeah, this is room so-and-so.

01:51:58.000 Our air conditioner's broke.

01:52:00.000 Could you send somebody up?

01:52:01.000 But I'm not talking to anybody because I want him to freeze as long as he could freeze.

01:52:09.000 So after a while, did you call that?

01:52:14.000 I said, Left, you saw me call him.

01:52:15.000 Call him again.

01:52:16.000 And I do the same thing.

01:52:18.000 And now he's calling me, Joe, every name in the book.

01:52:22.000 It's your fault.

01:52:23.000 You did this.

01:52:24.000 You broke it.

01:52:25.000 I said, Left.

01:52:26.000 I didn't do a thing.

01:52:27.000 I don't know nothing about air conditioning.

01:52:29.000 Right?

01:52:31.000 So finally, after about a half an hour, I do.

01:52:37.000 Now I call and I say, hey, our air conditioning.

01:52:40.000 So they send somebody up and the guy takes, okay, there it is.

01:52:46.000 But he blamed me, but, you know.

01:52:49.000 But that's how you keep your sanity sometimes, you know.

01:52:52.000 God.

01:52:54.000 What is it like to experience all that and then see it in a movie?

01:52:58.000 Like, what is it like to see a guy like Johnny Depp play you in a movie?

01:53:03.000 Oh, God, what an experience that was.

01:53:06.000 It has to be so weird.

01:53:08.000 It was.

01:53:08.000 And you know Johnny Depp?

01:53:10.000 Yeah, I know him.

01:53:11.000 I love that boy.

01:53:12.000 He's a great guy.

01:53:15.000 I could cry, I'm telling you.

01:53:17.000 I mean, what he's done for my family.

01:53:28.000 Excuse me.

01:53:29.000 It's all right.

01:53:31.000 He's a sweetheart of a guy.

01:53:33.000 Like, genuinely.

01:53:35.000 I've hung out with him a few times at the comedy store.

01:53:37.000 Yeah, I love it.

01:53:39.000 Very, very nice guy.

01:53:40.000 I love him.

01:53:42.000 he loved my wife Yeah.

01:53:57.000 He just flew in in January to have dinner with my whole family and my grandkids.

01:54:09.000 flew in from Spain and My wife couldn't make the dinner.

01:54:35.000 My wife couldn't make the dinner.

01:54:40.000 So the next day, he went and spent almost five hours with her.

01:54:55.000 Yeah.

01:54:57.000 and then she passed away a little while after that Yeah, he's a great guy.

01:55:11.000 He really is.

01:55:12.000 I mean, he's genuine.

01:55:13.000 He's genuine.

01:55:15.000 And it's odd.

01:55:16.000 It's odd for a movie star.

01:55:18.000 Yeah.

01:55:19.000 You know, I meet movie stars and I always have this wall up because I always feel like, okay, I'm just going to talk to some bullshit person.

01:55:26.000 You know what I mean?

01:55:27.000 Like, I've met a bunch of them and they're not really there.

01:55:30.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:55:30.000 Exactly.

01:55:31.000 But when you meet one and they're really there, it's amazing.

01:55:34.000 You know, like you realize, oh, they're just human beings who are in this very unusual position where they're incredibly famous and they're famous in a very weird way.

01:55:46.000 They're famous for pretending to be other people and acting and films.

01:55:49.000 And you know them so well as a fucking pirate or whatever.

01:55:56.000 We do.

01:55:56.000 We met in 96 and have stayed friends up until.

01:56:03.000 Wow.

01:56:06.000 Up until now.

01:56:08.000 And he has stayed friends with my girls, my grandkids that he, you know, that he knew since they were, you know.

01:56:24.000 Yeah.

01:56:25.000 And now as adults.

01:56:28.000 I mean, he takes phone calls from my one granddaughter.

01:56:34.000 Yeah.

01:56:39.000 Yeah, he's a genuinely good guy.

01:56:42.000 Before his trial was going on, I had a conversation with him for half an hour on the phone in Hawaii.

01:56:48.000 I was in Hawaii drinking margaritas in a lounge chair.

01:56:53.000 And my friend Doug, Doug Stanhope, calls me up.

01:56:56.000 He says, hey, Johnny wants to talk to you.

01:56:58.000 And me and Johnny were on the phone for like A fucking half an hour.

01:57:01.000 Yeah, I used to keep talking.

01:57:02.000 I used to keep in contact with him when he was in trial.

01:57:05.000 What a crazy trial.

01:57:06.000 But that trial showed you who he really is, who he really is, and who she really is, too.

01:57:11.000 And it just shows you, you know.

01:57:13.000 I didn't know her.

01:57:15.000 You're lucky.

01:57:16.000 I'll tell you a funny story: is that, do you know Vanessa?

01:57:21.000 No.

01:57:23.000 This is when, excuse me, well, I mean, I met Johnny.

01:57:28.000 He was first going out with Kate Moss.

01:57:32.000 And they all loved my wife.

01:57:39.000 So then he was, one day he calls me and he says, hey, I'm going to be in Joe Stonecrab.

01:57:48.000 I'm going to be in Miami.

01:57:49.000 He said, meet us at Joe Stonecrab.

01:57:52.000 I said, okay.

01:57:55.000 So me and my wife go down there and there's Johnny, his father.

01:58:00.000 His father's a great guy.

01:58:01.000 You know his father?

01:58:02.000 No.

01:58:02.000 His father's a great guy, too.

01:58:05.000 Really good guy.

01:58:07.000 And I had met his father during the shooting in the movie and everything, right?

01:58:11.000 We hung out.

01:58:13.000 So he introduces us to Vanessa, all right?

01:58:20.000 You know who she is, right?

01:58:21.000 His ex?

01:58:22.000 Who's Vanessa?

01:58:25.000 Perverdici.

01:58:27.000 She's the French singer.

01:58:29.000 That's the one who his kids are by.

01:58:30.000 Yes, his ex.

01:58:31.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:58:33.000 So, now, my wife wouldn't, when she ate, she would not touch anything.

01:58:41.000 She had to eat with a knife and fork, you know, or rather mudagan, right?

01:58:46.000 Irish.

01:58:47.000 So, you know, you had Joe Stonecraft.

01:58:51.000 What are you going to do?

01:58:51.000 You're going to eat, you know, you got to break him, you got to touch him.

01:58:56.000 So Vanessa says, man, you don't like them.

01:59:01.000 She says, oh, I like them, but I don't like to touch them.

01:59:07.000 She broke all the claws, everything, took all the meat out so my wife could eat him.

01:59:18.000 With a fork.

01:59:19.000 With a fork.

01:59:21.000 I'd say, only you could do that.

01:59:24.000 Only you could get somebody to, you know.

01:59:28.000 How long did you know him before he played you in the movie?

01:59:31.000 I didn't.

01:59:32.000 You didn't know him at all?

01:59:33.000 No.

01:59:34.000 Did you get to meet him before he played you?

01:59:36.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:59:37.000 We met, I guess we met maybe three or four months before we started shooting.

01:59:43.000 Did he want to talk to you about life?

01:59:45.000 Yeah, I spent time with him.

01:59:48.000 What's amazing about him, Joe, is that he just, it's like a sponge, you know, like we would just go out, go to dinner, go to lunch, hang out.

02:00:01.000 And the next thing you know, he's talking like me.

02:00:04.000 He has the same rhythms.

02:00:06.000 Every once in a while, I clear my throat.

02:00:08.000 He's clear.

02:00:10.000 He was walking.

02:00:10.000 We were on set one day.

02:00:12.000 And my mother happened to be on set.

02:00:16.000 And Johnny's walking away.

02:00:18.000 And she's calling me.

02:00:20.000 Wow.

02:00:21.000 Because the way he had that little gimp.

02:00:25.000 I mean, he's just amazing, you know.

02:00:29.000 And he doesn't like prod you about stuff.

02:00:34.000 He just absorbs it.

02:00:36.000 Yeah.

02:00:38.000 He's something.

02:00:39.000 But I've stayed in touch.

02:00:40.000 I've stayed friends with Chrissy, his sister.

02:00:43.000 You know, I've seen the whole family, basically.

02:00:47.000 How strange was it to watch the finished product, to watch this version of your life, of your story?

02:00:55.000 Yeah, it was.

02:00:56.000 It was.

02:00:56.000 Now, for you and your audiences, I just want you to know in that movie, I never slapped my wife in real life.

02:01:05.000 Why'd they have that in there?

02:01:07.000 Ask the director.

02:01:08.000 Those motherfuckers.

02:01:10.000 Because that wasn't in the script.

02:01:12.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

02:01:13.000 the director.

02:01:14.000 I went bullshit when I And here's the kind of guy, I tell you, kind of guy.

02:01:31.000 We'd stop at a bodega, and he'd run in and get the coffee and hard rolls.

02:01:40.000 I said, I go, no, I'll go in.

02:01:42.000 I mean, I mean, you know, to get to just a regular guy.

02:01:48.000 And that day he was kind of like, he wasn't himself on a ride in.

02:01:54.000 And then I saw them rehearsing that scene.

02:01:58.000 I went ballistic, man.

02:01:59.000 I went ballistic.

02:02:02.000 But, you know, you know that the director's the captain of that ship, you know.

02:02:07.000 They always have to do something like that.

02:02:09.000 They always have to add some bullshit that didn't really happen.

02:02:12.000 It drives me nuts.

02:02:14.000 Yep.

02:02:14.000 So, but what are you going to do?

02:02:16.000 Yeah.

02:02:18.000 So how, after the case is closed, what is life like for you?

02:02:25.000 Like, how do you, I mean, you had to be worried about your life.

02:02:30.000 Yeah.

02:02:31.000 Well, what happened is once they found out the commission put a $500,000 contract on me, and the New York office of the FBI went to every boss and told them they better not think of, you know, trying to cash in on that.

02:02:53.000 You know.

02:02:57.000 So I was working out of Washington and out of Quantico, and families moved.

02:03:07.000 I think we got like five or six moves since then.

02:03:10.000 You know, you try to back everything.

02:03:12.000 Right.

02:03:14.000 The Bureau was good about that.

02:03:19.000 But, you know, what's in the back of your mind is not the legitimate gangster.

02:03:29.000 You know, it's some cowboy that thinks, hey, you know, God, get on the good side.

02:03:34.000 There's Donny Brasco.

02:03:36.000 You know, if I take him out, we're in butch.

02:03:41.000 And I don't think anybody was going to pay anybody $500,000.

02:03:46.000 You think the mob is, they don't use their own money for, you know, for squat.

02:03:53.000 But that's the only thing that you worry about is, you know, some cowboy.

02:03:58.000 You know.

02:04:00.000 How long was it before you stopped worrying about that?

02:04:04.000 Well, you never really do.

02:04:06.000 I mean, you know.

02:04:07.000 Even to this day?

02:04:08.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:04:09.000 You know.

02:04:14.000 Because there's always somebody that thinks they're going to be famous about doing something.

02:04:20.000 Right.

02:04:20.000 You know that.

02:04:21.000 Right.

02:04:22.000 Right.

02:04:24.000 So, but it was more prevalent back in the day.

02:04:34.000 You know.

02:04:37.000 Most of my guys now are.

02:04:40.000 I don't know any of them that are alive, actually.

02:04:43.000 Did you keep in touch with any of those guys?

02:04:45.000 No, no, no.

02:04:46.000 My whole thing in undercover, Joe, was I never arrested anybody that I worked against.

02:04:53.000 My whole thing was I did the undercover.

02:04:56.000 You make the arrest.

02:04:58.000 I'll see him in court.

02:05:01.000 I'll see him in court.

02:05:05.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:05:08.000 Funny, you know, you always sit down with the, after the case is over, you sit down with the profilers and everything, and they say, well, we think this guy will turn this guy.

02:05:24.000 Not one of my guys, when I say my guys, ever became an informant.

02:05:30.000 Really?

02:05:31.000 Never.

02:05:32.000 Wow.

02:05:39.000 One of the prosecutors in Milwaukee, he said, I think we should go talk to Ruggerio.

02:05:47.000 I said, are you fucking crazy?

02:05:49.000 I said, you walk in there and mention my name, he'll go crazy.

02:05:53.000 He said, exactly what happened.

02:05:57.000 Exactly what happened.

02:05:59.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:06:01.000 He did 15.

02:06:02.000 He did 15, never cracked.

02:06:06.000 The only reason they let him out was he had, they found out he had, I don't know if it was gum cancer or whatever, and then he had one lung taken out, and then he had cancer in the other lung, so he had like three or four months to live.

02:06:28.000 So he was such a pain in the ass for the Department of Corrections that they let him out.

02:06:36.000 He died at home.

02:06:38.000 Yeah.

02:06:40.000 Wow.

02:06:40.000 But he didn't crack.

02:06:42.000 Of course, Sonny had a shot.

02:06:46.000 He said, no, none of them.

02:06:48.000 None of them.

02:06:49.000 They tried to turn all of them, huh?

02:06:51.000 Yeah.

02:06:52.000 They all went to the can.

02:06:54.000 They all did like 15, 20 years.

02:06:57.000 Yeah.

02:06:59.000 Wild.

02:07:01.000 Wild is right.

02:07:02.000 I mean, now, as soon as they put the last click on the handcuffs, they all want to talk.

02:07:10.000 Now.

02:07:11.000 Yeah, now.

02:07:13.000 Yeah.

02:07:14.000 Yeah.

02:07:15.000 I mean, they all got hits under their belt, but as soon as they put those cuffs on them, you know, some of the guys, they do their time, but eventually they turn.

02:07:26.000 None of those guys became snitches.

02:07:28.000 What do you think happened to the culture of the mob where these guys started snitching?

02:07:34.000 They didn't want to do the time.

02:07:35.000 I mean, some of them did time.

02:07:36.000 Some of them did seven, eight years, you know.

02:07:39.000 But then I think when they still, when they kept getting beat over the head, you know, they figured what good is it.

02:07:45.000 And you know what?

02:07:46.000 The culture of the mob has changed too.

02:07:52.000 I found near the end, these guys didn't, to the old-timers, this was like their life.

02:08:04.000 You know, they were really committed to it.

02:08:07.000 The younger guys, it's a me generation, just like normal citizens.

02:08:14.000 They want it now.

02:08:15.000 They don't want to, I mean, I don't know like the old-timers, they could cultivate politicians.

02:08:23.000 They could cultivate law enforcement.

02:08:29.000 These guys today, you know, they can't cultivate politicians and judges like the old-timers did.

02:08:36.000 You know, and drugs is a big downfall of the mob because now the guys start, some of them start using it.

02:08:46.000 Well, it's also, you can't keep secrets anymore.

02:08:49.000 No.

02:08:50.000 It's only secrets when one guy's alive.

02:08:53.000 Yeah, especially with cell phones, internet.

02:08:56.000 Yeah.

02:08:58.000 Surveillance is so easy now.

02:09:00.000 Everything you do is surveilled.

02:09:01.000 Every phone call you do.

02:09:03.000 You're on camera all day long.

02:09:05.000 I read somewhere or heard where the average individual is on the camera over 500 times a day.

02:09:14.000 Just walking around.

02:09:17.000 Wherever you go.

02:09:18.000 And then your phone's listening to everything you say.

02:09:19.000 Everything.

02:09:20.000 Yeah.

02:09:20.000 And everybody has a phone.

02:09:22.000 Everybody.

02:09:22.000 Yeah.

02:09:22.000 Everybody.

02:09:24.000 Today, and that's what's tough and undercover today is building your legend because it's hard to do 100% backstopping.

02:09:32.000 Right.

02:09:33.000 How can you with the internet?

02:09:34.000 Right.

02:09:35.000 Also, Google image search.

02:09:36.000 Bam.

02:09:37.000 Put your face up there.

02:09:38.000 Oh, that's that guy.

02:09:39.000 Exactly.

02:09:40.000 Yeah, instantly.

02:09:43.000 So I don't know.

02:09:44.000 I mean.

02:09:45.000 How much of the mob even exists now?

02:09:48.000 It's still there, but you know, they don't control what they did.

02:09:53.000 They don't control every label.

02:09:56.000 You know, when I was in it, they controlled everything.

02:10:00.000 I mean, they controlled unions.

02:10:02.000 They controlled every bit of...

02:10:06.000 They controlled every bit of commodity that ran.

02:10:12.000 In fact, when I was in it, they still had the skim out of Vegas.

02:10:17.000 And Belestrari had offered me with Lefty, he had offered me the job of running the skim from there to Kansas City.

02:10:35.000 Wow.

02:10:36.000 Yeah.

02:10:37.000 Yeah.

02:10:40.000 I mean, that's how tight I was with the Badanos that, you know, that was before the thing went south, you know.

02:10:46.000 That's so crazy that you got in that deep.

02:10:48.000 Yeah.

02:10:49.000 Were you the deepest that anybody had ever infiltrated the mob?

02:10:53.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:10:54.000 And everybody else that went in, you know, they had an informant.

02:11:00.000 I had no informant.

02:11:01.000 You just made your way in slowly.

02:11:04.000 Yeah.

02:11:04.000 Wow.

02:11:05.000 And I wasn't a mark, you know, where I didn't have all this money.

02:11:13.000 Right.

02:11:14.000 You know what I mean?

02:11:14.000 Right.

02:11:15.000 Where they could exploit you.

02:11:16.000 Yeah.

02:11:16.000 Right.

02:11:17.000 So, you know, yeah.

02:11:21.000 Crazy life, Joe.

02:11:22.000 Yeah, it was.

02:11:23.000 When you look back on it now, does it seem real?

02:11:26.000 Must seem insane.

02:11:28.000 Well, you know, sometimes I think I can't believe I did that.

02:11:32.000 Right.

02:11:32.000 That's what I mean.

02:11:33.000 Yeah.

02:11:34.000 Yeah.

02:11:36.000 And then other times that, you know, I say, as deep as I got, I could have done more.

02:11:44.000 Like how?

02:11:45.000 Well, I mean, if I would have got made.

02:11:48.000 Right, right, right.

02:11:50.000 Do you wish they had gotten you made?

02:11:53.000 Only because I had spent so much time, I spent six years, you know, and then to cap it off with getting inducted.

02:12:05.000 And not only that, think of the feather in the cap of the FBI.

02:12:08.000 Right.

02:12:09.000 Yeah.

02:12:09.000 The Mafia inducted one of our own, you know.

02:12:12.000 I mean, that would have really kicked their ass.

02:12:15.000 Yeah.

02:12:16.000 But, you know.

02:12:19.000 It's funny that you think back and that's the thing that you wish.

02:12:22.000 Yeah.

02:12:23.000 You know, it's kind of crazy.

02:12:24.000 Yeah, but still, I know.

02:12:25.000 I mean, you know, it's like...

02:12:28.000 Yeah, right?

02:12:30.000 Yeah.

02:12:30.000 I mean, you fucking.

02:12:31.000 I mean, we pretty much decimated them anyway.

02:12:35.000 Yeah.

02:12:36.000 You know, but it is kind of crazy when you think about the chokehold that the mob had.

02:12:43.000 And then it's kind of.

02:12:44.000 Nothing moved in this country without them getting a cut of it.

02:12:48.000 Wow.

02:12:48.000 It's crazy, all right?

02:12:50.000 Did that all come about because of prohibition?

02:12:54.000 Is that when it all started?

02:12:55.000 Is that when they really got a stranglehold in this country?

02:12:59.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:13:00.000 Isn't that crazy?

02:13:01.000 Pretty much, yeah.

02:13:02.000 Because that's exactly what's happening right now with the cartels.

02:13:04.000 Yeah.

02:13:05.000 It's the same fucking thing.

02:13:07.000 Yeah.

02:13:07.000 And it's like, we never learn.

02:13:09.000 No.

02:13:11.000 Yeah.

02:13:14.000 History repeats itself, right?

02:13:16.000 Yeah.

02:13:18.000 Well, you know, I think our problem is we don't study our enemy.

02:13:27.000 Remember what I said before, anybody I went against, I always knew who they were.

02:13:36.000 I wanted to know your structure.

02:13:39.000 I wanted to know how you treated each other.

02:13:42.000 I want to know all the crimes you're involved in.

02:13:48.000 I want to know how violent you are and who your violence is against.

02:13:55.000 I want to know your history, how you became what you are as far as a criminal organization.

02:14:04.000 And we don't do that.

02:14:06.000 I mean, I'm talking about as a whole, you know, you know, I don't want to get into politics, but, you know, you got to study your enemy.

02:14:25.000 You got to know your enemy.

02:14:26.000 The art of war, right?

02:14:27.000 Yes.

02:14:28.000 The art of war.

02:14:29.000 And I tell all my, and then the undercover classes, you got to read that book, The Art of War.

02:14:36.000 Because it was written thousands of years ago, but it'll serve you today.

02:14:45.000 Yeah.

02:14:47.000 It's kind of crazy when you think that.

02:14:49.000 People don't change that much over time.

02:14:51.000 No.

02:14:52.000 Human nature is still the same.

02:14:55.000 And the same strategies apply.

02:14:57.000 Yeah.

02:14:58.000 Yeah.

02:14:59.000 It's nuts.

02:15:00.000 And, you know, and like I said before, the only thing that's changing undercover is building your legend because of the internet.

02:15:09.000 Right.

02:15:10.000 Nothing else has changed.

02:15:11.000 Now it's kind of almost impossible.

02:15:13.000 You ingratiate yourself the same way.

02:15:15.000 Yeah.

02:15:15.000 You know, you do all that shit the same way.

02:15:18.000 Well, especially if someone had any kind of social media before they got in the bureau.

02:15:23.000 Yeah.

02:15:24.000 Or become a cop.

02:15:27.000 Yeah.

02:15:27.000 I mean, everybody's kind of ratted on themselves.

02:15:30.000 Yeah.

02:15:31.000 Yeah.

02:15:32.000 It's nuts.

02:15:33.000 Yeah.

02:15:35.000 But there's other ways they catch people now, obviously.

02:15:38.000 With all the surveillance.

02:15:40.000 Did you make a bunch of notes?

02:15:42.000 No, I just wanted to.

02:15:43.000 Did you make sure you covered everything?

02:15:46.000 I just wanted to mention my grandkids set me up with an Instagram.

02:16:07.000 And they said, make sure you bet you did.

02:16:09.000 Did they run it?

02:16:10.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:16:12.000 Joe, forget it.

02:16:13.000 I just about can turn my phone on, be honest with you.

02:16:16.000 And the real Donny Brasco.

02:16:20.000 And then a cameo page.

02:16:24.000 You have a cameo page?

02:16:25.000 Do you send people cameos?

02:16:27.000 Jopa Stone.

02:16:30.000 You just go into Jopa Stone.

02:16:34.000 Yeah.

02:16:35.000 The real Donny Brasco.

02:16:37.000 How do you spend your time these days?

02:16:38.000 There it is.

02:16:39.000 The real Donny Brasco.

02:16:41.000 Yeah.

02:16:44.000 That's from January, Joe, when he flew in for the dinner.

02:16:47.000 Yeah.

02:16:48.000 Yeah.

02:16:50.000 That's great.

02:16:51.000 Yeah.

02:16:54.000 Yeah.

02:16:55.000 Well, I'm kind of right now I'm writing another book writing on the bananos.

02:17:04.000 And I spent time with helping out with that Southern California gang conference I mentioned.

02:17:17.000 It's really, you know, like I said, I've been with them for 14 years.

02:17:21.000 Actually, been doing a 12, one year COVID and one year I was sick.

02:17:27.000 And these guys are, these coppers that run it, they all do it on their own time.

02:17:34.000 There's no administrative, nobody gets paid.

02:17:38.000 Really?

02:17:39.000 Nobody gets paid.

02:17:40.000 They do it all on their own time.

02:17:43.000 And the conference usually gets between 700 and 800 people at each conference.

02:17:52.000 And like I say, it's held once a year.

02:17:56.000 It's held in San Diego, but it's the Southern California Gang Conference.

02:18:02.000 And if anybody's interested, you have to be a police officer or in law enforcement, you could be Department of Corrections.

02:18:12.000 Their email is scgc.inquiry at gmail.com.

02:18:20.000 Go on and get information about it.

02:18:23.000 Or if they want to attend it, you know, that's how you can sign up.

02:18:27.000 Okay.

02:18:28.000 And they have great speakers every year.

02:18:32.000 And yeah, and some of my merchandise, you can see I have a shirt here.

02:18:43.000 It says Southern California Gang Conference, Donnie Brasco.

02:18:49.000 We sell these shirts.

02:18:50.000 I give 100% to the organization.

02:18:56.000 I don't keep any.

02:18:57.000 And the mugs we sell and stuff, I donate.

02:19:02.000 My books, I sign books there, and I give all the money to the organization.

02:19:10.000 I don't take anything either.

02:19:12.000 Because these police officers don't take any.

02:19:17.000 Their time is donated.

02:19:18.000 So, yeah, it's, you know, who's there to help you when your spouse or your, you know, one or the other dies in the line of duty?

02:19:29.000 So, yeah.

02:19:32.000 So you were telling me before the show that all that money gets donated to the spouses of people who were killed in the line of duty?

02:19:38.000 Yes, sir.

02:19:38.000 Yeah.

02:19:39.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:19:39.000 You know, help them get started after.

02:19:42.000 That's awesome.

02:19:43.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:19:43.000 And it's a great conference.

02:19:45.000 Like I said, they get between 700 and 800, either a police officer, Department of Corrections, you know, anybody that's in law enforcement is eligible to attend it.

02:19:56.000 And it's a week since San Diego.

02:19:59.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:20:00.000 Well, Joe, thank you very much for being here.

02:20:02.000 I really appreciate it.

02:20:03.000 Hey.

02:20:03.000 What a crazy life you've had.

02:20:05.000 Thank you.

02:20:06.000 I'm really excited to get the invite.

02:20:11.000 And my grandkids were, whoa, you're going on Joe Rogan.

02:20:17.000 They all love you, man.

02:20:18.000 Well, tell them I said thank you.

02:20:20.000 They all love you.

02:20:22.000 And thank you for being here.

02:20:23.000 Well, my pleasure.

02:20:24.000 It was my pleasure, too.

02:20:25.000 Thank you very much.

02:20:26.000 Thank you, Card.

02:20:27.000 Thank you.

02:20:28.000 All right.

02:20:29.000 All right.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 01, 2025

Joe Rogan Experience #2343 - Joe Pistone

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