In this episode, Gary sits down with former FBI agent Mike Campi, a key figure in the investigation that led to the downfall of Vincent “Chin” Gigante and the Genovese crime family. Mike takes us inside the complex world of organized crime, explaining how Gigante, infamous for his feigned insanity, managed to evade law enforcement for years while secretly running the family’s operations from the shadows.

Mike shares the critical role of informants like Cookie D’Urso, whose cooperation provided the FBI with essential insights that brought them closer to Gigante. Together, we explore the meticulous surveillance and wiretapping methods used in the investigation, uncovering the challenges of gathering evidence against individuals skilled at evading law enforcement.

The conversation covers the evolution of the case from labor racketeering to a full-scale investigation into the Genovese family’s activities. Mike recounts the internal tensions and bureaucratic obstacles within the FBI and local law enforcement during this high-stakes operation.

We also dive into the theme of loyalty and betrayal within the mob. Mike tells stories of brutal retributions, betrayal, and hypocrisy in mob culture, where ambition and greed often overtake family loyalty. He highlights how figures like Cookie D’Urso and George Barone went from mob insiders to crucial witnesses, with their testimonies and recorded conversations playing a decisive role in bringing Gigante to justice—ultimately resulting in Gigante’s admission in court that he had faked insanity for years.

The episode wraps up with Mike’s reflections on the current state of organized crime, exploring how some tactics have evolved, yet the underlying nature of organized crime remains largely unchanged. This episode offers a gripping look into the strategy, patience, and grit it takes to tackle organized crime from the inside out.

Click here to get Mike’s book, Mafia Takedown: The Incredible True Story of the FBI Agent Who Devastated the New York Mob

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Transcript

0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers. Welcome back here in the studio of Gangland

[0:03] Wires. Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City police detective from the intelligence unit. And I have a FBI agent today named Mike Camp. And Mike Campy was a case agent of a huge investigation on a Genovese family. This is the case that they turned a guy named Cookie Durso. And that guy ended up talking about Vincent the Chin Gigante. And in the end, that squad that Mike was attached to figured out how to get enough information to get Vincent Gigante to admit in open court that he had been put on an act all those years. You know, if you’re not familiar with their story of Vincent the Chin Gigante, he was a boss of the Genovese family and he had put on an act and he was crazy. Wandered around Little Italy and Greenwich Village, wherever he lived,

[0:50] somewhere there in Manhattan, in a bath robe and talking to himself and all that. And he did it for years and years and really avoided a lot of a lot of heat when he was actually the boss of the genovese family and they put uh fat tony salerno out as the boss and everybody thought he was a boss and and so this is a guy that really ends up exposing that and he does this huge long investigation on the entire family so just sit back and listen to mike campy so uh we’re gonna talk about vincent the chin gigante today when When I was investigating, when my squad changed from labor racketeering.

[1:27] Eventually became a focus on.

[1:30] The Genovese organized crime family. Rather than being assigned, I wanted to open my own investigation. And we have control files that have historic information from cooperating witnesses and informants that stores the… So I went back and I reviewed the files from volume one up to the last volume

[1:51] to focus on who I wanted to open investigation on. And I opened on… The reason I opened the investigation on nicky the blonde frustaci was because he was well liked by many people both chin gigante because nicky was involved in boxing as was chin yeah but also uptown with fat tony salerno and nicky’s neighborhood was over by historic where lucky luciano over on first avenue on the east side with 11th street and so he was my focus and originally.

[2:26] But I had him, according to information, being placed by chin with Jimmy Ida, who was the acting consigliere, eventually became official consigliere. So the surveillance and all other topics, you know, tapped into Jimmy Ida being a focus with Nikki DeBlanc and others. And so it took a bunch of years because we had a bunch of problems with the title three reinstallations. They got caught a number of times, both PD and the FBI. But at some point right now, Jimmy Ida is doing life in prison as a result of that investigation because of his role as the consigliere in coordinating murders of various individuals.

[3:14] Sanctioned murders from the Genovese family. And I thought focusing on Jimmy Ida and Nikki the Blonde, because Chin was pretending to be crazy for all those years, that the likelihood of somebody maybe wanting to cooperate because they’re taking a hit for a guy who’s wearing a bathrobe, living the life, you know, as bizarre as it seems.

[3:38] I thought that that was a good possibility of getting cooperation. And that investigation resulted in the arrest and conviction pleas of the acting administration for the Genovese family to include Laborio Belomo, Barney Belomo, who’s the current boss.

[3:56] He was the acting boss. Mickey D’Amino Generoso, who was the underboss, old timer, never gone. I don’t think he ever went to prison, but for this case, and Jimmy Ida and a whole bunch of other people. But that said, we didn’t get the cooperation, but the investigation facilitated the cooperation of Mike, future cooperation of Mike Durso actually reaching out in coordination with his defense attorney to meet with me to facilitate his cooperation. And, This was all supposed to be just a six-month investigation. This was in 1998, June of 98. And we were trying to get to December to arrest the people that shot him in the head, killed his cousin, his best friend, at their social club. And these guys were involved. The one guy, Carmine Pizza, Carmine Pulido, I had involved with previous bank robberies. And so the whole thing was going to address that type of criminal conduct. But because of the recordings we made right from Jump Street, you can clearly see that Durso had a unique reputation with his mentors. He was proposed for induction. He couldn’t retaliate and kill the people that shot him in the head.

[5:25] Because, you know, there was so many different people cooperating between Al D’Arco, Sammy the Bull Gravano. They were like, you’d have to kill five of them. If you don’t kill five of them, somebody may cooperate. So this all, though, facilitated with recordings about Chin, his role in continuing to…

[5:47] Manage and be the boss of the Genovese family, even when he was in prison. I mean, we made recordings with Tommy Cafaro, who was Vincent Fish Cafaro’s son, and this uptown crew of guys that were with Barney Belomo, who was also in prison. And these recordings were just so specific and detailed over a three-year period that it caused other problems for the Genovese family, to include a historic figure, George Barone, cooperating. And George Barone was somebody that went back to Vito Genovese days.

[6:25] That he was the guy that the Genovese family utilized to really facilitate the

[6:32] control of the ILA, the Longshoremen’s Union, on a national level. And that’s during the process of when it went from manually loading ships to the containerization process. So it was just and they wanted durso towards the end when we took the case down to basically kill george barone and and that’s the part i the things i like to point out in the book about the hypocrisy of that life you know to where your criminal family is supposed to come before your blood family yeah and i’ll say you know numerous murders that are to me clear examples of the hypocrisy. You know, you’re joining a group of guys with a lot of egos and, you know, they’re treacherous and even they may say that they love you. It doesn’t really have any meaning because they’re the guy that’s going to shoot you in the head. So the whole thing with George Perón, which is a perfect example of how, The blood family in Chin Gigantes, it appears to have maybe come before the crime family. George Barone was owed a modest amount of money, 70 grand, I think it was, or a little under 70 grand. He made millions.

[7:50] This one individual owed George this money before George went to prison was a guy who was affiliated as an associate of the Genovese family. Chin was a capo at the time, I believe. when George was going to prison asked if George would facilitate a relationship between his son Andrew and this individual Bert Guido. And George did that. Bert at the time owed him about 68 grand. But Bert became a multi-multi-millionaire. And instead of when George came out giving him the money that was owed, Chin was now the boss.

[8:28] Andrew wasn’t even made, but they didn’t want to insult chin by having george paid the money that he’s owed because andrew is now the guy that is overseeing burke guido and they viewed it as an insult i’m looking at that as like if i was in that crew i would have given him the money out of my own pocket he absolutely provided falsetti kefaro and others with positions that generated huge money for them and you don’t want to pay george back money owed from a guy who’s a multi-millionaire because it would be insulting to the son of the boss it made no sense to me it was so juvenile but that’s an example of the hypocrisy of that life yeah and i thought the recordings were so phenomenal that i mean it was like okay.

[9:18] Let’s keep going. And the only reason we took it down was because of not only George’s murder, but that there was the five families in New York, and these are recordings, were talking about going and killing.

[9:32] Taking the five killers from each family, 25 total, and using them to kill the Albanian gang members in the various boroughs with fully automatic weapons. And that’s when it was like, okay, this is getting a little airy here. And, uh, they wanted to get the Albanians in a comfort zone. And it just was like, you know, and the bureaucracy, if you can imagine, I was bumping heads with some guys, bosses that it was like, okay, let’s, let’s, let’s put together our rest teams and take it down now.

[10:10] So you were picking up on your, I guess, first of all, is there any, any stories about making those installations that’s always kind of interesting to me and on doing those installations yeah i mean it’s difficult sometimes but i mean i remember one time the communication i guess it was misinterpreted because they tried to install it on a night that was particularly busy and it I was thinking the window of time, and I remember I had to just step away because you can tell the attempt didn’t go well because the social club was Little Italy. It was frequented by members of all five organized crime families, very active. And then all of a sudden, it wasn’t, you didn’t have the frequency of the same crew. A matter of fact, one of the funny stories when Durso cooperated, he was an individual that caught them breaking into the club once. They were inside the club doing the installation. It was probably like three or so in the morning. He was going up Mulberry Street. He saw the light on. So he just thought it was this guy. His street name was Tits Koro that was in there with a girl. So he pulls over goes to knock on the window and he could see the shadows running around.

[11:34] And he sees looks looks at the curb and again there’s nobody in mulberry street at that time of night he looks and sees a guy sitting in a car and he goes up to the guy i think and it’s law enforcement says you know what are you doing he goes oh i’m waiting for a friend he asked him who’s the friend because he knew everybody in the neighborhood a guy could come up with a name probably had an accent and it was like he immediately called to say that uh he thought he didn’t know who if it’s the pd or the fbi but he said they’re putting a bug in jiggly social club and so when we finally got the bug in one of the comical things the first recording that i heard.

[12:17] Was the two guys that just came in saying they thought the NYPD broke in last night to install a bug.

[12:24] And they proceeded in a recorded conversation to say, we know it’s not the FBI because I read that book about Paul Castellano. And those guys that they’re so sophisticated defeating Locke, it only takes 30 seconds. And my squad was a joint task force. So we got a kick out of listening to them. And you know it just amazing that they continue to talk yeah it was wild i was listening to a, wiretap here where they were discussing on the wiretap on the phones they were discussing the codes they were going to use for when one of them came in las vegas to kansas city and and they had to have a code yeah and they couldn’t get the code straight and by the end one of them said oh just just tell me like it is anyway.

[13:17] Well, that’s one of the things when we, uh, so when we did a few raids, you know, to facilitate conversations and stuff. Yeah. Tickle wire. Yeah. Tell him, tell the guys, tell the guys a little bit about that. Uh, your discussions about tickling the wire. That’s people will find that really fascinating. I think. And explain what tickle the wire means. Well, It’s like when I’m looking in and I’m doing surveillance and I’m watching my whoever it is I’m focused on and I see him walk with a new guy. You don’t know who it is. You want to identify that person because to me every day it’s crime related. And so once you identify people, the nature of their business, you’re going to be able to determine.

[14:02] All right, what are they doing? And in a tickle the wire scenario, there could be any number of things from a subpoena, an interview.

[14:11] I mean, there’s things where you go out and interview somebody like a fugitive. You know that the fugitive is affiliated with somebody and you got somebody remote and you just go up to him and ask him, hey, when was the last time you saw this fugitive? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never saw the guy in my mouth. He’s going to go to the mentor to tell him they’re looking for such and such who’s out in the street. And you’ll hear it with that warning call. I mean, that’s how Michael Coppola, I believe who was a fugitive for 10 years, we ended up catching him because we believed he was attached to a murder. This guy, uh, Larry Ritchie, who was in trial, all of a sudden it disappeared from trial and months later was found in the trunk of a car behind the diner. Well, that facilitated Michael Coppola’s arrest because it was like his murder being affiliated with Michael Coppola was like, okay, where’s, how did they get to Coppola? Because Coppola would have had to be involved with the sanctioning of the murder. And that’s what caught him going out and talking to somebody and tickling the wire, listening to how they talk, follow it down.

[15:24] And then boom, you get your guy or your evidence. Yeah, it’s because every day, every, every day is a conversation of crime. Conversations.

[15:35] Yeah, that’s why I think Joe Patone talked about that. They’re long, boring days sitting around the social club talking about these different scores that they might want to make this score and that score. And so it’s just the conversations are basically if they aren’t about family or some gossip about anybody, it’s about crime and doing some kind of a crime. It’s always so coded, it’s hard to figure out many times, but it’s going to be about a crime. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s to me, when I look at things like now the FBI, like some guys that I’ve been out now, you know, I left, uh, FBI in 2007, went to the corporate world and then, but I still had guys calling me, you know, for years about, you know, various things, but yet the FBI is not focused on it as though it doesn’t exist. And these guys who call me, they’re like, it’s back in the 60s, Mike. They’re meeting.

[16:37] The simplicity of headquarters not understanding historically the unions that they control, the industries that they control. It’s to me like the NFL. You get your football player, your quarterback hurt. You’re not playing down 10 against 11. You’re going to replace him with somebody that’s not as good. It may take a while, but they’re not stepping away from that money. And as I understand, they increased, you know, they made a lot of guys and they’re back in business. And it’s, you know, to me, it’s like, okay, what point do you then refocus? Really? If anybody thinks that they stepped away from dealing stolen property, trailer loads and truck loads of stolen property and jewelry and things like that, with that long history and all the contacts they have out in the community with these. Like a guy owns a you know individual owns a little grocery store well you know he he’s going to be you know a great retail outlet and then you got on the other hand you got these boosters and drug addicts out here that are stealing stuff like crazy so you know they’re going to make their money out they ain’t going to quit doing that those all those kinds of crime and gambling they’re not going to quit that even with all the legalized gambling they’re still going to have a sports book out there and they’re still going to have a loan shark and and they get a slap on the hand, you know.

[17:58] That’s the thing that, you know, you need, I think if you really want to correct removing the most treacherous people, and again, a lot of them have podcasts now, which cracked me up. Yeah, I’m sorry, that is a cracker. But to discourage that type of the criminal conduct involving, they’re not as, I don’t think you see the murders that you used to see in the past. That got smart. If somebody’s violating, that body may just disappear, which, you know, similar to Patty Ryan’s, never showed up when they got killed. But that said, you know, you do say you got a three-year investigation or something, and then they give a guy, you know, a three-year hit. Let him plead. You charge him with multiple crimes and the prosecutor gets it on his resume.

[18:48] In the Midwest, I think it’s a little different because you can have career prosecutors, but in the big city, New York, you know, they’re only going to be a prosecutor for three to seven years maybe and go into private industry to become a partner. And those bullets regarding the titles are, I guess, rewards for your success. But to me, maybe we should go to trial a little more.

[19:16] If you’re charging somebody with a murder, let’s prove the murder. Give them life in prison.

[19:21] Yeah. Prosecutors are pretty quick to do a plea. I’ll tell you what, I’ve practiced law and having a trial, full trial, that’s a hell of a lot of work, man. I can understand. You want to do it you want to make a deal yeah you’re overnight yeah you’re yeah you got to get in before before the judge to prep for the next witness and you stay after at night prepping for the yeah it’s a long day but on murders i think thing yeah so speaking of murders now you started off genovese family is you know really been feared they got this long history of being And one of the more fearsome families because of Vito Genovese. I mean, that guy was, he was a terror.

[20:05] And so you’ve got to persuade somebody to turn. And they’re not at the time. This is kind of, was this before everybody in the Bonanno family started falling like crazy? This is, I believe it was. And you got this guy, George Barone. Was that one of your first guys you got to turn?

[20:25] So george barone after durso cooperated and again part of the part of it was to include durso’s role, in participating in the murder george barone so before the case came down this is like almost three years into it durso accompanied patty falsetti to give george barone a partial payment of the money he was trying to get.

[20:52] And it was at a strip mall and I was in the parking lot, videotaping it. You could see Barone was a passenger in a vehicle and, or no, he was the driver, that had a Cuban. Now, George relocated to Florida and organized the Cubans down at the ports there. And these Cubans were part of his protection, ready to go to war against the Genovese family. So he gave him a portion of the money, and I believe it was Patty Falsetti, so Durso can see what George looked like for when they organized and coordinated the next payment in the city. Now, again, George being around Vito Genovese and participated in a bunch of murders. He was supposed to kill Frank Sinatra, too, back in the day. And so George was a great guy. George, when he cooperated, he realized the hypocrisy of the life, that all he’s done for them and they can’t pay him money that he’s owed by a guy who’s not in the life. He just found it ridiculous. And me and George hit it off because George, when we arrested him, because we arrested him and charged him with extortion, we allowed him to make bail. And this was when the first big indictment came down. I was there in Florida for profits.

[22:10] George didn’t know he was Italian until he was eight years old. He grew up on the west side of Manhattan, the Chelsea section, which was a big Irish community. And we sort of hit it off because my mother’s from Ireland. My father’s Italian. And I just shared with him a funny story of being a half-breed. And the next day, he said, I want to meet him again, meaning me. And the next day is when he signed his cooperation agreement. And he talked about the various murders he was used in as part of his cooperation. You got to get all the crimes. And he would describe how he would be negotiating shipping, you know, contracts, union contracts with shipping executives, you know, in the day and then be tasked with flying to Florida to kill somebody. He was a World War II vet, Navy. He was on four invasions, including Iwo Jima. I mean, he was just a very bright

[23:10] guy that knew the treachery of the life. He didn’t really care if he was made or wasn’t made. His mentor was a guy named Johnny Earl, who he described as the toughest guy.

[23:25] Johnny Earl subsequently, a few years later, was killed. And Vito released George to Fat Tony Salerno, who was a soldier at the time, not even the capo or the acting boss. This is back in the 50s. So George provided some critical information because he was with Vito Genovese when the Frank Costello shooting in Albert Anastasia, and that’s in the book. And what he described was how…

[23:59] You know, Albert Anastasia basically whacked his boss and consigliere, Vincent Mangano and Phil Mangano, and Albert was the underboss, and now all of a sudden he’s the official boss. That was 1951. That’s another example of the hypocrisy. So he said in 57, Frank Costello and Vito were bumping heads because they were both acting bosses at various times. And Costello got along very well with that. Albert Anastasia. And so Anastasia meets with Frank Costello and Michael Miranda, who is the consigliere for the Genovese at that family, to get Miranda to agree to their conspiracy to whack Vito. And Miranda, I guess being a very talented guy, says, well, let me sit and think about this for the next day or two. Immediately goes to Vito to tell him that they were planning to murder him. Vito asked, was anybody there else that observed the meeting? It was at a restaurant in Brooklyn. And guess who was there was Sonny Francis.

[25:09] So they call Sonny Francis. He corroborates the meeting and they arrange the shooting of Frank Costello.

[25:17] Frank Costello, after being shot and not killed by Chin, and apparently Tommy Ryan Eberle was the driver and the capo of the crew at that time uh he corroborates the conspiracy and so they basically he he tells them he won’t let albert know that his shooting was related to the conspiracy and you know a few weeks later anastasia’s killed and that facilitates then the, the Appalachian meeting to install Carlo Gambino as the boss to describe this violation of Omerta and to get caught by the New York state police with the Appalachian meeting. So a lot there, but George Verone was with Vito Genovese when that was going on. So so you got it you got really a first person account of those historic events and a little bit different now this book i’ll tell you guys you got to get this book mafia takedown you got to get it so tell us a little bit about cookie durso he was he was pretty important and and then tell us about how you got them in the court and then you got the chin hit the court so let’s Let’s go down that path. Okay. So, so Mike…

[26:44] Was a tough kid. He’d bench over 400 pounds. Young. He previously, as a young kid, he grew up in the Williamsburg Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Again, historic area where Sonny Francis and other gangsters were. He worked at Joe Zito’s restaurant. Joe Zito had a restaurant in Little Italy originally called Ruggiero’s. Gieros. And Joe Zito was indicted in the Windows case, the infamous Windows case where they had the families basically getting kickbacks from window installations in the low-rise apartment buildings and all that, low-income apartment buildings. So Zito was supposedly, Zito was acquitted at trial and he was offered the position of capo. He turned it down and said, give it to Ross, Ross Ganji. And Joe Zito stayed up in the Bronx with his brother that had like a out of key because he kept thinking as a result of being acquitted, he’d be a focus of law enforcement, the FBI, if he was a capo. Pretty wise. Zito. Pretty smart. Yeah.

[28:02] Zito provided. So, yeah, Dursa was under Zito, but since Zito was uptown, Sammy Meatballs Apparel, who was Little Italy, was the guy that mentored and who Mike was doing business with. So Mike originally borrowed money from Sammy to put on the street. He gambled. And again, he was making huge money as a loan shark, big money. And he and Tino had, as one of their clients and customers, Carmine Pizza Pulido, who was a degenerate gambler. And when I was on the wire, you’d see Pulido, Carmine Pulido with Allie Shades Malangon’s crew. Allie Shades Malangon was a very, at that time, powerful capo, had a tight relationship with Barney Belomo. and he was the conduit in the corrupt carding industry for the Genovese family. So Polito, on Monday nights, especially during football season, the social club had gambling going on, the football going on. Allie Shades would leave the club and go south on Mulberry Street to have dinner with his crew. Polito would accompany some of these guys, There’s baby Carmine Russo, Chinatown. Um…

[29:27] Uh, Jerry Goudagno. It all got down together as a crew. Polito, and I, you know, it was just, I’d have this on videotape. I’d have it on the surveillance logs because I was just sitting out there on Mulberry Street. And Polito wanted to get released from Durso and Tino to Ali Shade’s crew. And Ross Ganji was the capo that oversaw Sammy Apparo. They didn’t want to release him because he was such a great client he was a degenerate gambler he owed the money yeah and and so that process of not releasing him to this group was a thing that was i guess a bad taste and palito would gamble at the social club in brooklyn with durso and others and what palito did was he facilitated the murder using so the people sitting at the table at the card table included a kid named Rookie and a kid named Jingal. They were two cousins of Pulido’s. You also had a Mario Fortunato who had a bakery with the Fortunato Bakery in Brooklyn. And apparently Fortunato wanted Durso killed too because he.

[30:47] Carrying grudges, Fortunato apparently would abuse, when Mike was a young kid, Mike’s father, Durso’s father, at social clubs. He’d fart on him and stuff like that. So, as Durso got bigger, more confident, he slapped Fortunato.

[31:07] And Fortunato then carried this grudge over the years because he realized that Durso’s the real thing. And since the incident where he’s not allowing Pulido to leave and go to the other crew they designed a scheme to kill him to kill Tino first or to shoot Mike in the head first the gun was too close to his head so the round went right down his neck and then they shot and killed Tino and left not knowing that Durso came to shortly thereafter they thought he was dead and so.

[31:44] Sammy goes to the hospital, tells Durso, you know, they speak with him. They find out what happened. What happened was this kid, Bruno, who was also a neighborhood kid, Anthony Bruno, he comes in and Mike apparently assaulted him before he was sort of a junkie from the neighborhood and he agreed to shoot Durso in the back of the head. Polito and others have guns on him. And so he’d asked, I think, for, he comes up, Cherisulo, rookie, opens the social club door to let Bruno in, they’re all playing cards, and Bruno then shoots Durso in the back of his head as…

[32:28] Polito and others shoot, uh, Tina Lombardi. Then they all flee. And the funny thing is they find out after they said, I wasn’t there. I went home. Fortunato tells Sammy Meatballs and Joe Zito that he doesn’t know that Durso got shot, who shot him. He went home and he goes, Durso’s not dead. And that look of cotton. So after that, this whole scheme of how does Ali Shades and Ross Ganji, I mean, Ross, supposedly they want to retaliate, let Durso retaliate. And Ali Shades apparently has more power with Barney Belomo and the others, and they diffuse it and saying, put it on hold, just wait. And so the book has details of how Durso didn’t listen to that initially. He had a buddy that shot Pulido in the head at his pizzeria and he too didn’t get killed. He went to the hospital. And I used to joke that the reason that Polito didn’t get killed is he’s Calabrese and they’re known to have hard heads.

[33:31] Hard head meaning stubborn, but there’s a lot there in the book about the retaliation. And it’s, you know, I could understand the administration saying you have to kill five people in the likelihood. So put it on hold for a while. But we made recordings with guys that were saying, just go kill him. Because once Polito went to prison on a bank robbery, we had an overlap with a bank robbery investigation. He made friends with the Lucchese family, and they wanted to release him to the Lucchese. And Durso, we made these recordings. No, he’s here with us. And he He was winning that dispute that he couldn’t be released. And at that point we were making recordings saying, why don’t you just go kill him? And even though the, even though that the administration was saying you can’t, others were saying in powerful positions, just let’s go do it.

[34:26] So we obviously couldn’t let that happen. But Polito now is a capital in the Genovese family.

[34:34] And, uh, it’s crazy times. and the guys that we’re talking on recording about having Durso kill them are in the crew so that that really puts you guys in a ticklish position too you you don’t want to uh expose the wire but you can’t just sit back and let somebody get killed it’s uh it’s a really tickly situation it’s a good way to turn somebody sometimes you’re going to take a risk you’ll take them take that little bit of tape and say here they’re getting ready to kill you listen to this and see if you can’t turn them. It’s a way that you can turn somebody, but you’re really in a tickly situation.

[35:13] We had another situation where they wanted Dursa to kill a kid who was bipolar, and he was the godson of Sammy Meatballs, and he was threatening the mother. We were able to defuse that because it was—and the kid’s brother had a gun where I took the gun from him. I mean, we made recordings, but we had agents on the squad go out to the kid who was bipolar because he was off his meds and he was supposed to go back in and get on the meds. At some point, we worked with a local law enforcement who arrested the kid, took him off the street because he was a mess.

[35:55] And Durso obviously said, I don’t know where this kid is. They didn’t know that he was arrested. And it basically diffused the situation. but it was, I mean, there’s so many different things from a treacherous standpoint. It’s like walking between the raindrops, trying to ensure that you can continue your investigation and ensure that, you know, other things aren’t happening. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It’s a, people don’t understand that you got to be on the inside to understand that they, they think of TV, they think of TV, FBI agents, TV cops that will, you know, just maybe let somebody get killed or maybe even help somebody kill somebody in order to to further their investigation but it isn’t like that you’ll end up having to sacrifice the whole investigation just to keep it prevent somebody from getting killed no i tell you there’s a lot of there could be some comedies if it was tv.

[36:48] Yeah yeah a lot of great stories in this book guys you just you’ve heard of some of them here and there’s a lot more in there you really want an inside look at the genovese family and what eventually will take down the chin that when he’s putting on this act all these years tell us a little bit now was cookie durso was he like the the smoking gun that that really caused the chin to cop a plea what it was or like one incident or was it a series of incidents that caused him to actually come in and admit in court out in an open court that he’d been putting on an act So it was Durso was making recordings again with powerful people from the crew, Barney Belomo’s crew. Barney was in prison and they were, it included the dispute between George Barone and Andrew Giganti. And so I’m sitting there, you know, listening to making all these recordings and we’re doing stuff. And I realized, you know, we had nine 11 hit and we had to put things on pause to address this terrorism thing for a while. And Durso was still out there. And, uh.

[38:01] You know, one of the things I thought is, let’s get the prison calls for Chin. Because, you know, to me, he’s now in prison. It’s been years. We pull six months of prison calls, which is comical, because he’s talking like a normal guy. And he avoided trial forever. And we have, again, the dispute between Andrew Giganti with George Peron. So we have the evidence to arrest Andrew. But when I listen to, we listen to these tapes of the prison calls, they’re so specific that he called on 9-11. We have the recording of him calling his son, Vinny Esposito, in Manhattan to ask, is everything okay?

[38:48] Vinny Esposito doesn’t even know, or the mother, Olympia, that the planes crashed

[38:54] into the World Trade Center. They have no idea what’s going on and it’s chin in texas prison who’s telling him to put on the tv and so i when we took the arrest down with andrew giganti and others superseding arrest i arrested andrew giganti and you knew you know chin would do what he could to save his family so they worked out a plea agreement we charged chin with the obstruction of justice should have probably charged the money from a forfeiture standpoint of the cost of prolonging this for so many years but that was more a prosecutor’s decision yeah and and uh but it was comical watching you know him having the jury box of.

[39:43] The plea the day of the plea was filled with press and they were expecting a big conversational type of back and forth but chin just acknowledged that he faked it the whole time yeah uh when you look at rita the daughter she has a book out and she talks about you know the impact that he pretending he was crazy all those years had on the family you know you feel bad for the children in that life because nobody wants to hang out with them because of the father and all but at the end of the day uh the gigante family made a lot of money.

[40:20] I talk about that in the book. He posted that must have been 13 family members that had jobs in the ports, which paid as much as $400,000. They were paid 24 hours a day, seven days a week, never had to leave their house. Amazing. Yeah.

[40:38] You talk about a good provider, man. How much does a bathrobe cost? How much? Yeah, really. I mean, he was a hell of a provider. One last question, I think. I don’t know. You may not know this. There’s like a discussion out there about this among different Bob fans, kind of maybe on Facebook, that there was supposedly a conversation between John Gotti and the chin. And Gotti’s bragging basically about how he made his son, John Gotti Jr. He inducted him in as a made guy. And the story is that Gigante had never had allowed Andrew to be made.

[41:17] And so Gigante supposedly replies, well, I’m sorry for him or something along those lines. Do you know anything about that? I believe that conversation was had, and it was really, I think, an example of Chin’s sophistication. Why would I want to make my son and have law enforcement focused on him as a made member when there’s nobody out there that can corroborate him being made other than my son being my son? And he still has the power and money. So that made sense. And it really, when you look at things, it sort of protected him. When you look at like Carmine Persico, he got life in prison 120 years. And his son, little alley boy Persico, got life in prison for the murder, you know, the conspiracy to murder Billy Cotullo, who was the acting, you know, boss for the family. and they feared that he’d become official. So I think from a Chin standpoint, it was bright to do things the way he did to protect it. I mean, it reminded me, I think the brightest guy ever for the Genovese family as a boss was this guy, Jerry Katina.

[42:35] I mean, he was sort of beneath the radar. He made millions, and he stepped away and went to Florida, to live to be, I think, 99 years old, you know, as a multimillionaire. And he made huge money, and it was the type of thing he was low key. And he was a Jersey guy. But he was back in the days of Lucky Luciano. And I don’t think the FBI, we ever carried him officially as a boss. Yes, you had him in the administrative role, but it was George Barone when I went through with him, you know historically the bosses and stuff when he said jerry katina i said jerry was an official boss and he looks surprised mikey you didn’t know that i said no i i you know and he was surprised uh but he was an official boss for a period of time and then he was held in contempt and stepped away from it and i sort of think that’s extremely bright.

[43:33] Type of move, uh, for a sophisticated guy that’s got the money. I don’t need the aggravation. And you know, there’s a lot of envy for some of the other guys. Cause they look at you and think, well, you’re not as tough as I am. And that’s when you got that death sentence coming. Yeah, really? Yeah. There’s always envy. Yeah.

[43:54] There’s all in that life. There’s always envy. That’s for sure. That’s, that’s why you want to be careful and not show that you’re making too much money i i know a situation in kansas city where the guy started bragging about how he was making 10 grand a month from his joint and and you know and some other investments he had around his joints of parking and that leases and everything he had and man they started moving in on him because you know think heck he’s got all that money we’re gonna get some of it so you just keep your mouth shut act play dumb yeah you can even get an independent contract to come out whack kid for the money the three words you gotta run away from is i love you most of the words say.

[44:39] And don’t go meeting your best friend for dinner if you think you’re you’re uh uh something’s going on at all do not meet your best friend for dinner somewhere or go out at night in a car with them or anything like that it’s crazy how they do things the hypocrisy the hypocrisy of it all is it really brought him down in the end uh you know like michael de leonardo he goes to jail he’s going to come back out and he’s got all this investments in different you know loan sharking and that uh strip clubs and and they’re taking goddy jr’s taking the money and and he’s not taking care of de leonardo’s family and you know what’s a guy to do that that’s you know that’s that same thing with dominic saccali the banana with vinnie i mean the thought of it is just i I mean, and there’s so many recordings. One of the things I think that…

[45:32] And I point out in the book, is you’ll have somebody like a boss pay everybody’s defense attorneys. It comes across as though that’s a gesture of kindness. But the money given to the soldier to give to the attorney, the attorney reports to the boss to see if he lowballed him. But the other thing is, if the guy is considering cooperating, the attorney will tell the boss, which will identify him as a rat. And it’s the type of thing where, you know, even the consideration, it shows the weakness, which means you’re like the walking dead because the attorney represents the boss, the individual who coordinates with the mob attorney, you know, how to do things. And a lot of times they don’t want these recordings played in court because I don’t think they want their members and associates to realize the treachery and hypocrisy of the life they’ll approve a plea they don’t want him to go to trial yeah and that may have caused like somebody like larry ritchie that end up getting trunked during the trial that he was killed because they didn’t want him to go to trial i want him to take a plea yeah uh last last case we had here in kansas city they everybody took a plea immediately it wasn’t there was gambling sports gambling and there’s hardly any sentences attached to it, but everybody took a plea immediately.

[47:01] Yeah. The recordings though, can be embarrassing. That’s what I’m thinking. Even though it’s gambling, they talk about each other in a way that is, they have these egos and it’s not like he’s your brother. For some reason, he may have insulted you with a joke or something and you found it offensive. And so those are the things they just want to suppress. And some of you have you fbi agents will find it quite humorous that you’ll leave a little bit extra in that you didn’t really need to but but you leave it in there so they play it in court i know how you guys are.

[47:38] Actually, it’s the attorneys make the decision of what gets played. We transcribe it. I’d have more. It was really up to you. You’d have even more in there, wouldn’t you?

[47:49] All right. Mike Campy. This book is Mafia Takedown. The true, incredible true story of an FBI agent who devastated the New York mob. And that was Mike Campy. And guys, this is a really good book. I’ll have links to it down in the show notes. And Mike, I really appreciate you coming on the show. and we’re finally getting this done. That’s an inside joke, folks. We did this before, but things got changed around. So we’re going to finally get it done now. I’ll tell you the funny thing that delayed the release was I didn’t realize the publisher also did Melania Trump’s book. And they said, can we push your book back? I said, is she coming to the party? Oh, yeah. That’s right. No, she’s not.

[48:32] It’s done. Well, you’re running in high cotton. and they’re running with Melania Trump. I don’t think so. All right, Mike. It was really great talking to you. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Garrett. All right, guys. Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles, so watch out for motorcycles when you’re out there on the street. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, go to the VA website. And if you have a problem with drugs or alcohol, go see our friend Anthony Ruggiano, a former Gambino prospect, our proposed member son of a maid guy in the Gambino family he’s a drug and alcohol counselor down in Florida and if you have a problem with gambling uh 1-800-BETS-OFF you know we just got sports gambling here in in Missouri a lot of gambling everywhere and and you heard you heard Mike Campy talk about these degenerate gamblers that then end up getting killed or they they end up getting you know what some other family wants them and then the other family doesn’t want them to leave because they’re such a cash cow. Well, guys, if you’re a degenerate gambler, you want to get out of that, you know, go to that 1-800-BETS-OFF and quit paying those loan shark loans. All right. Thanks a lot, guys.