#2343 - Joe Pistone

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Nice to meet you.

My pleasure.

You always wear sunglasses.

Is that to hide your identity still?

That's a habit?

Actually, it's.

I have to see, number one.

But

where I reside now,

my neighbors have no idea that they're living next to Donnie Brasco.

Well, you have a very distinct voice.

Yeah, I know.

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

What a wild life you've had, sir.

Well, pretty much.

Yeah, yeah.

Never expected it to go like that, but

it

took off.

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

Well, I was with Naval Intelligence for three years.

And then

I always wanted to be in law enforcement.

And I was working in Philadelphia, actually,

and you do a lot of work with the FBI because, you know, on the government installations, government basis.

So I became friendly with some FBI agents.

And

I figured if I, you know, when I get up, when I finish this tour with NIS,

I'm going to go into law enforcement, so I might as well try for the best and the best of, you know, the FBI.

And so how does that lead to you infiltrating the mob?

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

You know, it

look, I grew up in Paterson, New Jersey.

I grew up in an all-Italian neighborhood.

knew wise guys, went to high school with sons of wise guys.

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

You hang out at the,

they let you hang out at the social clubs because, you know, you're a neighborhood kid, they know it.

So I knew the streets.

So when I went into the FBI, I was, you know, I was street smart, basically, Joe.

That's what it comes down to, you know.

And

my first assignments were bank robberies, fugitives, gambling cases,

and uh I started uh doing some uh little undercover work uh

on gambling cases'cause back then the FBI was big into into gambling, uh interstate gambling cases.

So what was your first undercover work?

First was uh infiltrating a um

a gambling house in uh Jacksonville, Florida, actually.

That's what was my first office.

What kind of gambling were they doing?

Uh craps.

Uh, I had a regular casino going,

and uh, you know, I felt comfortable around that stuff because I grew up with that stuff.

You know, I grew up uh

uh like I say in the neighborhood, uh, crap games, card games.

It wasn't wasn't anything new to me.

And being around gangsters was not like uh

intimidating because I was around gangsters growing up.

So, uh

I didn't have any problem, you know, getting into these games

and identifying the major players and who was running them, and that's basically what it was.

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

Yeah, later on, after the case goes down.

But most of these guys plead guilty, so you never go to trial.

Because,

you know,

it wasn't where they were facing, you know, 15, 20 years.

You know, they might get a year or two years and then,

get some time knocked off their sentences.

So most of it they plead, and so you never have to appear in a court.

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

Well, not too much with these cases.

No, not too much with those cases.

And then I worked a lot of stolen art,

buying stolen art, buying stocks and

swag, stuff like that.

So for how many years did you do stuff like that before you started being undercover in the mob?

Uh let's see, probably

uh

four or five years.

Yeah, yeah.

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

Well, what happened was is that uh I'm working out in New York, the New York office of the FBI,

and

there's a big case in

Tampa, Florida.

They have a case going on

guys that were stealing automobiles, high-priced automobiles.

In other words,

you go to them

and you say, hey, I want a Cadillac.

Okay,

what color you want?

All right.

What model you want?

And then they'd go out and hook it.

it

so they had uh

they grabbed one of the guys uh and they they flipped him

and uh they grabbed his son

and uh they said hey look you know

you help us and we'll we'll cut your son a break

he said okay

so he said look uh we want to put an undercover agent in with this crew.

They operated all up and down the East Coast from Baltimore all the way down to Florida.

And the guy that was running it was

what we call a half-assed wise guy out of Baltimore.

So he says, all right, so he introduced me to this guy

as a car thief.

But before

he introduced me, I said, look, I got to know how to steal cars.

So he gave me about a week's lesson on how to steal cars, how to hook cars.

Hot wire.

This is like what year was this?

This was in 19, let's see, 1973, 74.

So you essentially just pop in the ignition,

pop in the ignition,

crossing wires.

Crossing wires.

And some cars had alarm systems, taught me how to get under the car,

disarm the alarm system, how to use a slim gym to get in the door, and then

how to pop the ignition.

And once I learned, you know, I figured I can do that.

Then he introduced me and I got in with this crew.

There was a crew of about,

he was running like five or six guys.

And I did that for a year and a half.

Stole cars.

stole the tractor trailers.

I knew how to drive

tractor trailers because I did that in college.

During the summertime, I drove a tractor trailer during the summer.

So you take the cars, load them on a tractor trailer?

No, we just stole the cars and I bring them to you.

Oh, okay.

But I mean, we stole rigs too.

Oh, I see.

Because we were dealing with companies, too.

Got it.

You know, these guys that own some trucking companies.

So you have to trust this guy, though, to get you inside.

You have to trust this guy to not fuck this up and say hey this is a car thief exactly this episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog i think we can all agree that eating highly processed food for every meal isn't optimal so why is processed food the status quo for dog food because that's what kibble is an ultra processed food but a healthy alternative exists the farmer's dog they make fresh food for dogs and what does it look like real meat and vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients and help avoid any of the bad stuff that comes with ultra-processing.

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That's got to be hair raising.

Well, it is because, you know, the guy's an informant and he's already in trouble.

He's in trouble.

But

his basic reason for getting me in was he wanted to get his son out of trouble.

So, you know, we had him by the short ears there.

That, hey,

you know, if this goes good, your son is free.

We're going to cut your son free.

So that's what happened.

So I did that for a year and a half.

And

I get back to New York.

They make the arrest.

I went to trial in that case, but that case was in Florida.

And

a funny story on that case is, if you want to hear it,

I

hooked a Mercedes and delivered to this guy

and go to his house, and he wasn't home, but his wife was there.

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

And she says, oh, okay.

I give her the keys, because he had already paid.

So me and the other guy, we leave.

Fast forward now to court.

I'm going, I'm sitting in the

outside the court getting ready to testify.

And there's this lady.

She looked familiar.

It was two ladies.

And

so she walks up to me and she says,

Aren't you Donnie?

I said, yeah.

She said,

you delivered a car to my house, right?

I said, yeah.

She said, well, you know, my husband's on trial now.

I said, yeah, I know.

I'm going in to testify.

She says,

after he goes to jail, you want to go to dinner?

Dirty lady.

I said, no, thanks.

She might poison you.

Yeah.

So I get back to New York, and

I had a real great supervisor up there.

Was she hot?

I can't remember, Joe.

It was so long ago.

I would have remembered that part.

If she was, I would have remembered.

Yeah, you probably would have remembered.

So I get back to New York, and I had a real good supervisor named Guy Barada.

He was an Italian guy from the Bronx, good street agent.

And he was a supervisor of the truck hijacking squad.

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

And they were probably

doing

you know eight to ten hijackings a day, which was big time money because they were pharmaceuticals,

high value food items like lobsters, coffee.

You know, you're talking about the forty something foot trailer, so you're talking a lot of money.

But they were all run by the mob.

So

I get back to New York, I get to New York, and he says, hey, I'm thinking about doing this undercover operation,

seeing if we can get something going with

these truck hijackers.

So the idea was, you know, Nobody had ever infiltrated the mob before, you know, actually the mafia mafia.

Had some informants in with them, but nobody had actually gotten in.

So the idea was,

let's try to hit the fences.

Fences are

the guys that

sell the swag and sell the goods.

So

you need to have a profession.

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

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

So

who's not violent?

Jewel thief.

So I figure, okay,

I'll go in as a jewel thief.

Well,

if you're going to go in as a jewel thief, what do you have to know?

You've got to know diamonds and precious gems, right?

All right, so I went to school.

I went to diamond school, diamond and precious gem school.

Oh, so you have to be able to identify

the lens.

Well, that's how you're going to get, that's how you're going to get caught, right?

Right, right, right.

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

Right, right.

How long is the school for?

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

Now, take it another step further.

If you're a jewel thief, what else do you have to know?

You got to know how to get in places.

Right.

So, pick locks.

I had to learn how to pick locks.

Right.

What else you got to know?

Crack safes.

You got to know about safes.

Yeah.

You got to know about alarm systems.

So I had my guys, when I say my guys, our guys, you know, our tech guys

school me on lock picking,

different types of safes and alarm systems.

So all that took a few months before I felt comfortable, you know.

And then I went out and

on this operation

we didn't do anything with contacts.

In other words, everything I did, I did under Donny Brasco.

I was I rented an apartment, I bought a car,

utilities, you know, phones, everything.

Everything as a as a citizen

in quotes, Donnie Brasco.

They get you a social security number and the whole deal?

Social Security, everything.

But

I don't want to get into how they do that, but

nothing could be

at that time,

they couldn't

uncover anything.

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

And again,

You have to know the mafia, you have to know New York City.

You don't just walk into a place

and say, hey, I'm a jewel thief.

It doesn't work that way.

You got to get seen.

You got to be around.

So I moved out of my residence.

Of course, my family wasn't in New York anyway.

But I had to move into my apartment.

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

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

How do you go and get your face seen?

You just show up by yourself?

Just show up.

Is that suspicious, though?

A guy shows up by himself, not from the neighborhood?

No, well, that's the thing.

Because I couldn't say, hey, I'm from Brooklyn.

I'm from Manhattan.

I'm from the Bronx because these guys have the contacts everywhere.

So it was up to me if I got into conversation with anybody.

My story was, and then again,

you have to know your enemy.

Okay?

And the enemy was the mafia.

So you have to know about the mafia.

You have to know if you do get into conversation with these guys

and they're trying to check you out.

What's your backstory?

Where are you from?

My background was I was an orphan,

okay?

And I moved between Florida and California.

Why an orphan?

Because then I wouldn't have to produce a mother and a father.

Because again, if I was lucky enough to get in,

they'd say, well,

where are your parents at?

Right.

I couldn't have any siblings that I knew of.

I couldn't have been married, so I couldn't have an ex-wife or anything, because I would have had to produce somebody.

So my backstory was I was an orphan.

To back it up, we found an orphanage

that had burnt down

and all the records were destroyed, so

they couldn't check that.

I mean, these are all things that

that if you're going to send somebody into an undercover operation that is deep cover, and remember I had no informant bringing me in.

This was a, it had to be a cold entree.

So I hung around

maybe five, six months.

That's all I did.

And that's another thing, too.

It's a seven-day a week job.

Because if they see you Monday to Friday

and then they don't see you Saturday and Sunday, where the hell are you Saturday and Sunday?

Right.

So it's seven days a week.

It was seven days a week.

Did you have a family at the time?

I did, yeah.

But they they lived

they lived across country at the time.

That ought to be crazy difficult for them.

Very difficult.

It was.

It was, yeah.

So uh

So you just kind of just hang around restaurants, bars?

Yeah, and my only conversation with anybody was, is uh

what I'll have to drink and what I'll have to eat.

That's and I'm not a drinker.

I never was a drinker.

So uh and you know for young undercovers, you don't have to be a drinker and you don't have to do shit that, you know, that you think

gangsters do.

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

That's it.

And

I never

went outside those boundaries because

that's me.

I didn't do it.

So I used to go to this one place, and actually, this place wasn't too far from

my apartment up in Yorkville.

And

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

And

I always would sit at the bar, you know,

never talk to the bartender other than,

what do you want?

What do you want to eat?

What do you want to drink?

So one night I go in there and

the wise guys are there.

One of the girlfriends, but there's one guy missing.

But the the girl that he was always with was there.

So I'm at the bar and

I guess she gets up, she goes to the lady's room, she comes by and she says hello.

And I just said hello.

Now again, knowing your enemy, know how they operate.

So, the first thing I do is I call a bartender over, right?

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

So, I just said, sir, would you, you know, I said, I want to go on record.

That's a mob term.

I want to go on record.

I didn't ask that young lady to stop and say hello.

And

he just nods, and that's it.

Well, fast forward, this happens like three or four different times.

And

they're in there, she's in there, he's not there.

About the fourth time, the same thing, you know, she would come over

and I would call him over.

So finally he says, hey, he said,

if you want to talk to her, go ahead.

Her boyfriend went bye-bye.

He didn't go to Disneyland, Joe.

Right,

they whacked him.

So I said, no,

I don't have any

interest.

So now what does this guy know?

He knows that I'm a street guy.

All right?

So

now he comes over to me and now we start talking.

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

Finally, he says, hey, my name is Charlie.

I said, my name is Donnie.

Now that's another thing.

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

Or, hey, my name is Donnie Brasco.

It's nickname or first name.

So that's another notch with him that this kid knows something.

So

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

I said, sure, why not?

He said, when I bang up here,

I'm going to go to an all-night game so you want to come I said yeah

so we

close up the joint with him and

takes me to a

game

and obviously it's run by the wise guys

you know they got a whole casino set up

and

doesn't introduce me to anybody

but

I'm okay because I'm with him.

So now,

this is

a couple more weeks maybe.

So now I figured now, and he don't ask me what I do,

and I don't say anything about jewelry.

But now I figured now I got to try to set the hook.

So I come in one night, and I got a packet of diamonds.

So I put them on a bar

and I say, hey, Charlie, I need X amount of money for this envelope.

I don't tell him what's in it.

I just said, I need X amount of money.

But I give him a street price where he can

make money himself.

So

he takes it,

says, okay, puts it under the bar.

A couple weeks go by.

I don't ask him about it.

He don't ask me.

But

I'm still hanging around with him.

He comes in one night,

puts an envelope on the bar, and he said, Donnie, somebody left this for you.

I said, okay.

I put it in my sport coat pocket, get back to my apartment, and

there's the money in it.

So now what does he know?

He knows

I'm a thief, because I'm giving him diamonds.

I'm not asking them at

prices for Tiffany prices, right?

Now we get to

the game, and

he introduces me as Don the Jeweler.

So he introduces me to this Colombo guy.

The guy's name was Jilly.

So

Jilly said, hey, you know, Don, where are you from?

I said, well, you know, I

hung around in,

hung around Summit, Florida, hung around, you know,

California.

I said, you know,

I just move around a lot.

he said well why don't you come out to my place i'm out in brooklyn and i said yeah okay

so i go out there and i go out to his club and he has a

store you know all swag

and uh

so he was at the clumbos

so i start hanging out there with the clumbos and i got in with him i got in with his crew uh

did some stuff with them you know because you got to do something something otherwise

if you ain't producing if you ain't producing, you ain't worth it, you know.

Like what kind of what's the first thing you have to do with them?

Well, they had uh they did they did some hijacking and uh

you know, unloaded some trucks for them and

different things.

Uh

so that went on with the with the Columbos and I was getting I was getting good information with these guys.

Uh that went on for a couple months.

And

finally, I get to the club one day,

and there's two guys there that I didn't know.

So he

introduces them to me as Frankie and Patsy.

He said, Donnie, you know, Frankie, Patsy,

okay.

As it turns out, they just got out of the can.

They were part of Jilly's crew.

One of the guys was a made guy.

Made guy is a guy that's been officially inducted into a particular mafia family.

And these guys were with the Columbos.

I think Patsy was a made guy, and

Frankie was an associate,

but they had just gone out of the can.

So they're looking to set up scores because, you know, they've been away for a few years.

So

Jilly tells them, you know, hey, Donnie's, you know, Donnie's a good thief, and

he knows alarms, he knows locks, he knows safes.

So they had a couple

scores lined up.

So we go out,

case this place, and I tell them, hey, I can't bypass that alarm.

Because, you know, if you say you can do everything,

nobody can do everything, no matter how good you are.

So I said, no, I said, I can't defeat that alarm.

Okay.

A few days later, they got another one set up and

it's a safe.

We go in.

I said, you got to blow this safe.

You know, you'll wake up the whole neighborhood, you know.

Okay.

So now this this pisses them off.

So

a couple of days later I get to the club and Jilly, he says, Donnie, let's let's take a walk and talk.

I said okay

so we walk and we're talking

that's what a walk and talk is you're walking on the street and you're talking because they don't think it you know they don't think the FBI or anybody can hear you I said what's the matter Jilly

he said well he said you know I told I told Frankie

and and Fancy what you know what a great thief you are and he

And they're pissed off because, you know, Fancy's pissed off because you turned down

the two scores.

I said, well, what do you want me to tell you, Jillian?

I couldn't bypass the alarm.

I'm honest with you, and I don't want to blow a safe that, you know, you got to blow, blow, blow.

So he said, well, they want to have a sit-down.

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

So we go in the back room, sit down, they lock the door,

and

Patsy

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

Oh boy.

Oh boy.

So it's crazy what goes through your head.

So I look at the rug.

I said to myself, I hope it's fucking Persian.

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

So we're in there and

where are you from, Donnie?

Now, you know, in these situations, you want to be on the offense.

You don't want to be on the defense.

But

I can't really disrespect him because he's a made guy.

And, you know, if you know anything about the mob,

you can't disrespect a made guy.

in front of other people.

So I said, hey, look, you know, I'm an orphan.

I'm not from here.

I travel the country.

You know,

well, tell us some people that you stole with.

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

I said, why would I do that?

Why would I give up anybody that I did scores with?

Right?

So this goes on and on and on.

After about four hours, finally, Jilly says, Hey,

Donnie's been with us for months now.

We know what he can do.

It's over.

It's over.

I said, Okay.

Now I got a problem.

The problem is, they just called me out.

So, in their world, I can't go shake their hand because this why isn't Donnie pissed off?

All right,

my only recourse here is some kind of physical

recourse.

But

I can't do anything to Patsy

because he's the made guy.

I can't touch him, and that's one of the rules of the mafia.

You don't lay your hands on a made guy.

It'll get you killed.

It'll get you killed.

So

the only guy I can hit is Frankie.

He's not a made guy.

So we get up,

start to walk out,

and I call Cock Frankie.

Oh, Jesus.

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

Right.

So now I'm going to.

Was Frankie questioning you too?

Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

But he's not a mate guy.

Right.

So he's fair game.

Boy.

So I hit him.

He goes down.

Now Patsy's jumping on me and he's he's punching the hell out, but I can't

hit him back.

I can't hit him back.

I can just protect myself.

But I figured, well, you hit me once.

I hit Frankie twice.

So

it went on.

So then finally they broke it up.

But now I know I can't stay around here.

I can't stay with these guys because it you know, you can't get into a altercation with made guys

and

and have it come out.

So

after we're

everything settled down, I'd say to Jilly, Jilly, let's take a walk and talk.

So we do.

We get outside.

I said, Jilly, look, no disrespect to you, you know.

I said, but I can't come around here anymore.

I said, because you know how it's going to end.

He says, yeah, Donnie, I realize that.

He said,

but, you know, no real feelings between you and me.

I said, okay.

So

at the card game,

I was introduced to a banana guy by the name of Tony Mira.

I had never done anything with him, but I was introduced to him.

So

I go back with Charlie, you know, to the card games.

I start siding up to this Mirror, who is a complete psycho case, a complete fucking psycho case, which I find out later on.

He's a big brawly guy

and

he says, you know, why don't you come downtown?

I said, yeah, okay.

So he was from Little Itley and that's where he hung out.

He had a

bus stop luncheon at

down at Little Itley.

but he was psycho.

So I started hanging out with him

at my first bonano guy that brings me around.

So we were out one night, and he was shaking down nightclubs.

And

I was helping him, when I say help him, I was with him, you know, shake down owners and

at nightclubs and stuff.

So

it's about three or four in the morning one morning and we go to a diner for breakfast

and

the eggs come out cold.

So he starts berating the waitress.

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

So I said, Tony, I said, you know,

I said, she's only doing her job.

I said,

why are you taking it out on her?

You know, she's here at 4 o'clock in the morning, waitressing.

So he tore the shit out of me.

He tore into me in front of everybody.

But I really can't go back at him.

But I have to let him know that, you know,

I'm not a pushover.

So the next day...

Now this guy,

as I had gotten to know him, I had seen him in action.

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

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

I said, because I'll fucking stab you.

I said, you won't even know it's coming.

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

And he was like,

so,

but he introduced me to,

kept introducing me to other bananos, and then he introduced me to.

So even after that?

Yeah, after that.

So after that, did you get his respect by saying you stabbed him?

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Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because he knew that, you know, he knew that I wasn't bullshitting him.

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

I mean,

not

physically, but, you know, just calling me, you know,

and because I was standing up for this waitress.

But that was him.

So he introduces me to a guy by the name of Lefty Ruggerio, another maid guy in the bananos

from

downtown, Knobbaca Village.

They all lived in Knickerbocker Village.

And

he introduces me to Lefty.

So now Mira had just gotten out of the can.

Now they send him back.

So he goes back to the can.

He was a big moneymaker for the bananos and dope.

He was a big narcotics guy for the bananos.

But he had violated his parole, so they sent him back.

So I started hanging out with Ruggerio.

And

what Mira never did and what Ruggio did

is

his captain was a guy by the name of Mike Sabella.

And

once Ruggiero Ruggerio got to know me a little better, he brings me to Mike Sabella, who's the captain of the crew.

And he said to Mike,

I'm going on record that Donnie's with me.

And that's what you do.

When you're a made guy, you have an associate.

You go to your captain and you go on record.

So now nobody else could fuck with you.

Nobody else could take you.

Mira never did that, even though I spent a lot of time with Mira.

He never went to his captain and said, I'm going on record that Donnie's with me.

So

I get to know Rogerio pretty good.

Start doing stuff with

all told, how much time are you undercover now?

Now this is probably

going over a year.

Wow.

Yeah, over a year now.

Yeah.

Now, are you reporting to anybody during this time?

Do you have to go back to the FBI?

Never.

Once I stepped out of the office, I never went back to the office.

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

So you're totally on your own.

You're on your own.

I had no surveillance because, you know, you're in New York City.

Right.

You're working seven days a week.

You know, my day would go from maybe

11 o'clock in the morning to maybe three, four o'clock the next morning,

seven days a week.

So,

you know, your only lifeline is the phone to

your contact agent.

Yeah.

Wow.

And

so I'm doing a lot of stuff like that.

I'm gaining all kind of intelligence, though.

You know,

identifying made guys, identifying guys in other families that are made.

Are you writing this stuff down?

Do you just keep it all in your head?

No, in your head.

And what I do is I would regurgitate it

over the telephone to my contact guy.

And he would reduce it to paper.

Yeah, because,

like,

you know, these guys would come to my apartment.

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

You know, very seldom did I have a wire on.

Most of my recordings are on the telephone.

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

And when I had the feeling

that I was going to be told about hits.

And what I do was I had a mini mini cassette recorder that I bought at

what's that, Radio Shack?

Radio Shack.

Radio Shack.

Oh, wow.

You know, and I just put it in my

sport coat pocket.

You got to be really worried about getting caught with that.

Yeah, but at least, you know, nobody's tapping, you know, because

once you get in with these guys,

when you meet them for the day, they all hug each other and they kiss each other on both cheeks.

If they kiss you on the lips, then you're done.

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

So, yeah, so I didn't make, I didn't make many body recordings

because you're always, and

they're very touchy-feely guys, you know.

I mean, when I was, I was with Mirror one time, and

he said, hey, pull over, Donnie.

I pull over,

and

he tears my, he tears my,

and my car, the dashboard apart.

Now, if you saw the movie, that was they had Lefty do that, but that was in the real life, that was Tony Mirror.

I mean,

you know, so I couldn't have my car wired.

Right.

Does he suspecting you or suspecting somebody else when he's tearing your dash apart?

Well, it's it's well, I'm new, you know, I'm uh you know, nobody could go to anybody and say that they knew somebody that that they knew Donnie, right, you know.

so that's how they that's how they

check you out you know because they had no other way of checking me out really

so I you know hanging with Ruggerio doing stuff with him

and

now we come to a point where I'm really in with with the bananos I mean

they're starting to talk

they would talk business with me there

you know,

and they felt comfortable with me because,

again,

reverting back to

my early years growing up, you know, hanging out

at the social clubs in the neighborhood, you know,

I knew that if you don't have any interest in the conversation, walk away from it.

And that's what I did with these guys, is

if they started to talk about something, I would get up and walk away because it puts in their mind,

you know,

Downey's not really interested.

You know what I'm saying?

It's not he doesn't want to get into our real business.

So

that made them trust me more.

That made them trust me.

You knew the protocol.

Yeah, I knew or I knew the protocol, exactly.

So

now what happens

is that

the

FBI had an operation going in Milwaukee, undercover operation, against the Milwaukee family, right?

The Balestrari family who's connected to Chicago.

Now this gives you this will give you a little hint how the mob works.

So they're not really good

not really going anywhere.

All They had a vending machine company set up,

and the undercover was undercover

actually that I knew, which is

because

I had a rule: if I didn't know you,

I don't care if you're an FBI agent or not,

I'm not introducing you, I'm not vouching for you because I don't know if you're any fucking good or not.

You know,

so they reach out to me and they say, Hey,

we got an operation going in Milwaukee.

Yeah,

and this is what it is.

We got a vending machine company.

We got trucks.

We got a warehouse.

We got machines.

But we're not getting anywhere.

You know, the undercover,

who's the undercover?

Ty Cobb.

That was his...

Yeah, that was the agent's real name.

I said, Ty's the undercover.

They said, yeah.

I said, okay, now you can, now I'll listen to you.

Because I know

Ty and I had done undercover work in Chicago

together.

I said, okay.

So

I'm talking, you know, I said, well,

tell Ty to call me.

I want to talk to Ty.

So he said he he tells me what what's going on.

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

I said, all right.

So I said, well, what's the plan?

Well, maybe you can bring the bananas out here

and we can

get a sit-down with the balustraris.

I said, well,

let me see.

So

we were Jerio one day, and

I just

dropped a, hey, Left.

You know, I got a call the other day from a guy that

I used to steal artwork with down in Baltimore.

And he's out in Milwaukee.

He said, what the fuck's he doing in Milwaukee?

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

He says, is he crazy?

He said, they'll blow him up out there.

He says, he can't do a vending machine business out there.

That's the mob.

I said, well, he doesn't know.

He doesn't know anything about the mob.

We drop it.

A couple days later,

I says, hey, left, this guy call me again.

He needs help.

He said, Donnie, what do you think?

He said, you can't just go out there.

And then he looks at me, he said, this guy got any money?

I said, I don't know.

Let me ask him.

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

So I called Ty.

He was going by the name of Tony.

And I said,

hey, Tony.

He said, I said, Lefty wants to know if you got any money.

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

And, you know,

I got a warehouse full of machines.

I got everything set up.

I said, okay.

So I go back to Lefty.

I said, Lefty, he's told me he's got 200,000 in the bank.

And he's got this big warehouse set up.

He says, all right.

He said, let me talk to Mike.

Now, Mike Cibelo is the captain, right?

So Mike said, all right.

He said, you and Lefty go out there.

Just sit down with him and make sure that he has what he says he has.

Don't tell anybody you're going.

I said, okay.

So

the first thing is

call Tony and tell him to send us airplane tickets.

Because, you know, wise guys,

they're not spending their own money.

So the Bureau, you know, Tony

gets us two plane tickets.

Me and Lefty fly out there.

And

he takes us to the warehouse.

And he's, you know, they got the whole operation going on.

And

Lefty said, okay, so we go back and report back to Mike.

And he said, okay, he says, now here's the story.

Tony's been with the Bonanos for 10 years.

He's been an associate of ours for 10 years.

Because that's what he has to tell

Chicago and Milwaukee.

Because if they just say, Donnie just met this guy, they're going to say, well,

he's not with you.

You didn't claim him.

So we'll take the whole business.

Right.

So here's the way it works.

Now we go to

our Consiglieri, the Consiglieri of the Bananos, right?

Guy by the name of Bobby Badheart.

You know why they called him Bobby Badheart?

Because he had a bad heart.

A bad heart.

Easy, right?

So he goes,

and

Bobby Badheart now has to call Chicago,

right?

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

He's settled now in Milwaukee.

He's been in Milwaukee for a couple years.

He wants to go into the business and he has machines and everything.

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

Okay.

Chicago now calls

Balestrari's concigliary

and relates the whole story to him.

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

A week or so goes by.

Chicago calls back and said, okay,

he'll have a meet with you guys.

Who's coming out?

It'll be Lefty Ruggerio and Donny Brasco.

Now, Lefty's have made guys, so, you know.

So they say, okay,

come on out, check into this hotel, and wait for a phone call.

So me and Lefty fly out,

check into this hotel, and

we wait about three or four days, just hanging around the hotel.

We can't go anywhere because we can't miss the phone call.

So we get the phone call.

He says, okay,

come to

Snugg's restaurant.

Such and such a day, such and such a time.

It's Balasteri's restaurant.

He owns a hotel, and it's a restaurant in his hotel.

So me, Lefty,

and Tony, the other undercover,

we go there.

And

now, if you know the model, Joe, you don't get to sit down with a boss

unless you're another boss.

You know what I mean?

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

So now,

who's there is

Balestray, the boss, his under boss, his consiglieri, and his two sons, who are both lawyers.

Right?

So we have a big spread.

We're in why do you want to be here?

Well, you know, Tony's been with us.

This now Lefty's doing all the talking'cause he's the main guy.

Tony's been with us for ten years, you know, him and him and Donnie,

They did a lot of

art theft together and stuff, and

they've both been with us.

And

Tony thought he, you know,

he could get the best, he can get the

business going with the machines and stuff.

So after this whole dinner, probably about five or six hours, they said, okay, we'll get back to you.

All right.

So a couple of days later,

they called,

why don't you have dinner at my house?

A fucking boss is inviting us to dinner at his house.

It doesn't happen

if you know the the world of the mafia.

Gives us the address.

Me, Lefty and Tony, and Lefty's like,

you got to know wise guys, right?

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

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

So we go to his house, and...

He's right on the lake.

He has a big

table, you know, like you see in the movies.

And got the maids

serving us.

And he said, okay, he said,

we'll go in partners.

We'll be 50-50 partners.

Tony does all the work.

You know, we'll tell you where to go

to put your machines in.

They'll take your machines.

So, now, what did we just do?

We just married two mafia families together: Bonanos

and the Belestraries through Chicago at first,

marrying two mafia families to do business together.

Right,

me and Left to go back to New York,

everything's going good.

Tony's meeting with the sons, because that's who they said, you meet me with my sons, right?

After a few months,

nothing.

They stopped meeting with him.

Don't know why.

They won't take his calls, nothing.

So I tell I said, Lefty,

they don't

they're not responding.

What do you mean they're not responding?

I said, They're not taking his calls anymore.

He said, Well, w what do you do?

Try to, you know.

I said, Tony, I said, Lefty, this guy's not like that.

Make a long story short,

Tony had been a cop in a city outside of Milwaukee

after he got out of the Marine Corps, before he went into the Bureau.

And somehow they found out

there was a leak somewhere.

But

they don't tell

we find this out later that this is how they

they don't tell this to Lefty

Which saved my ass

because I I vouch for Tony.

Right.

Right

so

We're trying to get in touch with Chicago

Chicago's not you know, Chicago's a we don't know why they

why they stopped you know, we don't don't have any idea

so that goes on now that's

I got that hanging on me

right yeah

so Lefty sends me to Milwaukee go you know go find out

go search for this guy and blah blah blah blah

And you know I come up with a story, left, you know,

I found this car, it's in the parking lot, I mean, it's in the parking lot of the

airport.

Then when I went back, it was gone.

So I go and they said the cops towed it.

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

So now we've got to go tell Mike Sabella.

our captain, because, you know, our money source dried up.

so we go sit down with mike

and this is hard to believe but

and he's ripping right

you know

my punishment was what i couldn't go to the christmas party

that's it that's it

i mean he was he was ripped

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But he banned me from the Christmas party.

Because you introduced him to the cop.

Well, he didn't know he was a cop because

the operation just shut down, and so the money stopped, wasn't coming in anymore.

Right.

And they don't tell you why.

No.

No.

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

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

You know,

I'm saying to myself, my God,

this is what I'm going to do.

saying so they don't suspect you at all

no

how do they not suspect you how do they not question you well I had been with them so many I have been with them now you know Joe over two years now right and you know so but I'm always on edge because I don't know why aren't the Balestraris telling

Ruggerio right unless they're too embarrassed

you know what I mean right I don't I don't know.

To this day.

Well,

I mean,

after we found out, yeah,

to this day, I have no idea why they didn't tell him.

And whatever happened to Tony?

Oh, we just shut the operation down.

They just shut it down.

You know?

So

I'm going on again.

We're going on.

Nice cup.

Want it?

You can have it.

Yo, thank you.

I got some swag coming for you.

All right.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I got swag too.

You can have one of them, Jerry.

But I mean, I got a lot of Donnie Brasco swag that I'm going to mail to you.

It was supposed to be at the hotel.

It never made it.

So this has to be hair raising.

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

Right.

And but I got to stick to the story, you know.

So

I kind of

squared things around with him and

because I, you know,

and Mike.

So now what happens is that

at the time, Carmen Galenti was the boss of the Benanos.

All right.

And

they kill Galenti.

They whack him.

Right?

Because there's kind of a beef within the family, and

one side didn't like Galente, so they whack him.

Mike Zabello now was associated with Galenti.

So they tell Mike, Mike,

either step down or we're going to whack you too.

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

Right?

So

one of the

originators, when I say originators,

instigators, whatever, is a guy by the name of Sonny Black, Napoletano.

He was out in Brooklyn.

So they put me and remember we were with Mike Sabella.

So they put me and Lefty

now with

under Sonny Black.

They make Sonny Black becomes a captain.

They put me and Lefty under Sonny Black out in Brooklyn.

So that's who we report to every day.

And what you, you know, you have to, you have to check in with your captain every day.

So every day,

me and Lefty would report out to

the motion lounge.

It's on Graham and Withers Street in Brooklyn.

Sonny's our new captain.

So,

and again, you know,

the intelligence information I'm gathering is like

no other than anybody else can get because, you know, informants aren't going to give you all this stuff.

And I'm meeting different people again.

I'm meeting people from

different families through these guys.

so i'm rocking out there in in uh

in brooklyn uh

under sunny black

and i get another call

uh

they want to the

headquarters wants to talk to you about what Well, we got another cover operation going in Tampa, Florida.

Yeah.

And we want to see if you can

bring your bananas in.

I said, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute,

I just went through this in Milwaukee.

Well,

the supervisor wants to talk to you.

I knew the supervisor.

Supervisor's a good guy.

So I called him.

I said, Tony, what's up?

He says, we've got a nightclub

and

it's pretty good, but

we can't get into Santo Trafficante.

And maybe, you know, maybe you can do the same thing you did in Milwaukee.

I said, I don't know, man.

I said,

if I do it, number one, who's the undercovers?

Because they had two undercovers

running a nightclub.

And

they said, well, one of them is

an agent by the name of Sal Mary, Steve.

I said, okay.

I said, he's, I know Steve.

I did undercover work with him too.

I said, I got no problem with Steve.

And they gave me the other guy.

The other guy I knew, but I never worked with him.

I said, but as long as Steve is involved,

I'll see what I can do.

But

I don't know how long it's going to take so you got to just let me think about this all right because I don't want to come up

you know I'm not coming up with a story hey I got a call from a guy that I used to fucking thieve with right right right

so I figure okay

after a while

okay here's what we'll do

We used to go to Miami a lot.

When I say we, I'm talking about me, Lefty, the wise guys.

We'd fly to Miami for a long weekend.

We had a hotel down there that

put us on the arm, right?

Give us the sweets and stuff and stay for the weekend.

So I says, okay, here's what we'll do.

The next time we go to Miami, right,

you guys go down there.

And

whenever we go to a restaurant, I'll let you know what restaurant we're going to go to.

And you guys just happen to be in the restaurant

and you you

uh sh

uh Steve Salmieri, who was going by Chico, I said, Chico just

happens to notice me and comes over to the table and hey, Donnie, how you been?

So it's like a bump, right?

It's not like right, right, right.

So that's what we did.

So we're out at this restaurant and

we set that deal up.

And Chico comes over, and Donnie, hey, I haven't seen you in years.

How you doing?

What are you doing down here?

Well, we got a nightclub.

You got a nightclub?

Where?

It's outside of Tampa, up in Tampa, Florida.

No kidding.

How long you been down there?

I don't know, three, four years.

What are you doing?

And I thought, it's a nice club.

Why don't you come by?

Now, that, you know, again, he's talking about a nightclub.

So everything is dollar signs.

So

I said, Left, you want to take a ride up one day?

He said, yeah.

So when they leave, he says, you know these guys?

I said, well, I know Chico.

I said, I don't know the other guy.

I said, but, you know,

Chico,

he was a good thief, you know.

I said, I haven't seen him in a while.

I haven't seen him in like maybe five years, but

he's always was, you know, he's always a good thief.

So

he said, all right, let's take a ride up.

So we take a ride up, and it's a nice, nice nightclub.

It's on like five acres.

They got tennis courts.

We hang out.

A lot of business, you

Uh it was open from

I don't know

nine o'clock to all it was wanna, you know, open all night.

So

he said nice place.

He said, uh, we have to tell Sonny about it when we go back to when we go back to Brooklyn.

Okay.

So we go back to Brooklyn and uh

tell Sonny about it.

Now, you know, now I'm like in my fourth year with these guys.

So

we go back to Brooklyn and tell Sonny

left it.

Hey, we ran into one of Donnie's old friends.

Boy, they got a nice club.

Yeah,

well, maybe we'll go down and see it.

So we go down and they see a lot of potential.

But now we

they can't operate anything illegal because Santo Trafficante owns Florida.

So now we got to go through the same routine

All right

Consiglieri has to call Trafficante's guy and say hey, we got you know

One of our guys has a club down there who hasn't been with us for,

you know,

Chico has been had to be with the bananos again for five, six years.

Excuse me.

So we go through that same routine.

And

finally,

you know,

this takes a while.

It's not like overnight.

So we go through the routine

and he says, okay.

His guy says, all right,

Santo will meet you at such and such a hotel on such and such a day.

Get to meet another fucking boss of a Florida.

Me and Sonny meet him.

Oh no, the first time we met him was at a restaurant in

Right outside of Tampa, that Creek fishing village.

I've drawn a blank, but at any rate, we meet him in a restaurant,

and actually it was Pappas' restaurant.

That was the name of it.

And

Sonny had never met him before,

but you know, they go through all the niceties.

And

Sonny tells him, you know, we've got a nightclub and we want to start running gambling out of it.

You know.

So

he said, okay, I'll meet you.

I'll come up and look at it.

I'll meet you.

So

I don't know if we met him the next week or the next couple of weeks.

We meet him again.

Now, this time it's in a hotel room.

He comes to Sonny's hotel room

and

sets everything up, right?

Forms the marriage.

Again, now it's the second time we've married two fucking mafia families together.

So

he

said, all right, he said, you want to do a casino night?

Yeah.

He said, I'm going to send my two guys up.

Okay.

A couple days later, two guys come up from Miami,

card sharks.

I sat in a hotel with these room guys, Joe,

and they were marking all the decks of cards.

I could not, after they get done, I had no idea

how they marked these cards.

They were for blackjackets, not right

had craps tables, the dice were dice were fixed.

I mean, it was like

everything was, you know.

So we set the club up

and

we're advertising

casino night for the veterans of foreign war.

We even had a certificate and everything, right?

We're paying off somebody in the Sheriff's Department

to protect us.

Well,

we got the game going

and doing pretty good.

Doing pretty good.

And

the place is jammed.

So what happens is that all of a sudden knock on the door,

one of the doormen slides.

He comes to me, he said, Donnie, there's a bunch of sheriff's deputies outside.

Whoa.

So right away I get on the phone.

I can't get our our contact in the sheriff's department.

You're not answering his phone.

And then we had just paid him that day.

So

I said, all right, clear all the money off the table.

So we get all the money off the tables and put chips back on the tables.

I said, all right, let him in.

Because

we had the certificate, we had everything.

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

There was a lot of money stashed.

What we had was an old-time one-arm bandit.

The thing had to be a hundred years old.

Nobody ever put money in it.

It was just there.

So they come in and they they

they don't see any money.

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

He fucking wins.

You're running a gambling operation.

He said, nobody's ever played that thing, right?

Well, they wrecked the joint.

We all get arrested.

Why did he get arrested?

Because I don't understand.

It was a gambling charge.

They arrest us.

Oh, because but why?

Because of the one-armed bandit.

Because they won, and they said that that was gambling.

Oh.

Nobody even knew there was any money in it or anything.

It was just there as a decoration.

Oh, boy.

You know,

it was an antique.

So they just used it as an excuse?

Yeah, just use it as an excuse because

we were the mafia guineas

from New York.

Right.

That's what we were.

Right?

So if they throw us in a can

and just for the one-armed bandit.

Yeah.

They never find the money.

We didn't, but somebody did.

Oh, boy.

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Somebody did.

How much money?

There was over 30 grand that I know that that was stashed.

So they swiped that?

Well, I don't know.

Somebody did.

Probably.

Somebody did.

Yeah.

So we had Traffic Canthy's lawyer.

He gave us, I don't know who it was,

so we call the lawyer and he gets us out of the can the next day.

And now I'm in another fucking bide because now we got busted.

And

we did, you know, we were paying the guy off.

And what happened to the guy you paid off?

He committed suicide later on.

Oh,

convenient.

Yeah, yeah.

Did he really commit suicide?

Yeah, he did.

Really?

Because

when he got a subpoena.

Oh, he knew they were coming for him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So

that kind of screwed that thing up.

And,

but, you know,

Sonny knew that uh

uh that we were paying the guy off and everything, so you know it was just a

hazards of doing business.

Hazards of doing business as as a mob, you know.

But when we got back to the club, like I say, the the satchel was gone with the money.

Somebody took it.

Uh

and so we go back to New York.

And again now

there's another beef in the in the Bonano family, because after they whackalenti,

They make Rusty Rostelli the boss of the family, but Rusty's in a can.

He's in a can

so Sonny Black is is running the family along with

Another capo

and then there's a Sicilian faction of the Bonano family and They're running their they're running their faction

All right

Now there's a faction of three capos

that are against Rusty Rostelli

and they're against Sonny and the other capos.

So now there's more friction in the bonanos.

So

in order to solve this,

they call a sit-down.

Sonny Black, the guys on his side, the capos on his side.

call a sit-down for the other the other three capos

to straighten this out

well it the deal is when these other three capos get to the sit-down they're gonna whack them

they're gonna whack them

so

uh

I was supposed to be in on that but they cut they cut me out at the last minute

I was supposed to be in on the hit but they cut me out at the last minute and then they I was supposed to be on the cleanup crew but they cut me out

at the last minute.

Why'd they cut you out?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Because I wasn't told until after,

you know.

Right.

So they whacked these three guys.

And the next day, Sonny calls me into the club.

And he said

Bruno never showed up.

That was the fourth guy that was

one of the capos in Delicano, his son was supposed to come, and he didn't show.

So he gave me the contract to kill him.

So he said, we think he's in Florida.

So he sends me to Florida to look for him, but he wasn't down there.

And the deal was that if I did find him, I'd call the FBI, and they would snatch him, and we'd stage a hit.

Or if they found him, you know, we'd do the reverse.

They'd stage a hit, but we never found them.

So now,

all this time I never carried a gun.

I never carried a gun in this whole operation.

Really?

Yeah.

Was that unusual?

No, because these guys don't carry guns on a daily basis, the mob, you know, mafia guys.

They don't?

No, no, because they're always getting rousted by the cops.

Got it.

The only time they carry a piece is when they're going to go do some work.

Right.

You know?

so did you see guys get killed

no

i don't believe you

so

that was the sneakiest no i've ever heard in my life

so we

we uh

let's move on we yeah let's move on we um um

you made me lose my train of thought joke

no so

uh we're in the club so i get the contract for Bruno, but obviously I can't find him.

Bureau can't find him.

Did anybody ever find him?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what happens is we're in a club one day in the motion lounge,

and

Sonny gets a phone call, and he says, hey, Donnie, he said,

we think Bruno's at such a place.

But

it was bad info.

It was bad info.

So I was asked, well, what would you do if he was there?

I said,

I hate to say it, but Bruno probably was a dead man.

And

how could you say that?

Well, because when you're given a contract,

it's your responsibility that a guy gets killed.

And if you refuse the contract,

you get killed.

you're gonna get whacked so would you have had to do it

well

if you found him I could have given it to some one of the other guys to do it but it's my responsibility right you know and my whole

look

my mindset in undercover is I'm not dying for a gangster right

I'll die for a citizen I'll take a beating for a citizen, but not for a gangster.

He's going to get whacked either way.

He's going to go either way.

Right.

So I'll take my shot with the government.

A lot of people can't deal with that, but I get it.

That's the job.

That's the job.

You know, I mean, look, I'm there to put you in jail.

I'm not there to get you killed.

I'm not there to kill you.

I'm I'm there to arrest you

and try to hopefully send you to jail.

But I'm not going to die for you.

Right.

I'm not putting, you know.

So it's a situation where your back is against the wall.

Yeah, exactly.

Got it.

So,

but I, but, you know, that didn't happen.

Did they ever find him?

Yeah, yeah, they found him.

They found him actually.

I don't know if it was a year or so later.

I'm not too sure.

But yeah, he eventually got arrested.

Yeah.

He was a Coke, you know, he used Coke.

So

sloppy.

Yeah.

So

now, you know, now with the war going on, the Bureau decides that

we gotta we gotta shut the operation down.

So those hits took place on May 5th.

So

and prior to that, I had a sit-down with Sonny Black.

And he said, Donnie, he said, uh

the books on the mafia are opening up in December.

He said, and I already proposed you for membership into the Bonano family.

So

you're going to get inducted into the family in December.

He said, so

I

congratulated him, thanked him, kissed him on both cheeks, you know.

So you were going to be a made guy.

Yeah, I was going to be a made guy.

Yeah.

How attractive is that life when you're in it?

Oh, forget it.

Must be so much fun.

It's part of the problem, right?

So, no.

Waking up every day to think is today, the day I go to jail or today I get whacked?

No, I didn't.

Joe, I didn't find it that fucking attractive.

Believe me.

I mean, it's all right.

They flash, they cash.

You know,

you walk into a restaurant, they know who you are.

You know,

you get the

VIP treatment, you get the VIP treatment, you don't order off the menu,

you know,

you know, there's perks, there's those perks, but you know,

I didn't want to wake up every day saying, do I go to jail or do I get whacked today?

That's that's their mindset.

It's crazy, it is crazy, it's crazy, but I've talked to guys in that life and they love it.

Yeah, that's what's crazy about it, yeah.

Yeah, they could, I know guys

that

became informants, and

they wish they could go back.

I say,

you know,

no,

I wouldn't want, you know.

But that is a problem with guys who do undercover work, right?

Yeah,

some of them fall in love with it.

Yeah, they fall in love with the undercover aspect.

And I think the reason that I was successful in all my cases and

that I'm still 98% sane is

I didn't fall in love with it

and I grew up on the streets

you know what I'm saying right I mean that I grew up in that environment and I was never attracted to it as a kid right you know right

did you ever run the risk of running into someone that you knew who knew you as Jobstone

yeah Yeah, did you see the movie?

I did, but I don't remember.

In the airport?

Oh, that's right.

With the lawyer.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah.

That's what really happened.

Yeah.

How did that go down?

Well, I saw, you know,

we saw

made eye contact and, you know,

I just clocked him.

Oh, wow.

And Sonny says, Donnie, why'd you do that?

I said, Sonny, you guys are looking at my prick.

What do you want me to do?

Oh.

You know.

But no, I never got attracted to the life other than as a job.

And I think another reason, too, Joe,

where a lot of undercovers go wrong

is

they think they have to act like gangsters.

They change their personalities.

Right.

And you can't be A

in the daytime and B at night.

Right.

I never changed my personality.

Right.

You know.

And a lot of undercovers are extroverts.

And I'm the exception to that rule when I'm really an introvert.

So you didn't need the attention.

I didn't need the attention.

You didn't thrive on it.

I don't,

you know.

And I never changed

my values.

Like I mentioned before, I'm not a drinker I never was a drinker

I worked in bars as bartender you know during during my college years when I got out

and I wasn't going to become a drinker just because I just because I was working undercover you know I mean I had guys say Donnie

you never finish a beer

Because I can't.

I only can drink half a bottle of beer.

That's all I can drink.

Probably lucky.

Probably.

Yeah.

Or, you know, you never have more than one glass of wine.

That's all I can ingest, is one glass.

And see, too many undercovers think, oh, all bad guys are drinkers, all bad, you know.

Donnie, I never do drugs.

The Coke is a real problem with guys who go undercover, right?

Yeah.

Because they have to do it with everyone else.

Well, you know,

they think they do.

I mean, I was in a nightclub nightclub in Miami, and the guy offers me Coke, and

I slapped his hand.

You know, fucking Coke is all over the place.

And I said, don't ever offer me that shit.

I said, I make money off of that.

I don't put that stuff in my body.

I go to the gym every day.

Why would I do that shit?

I said, to me, it's a money maker.

See, but too many young undercovers think, oh, you know, I got to drink.

Right.

You know, I got to do this.

I got to do that.

I got to act tough.

Right.

You don't have to.

All you do is you have to be yourself.

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That's all.

That way, you don't have to ever change it up.

That's exactly right.

You never have to.

You never get caught.

You never get caught.

And you don't have to act tough.

You don't have to talk tough.

You just got to back up

what you say.

And that's it.

Never say anything that you can't back up.

And that was always my motto.

You know, I never promised anything that I couldn't do.

I never let anybody back me against the wall.

You know.

And I never got into anybody's face

to make myself look tough.

Right.

You know, I mean, and that's where a lot of young undercovers go wrong, that they think you know, they watch too much television,

be honest with you.

The only time I

screwed up, I'll tell you,

we're in in Miami, all right?

And

I'm in another undercovers car.

So

it might have been Chico's, I don't remember.

So there's

the three bad guys,

you know,

and he had his car

wired up.

So

we're riding by and

and it's a strip club

and it said twenty

twenty two

naked dancing girls

and I said 44 nipples

that's all I said

Well, that came out at trial

by the defense attorney, and I had to explain why I was such an expert on female nipples.

That's just simple math.

But what I'm saying is,

you know.

So somebody remembered you saying that?

Well, it was on the tape.

On the tape.

On the tape.

So they were trying to use that against you?

Yeah, that was, you know, my...

My character was, you know,

was questioned.

But, you know, it goes back to what I say

is that I would not normally say that.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Right, right, right, right.

It was just a dumb statement, but it's always going to come back to bite you in the ass.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, you just got caught up in it.

Yeah, yeah.

So, what happened when they opened up the books?

Well, they closed the case down.

So

I got him to postpone it to July because we had one more meeting with Traffic Canny set up.

So I got him to postpone it until after that meeting, but I couldn't get him to wait until after I got inducted into

the family.

They wouldn't wait.

Wow.

So they closed the operation July 27th.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

six years undercover, seven years of testifying.

Wow.

But I was lucky enough that after that case, I did undercover work overseas.

I did undercover work for Scotland Yard.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

What did you do over there?

I had one case.

And

so they had two Scotland Yard

detectives who I knew.

I did a lot of work with their undercover unit.

And

so they were into the Chinese triads.

And there's stuff I can't disclose, but th they they they were um

they were manufacturing credit cards.

And I won't I won't say which which companies.

Uh and you can bang them out for like fifty thousand before

before they were discovered.

Because they had they had the numbers.

Yeah, I knew a guy who did that.

Yeah, they had the legit numbers.

Yeah.

That was back when they had like the carbons, right?

Yeah, so

Scotland Yard was trying to get

to the location

in another country,

right?

Where they were actually, everything was going down.

So they were meeting with the number two triad in London.

So they said, hey, look.

Our guy from New York, mafia guy from New York, who's the the money man, wants to have a sit down with you.

He says, okay.

So I fly over to London.

And I knew the Scotland Yard guys because I had

done other stuff with them.

So they introduced me to the supervisor of the Serious Crime Squad.

He was the guy that was

running this case.

So I would

break just chops.

You know, you can't,

they don't carry guns or anything.

You know, even the undercovers don't, they don't, they don't carry guns.

So

I'm sitting down with him and I said,

I said, you know, I got my gun, but I didn't bring any bullets.

You got any bullets?

The guy goes, apeshit.

You can't carry.

I said, calm down.

I'm just breaking your chops.

So, and he says to me, what are you wearing to this meeting?

I said, I'm wearing slacks, sport coat, and a shirt.

He said, No, no, you got to wear a suit.

I said, Why do I have to wear a suit?

He said, Because all these triad guys wear suits all the time.

I said, What's that got to do with me?

He said, No, no, you got to wear a suit.

I said, Well, I don't have a suit.

I said, I'm telling you, I got slacks, a sport coat, dress shirts, and that's what I'm wearing.

So he turns to

he turns to the

undercover guy from Scotland Yard

and he turns around, opens his safe,

pulls out money, says, go buy him a suit.

I said, you're going to buy me a suit?

He said, yeah.

I said, what do I do with the suit when I'm done with it?

He says, you keep it.

I said, all right.

So me and Graham, we go.

I buy two suits, one for me and one for Graham.

Right?

So we go to the meeting and I'm wearing his suit.

So there's me,

the two Scotland Yard guy undercover guys, and the triad.

So now before we go to the meeting, the supervisor's telling me, look, you can't insult this guy.

You've got to be nice to him because he's the number two guy.

So I says, hey, look, I said, I don't tell you how to run your serious crime squad.

Don't tell me how to work undercover.

I says,

whatever you need, I'll get.

I said, well, don't tell me how to do it.

So he's all nervous.

So we're in a resort.

They rented

a suite, big suite in a resort,

and they're next door.

So they got the suite where we are.

They got it wired, audio, video, right?

So

we go in and we're sitting there and we get through all the niceties with

the triad.

So the guy keeps fucking interrupting me.

So finally I says, hey, Chin,

I said, why do your sentences always start in the fucking middle of mine?

And he looks at me.

And you can hear it.

There's dead silence, right?

Then he says, oh, Mr.

Joe, I was going by Joe Marino at the time.

He said, oh, Mr.

Joe, I apologize.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Graham tells me, he says, when you said that, he thought the supervisor was going to have a heart attack.

He said,

he just blew it.

He just blew it.

It's over.

after that the guy gave us everything the location of the factory the the whole McGill do you feel like you had to do that to have his respect of course I mean I'm a mob guy what do I know about the triads right you know what I mean right so if I would have let him kept stepping on me right he'd have been out of character yeah right you know so yeah

that ought to be fucking scary yeah well the triads are you know scary yeah they are they are and he was the number two And I give these guys credit.

I mean, he got to the number two guy, but they couldn't get, you know.

Right.

So, but

what a life.

Yeah.

How do you stay calm in these situations?

I, me, Joe,

I just stay who I am.

You know, I get that Sicilian in me.

And, you know,

you go at it when you have to.

And if you if you don't,

you know

if you don't, it probably seems off.

Yeah,

yeah, so

but that's got to be just fucking nerve-wracking.

I you know, it is because you what's nerve-wracking is you always have to be on.

Right.

You know, you can never be off.

You never relax.

No.

I mean

and I mean

not many guys could say

that they had sit-downs with two mafia bosses of different families, right?

I used to stay at Sonny Black's apartment with him in Brooklyn.

And this guy was running the Bonano family.

He was one of the top capos in the Bonano family.

Sonny, I don't know how many hits he had on.

Now all these guys I dealt with don't forget all these guys had hits under their belt.

These weren't

novice guys.

I mean, they all had, you know, five, six, ten, fifteen hits under their belt.

You know,

I mean, I got into a fight one time in a bar with Tony Mira.

I mean, me and him against three guys.

And I mean, he grabbed a beer bottle,

broke it on the the bar, and just boom, raked the guy's face, you know.

Now, there's another guy, you know,

I always bring this up to Young Undercovers is that this was probably

the meanest guy I ever fucking met.

I mean, flat out mean.

You know, these other guys were mean, you know, because they killed people, but I mean, he was just a mean guy.

The other guys, the other gangsters didn't like him.

I never saw him overindulge in any liquor.

Never.

Never.

And he would stab you as soon as look at you.

And after that incident I told you when I had to go around with him, I always made sure I was an arm's length away from him.

What was his name?

Tony Mirror.

Oh, okay.

Now, after it was over and they found out who I was, they killed Mirror.

His own nephew killed him, actually.

Wow.

Because he introduced me to all the bananas.

Wow.

Yeah.

Lefty was on his way to get killed, but the FBI picked it up on the wiretap, so they snatched him, you know, surveillance team snatched him off the street.

They killed Sonny Black.

Sonny Black got killed.

Yeah, he got killed.

Yeah.

So all the people that had let you in.

The, yeah, yeah.

Tell you how Sonny Black got killed.

You talk about a gangster,

right?

When it came out that I was an under, you know, undercover agent, in the beginning, the mob didn't believe I was

an FBI undercover agent.

They thought the FBI had kidnapped me and was trying to turn me.

Because we picked it up on the wiretaps and the informants.

But once it, you know, once their lawyers told him, hey,

he really is an undercover agent.

So

Sonny Black gets a call.

You got to come go to a sit-down.

So he walks into the motion lounge.

He had a diamond ring, takes off his diamond ring.

All right.

Takes his money out of his pocket.

Takes all his keys except his car keys.

Puts them on the counter.

He says to the bartender,

I just got called to a sit-down.

I'm probably not coming back.

Is that a gangster?

Wow.

Calls his girlfriend.

and this is how this is how we found this out calls his girlfriend and tells her the same thing

so what happens is that

after

they find his body and everything

his girlfriend calls the FBI

and she says I'd like to I'd like to

have a meeting with Donnie Brasco

I said, why?

I said, because I got something to tell him that

that Sonny Black

she calls him Sonny, she didn't call him Sonny Black.

She said that

Sonny wanted me to give him a message.

They said, okay.

So they fly her down to DC

and myself and the agents, the other agents,

go out to a restaurant, and she said,

Sonny wanted me to tell you

this is what happened.

She said, this is what happened.

He got called to a sit-down, and he goes into the motion lounge,

gives his ring, his money, his car keys,

to the bartender, and tells the bartender, you know,

I got called to a sit-down, and I'm probably not coming back.

And then he calls me

and he says her name

and he said,

if I don't come back,

he said, I want you to get in touch with Donnie

and tell him I loved him.

And he was just better than we were.

I don't hold anything against him.

Wow.

Is that a gangster?

That's a guy that's living that life.

Wow.

Is that a gangster?

That's crazy.

How did that make you feel?

Well,

it kind of threw me for a loop.

I mean, I had a good relationship with him.

And, like I said, I didn't want to see anybody get killed.

Even Mira.

I didn't want to see him get killed.

I mean, although

I might have fucking done it myself.

I mean,

the guy was just plain mean.

But, you know, that's not my job.

My job is to gather evidence, bring you to trial, and hopefully you're convicted.

But

yeah, Sonny was Sonny,

you know,

the difference between me and Sonny,

we could sit just like we're having this conversation.

He wasn't 24-7 gangster.

You know what I mean?

We'd break chops.

We'd break balls.

Rogerio was 27,

24-7 gangster.

I couldn't,

I liked him because he was a great cook.

He was bad.

Boy, I'll tell you, Joe, he could cook.

But

you always,

there was always something

you know he was digging for, you know.

But like, Sonny,

look, I'm staying over at

the main capo in the family, one of the two main capos in the family's apartment.

He'd get up in the morning.

I sleep on his couch.

We'd get up in the morning.

He'd go, here's a guy that's running a goddamn

banano family.

He'd go out

to get coffee and hard rolls and butter.

and bring him back and me and him would sit there in our shorts and watch cartoons on television.

I'd tell that to the guys of the FBI and they'd say, no, I'm telling you, this is,

you know.

And then

he had a weight bench in his

apartment.

And back in the day, I used to lift pretty good, you know.

I mean, you can't tell me now,

of course, I'm old now.

And I was pretty good at hand wrestling.

I mean, arm wrestling, right?

And he could never beat me.

And he was built like you.

I mean, he was built, right?

He's about your size and everything, and big arms like you got.

But he could never beat me in arm wrestling.

And I don't know what it was.

So one day he says to me, Donnie, he says, I'm going to beat you today in arm wrestling.

I said, Sonny, you'd never fucking beat me.

Why today?

I'm going to beat you.

I said, okay.

So the day goes on.

So then he says, all right, let's go.

Right?

We're going on.

He spits in my eye.

Boom.

He said, I told you I'd beat you.

But I mean, that's the kind of guy he was.

Right.

You know?

And I couldn't get P.O.'d at him.

Right.

You know.

But

with Lefty,

you couldn't joke around like that.

Right.

You know, I mean, he was, he was,

he was something else, man.

He couldn't stand air conditioning.

Really?

Never.

We'd be in the car

in Miami.

The windows would be up,

and he'd be smoking English ovals with no air conditioning.

Jeez.

And I'm dying.

I'm dying.

I'd put the window down.

Donnie put that window up.

He turned the air conditioning off.

He couldn't stand air conditioning.

Why?

I don't know.

I don't know.

He had cancer.

Maybe it was.

I don't know.

Oh, he had cancer at the time while he was smoking with the windows rolled up?

Yeah, but he had been cured of that.

You know, he had been cured.

He had testicle cancer years before.

He eventually died of lung cancer.

And he used to smoke English ovals.

We go in the hotel room, and we always had a big suite, so, you know, we didn't have different rooms.

We'd have a suite,

two bedrooms.

He'd turn the air off.

He'd turn the air off.

So, you know, you have to do things to keep your sanity sometimes, right?

So

we're down in Miami, so I figured, son of a bitch, I'm going to get you today, right?

So I said, left,

I got to go to the head.

I'm going up to the room.

I go up, I take the cover off the air conditioning, I crank it where you could hang meat in there, right?

And I put the cover back on,

and

I put a thing in there.

So, you know, if you move the thing back up here,

we get upstairs.

I mean, it was freezing.

So we get in that room, we get in that suite, and he's like,

Any,

turn that air conditioning off.

So I go over there, and

I said, Left, I don't know if something's wrong.

I don't know.

He said,

call the front desk, get maintenance up here.

So I pick up the phone, but I don't, I make believe I'm talking.

I said, yeah, this is room so-and-so.

And our air conditioner is broken.

Would you send somebody up?

But I'm not talking to anybody.

Because

I want him to freeze as long as he can freeze.

So he's

after a while, did you call that?

I said, Left, you saw me call, call him again.

And I do the same thing.

And now he's calling me, Joe, every name in the book.

It's your fault.

You did this.

You broke it.

I said, Left, I didn't do a thing.

I don't know nothing about air conditioning.

Right?

So

finally, after about a half an hour,

I do.

Now I call and I say, hey, you are air conditioned.

So they send somebody up and the guy takes it.

Okay, there it is.

But he blamed me.

But that's how you keep your sanity sometimes, you know.

God.

What is it like to experience all that and then see it in a movie?

Like, what is it like to see a guy like Johnny Depp play you in a movie?

Oh, God, what an experience that was.

It has to be so weird.

It was.

And you know Johnny Depp?

Yeah, I know him.

I love that boy.

He's a great guy.

I could cry, I'm telling you.

I mean,

what he's done for my family.

Excuse me.

It's all right.

He's a sweetheart of a guy.

Like, genuinely.

I've hung out with him a few times at the comedy store

in L.A.

Very, very nice guy.

I love him.

He loved my wife.

Yeah.

He just flew in in January

to have dinner

with my whole family

and my grandkids

flew in from Spain

and

my wife couldn't make the dinner.

So the next day

he went and spent almost five hours with her.

Yeah,

and then she passed away

a little while after that

Yeah,

he's a great guy.

He really is.

I mean, he's genuine.

He's genuine.

And it's odd.

It's odd for a movie star.

Yeah.

You know, I meet movie stars and I always have this wall up because I always feel like, okay, I'm just going to talk to some bullshit person.

You know what I mean?

Like, I've met a bunch of them and they're not really there.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

But when you meet one and they're really there, it's amazing.

You know, like you realize, oh, they're just human beings who are in this very unusual position, yeah, where they're incredibly famous

and you know, they're famous in a very weird way.

They're famous for pretending to be other people and acting and films.

And, you know, you know them so well as you know

a fucking pirate or whatever.

I mean, or you do.

We met in 96

and have stayed friends

up until

up until now.

And he has stayed friends with

my girls,

my grandkids that he, you know, uh

that he knew since they were,

you know, yeah,

and now as adults.

I mean, he takes he takes phone calls from my one granddaughter.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's a genuinely good guy.

Before his trial was going on, I had a conversation with him for half an hour on the phone in Hawaii.

I was in Hawaii drinking margaritas in a lounge chair.

And my friend Doug, Doug Stanhope, calls me up.

He says, Hey, Johnny wants to talk to you.

And me and Johnny were on the phone for like a fucking half an hour.

Yeah, I used to talk.

I used to keep in contact with him when he was in trial.

What a crazy trial.

Yeah.

But that trial showed you who he really is, who he really is, and who she really is, too.

And it just shows you, you know, I didn't know her.

You're lucky.

I'll tell you a funny story: is that

do you know Vanessa?

No.

This is when

I mean, I met Johnny.

He was first going out with Kate Moss.

And

they all loved my wife.

So

then he was,

one day he calls me and he says, hey, I'm going to be in Joe Stonecrab.

I'm going to be in Miami.

He said, meet us at Joe Stonecrab.

I said, okay.

So me and my wife go down there.

And there's Johnny, his father.

His father's a great guy.

You know his father?

No.

His father's a great guy, too.

Really

good guy.

And I had met his father during the shooting and the movie and everything, right?

We hung out.

So

he introduces us to Vanessa, right?

You know, you know who she is, right?

His ex?

Who's Vanessa?

Peridici.

She's the French singer.

That's the one who his kids are by.

Yes, his ex.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So

now, my wife wouldn't w when she ate, she would not touch anything.

She had to eat with a knife and fork, you know, a rare mudagan, right?

Irish.

So,

you know, you had Joe Stove and crack.

What are you going to do?

You got to eat, you know, you got to break him, you got to touch him.

So Vanessa says, uh,

Angie, you don't like them?

She says, oh, I like them, but I don't

I don't like to touch them.

She broke

all the claws, everything, took all the meat out

so my wife could eat him.

With a fork.

With a fork.

I'd say, only you could do that, you know.

Only you could get somebody to, you know.

How long did you know him before he played you in the movie?

I didn't.

You didn't know him at all?

No.

Did you get to meet him before he played you?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We met.

I guess we met maybe three or four months before we started shooting.

Did he want to talk to you about your life?

Yeah, I spent time with him.

And what's amazing about him, Joe, is that

he just

is like a sponge, you know?

Like, we would just go out, go to dinner, go to lunch, hang out.

And the next thing you know, he's talking like me.

He has the same rhythms.

Every once in a while, I clear my throat.

He's clearing his.

He was walking.

We were on set one day.

And my mother happened to be on set.

And Johnny's walking away.

And she's calling me.

Wow.

Because

the way he had that little gimp.

Yeah.

I mean,

he's just amazing, you know.

And he...

He doesn't like prod you about stuff.

He just absorbs it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's something.

But I've stayed in touch.

I stayed friends with Chrissy, his sister.

You know, I've seen the whole family, basically.

How strange was it to watch the finished product, to watch this version of your life, of your story?

Yeah, it was.

It was.

Now,

for you and your audiences, I just want you to know in that movie, I never slapped my wife in real life.

Why'd they have that in

Ask the director.

Those motherfuckers.

Because that wasn't in the script.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Ask the director.

I almost went, I went bullshit.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's funny because Johnny used to pick me up every morning to go to work.

And here's the kind of guy.

I tell you, kind of guy.

We'd stop at a bodega, and he'd run in and get the coffee and

and hard rolls

I Said I go no, I'll go in.

I mean

I mean

you know to get to just a regular guy.

Yeah,

and I

that day he was kind of like

He wasn't himself on the ride in

and then I saw them rehearsing that scene.

I went I went I went ballistic man.

I went ballistic

But you know, you know, you know that the director's the captain of that ship, you know.

They always have to do something like that.

Yeah, they always have to add some bullshit that didn't really happen.

It drives me nuts.

Yep, so but what are you gonna do?

Yeah,

so

how d after the case is closed, what is life like for you?

Like, how do you I mean, you had to be worried about your life.

Yeah, well,

what happened is once they found out the the the the the commission put a five $500,000 contract on me

and

the New York office of the FBI went to every boss

and told them they better not think of

trying to cash in on that.

I was working out of Washington and out of Quantico and

families moved.

I think we got like five or six moves since then.

You know, you try to back everything.

Right.

The Bureau was good about that.

But, you know,

what's in the back of your mind is not the

legitimate

gangster.

You know, it's some cowboy that thinks, hey, you know, God,

there's Donny Brown.

Get on their good side.

There's Donny Brasco.

You know, if I take him out we're in right which

and I don't think anybody was gonna pay anybody five hundred thousand you think you think the mob is they don't use their own money for you know for squat so

yeah but uh that's the only thing that you worry about is you know some cowboy you know

how long was it before you stopped worrying about that

well you never really do I mean you know even to this day yeah yeah

you know

because there's always somebody that thinks they're you know they're gonna be famous about doing something right you know that right

so

But it was it was more prevalent back in the, you know, back in the day,

you know.

m most of my guys now are

I don't know any of them that are alive actually.

Did you keep in touch with any of those guys?

No, no, no.

My my whole thing in undercover, Joe, was I never arrested anybody that I worked against.

My whole thing was I did the undercover, you make the arrest, I'll see him in court.

I'll see him in court.

Yeah, yeah.

Funny,

you know, you always sit down with the

after the case is over,

you sit down with the profilers and everything, and they say, Well,

we think this guy will turn this guy.

Not one of my guys, when I say my guys,

ever became an informant.

Really?

Never.

Wow.

The

one of the prosecutors in Milwaukee,

he said he said, I think we should go talk to Ruggerio.

I said, Are you fucking crazy?

I said, You walk in there and mention my name, he'll go crazy.

He said

exactly what happened.

Exactly what happened.

Yeah, yeah.

They he did fifteen.

He did fifteen, never cracked.

The only reason they let him out was

he had,

they found out he had,

I don't know if it was gum cancer or whatever, and then he had one lung taken out, and then he had cancer in the other lung, so he had like three or four months to live.

So he was such a pain in the ass for the Department of Corrections that

they let him out.

He died at home.

Yeah.

Wow.

But he didn't crack.

Of course,

Sonny had a shot.

He said, no, none of them.

None of them.

They tried to turn all of them, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They all went to the can.

They all did like 15, 20 years.

Yeah.

Wild.

Wild is right.

I mean, now,

as soon as they put the last click on the handcuffs, they all want to talk.

Now.

Yeah, now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, they all

got hits under their belt, but as soon as they put those cuffs on them, you know, some of the guys, they do their time, but eventually they turn.

None none of those guys became snitches.

What do you think happened to this the culture of the mob where these guys started snitching?

They didn't want to do the time.

I mean, some of them did time.

Some of them did seven, eight years, you know.

But then I think when they still when they kept getting beat over the head, you know, they figured what good is and you know what?

The the culture of the mob has changed too.

I I found

near the end

these guys didn't

to the old timers

this was like their their life.

You know,

they were really committed to it.

The younger guys,

it's a me generation, just like normal citizens.

They want it now.

They don't want to, I mean, I don't know,

like the old-timers,

they could cultivate politicians.

They could cultivate

law enforcement.

These guys today, you know, they can't cultivate politicians and judges like the old-timers did.

You know, and

drugs is a big

downfall of the mob because now the guys start, some of them start using it.

Well, it's also, you can't keep secrets anymore.

No.

It's only secrets when one guy's alive.

Yeah, especially with cell phones,

internet.

Yeah.

Surveillance.

Surveillance is so easy now.

Everything you do is surveilled.

Every phone call you do.

You're on camera.

All day long.

I read somewhere or heard

where the average individual is on the camera over 500 times a day.

Just walking around.

Wherever you go.

And then your phone's listening to everything you say.

Everything.

Yeah.

And everybody has a phone.

Everybody.

Yeah.

Everybody.

Today,

and that's what's tough and undercover today is building your legend because it's hard to do 100% backstopping.

Right.

How can you with the internet?

Right.

Also, Google image search.

bam.

Put your face up there.

Oh, that's that guy.

Exactly.

Yeah, instantly.

So I don't know.

I mean, how much of the mob even exists now?

It's still there, but you know, they're

they don't control what they did, they don't control every all label.

You know, when I was in it, they controlled everything.

I mean, they controlled unions, they controlled every bit of Vegas.

Vegas, they can they controlled every bit of

commodity that that ran.

In fact, when I was in it, they still had the skim out of Vegas, and

Belestrari had offered me

with Lefty, he had offered me

the job of running the skim

from

there

to Kansas City.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's how tight I was with the Badanos that, you know, that was before the thing went south, you know.

That's so crazy that you got in that deep.

Yeah.

Were you the deepest that anybody had ever infiltrated the mob?

Yeah, yeah.

And everybody else that that went in, you know, they had an they had an informant.

I had no informant.

You just made your way in slowly.

Yeah.

Wow.

And I wasn't I wasn't a mark,

you know,

where I didn't have all this money.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Where they could exploit you.

Yeah.

Right.

So, you know,

yeah.

It's a crazy life, Joe.

Yeah, it was.

When you look back on it now, does it seem real?

Must seem insane.

Well, you know, sometimes I think

I can't believe I did that.

Right.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then other times, you know, I say

as deep as I got, I could have done more.

Like how?

Well, I mean,

if I would have got made.

Right, right, right.

Do you wish they had gotten you made?

Only because

I had spent so much time, I spent six years,

you know, and then to cap it off with getting inducted.

And not only that, think of the feather in the cap of the FBI.

Right.

Yeah.

The Mafia inducted one of our own.

You know, I mean, that would have really kicked their ass.

Yeah.

But, you know.

It's funny that you think back and that's the thing that you wish.

Yeah.

You know, it's kind of crazy.

Yeah, but still in all, I mean, you know, it's like...

It's the ultimate fuck you.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you fucking.

I mean,

we pretty much decimated them anyway.

Yeah.

You know,

but

it is kind of crazy when you think about the chokehold that the mob had.

And then it's kind of like.

Nothing moved in this country without them getting the cut of it.

Wow.

It's crazy, all right.

Did that all come about because of prohibition?

Is that when it all started?

Is that when they really got a stranglehold in this country?

Yeah, yeah.

Isn't that crazy?

Pretty much, yeah.

Because that's exactly what's happening right now with the cartels.

Yeah.

It's the same fucking thing.

Yeah.

And it's like we never learn.

No.

Yeah.

It's

history repeats itself, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you know,

I think our problem

is we don't we don't study our enemy.

Remember what I said before

any anybody I went against, uh

I always knew I always knew who they were.

I wanted to know your structure.

I wanted to know how you treated each other.

I want to know all the crimes you're involved in.

I want to know if you how violent you are and who your violence is against.

I want to know your history,

how you became

what you are as far as a criminal organization.

And we don't do that.

I mean,

I'm talking about

as a whole, you know,

you know,

I don't want to get into politics, but,

you know,

you got to study your enemy.

You got to know your enemy.

The art of war, right?

Yes.

The art of war.

And I tell all my

and then the undercover classes, you got to read that book, The Art of War,

because it was written thousands of years ago, but

it'll serve you today.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of crazy when you think that.

People don't change that much over time.

No.

Human nature is still the same.

Yep.

And the same strategies apply.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's nuts.

And, you know, and like I said before, the only thing that's changed in undercover

is building your legend because of the internet.

Right.

Nothing else has changed.

Now it's got to be almost impossible.

You ingratiate yourself the same way.

Yeah.

You know, you do all that shit the same way.

Well, especially if someone had any kind of social media before they got in the bureau.

Yeah.

Or or become a cop.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, everybody's kind of ratted on themselves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's nuts.

Yeah.

But

but there's other ways they catch people now, obviously.

With all the surveillance.

Did you make a bunch of notes?

No, I just wanted to.

Did you make sure you covered everything?

I just wanted to

mention

my

grandkids set me up with an Instagram.

And they said, make sure you bet you.

Did they run it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe, forget it.

I just about can turn my phone on, be honest with you.

And

the real Donny Brasco.

And then

a cameo page.

You have a cameo page where you send people cameos?

Jopa Stone.

You just go into Jopa Stone.

Yeah.

The real Donny Brasco.

How do you spend your time these days?

There it is.

The real Donny Brasco.

Yeah.

That's from January, Joe, when he flew in for the dinner.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah.

Yeah, well,

I'm kind of

right now.

I'm writing I got another book writing on the bananos

and

spent time with

helping out with that Southern California gang conference I mentioned.

It's really, you know, like I said, I've been with them for 14 years.

Actually, been doing a 12, one year COVID and one year I was sick.

And these guys are,

these coppers that run it,

they all do it on their own time.

There's no administrative,

nobody gets paid.

Really?

Nobody gets paid.

They do it all on their own time.

And

the conference usually gets between 700 and 800 people

at each conference.

And like I say, it's held once a year.

It's held in San Diego, but it's the Southern California Gang Conference.

And if anybody's interested,

you have to be a police officer or in law enforcement, you could be Department of Corrections.

Their

email is

scgc.inquiry at gmail.com.

Go on and get information about it,

or if they want to attend it, you know,

that's how you can sign up.

Okay.

And they have great speakers every year.

And

yeah, I

and

some of my merchandise,

you can see I have a shirt here, this is

Southern California Gang Conference, Donnie Brasco.

We sell these shirts, I give 100% to

the organization.

I don't keep any.

And

the mugs we sell and stuff, I donate.

My books,

I

sign books there and I give all the money to the organization.

I don't take anything either.

Because these police officers don't take anything.

Their time is donated.

So, yeah, it's,

you know, who's there to help you when your spouse or your, you know, one or the other dies in the line of duty.

So,

yeah.

So you were telling me before the show that all that money gets donated to the spouses of people who were killed in the line of duty.

Yes, sir, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, to help them get started after.

That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

And it it's a great conference.

Like I said, they they get

between seven and eight hundred

either a police officer or Department of Corrections, you know, anybody that's in the law enforcement is eligible to attend it.

And it's a week since San Diego.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Joe, thank you very much for being here.

I really appreciate it.

Hey, what a crazy life you've had.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm really excited

to get the invite.

And

my grandkids were, whoa, you're going on Joe Rogan.

They all love you, man.

Well, tell them I said thank you.

They all love you.

And thank you for being here.

Well, my pleasure.

It was my pleasure, too.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Bart.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

All right.

Bye, everybody.