The Untold Podcast Journey: From Gangs to Gangland | Anthony Ruggiano #886

Did you have the same squad you hung out with in prison?

Yeah, pretty much.

I mean, I always hung out with Italian guys, you know, mob guys.

You know, I did state time, New York state time, and then I did federal prison time.

So it's different.

In the New York state, the Italian guys were like, we were like pretty much hooked up with the Latin Kings, like we had each other's back.

In the feds, it was all, there were so many Italian guys.

So we were all clicked up really by what city we came out.

There was the New York crew, the Philly crew, the Chicago crew.

There was that many Italian guys?

Oh, yeah, from all over the country, yeah.

All right, guys, got Anthony Ruggiano here today.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Oh, my pleasure.

I've been looking forward to it.

Yeah.

I've been seeing you blow up on the internet.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

How long have you been doing the podcast for now?

About three years, coming up on three years.

You know, I just got into this.

You know, I had no clue about podcasts or shows, and I just got a phone call one day that

these people in England were looking to keep hearing things about me and my father, and they wanted to put me on this show, National Geographic, or

Narco Wars, and I did it.

And then one thing led to another, and I winded up getting my own podcast.

Nice.

And do you interview people, or is it just you?

No, I do both.

I interview.

I tell my own story.

You know, I interview people.

I interview people that I know.

I interview

people that are in recovery because I'm in recovery.

So, yeah, I interview people.

How long have you been in recovery?

I'm coming up on 36 years.

Clean and sober.

Dude,

you were born.

Yeah, I'm 27.

I got clean in 1989, January of 1989.

And it was really bad before that?

Yeah, it was the last few years were bad.

The last few years were pretty, were kind of crazy.

What was the substance?

It was alcohol?

Cocaine.

Oh, cocaine, alcohol.

Yeah, I was free basin cocaine at the end.

You know, it was not pretty.

You were free basin?

What's that?

It's before crack.

We would make cook it up ourselves and smoke it.

And then after what I had, it progressed into crack cocaine.

But this, they used to call it.

I don't know if you ever heard of Richard Pry.

Did you ever hear Richard Pry?

He was a famous comedian.

He caught on fire from Free Basin.

That's how

it was a form.

So you took the cocaine and you purified it yourself and you smoked it.

Whoa.

So you kind of made it on your own.

Yeah, it was bad.

Damn.

Yeah, it was bad.

And what compelled you to that addiction, you think?

Well, you know, and I'm a 70s kid, so I'm in the, you know, in the early 70s, you know, I'm in the mall.

My father's a May guy, you know what I mean?

So now a lot of doors were opening for me, and I'm running around Manhattan.

I'm running around to all these clubs, and everybody's blowing Coke.

You know, it was very expensive.

It was like

the beautiful people did it back then, I guess you could say.

And it was all in all the clubs in Manhattan.

And it started out like anything else, recreationally, having a good time, sniffing a little Coke, drinking, the girls, the this, the that.

And, you know, then over the years, you know, the progression of the disease of addiction.

And then, you know,

in the early 70s, you know, which started out on weekends.

And then as time went on and then into the 80s,

it started becoming an issue.

I guess maybe my the way I was wired.

I mean, because, you know, it's funny when you talk about addiction because people that I used with in that in, you know, when I was a kid in my twenties didn't become addicts, but I did.

So, you know, maybe it's just hereditary or the way I was wired, my personality.

And then in the 80s, it became an issue.

It started becoming an issue.

And then in 88,

I went into a treatment center.

My father's partner, Tony Lee, paid for me to go into a treatment center in Vermont.

And I got clean, and

I came out.

And, you know, I've been clean.

Wow.

These days, it seems like, because they're laced, it doesn't even seem worth it.

It's terrible.

You know, now I work in it.

I work in, that's what I do now.

I work, besides having my podcast and all this and doing these interviews, I work in a detox now.

I became a counselor.

I was a counselor, a case manager.

Now I'm a technician at a detox.

So I deal with addiction every day.

Damn.

Yeah, it just seems like the chances of dying are so high now, it's not even worth just randomly doing it at a party.

Oh, no, with the fentanyl, I tell my patients, today

you're playing Russian roulette.

If you buy street drugs today, you're playing Russian roulette because fentanyl is in everything.

I mean, it's literally in everything.

You know, you think you're buying cocaine and you're going to do a few lines of Coke.

There's fentanyl in it and you're overdosing.

You think you're buying some Xanax, you know, some Bruce Barr, you know, Xanax and there's fentanyl in it.

So kids today,

if I was getting high today, I'd be dead.

Crazy.

Yeah, back then when you were doing it, no one was overdosing, right?

They were, but not like today, you know, like randomly, you know, from heroin.

It was all heroin.

You know, I never messed with heroin.

But yeah, that overdoses were not like today, every day.

People are dying every day.

It's terrible.

Were you strictly on the consumer side or were you pushing it too?

No, I.

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Really wasn't, you know, I mean, I pushed it once in a while.

You know, my brother had a very big marijuana business back when marijuana was illegal.

Unfortunately, he was way ahead of his time.

So he had a really big marijuana business in the 70s and 80s.

But other than that, we weren't pushing drugs.

Did he get popped?

He, you know, it's funny.

He never got popped, but the guys that worked for him and ran for him, a couple of them went to prison for it, but he never

routed on him.

No, no, no.

Nice.

Back then, no.

So they went to prison for marijuana.

It's so silly to say it now, right?

It's legal.

I mean, every, listen, even me, I went to prison for bookmaking.

It's legal today.

Sports spending.

Numbers is the lotto.

That's everything I went to jail for outside of murder is legal today.

Crazy.

Crazy.

That makes you feel pissed, probably, right?

It does.

At times, it really does.

Yeah, definitely.

You served years.

I went to jail for years.

I spent 14 years in prison.

Holy crap.

Was that mainly for the bookmaking?

Well, no.

The first time I went to prison was in 1978.

I went to prison for we robbed the liquor warehouse.

And then I went to prison in 91.

That was for policy.

That was for the lottery.

We had a number business.

Lottery.

Yeah, you know, the lottery, like the, you know, that they have now the states all have the lottery, the numbers.

So we had an illegal number business,

and I went to jail for that.

And then

in 95, I got arrested for sports betting for bookmaking, and I went to jail for that and extortion and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Damn.

Which one brought in the most money?

Oh, the bookmaking and brought in the most money.

The numbers, really, the numbers brought in the most money because that's an everyday thing.

That's like people are betting dollars and 50 cents and quarters and dimes and $5.

So, you know, we would, it was a lot of money.

Wow.

So you literally had your own lottery.

That's crazy.

Yeah, we did.

I didn't know that was a business.

Yeah, that was a big business.

Yeah, it was a big business.

Big, yeah.

But I went to jail for it, of course.

I always wonder what the mafia does now for money because it's a lot harder to get away with stuff, right?

You know, that's a good question because I was talking to somebody the other day.

Like, I don't know what they do anymore because everything, like I said, everything I did to earn money today is legal.

You know, they're selling drugs, that's for sure.

I mean,

that's for sure.

And probably, you know, white-collar crimes, you know, stocks, bonds, whatever they could.

Listen, the mob is going to do whatever they could do to make money.

They're going to think ways to

make money.

But

everything I did to make money back then, I couldn't do today.

First of all, there's too much surveillance.

There's cameras everywhere you go.

I mean, there's cameras in fucking people's doorbells.

I mean, it's insane.

And,

you know, like I made money with fraudulent credit cards.

You couldn't do that no more because every store you go in has cameras.

I had a vending company.

I mean, I'm sure there's still people out there with uh gambling machines and bodegas and all that stuff so they're still making money with gambling because even though gambling is legal not everybody has a bank account so if you don't have a bank account you can't hook the app up to a checking account or a savings account you can't bet legally so you're going to go to a bookmaker so there's ways for them to make money not like it used to be and there's no more violence

so no more like murders or anything no they're not doing that anymore i mean um was it because they kept killing each other?

They were like, Yeah, you know, it's because it's because really because of the surveillance, because of the laws, and because people are cooperating.

Yeah, the surveillance is insane.

I'm watching these uh cases on these rappers right now, and they tracked the murder from their phones and the towers.

Yeah, it showed they were at the same place at the same time, yeah.

And then they got like the Colombo, there was it's fun, and then you got everybody's on TikTok and YouTube, and you know, and Instagram.

And, and

this kid, this guy was on the lamb a Colombo guy a captain in the Colombo family Michael Francis' whole family yeah he was on the lamb hiding from the FBI and his son put his picture on

Instagram or TikTok and the guy had to go surrender himself they knew where he was yeah because all they need is a photo now right that's it even your Tesla if you have a Tesla it pretty much tracks wherever you go everywhere that's crazy so the way i made money back then i could never i want to know how to make money illegally today the only you know well i i would because somebody asked me the other day,

what if I had to do anything illegal today,

what would I do?

And I says,

I would do two things.

They said, what?

I would smuggle untaxed cigarettes from Florida to New York because in New York, cigarettes are $17 a pack.

And then when I got to New York, I would go to Canal Street and get knockoff Gucci's and Louis Vuitton and bring them back to Florida.

That's the only thing I would know how to do right now.

It's tough, but I'm not.

I mean, that's what I would do.

Yeah, cigarettes in prison sell for a lot, though, right?

A lot right now.

You can't smoke in it.

You got to smuggle them in.

It's like drugs now.

It's crazy.

When you were in prison, were there drugs everywhere?

Everywhere.

I wonder if it's still like that.

The first time I went to prison, I had my own drugs.

I mean, I was getting, the COs were bringing me marijuana and volumes and alcohol.

That's not too bad then.

No, no, it was good.

The second and third time,

I wasn't using them.

I was cleaning everything.

So I had no use for anything like that.

But I did have use for food.

They were bringing us food a lot of you know nice so that that was good did you have the same squad you hung out with in prison yeah pretty much i mean i always hung out with italian guys you know mob guys um yeah yeah yeah you were probably protected pretty well we had our own little click we were always hooked up all in this it's different this this you know i did state time new york state time and then i did federal prison time so it's different in the new york state the Italian guys were like, we were like pretty much hooked up with the Latin kings.

Like we had each other's back in the state prisons.

And the feds, it was all, there were so many Italian guys.

So we were all clicked up really by what city we came to.

There was the New York crew, the Philly crew, the Chicago crew.

There was that many Italian guys?

Oh, yeah, from all over the country.

Yeah.

Holy crap.

Which Fed prison were you in?

I was in School Kill for five years.

I was in Otisville.

I bounced around, but I did most of my Fed time in School Kill.

And my roommate was Kevin Kelly.

He was a Westie.

Ever hear of the Westies?

Yeah, the Irish, right?

Yeah, from Hell's Kitchen.

So you name as you.

Yeah.

yeah were you uh were you on good terms with the westies when you were out of prison when i was out of prison yeah oh yeah definitely yeah they were with the gambino family oh they were yeah oh okay yeah yeah what about other like spots like biker gangs and

you know i i never really did any business with biker gangs i knew a couple of them you know but i wasn't really friendly friendly with them um we never really had any much interaction with them um but the westies were a lot of interaction a lot of interaction with dominicans i had because i had a a vending company.

So my vending company were machines, and they were a lot of illegal gambling machines.

And I had them in like bad neighborhoods more, to say in the hood.

That's where the money was.

And I had them in Dominican after-hour clubs and Puerto Rican bodegas.

So I did a lot of business with the Hispanic population.

Interesting.

So all the beef then was internal.

It was with other families mainly.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that's what I noticed with all the documentaries I watched.

It's never like other...

No,

always within amongst ourselves.

Was it within within your family or was it with the other families, maybe?

In my day, it was just within the Gambino family.

But, I mean, you know, all the mob was that in my time were all internal, like the Colombo War.

It was internal.

Michael Francis could talk to you about all about that.

Yeah, so it was all, and even the people that got killed in the Gambino family was all internal.

Damn.

Was your dad pretty open with you about everything or was he keeping it pretty?

No, he was very open with me.

I mean, in the beginning, you know, growing up, when I was a kid,

he was in the mob since the day I was born.

He became a maid member the same year I was born in 1953.

So I grew up in it, in the life.

I mean, you know, and in the beginning, I didn't really know what he did, but I just knew something was different.

But when I started at 16, when I actually went to work for him, then he started to school me in

the life.

And then when I was in my early 20s,

He started telling me about acts of violence that he personally committed with other members.

Like he would tell me, we would be out one night, and we would meet this guy, and he would tell me I did a piece of work with him.

That meant that, you know, they committed a murder together.

Damn.

Because, in the mob, they consider murder work.

That's the code name.

Like, he did a piece of work.

Wow.

And he was just telling you this out in your 20s.

Yeah, my 20s.

Yeah, in my 20s.

And how did you react?

Were you like, holy crap, this is serious?

Honestly, I was impressed.

I didn't expect that answer.

At that point in time, listen, you got to understand, I was raised with this mentality that that way of life was the right way of life.

And

society out there's way of life was the wrong way of life.

So this was ingrained in my brain.

And these are the people I grew up with.

These are the adults that I grew up around.

So when I got into the street, like I was impressed that I was Fat Andy's son.

So that gave me like a little swagger.

You know what I mean?

I got some kind of respect and I liked the feeling.

It was like a drug.

I liked that feeling.

I liked doors being opened for me.

I liked being able to go to the Copa Cabana, like in Goodfellows, through the basement, up through the kitchen.

Wow, that actually happened?

Oh, yeah.

That's a real thing.

And I liked it, you know.

So, so, you know, when he told me about and

his reputation,

I liked it.

I like, you know, his reputation impressed me.

Right.

You know what I mean?

The mob life impressed me.

And he was like a he was a big figure in the mob so when he told me about things like that um

it really didn't phase me now it you know now when i think of it now you know i was crazy you were just programmed

crazy you know like uh and then later on you know him and him and i actually committed a murder together you know like it's insane wow you and your dad yeah damn

we're not together he was in prison and he okay to murder okay yeah that's nuts and uh sometimes the flashiness is the demise of the the person, like with God.

Without a doubt, yeah, well, he was way too, I mean, that was crazy.

He was on the front page of Time magazine.

My father was never that flashy.

I mean, my father was front page news.

That's how we found out, you know, that's how my kid brother found out my father was in the mob because he was on the front page of the newspaper.

So he had no idea.

No, he was because he was two years younger than me.

So when my father had gotten arrested for bookmaking sports because it was illegal and it was on the front page of the newspaper and

my father was upstairs and my father said, did Albert read the newspaper and I said yeah because he was a in the he was a really good baseball player my brother and my father used to go to all those little league games and he had a game that night and my father went downstairs and says to my brother you read the paper and he said yeah and uh and he says uh you still want me to come to the baseball game with you and my brother said of course I do so that's how my brother found out he was in the mob and then it's funny because we went to the game that night and all the fathers all the baseball fathers they didn't know my father was in the mob now they all knew they were like oh andy we didn't know they were like his best friend you know yeah you know they were like so thrilled yeah they suck it up yeah because back then that's massive respect big and then even me like in 1974 i got arrested on mulberry street in little italy i got arrested and it was in the newspaper that was the first time my name was in the newspaper you know i i bec went out that weekend and i was like a celebrity You know what I mean?

Like it was, you know, it was intoxicating.

Yeah.

I could see why Gotti fell in love with the attention.

Of course.

I always used to go out with John Gotti.

He used to sign autographs.

Damn.

Oh, so you were hanging with him?

Hanging with him.

Yeah, he bought me a car when I got out of treatment, out of the drugs treatment center.

Wow.

So you were really close with him.

Oh, yeah, I was very tight with him.

He liked, for some reason, he liked me.

Thank God.

I haven't heard many positive things about him, but it sounds like you were.

No, see,

we had a different...

Me, my family, and my friends.

had a very different relationship with him than the rest of the city because we knew him from when he was a nobody.

Like we all come from the same neighborhood.

My father knew him since he was a kid.

Wow.

His partner, Tony Lee, knew him since he was a teenager.

So, we, you know, I knew him from when I was 16.

He was in his 20s.

So, you know, we knew him before he was John Gotti, let's say.

So, we had a different relationship with him.

And we lived in Ozone Park, so we had access to him every day.

Got it.

You know what I mean?

And we had some things in common, you know.

So, I got along really good with him, and he always looked out for me.

Nice.

Were you telling him to tone it down or no?

No, you just let him live it up.

No,

because

actually,

the people that were around them really liked the notoriety.

Listen, any mob guy that tells you they didn't like reading their names in the newspaper, it's full of shit.

Even if it's derogatory stuff, they like it.

You know what I mean?

They like it.

Did you ever deal with Sammy back then, too?

No, but I knew Sammy.

You know, I never had any dealings with him personally, but we knew each other.

He used to, you know,

he was a very stern guy back then.

but uh yeah i used to see him all the time at the ravenite and my old man and his partner had a construction company they did business with sammy you know with construction stuff but i i didn't know him uh like i know him now man his stories are legendary yeah he's escaped death many times many times i'm sure you have too yeah man was there any moments in your career where you're like i might not walk out of this room There was a couple of meetings I went on that were kind of dangerous.

Like I went on, did you ever see The Gangs of New York, that movie, The Gangs of New York, with Leonardo DiCaprio?

A while while ago, yeah.

Okay, well, there's the tunnels down in the five points, those tunnels still exist.

Really?

Yeah, and I had a meeting down there once, and

it was kind of eerie walking through those tunnels.

I bet.

Like, you know, you could get lost down there, and I was going, how the fuck am I going to get out of this place?

You know, and I had to meet these kids, and I had to straighten out some beef, you know, but I made it out.

A couple of times I had guns pointed at me, you know, I was a couple of times I was in clubs where shootouts took place, you know, but

I made it out.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

Yeah, back then they were probably less strict on the guns in the clubs.

Oh, yeah.

We used to take guns on airplanes.

We used to put them in our luggage and go on an airplane with guns.

Everything was wide open.

I used to take a gun on an airplane.

Holy crap.

That's nuts.

What was the beef you were settling underground?

Was that between families?

No, well, what happened was

we were in a club and a friend of mine, some friends of mine that were with us, had a beef outside and someone got stabbed.

Damn.

And for some reasons, they were, it was really more of a shakedown.

They wanted to press charges, and this guy, Greg, knew this.

They were like a gang from down there, and that's where they stood in these tunnels.

So I had to go down there and bring them money.

And it was, and I had to go, and they met me in the street, and then him and this, and they walked us down through all these tunnels and to where they were waiting for me.

So it was a little eerie.

I wasn't really worried about getting hurt, hurt, like killed or anything, but

it was an uncomfortable feeling

I can tell you that yeah because people couldn't lay a hand on a made man right

no I mean you could but you would have got killed for it I mean even even a made guy's son I mean you know if anybody would have killed me back then they would have been in a lot of trouble I mean some people try to die almost got stabbed one night in a club damn they had a big sit-down over it my

nose you though or

they knew yeah they said they try to say they didn't but they knew who we were and uh and what happened was a guy which went to stab me and there was like a ceramic ashtray ashtray on the bar.

And

my friend Sally Minicello saw the guy and the guy, and he took the ceramic ashtray and he hit the guy on the head with it.

And the knife fell out of his hand.

And there was a couple of wise guys there.

And so we had a big sit-down over that.

And the kid that tried to stare me actually ran away.

It's a funny story because now the kid knew he was in trouble and he ran away.

Jeez.

Like he'd left the neighborhood.

He came from downtown Manhattan and he left the neighborhood.

And years later,

I'm in jail in 1979 I mean this happened in the early 70s I'm in jail and

I'm in my room because I was in a prison where we had rooms in Art to Kill and and this guy comes up to the to my room and he goes listen there's a guy in the yard and this kid's nickname was Mush he goes this kid mush is in the yard he's terrified he found out you were here

right so I said oh mush is here you know so he came he's a tank and he came up to I said go get him and they got him they brought him up to my room and you know he was i'm so sorry you know and and and

you know i we just let it go patched up yeah yeah patched it up yeah this was like five or six years later damn you probably didn't even recognize him that's crazy how did those sit-downs work like is it just like the movies where each side speaks yes it's like a board meeting it's like a it's like a business meeting you know it's uh you sit down you know you do most of the time it's over money or uh you know uh business uh or somebody got or it could be over something violent, but most of the time, it's strictly over business, over money.

I mean, all the sit-downs, most,

I want to say all, most of the sit-downs that I was personally involved in were all over money, who owed this, who owed money.

If we owed money, they owed money or some kind of business or some kind of location, like

a vending location.

Like in other words,

if I have a vending machine in your bar

and and you're the owner of the bar and I'm your vendor, so this is a mob thing and I'm your vendor, and you sell the bar to someone else, that's still my vendor.

And now that someone else is with a different mob guy or a different family, the vending location still belongs to me.

Got it.

But sometimes they would try to get out of that or, you know, and that would be a sit-down because it's still my spot.

And I would maybe be asked to give the spot up or maybe asked to sell the spot.

Makes sense.

But that would be a sit-down, you know, stuff like that.

Both making.

What percent of money did you have to kick up when you first joined?

Well, I really didn't have to kick up anything because my father was the boss, but usually you kick up 10% or you bank a part, you know, make them partners.

But I mean,

when I, when my father was in prison and he went and his partner, Tony Lee, died, and I just put them on the payroll.

Like with my vending company, I would give

them money every week out of my vending company, but I didn't have to kick up.

But what guys everybody kicked up usually an envelope every month.

Some guys kicked up 2,500.

Some guys kicked up a thousand.

It all depended.

I mean my father and his partner probably were getting maybe

20, 30,000 a month in envelopes from people that were with him.

That's solid.

Back then, that's a lot of money.

No, they made a lot of money.

That's when money was money.

Yeah.

Were you guys the most successful family financially, you think?

The Gambinos are, without a doubt.

Yeah, the Gambinos in the Genovese family, they were the two biggest.

But I would say, yeah,

it's like, yo, it's crazy money.

I mean, it's just, listen, I had a nothing vending company.

I mean, I had a small little vendor company, and I was bringing in 20, 25,000 a week.

Cash a week?

Yeah, dude, back then, that's like 50K a week these days.

Yeah, and then, I mean, it's all gone now.

Unfortunately.

All spent on lawyers.

You know, even my, so the number business, so the policy, so numbers, so numbers, like a lot, you know,

you go in stores now and there's a lottery machine and people are waiting online to play the lottery.

Back then, it was in the neighborhoods, it was in Jamaica, Queens.

We were doing a day.

Now, we weren't making it.

So, it's a whole procedure.

So, there's a banker, there's a controller, and then there's runners.

We were the controllers.

So, the banker would give us 35% of the gross.

Got it.

And we would give the runner, so a runner, you would be a runner, you would bring me business,

and I would give you 25%.

So, if you brought me $1,000 a day in business, you kept 25%.

Got it.

So when the smoke cleared, the controller made 10%.

We were doing grossing $80,000, $90,000 a day.

Whole numbers.

On the lottery?

On the lottery.

Damn.

It was insane.

So we, you know, now out of that $9,000 that we made every day, of course, we had expenses.

We had to pay people, you know.

But so you're talking a lot of, and this is all cash.

This ain't no credit cards.

So, you know, just think of the mob, the money the mob makes.

That's insane.

And then the RICO came, right?

The RICO came.

You know, it's funny because when the RICO started the test case,

when they got their first conviction for the RICO, I remember my own man was sitting in the kitchen in his robe and he had the newspaper opened.

And I came up from downstairs.

I lived in the basement.

We had an apartment.

I came upstairs to have coffee with him and he had the newspaper open and he says, it's all over for us.

Whoa.

So he knew right away.

I knew right away.

He said, it's all over for us.

And you know what?

And between him and I, we got indicted for five five RICOs.

Damn.

Five.

One's already hard to fight, but five.

I got indicted for two.

I got indicted for two federal RICOs and one state RICO.

Holy crap.

Which one was the toughest one?

Well,

the last federal indictment, RICO I had that I went to prison for was in 96.

I got indicted in 96 in Florida, right?

Down here in Miami for a RICO.

I took a plea.

I got 10 years.

And then when I got out in 04, in 05, I got indicted for another federal RICO with a murder.

They waited till you got out.

Yeah, they waited.

I committed

a murder in 1988.

They put that in a RICO.

And then I cooperated later about a year after that.

So, yeah, I got indicted for three RICOs.

And I was one of the first people to get indicted for a state RICO.

Wow.

I didn't know there was a state RICO.

Yeah, they have a state RICO.

New York State has a RICO.

They call it an orca, whatever that means.

Yeah, but it's an organized crime something.

Holy crap.

Everything has initials.

So they put murder under the RICO?

I didn't know they were.

Yeah, well, that's what they do.

Yeah, they put it's a predicate.

Because the RICO has to be predicate acts.

So it has to be an ongoing criminal conspiracy, but it has to have predicate acts.

So my RICO was murder and gambling.

Those are my predicate acts to show that I stood in the, you know, that it was an ongoing, I was part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.

The first, the other RICO that I went away for in 96, the predicate acts were extortion, murder conspiracy, arson.

It was all predicate acts showing like over a period of time.

Damn, you were living fearless back then.

Yeah, I had no conscience.

You know, no, really, no, I had no conscience.

You know, it was just, that's what we did.

You know, people asked me what my job was.

My job was I was a criminal.

That was my job.

Every waking moment of the day, we committed crimes.

If my eyes were open, I was committing a crime.

You know, that's how it was, you know.

And that's why when I, you know, that's why

I had no skills.

You know, my father taught me how to be a criminal.

I mean, because that's what he believed in.

Right.

You know, and then when I got out of the life, I had no skills.

And, you know, it's, and

it was kind of scary because I don't know how to fix that.

I still have no skills.

You know, I had no social security.

I had no 401k.

I had nothing.

You know, the mob doesn't give you a retirement plan.

You know what I mean?

There was no money.

You know, and so now when I cooperated and I got out of the life,

I'm 60 years old.

I had no skills.

And then one day my phone rings and it's this this friend of mine that ran a treatment center.

And he goes, listen, I spoke to the owner of the treatment center and we want to offer you a job.

I said, a job?

Doing what?

They said, we think you would make a good counselor.

I said, what the fuck?

A counselor?

I don't know nothing about being a counselor.

He goes, no.

He goes, listen, we think with your life experience and everything you overcame, the mob, jail, you know, you got a lot of years sober.

We think you would, you know, really do good as a counselor and we want to put you back in school to become a counselor.

I said, school?

He goes, yeah, you know, we'll pay for it, you know, and, you know, and I thought about it, and, and, and I, you know, and I did it.

I packed up, and I left where Michigan, I was living in Michigan at the time, and I came to Florida, and I became a counselor.

Wow, you know, so really, so I guess my skill was my, my life.

Your experience, yeah.

My experience.

Because you got clean years prior.

So.

Yeah, you know, and that's another thing.

You know, here I am, now I'm clean.

That's when my thought process started changing.

So now I'm clean and I'm trying to work this 12-step program and I'm hanging out with people that are clean and I'm still in the street.

I'm still committing crimes.

And where things started rubbing me the wrong way, like things that had never phased me, well, now starting to like, I was starting to develop, in spite of myself, really, I was developing a conscience.

And I started feeling uncomfortable again.

in my own skin.

And then, you know, like I hit a bottom with the drugs, like I started hitting a bottom with my life, my lifestyle, you know?

You know, now I had two kids.

I had a little girl, I had a son, a daughter.

And, you know, I'm now here I am.

I'm clean.

I'm clean a lot of years.

I'm clean like nine or ten years.

And I'm locked up in Attica, which was a violent prison.

Cockroaches crawling all over the wall.

And I'm going like, what the fuck am I doing?

Jeez.

You know, and then I got indicted.

While I'm in prison, I get indicted in Florida.

You know, and, you know, now it's just was, you know, like it was a crazy way to live it.

And, but I never knew that.

And, you know, I never knew that until I got clean and I started started working on myself.

And then

I wrote like an autobiography of my life.

Of course, it's like,

I don't know if you know anything about the 12 steps.

I do.

All right.

So, you know, in the fourth step, I had to take a personal inventory of myself.

And I wrote that inventory while I was in Attica in a jail cell.

Wow.

And

I looked at, you know, and, you know, I just said that,

I can't do this anymore.

You know, and

damn.

Hell hell of a story, man.

That's crazy.

Yeah, because in prison, you're surrounded by drugs, but you're sober.

So it must have been a weird kind of dynamic, right?

Yeah, you know what?

This is what I, you know, this is what, this is how I felt.

Somebody asked me that question in prison.

So now I'm in Attica.

I don't know if you know, so now I'm in Attica.

I have a federal detainer on me.

So they raised

my security to high, super high.

So now Attica is probably one of the most secured, violent prisons in the New York state system.

And now I'm in Attica.

But now I have, now, this is how crazy life is.

So now I have my own cell.

I have a little 13-inch TV in my cell.

I have a box window that in the winter, it's like a refrigerator.

I have two hot pots.

I have a robe.

I have some comforts, right?

So now, so now someone asked me one day, why don't you know, you don't even smoke a joint and everything.

I said, listen, why would I smoke a joint?

And then they take my urine urine and I give them a dirty urine and I'm going to lose everything in myself?

Is it worth me, my TV?

It's not worth my TV.

It's not worth my hot pots because

people that have issues with drugs have to understand that when you cross over the imaginary line into addiction, when you use any substance, there's going to be consequences.

And

until you're not okay with those consequences, you're going to keep using.

So my consequence in Attica was if I used, yeah, I would like to use, I would like to smoke a joint right now, I would like to go smoke a joint today.

But if I used then

and I gave them a dirty urine, I'm going to lose all the stuff.

And that's a consequence I wasn't willing to take.

Smart.

Damn, you seem really level-headed for all the stuff you've been through, dude.

Do you, do you have any like PTSD or like?

I probably do.

I was in there.

Well, I think My therapist, I was in therapy because when I first went into the, you know, when I when I left New York, I had to live under assumed name and everything.

And I was getting a little jammed up in the head because nobody knew who I was, and I needed someone to know who I was.

So I found a therapist and I told her.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I told her who I was, you know, and yeah, she used to do so.

She said, I had a lot of trauma.

I had a trauma, I was traumatized.

Oh, yeah.

No, I definitely was.

You know, it's not normal things I did.

Yeah, so we were working on a few things.

I don't know if I have PTSD.

I mean, I do have some issues.

I have issues.

Nightmares.

I have nightmares.

Yeah, I have, I have some, I get sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and, you know, like, I think about things I did, people I hurt.

You know what I mean?

Like, I hurt my family, you know, I did bad things.

I mean, listen, I was a violent criminal.

You know, I did damage to my children.

I missed a lot of their lives.

I feel some remorse.

I feel like

I missed a lot.

I believed in what I did.

I believed in that way of life because that was what's instilled to me.

And

I didn't take other people into consideration.

And I think I gave up a lot

for that life.

Like, I went to jail.

The last time I went to jail, my daughter was three.

I got out, she was 11.

My son was 13.

I got out when he was 21.

Wow.

You know, I gave up so much for that life.

And at the end of the day, it wasn't worth it because that life betrayed me.

Damn.

That's a deep statement, man.

Yeah.

Because that was your whole life.

Yeah.

That's everything everything you knew, your father's life.

Yeah.

Holy crap.

But you didn't feel the remorse in the moment.

It was all after.

Didn't even phase me.

Listen,

I got locked up for murdering my brother-in-law.

I picked him up and drove him

to a place where he got murdered.

Like, I drove him to his death.

And you knew.

Yeah, I knew, of course.

We planned it for months.

Your father planned it, right?

Yeah, he okayed it.

Wow.

John Gotti okayed it you know and it didn't even phase me damn now i think of it now and like

it's horrible like of you know like i you know i didn't take my sisters into consideration i didn't take my niece into consideration like it was it was horrible what i did you know now i think of it now and like

how do i how do i how do i mend that fence how do i you know how do i

you know, my niece hates me.

It's terrible.

But back then,

you know, the way I,

I was just a different person.

Yeah, that's crazy.

You were so programmed to that life, you didn't even think about how other people would react.

I picked him up.

He was smiling.

He got in my car.

Oh, he had no idea.

Oh, no, he had no idea.

Damn.

No, he had no idea.

That's crazy.

That's the mob.

But that's the, listen, that's the mob, a father and son planning a murder.

That's the mob.

You know, and a guy like Joe Molina, speaking of Joe Molina, like guys like that and guys that are in the street today, like, they think that's okay.

Like I'm wrong for thinking the way I'm wrong for thinking that that was wrong.

Right.

I mean, how crazy is that?

Yeah, you were taught to never snitch, never route on anyone.

Never, never.

You know, that's okay.

You know, if someone, well, you like Sammy, Sammy talks, Sammy the bull,

he frames it like really well.

People, listen, if you choose to be in the life of the mob, there's rules.

And you have to know going in that if you break these rules, you might pay with your life.

And the people that

I know died broke the rules.

You know, but who are we to judge them?

Who are we to decide who lives and who dies?

That's my point.

Like, who was John Gotti to decide who lives or dies?

Who was Fat Andy to decide who lives or dies?

But that's the life that they led.

That if you break rules, you could die.

And the people that die broke the rules.

How many people that you were in with survived?

That I was in with.

Oh, I mean, mean, a couple of my friends were killed.

I mean, you know, I know guys that, you know, my personal friend, my brother's friend was murdered, and my brother's best friend was murdered.

I mean, you know, a lot of people I know, my friend Greg was murdered in the front of his house.

My friend Tito was murdered.

He killed Jimmy Burke's son.

Tito, the barber, he was murdered in his barber shop, you know.

Wow, yeah, they're either locked up or dead.

I think Michael said only one guy on that top 75 money list is still alive other than him.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Especially his family.

His family was one of the most violent families.

They were killing each other.

They had more wars than I could have shared it.

I wonder why.

That's weird.

It just was all internal.

I don't know, all over, you know, ego, you know, who wanted to be the boss?

You know, listen, the mob runs on greed and ego.

Yeah, you were probably dealing with a lot of that, right?

Oh, all the time.

Especially the way you grew up under the boss.

Greed, ego, and self-centeredness.

You seem like a really changed guy now, though.

I am.

You know, it's funny because an FBI agent once told me that you and your father are social pets.

And I didn't know what he meant.

Wait,

I said, what the fuck?

A social pet.

He said, no, not a psychopath.

You and your father are social pets.

And then I looked it up and I said, damn, he's right.

I was a sociopet, but not now.

I mean, I still have a couple of the traits left.

I'm working on, like, those are my character defects.

Yeah, but, you know, I could never live that life.

I'm definitely not the same person, person, you know, without a doubt.

You know, like I look at my son, I could never do the things with my son that my father did with me, you know,

definitely not the same person.

When did you know the FBI was on you?

Did they call you or something beforehand, before the arrest?

For the last time, for the murder?

Yeah.

No, it was.

So what happened was

I had to go to a wedding that night.

So I lived out in Long Island in Comac, and I had to drive to Queens to pick up my son.

So I drove to Queens, and he wasn't home yet.

So there's a park bench in front of his house.

And it's funny.

So I go sit on the bench.

It's a nice June day out.

Sun's shining and I'm laying on the bench with my eyes closed like my eyes back on this and all of a sudden I hear, don't move, you motherfucker.

And I open up my eyes and there's a gun right in my nose.

And I look right and then

the next thing I knew, it's someone who was behind me and they literally lifted me up off the bench and they handcuffed me.

And it was about eight of them.

Damn.

I didn't even hear them.

They were like Indians.

I didn't hear nothing.

I didn't hear a footstep.

I heard nothing.

And the next thing I knew, they threw me in a van and they were screaming at me, we got you now, you murderer.

You're going to spend the rest of your life in prison.

And blah, blah, blah, blah.

And that was it.

My whole life flashed in front of my face at that point because I'm in this van and the guys are screaming at me.

I'm handcuffed.

And I'm like, oh, my God.

And they took me and then I got out on bail.

And then

they put me on house arrest.

And then about a year later, you know, things happened and I decided to throw in the towel and I cooperated.

Wow.

They arrested your dad, too, for that one?

No, he was passed away.

Oh, he passed away?

He passed away in 99.

Yeah, they just arrested me and the shooter, this guy, Skinny Dom, Pizzonia.

He was a captain in the Gambino family.

He was actually the one that did the shooting.

How did they find out so late?

Like, what happened?

Other people cooperated that knew about it and led them to us.

So, yeah.

Damn.

But they had no evidence?

It was just their word?

Yeah, they had no evidence.

There's no physical evidence, no, because the body disappeared.

They never found the body.

They never had a murder weapon.

But

they had enough.

They had enough to indict us.

I mean, they had enough.

So just a witness testimony is enough?

Yeah, in the feds, yeah.

You don't need a body.

Damn.

So circumstance.

Because you could just pay some of that.

Circumstantial evidence in the federal courts is good.

Wow.

So that's why you went with the plea route?

Because if you went to trial, you would have gotten it.

Well,

I went to the plea route because my co-defendants were sort of like trying to throw me under the bus.

You know what I mean?

You know, like I was the last person with him.

I picked him up and drove him somewhere, and then he disappeared.

So I had some conversations with some people, and I had some conversations with some attorneys, and the attorney actually told me, listen, you're going to get thrown under the bus here.

You should call the government.

Damn.

You know, and I couldn't do it.

You know, I talk about it all the time.

I still couldn't do it.

The next day, my wife was driving to work, and I told her to call them and tell her I couldn't make the call.

That was probably the toughest one for you because you had the family.

The worst.

The worst.

I couldn't do it.

That haunts me sometimes that I cooperated.

But,

you know, I think

because I cooperated and I changed, you know, I became a counselor.

I think, I think I'm sort of trying to make up for all the bad I did.

I guess you could say, I don't know.

Karma, right?

Yeah.

Damn, that's deep.

Yeah, because you were programmed your whole life to never, ever do that.

So that must have been the toughest decision you ever had to make.

It was terrible.

Yeah, it was tough.

It took me a year.

I used to pick up the phone and hang it up.

Holy dude.

I would have the FBI card in my hand and I would pick up the phone and I would hang it up.

Damn.

I couldn't do it.

I used to get knots in my stomach, sweat.

I couldn't do it.

And I still couldn't do it.

Even when I did do it, I made my wife do it.

I couldn't do it.

Because you knew you'd lose your whole friend group, everything.

Yeah, you know, I was, you know, I was giving up everything I knew.

And, you know, I had a lot of insecurity because, like I said, I had no skills.

But at that point, listen, the mob wasn't the same.

There was different people out there, different guys running the show.

They took everything.

When my father died, they really took everything from us.

They weren't looking out for me.

And I was done.

At that point, I was done.

Like, I wasn't willing to spend the rest of my life in prison anymore for the mob.

I wasn't willing to do it.

If my father was alive,

or his partner, Tony Lever, was alive, I would have never cooperated.

Because then I would have implemented them in the murder, and I would have never done that.

But the cards fell the way they fell.

John Gotti was dead.

My own man was dead.

Tony Lee was dead.

And I was done.

I was done.

I was done with that whole lifestyle.

I was done spending time in prison and that was it.

What happened to Tony?

Tony Lee passed away.

He had cancer.

He died.

Oh, wow.

He died in 93.

Before I got arrested in 95, he died two years before I got arrested.

Damn.

And that was your dad's right hand, man.

Yeah, they were partners from childhood.

That's cool, man.

Not a lot of guys come in together and last the whole way through.

If they made 10 cents, they got a nickel each.

Damn.

Yeah.

It was like a stronger, it was like a brother bond.

It was crazy the partnership they had.

Like, nobody has a partnership like that.

I've never seen that in the mob.

Maybe Gotti and Sammy?

No, Gotti and they were never partners.

Oh, they weren't?

No, they were just, they were, you know, if Sammy was the younger Bush.

They were probably partners in some things, but not partners in everything.

Got it.

You know,

I think probably Angelo Klock at one time was John Gotti's partner, partner.

But other than that, there's not really anybody I knew that had a partnership like Tony Lee and Fatty Andy.

I mean, that's probably why it was a successful.

Oh, yeah, very.

Yeah, they had a big crew.

They had a big crew.

Yeah.

They were partners from when they were teenagers.

Yeah, that's crazy.

The trust and the loyalty.

They used to tease each other.

You were a window breaker before you became my partner.

Oh, I love that, man.

So, was your grandfather in the mob issue?

Oh, you know, that's a funny thing.

No, nobody in my family was in the mob except my father.

Oh, wow.

You know, he never had a father.

So my grandfather immigrated from Naples, Italy, in like the turn of the century.

And my grandmother was a teenager when they got married.

My father was the youngest child out of eight.

My grandfather in 1932 got hit by a trolley car

and died.

And my father was only six.

Holy crap.

At the time of my grandfather's death, my father's best friends were

this guy Lenny the donor and Larry Abendando

Larry's father was the dasher and Lenny's uncle was happy mayone they were both members of murder incorporated

I'm sure you know yeah murders incorporated they were they all got the electric chair with Lepkey and Sing Sing holy crap so

they became his father figures these mob guys because his friends

family were all mobbed up.

The Maonis were all mobbed up.

The Amandandos, these people were all mobbed up.

So they became like his father figures.

And when he became a teenager, he started working for them.

And he used to tell me he's the way he is because he had no father.

Wow, that's deep.

Yeah.

Yeah, because a young kid is so impressionable, right?

Because my uncles, his brothers, all were legitimate guys.

Oh, none of them joined?

My uncle, no.

They all worked.

My two uncles worked for the transit.

One of my uncles, I mean, he made money legally within the transit.

He was shy lack of money, you know, booking bets, but he was legitimate.

They all were World War II veterans.

My three uncles,

totally all legit.

And my mother's family, too, all legit.

Damn, that is interesting.

Except Gene, Gene, my cousin Gene,

his grandfather, my uncle Jr., he was a little, he was legit, but not legit.

He was a bus driver, but he was a criminal.

Dude, Gene is funny, man, because with his mouth, the fact that he survived,

because he just says whatever he says.

Yeah, his grandfather was my mother's kid brother.

Wow.

So he's my second cousin.

Were you like mentoring him through the game?

No, you know, I was away.

When I went away, he was a kid.

When I went away, he was only 12.

Wow.

When I went away in

96, he was 12.

He was a year younger than my son.

Him and my son are very tight.

They grew up together.

So when I went away, he was 12.

When I came out eight, nine years later, he was in the mob.

He was already made?

No, he was just running around

with the banana family.

And so I never really mentored him or anything.

I was away them formative years,

you know.

But when I came out, I ran into him.

I went to get a haircut in Howard Beach, and he was in there getting a manicure and everything.

And, you know, he paid for my haircut, you know, yeah.

But yeah, so I missed out on that, you know,

that education that he got.

Did your kid want to join?

Whether he wanted to join or not, I made sure that that wasn't never going going to happen.

You know what I mean?

He grew up, the first 21 years of my son's life,

either I was in jail

and my father was in jail or we were both in jail at the same time.

The first 21 years of his life, he literally grew up in a prison visiting room and I made it a point.

that he was never going to wind up in the shoes I was in.

And I used to tell him, I'm not going to make the same mistakes as grandpa.

You know, I always made sure he worked.

I always got him jobs.

His mother made sure, you know, I mean, he got in trouble, you know,

like a kid, you know, normal kid trouble, you know.

Principal's office.

Yeah, you know, stuff like that.

I had to bail him out of a few things, you know, I had to bail him out of a couple of situations.

Genetics, man.

Yeah, but no, but he's a hard worker.

He works now.

You know,

he works.

He works.

I made sure of that.

Nice.

Yeah, that's important, man.

Anthony, it's been cool.

What do you got coming up next?

And where can people find you?

Well, they can find me on Reform Gangsters on my podcast.

They can find me at AnthonyRuggianojr.com on my website.

I got a Patreon page.

I'm going to be on August 11th at 10 o'clock on the history channel.

I'm going to be on Gangland.

That's a show that's coming out.

I have a few things going.

I'm going to be back out in Arizona with Sammy.

I have some mob tours that are really cool on my Patreon page if people want to check them out.

And that's it.

Reform Gangsters.

Subscribe.

We'll link below.

Next coming on, man.

Oh, my pleasure.