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Seamus McElearney with Barbara Finkelstein, "Flipping Capo: How the FBI Dismantled the Real Sopranos" (Chicago Review Press, 2025)
01:09:08
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A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Alfred Marcus and this is on the cusp between strategy and ethics, where we explore how organizations navigate the tensions between performance, innovation and responsibility. Today I'm Speaking with Seamus McIlrney, a former FBI agent who spent more than two decades investigating organized crime and the author of Flipping how the FBI Dismantled the Real Sopranos. Co written with Barbara Finkelstein and published by Chicago Review Press, the book tells this inside story of how the FBI flipped Anthony Capo, a violent soldier in New Jersey's D. Cavalconte family and used his cooperation, along with that of other witnesses to take down a century old crime organization that had infiltrated unions, contractors and key sectors of the economy. So, Seamus, thank you for joining me. One thread that runs through the book is your own journey from the Bronx to the bureau, from a gas station work ethic to FBI rookie to part of a major organized crime squad. How did this background shape the way you saw both the mob as an organization and, and the FBI as an organization?
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A
Well, first, it's great to be here with you and I know I have a very tough name. It's actually Seamus. It's a Seamus. It's an Irish name. It's Seamus.
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B
Yes, Seamus. Oh, I forget that. Right, next.
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A
So for, so for your first question. Yes. My initial work was working at a gas station with my father, which he owned, and he taught me tremendous work ethic. And when you work at a gas station, there's a lot of complex customer service there. So I got to, I got to experience working with a lot of other people, getting to know a lot, a lot of people. So that kind of helped me, the customer service aspect of it. From there I went into banking and audit. And when you do audit, you actually have to go to departments which you know nothing about and quickly have to adapt and kind of see how you can have better controls and how you can help them function properly and quickly and efficiently. So that was the first thing. And then going into the FBI. The FBI is all about structure, right. And you're trying to enforce laws. And lo and behold, that's what the mob is about. The mob is all about structure and not enforcing laws. They're actually trying to break laws, but they have their own rules. And so that was the similarity between the FBI and the mob related to an organization is the structure aspect of it.
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B
The FBI often hire people who do audits. I think that's true. Isn't that the case?
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A
Well, they, they kind of look for Lawyers, people that were in the service, or people that have accounting or finance backgrounds.
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Uh huh. Why did you want to do the FBI?
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Well, to tell you the truth, when I got out of college, I really didn't know what I had wanted to do. My parents came from Ireland. They actually met in the Bronx during the 60s. And all my parents could actually do is tell me to study hard. So when I got out of college, I really didn't know what I had wanted to do. I got into audit because a buddy of mine told me about a job that was open. So I started to work at a bank. And then lo and behold, I actually met an FBI agent. And I was just fascinated by the job because they were explaining to me that one day you could be interviewing a CEO, another day you could be doing surveillance, another day you could be going to court. So at that point, this is in the mid-1990s, they had a hiring freeze. So I applied and that at that point in time I was told that there was about a hundred thousand applicants just in New York alone because the freeze beliefs had been lifted. And I was told, you're never going to make it. And I'm a. My motto throughout life has always been persistence beats resistance. So I was determined to become an agent. And there's a long process, it's basically about a two, two year process. And lo and behold, I actually got selected to go down to training. And just because you get selected to go to training doesn't mean that you become an agent. Our class I think started with 50 people and I think we ended up with 37. But that's how it actually got started was because I by chance met an agent and I just became fascinated by the job description description that she had told me about.
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B
It's enormous service to our country soon and it's not rewarded at the same level as other professions. So we have to thank you for doing this, especially what you did in breaking the Decaval. Kantis. Am I pronouncing that correct?
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A
The D. Cavalcante family.
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B
Yes, the Decavalcantes family. And so you portray them more than a band of thugs. They are a shadow business enterprise. You describe union tampering as their cash cow. And along with the shakedowns they made of contractors and infiltration of industrial sites, we strip away the violence for a moment. I think you were alluding to this before. What kinds of business strategies did you see them using a parallel or invert? What legitimate firms do?
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A
Well, the Kelante family is based in New Jersey and That's the family that the show the Sopranos is based upon. That's what the book is about. But from a business perspective, the Decal Vacanti family controlled two unions in New Jersey. They control Local 394, which was the labor union and they actually started a second union called 1030, which was the asbestos union. So right from the very beginning, these were businessmen. They actually did do some work. And when they started the asbestos union, they actually started a school. So they controlled the school. So they controlled the business from the ground up, where they had people go to the school. They knew where the jobs were, so they controlled the business from the very beginning. If you read the book, there is a story where Anthony Capo, who's the decaval canty soldier that I flipped, he actually had a problem at one of the job sites. They were so powerful in New Jersey that they shut down all the Jersey job sites for a period of time. I think it was three days because of the incident that he had. That shows you how powerful they were. And then when you talk about strategies, there's all sorts of scams that they can actually do, like bid rigging. When you're supposed to legitimately submit bids for a job where they had rigged those, where they knew who was going to get the bid. Then there's things like no show job where you would get paid and didn't have to go to work. There was a no work job where you would actually show up to work but didn't have to work. So there's no. So many things that you had to do. Back in the old days too, related to the labor unions, there was a thing called shaping up and what that meant was you had to physically go down to the union hall and wait in line and be selected to be go to a job site. So the normal human, the normal union worker who would pay wages and pay into the pension benefits would show up at like 5:30 or 6:00 clock in the morning and wait to be selected to go to a union or to a, to a job. The Decal cantis would come at like 8 o' clock whenever they wanted to and they would just go to a job. So because of the power that they had, they were overriding the normal worker that was there. So these are some of the things that they can actually do. So it wasn't fair to the, to the normal worker that was paying into the pension.
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Were they dominating the construction jobs?
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Construction businesses?
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Yes, construction businesses. So in both residential, commercial, the whole. Everything.
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Everything. Yep. So they were Very powerful within New Jersey.
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And so a lot of developers ended up working with them, I would suspect.
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Unwillingly. Yes.
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Including some families that are now quite famous in our country, I would say.
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So.
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Okay. We don't want to go there necessarily. Okay. The book is rich on operational detail. The long hours, transcribing tapes, building binders, and integrating surveillance photos, recordings, witness testimonies. You had to put it all into a coherent case. How should we think about this kind of back office work in an organization like the FBI? Is it fairly, is it fairly valued internally or is it overshadowed by the more glamorous, or we think of the more glamorous aspects of law enforcement?
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A
Well, related to organized crime cases, they are long term investigations where they could take three to four years to actually formulate and to prosecute. So the back office work is essential. Now, the most damning evidence that we can get are consensual recordings. And what I mean by consensual recording is when you have someone go out and make a recording against somebody else who doesn't know they're being recorded. And that's, that's the best type of evidence we have. And in this particular case, that's one thing that we did is there was an individual named Ralph Guarino who became a proactive witness. And when I say a proactive witness, is that someone we give a recording device to and we put them on the street to go make recordings against bad guys who know they're being recorded. From a back office standpoint, we would have him make the recording and then we have to download the recording device and listen to the recording. That recording could be two hours. And you have to be meticulous listening to that, because these guys talk in code. The recording could have taken place in a diner, a nightclub, walking down the street, or in a car. So it is so essential to, to listen to this meticulously because what you're trying to do is you're trying to get that golden nugget of information to give to the prosecutor to then put it into an indictment. And you know what's funny is we did have a recording, I think it was in March of 1999, where we actually had the show Sopranos that started in January of 1999. This investigation started in January of 1998. And I'll tell you how it started. But In March of 99, we actually had the bad guys on tape discussing the show and saying, this is you, this is you, this is you. That was priceless for trial. So when it came time for trial two years later. All we had to do was press play. And actually, you know that what's. What's worse is having your own voice on tape talking about the Sopranos, admitting that that is you in the show. So that was horrible for them.
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Investigations, like would the FBI have going at any point in time? Would there be a lot of them?
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Not many. Oh, hundreds and hundreds of investigations at the same time. Yep. You know, and they are.
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B
They're not all organized crime, though. There's all kinds of.
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A
No, no, there's. There. There's all different types. Like in New York, there's like white collar cases, there's organized crime cases, there are violent crime cases, there is counter terror terrorism cases. There's all types of different cases. This particular squad that I was on was called C10. And it's a very unique squad. And one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because we basically dismantled two families at the same time, which was very historic. We dismantled the DeCalvalcanti family and the Bonanno family at the same time. And we were getting daily press coverage, but the press never put it together that it was the same squad which was. And this is from, like 1999 up until 2004.
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When does the FBI decide to pursue these cases? Is there some prior evidence, suspicion, or.
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Well, there was. Back then, there was a squad dedicated to each LCN family. There is five LCN families in New York City. There is the Bonanno family, Colombo family, Genovese family, Gambino family, and Lucchese family. And then there's the Jersey family. So in New York, there was. There was one squad dedicated to each family. Now, how, you're probably thinking, how does the New York FBI get involved with the Jersey family? And how this case comes about was in January of 1998, right before I even go to training. There's two events that happen in January of 1998. Someone decides to rob the World Trade Center. So three guys go in to rob the World Trade center and they actually do rob it. And they come out, but what they do is they take their mask off pretty quickly. And unbeknownst to them is that there's cameras there and they get caught rather quickly. Two people were caught that day. The third person was caught. He fled to New Mexico and was caught within two days. The mastermind behind the robbery is a guy named Ralph Guarino, the guy I mentioned there before. He's smart enough to know that the walls are starting to cave in around him. And he calls a legendary FBI agent by the name of George Hanna. I don't want to give away why he's a legend. If you read the book, you'll see why. But he calls George, and George is from Brooklyn, a real street guy. And he convinces Ralph to become a proactive witness, as I said there before. And we run Ralph for two years again. This happens right before I even go to training. So Ralph makes about 300 tapes between January of 1998 up until December of 99, when we have our first arrest. And that's when I arrest Anthony Capo.
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B
It's well known that these are the five families, so it's easy to pick up against them. And by dismantle them, I mean, are they completely dismantled, or is this a regime change
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A
at that time, at the end of our investigation, which went on for about almost six years, I think we had convicted 71 people, solved 11 murders, and I think we had seven trials. But like anything else, you know, we can talk about the resources dedicated to the. To organized crime. If you don't stay on top of them, they're going to rebuild. They're not as strong as they once were, but at that particular time, we did dismantle them. But I'm sure, you know, they probably have grown back, but they're nothing as to what they were before now. One thing that I forgot to mention them before is when we proactively ran Ralph, you never know where a proactive witness is going to take you. Where he took us to was the Brooklyn faction of the decalicanti family, which we really didn't know about. And that's how the New York FBI gets into the Jersey family
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today. Do you think that the unions in Jersey are not corrupt, or do you think that's been weeded out of the.
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I don't think it's fully weeded out yet. I think there's still corruption there, and
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the FBI is probably still pursuing these types of investigations. It's almost endemic. You talked about that, listening to the tapes, and it's actually as a researcher in a university and you do qualitative research in the old days at least, I did a lot of that myself. Listening to tapes. I was just wondering. I think AI would make this job incredibly simpler today. Could summarize these tapes in 10 minutes.
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A
I think it would, but I guess you still have to listen to it. Just to be like. You don't want to fully rely on any. On AI, right? You want to make sure. Because as I said, some of these recordings are done in nightclubs, diners, cars. You really want to make sure that you give it a full listen yourself, too. Yes, AI is going to help you, but you want to make sure that you don't fully rely on AI.
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B
You're not working for the FBI now, so you don't know what.
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They retired back in May of 2019.
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Yeah. So you don't know what their current. You described the difficult judgment calls around allowing informants to continue certain authorized criminal activities like gambling, selling untaxed cigarettes so they don't blow their cover. How did you and your colleagues ethically justify that line, tolerating some wrongdoing in order to reach out what you saw as a greater good? This is a. I think it's fine myself, but I, you know, I just. How do you.
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A
Well, what we always try to do is control it, right? So, for instance, we would never. We would buy drugs, but we, like, we would let the informant buy drugs, but we would never sell drugs. We would never let drugs walk like. We would never let drugs go into the community. We would never let that happen. Then when I say allowing him to do certain criminal acts, for instance, as you mentioned there untaxed cigarettes, it would be one of two things where it would be cigarettes that the FBI had already seized through an operation that we had previously. And now we're going to let him sell them. So the bad guy doesn't know that. He thinks that our informant got a hold of them himself and he's going to sell them. So that's how we're willing to let him do that. Then it could be, you know, the appearance of stolen goods, like, say, that I was to get a load of TVs, right, that the bad guy doesn't know, but I went out to Best Buy and bought the TVs myself. So we're allowing he. He's saying that they're stolen, but the FBI actually bought them himself, giving them to our witness for him to pretend that they're stolen and he's selling them.
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B
I feel that as much. That much control over the informants. I mean, couldn't they just go on their own and do something really horrible?
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They. They could, but that's why, you know, there is a level of trust, but we're constantly watching them, right? So another thing that actually do is we would have surveillance teams trying to watch them. Because back to what we were saying about the best types of evidence that we could have is having a surveillance team on our witness for his protection too, right? To make sure that he's safe, but having the surveillance Team take a photo of the witness with the bad guy who's being recorded. So for court purposes, we would have a photo, the actual recording, and then the ability to put the witness on the stand. So you would have the recording of the witness talking to the bad guy, the bad guy's voice on tape, and then having a picture along with it. It's hard to dispute that. So that's why it's having a surveillance team for protection, but also to verify or to corroborate the evidence that we actually have.
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Do they ever go rogue, the witnesses and inform their bosses that were. What you're doing is that there's, there's
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been informants that have done illegal acts before. Yes. You know, thankfully, I haven't experienced that on, on my end. Thankfully. But that has happened before. Yes, there's, there's been cases of that. And then you have to shut them down and you have to part your ways or you have to arrest them and end the relationship. Yes. You know, yeah.
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B
After 9 11, you write that justice goes silent. Resources and attention shift to counterterrorism and big organized crime cases find themselves in a new environment.
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A
Close your eyes, exhale. Feel your body relax and let go
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C
of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
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A
And breathe.
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C
Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts New Year, new me.
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A
Cute.
- [20:24]
C
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B
Experian. From a strategy perspective, what did that pivot do to the Bureau's capabilities and culture? And did it help or harm long term efforts against organized crime?
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A
All right, so after 9 11, all our resources towards organized crime and every investigation basically came to a screeching halt. And I would say that happened for about four Months. So everything at that point in time came to a screeching halt. And all our resources were dedicated to protect the country and, you know, status conferences, investigations, screeching halt. And, you know, that happened for a while. And if I remember correctly, it was from September up until probably January or so. So Anthony Capa was in a secure facility at that point in time. It's like one of the things that happens is. And people don't realize this, and that's. We explain it in the book that hasn't been done before, is people think you go into the witness security program and you have this great new life. There are prisons throughout the United States that house people that are in this situation. They're called Woodseck facilities. So you have to go to jail. It's not like you just get a whole new pass on life. You have to do time in jail for your heinous acts that you've done. And again, I don't. I do not condone any of the heinous acts that people have done. So what happens is you go to jail first. It's a protected jail. Everyone in that. That particular jail is in the same boat. They're not trying to, you know, they don't have to, like, watch their back, because everyone in that particular facility is trying to just do their time and go to the next phase of their life. But people have to realize is there's witness security prisons that you have to do time before you get to that next stage of your life. And that's something that we explain in the book. There's probably seven facilities throughout the United States. I can't say where they are, but they're. They're joined to other major facilities, but they're separated from the general population because these people can't be in general population, because if they were, they would get killed. Yeah.
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B
I was just thinking organized crime would come after these people, and they don't leave the facilities in either at all.
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Yep. So there are separate facilities that they actually go to, and that's called phase one of. And then once you get through phase one, and it all depends, some people can go to jail for four years. I've had witnesses go to jail for 13 years before they go into phase two. And when you're done with your phase one, then you have to make a decision. And that decision is, okay, do you want to go into phase two of the program, which would mean being relocated to another area of the country and getting false identification, or do you want to sign out of the program and just Relocate on your own and keep your same name. So it all depends if you have a unique name or not. Right. If you have a name like John Smith, you're going to blend in. But if you have a name like Seamus McIlhorny, that's a kind of little unique. People are going to find me. Right. So if you go into the program, the program is extremely strict. It's run by the U.S. marshals Service. It's very strict. And it works. It works because it's strict.
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B
How many of these people take the change their names and how many?
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A
A lot. A lot of them do. Now what happens is too, because the program is so strict, they go in, they get their identification and then at some point they end up leaving the program. So they might go into the program for a couple of years, get all their new identifications, identification, passport, driver's license, and then decide to leave the program.
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B
Did this organized crime find these people? Sometimes. And
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A
I haven't. Thankfully, that hasn't happened. You know what I mean? Which is good, you know, and kind of back to what you were saying in there about the resource angle. So what happened is after 9 11. Yes, there was. Our investigations came to a halt and then after about four or five months, we came back to working our investigations again. When I first got to the organized crime branch in New York, there was probably about 325 agents assigned to working organized crime. And as I said, there was a dedicated squad for each family. Then after 9 11, it started to get a little bit smaller. Our squad was really heavy at that time. Not heavy, but we weren't really. Agents weren't taken from us because we were so busy and because we were making such an impact. As I said, we were dismantling two families at the same time. But as years went by, it started to get smaller and smaller. What I can say though is after I got done with this investigation, I went down and ran the Columbo squad. And then in 2011, January 2011, I executed the largest FBI mafia arrest ever, where we arrested 127 people worldwide. After that arrest, they then shrunk squads so it was no longer one squad per family. They actually collapsed C10, the squad I was on, into my current squad, which was C38. So then I was a supervisor then. And then I had the Bonannos, the Colombos and the Decalicanti family. So they collapsed them. So that was the first time that I saw really a significant reduction in resources towards organized crime.
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B
Did that hurt the effectiveness of the FBI and is that persisting now? And what were the causes? Why did this come about?
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A
What, what I did see, it's like not at that point in time. It didn't have a great effect. And it's like it's always the needs of the Bureau, right wherever the greatest need of the Bureau is, they're going to dedicate the resources there. I can speak about current day because I'm not there. But I do know, based upon reading the press and everything and the contacts I still have, is the need of the Bureau right now is violent crime. But I do know in the last six months they have, especially in New York alone now, they've dwindled down where they just have one organized crime squad, which I don't. You know, this is my own opinion. I don't think that's a good idea. Because if the mob has been around for 125 years, if you don't keep a close eye on them, they are going to rebuild. The FBI has done a tremendous job the last 20 years of prosecuting the mob. Significant investigations. Whereas I said our squad alone back then, we dismantled two squads. And then when I went to the Columbus squad, we dismantled them. We did a great job there. C38 was the name of the squad I had there. Tremendous results. So I've been blessed in my career to be part of teams that have dismantled three families. But if you don't continue to apply the pressure, they're going to rebuild. So right now, as I said, I know that in New York, I can't speak about other the offices throughout the States, but in New York they just have one organized crime squad. So they have significantly reduced the resources here.
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B
Say they're concentrating on violent crime. Is that related, still related to terrorism or.
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A
Well, it's related to, I would say gangs. And you know, that seems to be the way, like the way of the world right now. So
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B
is the FBI playing a role in the fight against terrorism, domestic terrorism as well?
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A
Yes.
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B
So about what is the percentage of their budget that's dedicated to domestic. Do you have any sense for that?
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A
I really wouldn't know that.
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B
Yeah, right now. Okay, so the dynamic between you and Capo, you had to get his trust. So you talked about football. Like who he who? I don't remember. Now, who was a Steeler fan and who was the Cowboy fan?
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A
He's the Cowboy fan. I'm a Steeler fan. Why are you.
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B
Why are you a Steeler fan?
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A
Well, when I grew up in the 70s, the Steelers were good and I stayed with Them, and I'm a very loyal person, so I stayed with them. And it's like, the day that I went to go arrest him, he came out. You know, when I got him dressed and he was wearing a cowboy jacket, I was like, oh, my God, I got to deal with this. So the banter started like. Like right then and there. And thankfully, he was a Yankee fan, and I'm a Yankee fan because I grew up in the Bronx, and, you know, at least we had that in common. But, yeah, we had a lot of, you know, jabs going, Going, going back and forth with sports, which was good. But, you know, a. As I said there before, I don't condone any of the heinous acts that he did at all and the victims that came about from that. But, you know, there's a couple of things, though. It's like a. A happy witness is a good witness, right? And the more I can make him feel comfortable and relaxed, the more he's going to tell me. And that is important. It's so important to do that. And just related to all the heinous acts that he did, that's not up for me to judge. He'll be judged by a higher power at an other day. You know what I mean? So it's not up for me to judge. And trust me, throughout my career, I have heard the worst of the worst. And again, it's not up for me to judge when someone decides to cross that line and come to our side. It's up for me to make that work, you know, because it's a difficult thing, right? You know, you got to look at these guys. They've been raised their entire life to hate law enforcement no matter where. Like, we don't know where they were raised or how or how they were raised, but they were raised to hate law enforcement. So when someone takes that huge leap to cross over to our side, we have to get them to trust us. And trust, you know, is built, right? And so that's why it's not up for me to judge. Some of the most despicable things to me were the home invasions. When someone comes into your house, ties you up and steals from you and beats you up, those are horrible acts, right? Like, that's an invasion of your privacy. Horrible thing. But it's not up for me. For me. For me to judge that, right? My job. Because it is a job, right? And you have to remember that my job is to get information from him, to build cases, to build indictments. And the beauty of the mob is These guys do crimes together. They don't do crimes alone. That's the big thing.
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B
And so they're able to implicate other people. Would they actually describe their despicable, heinous crimes to you?
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A
Yes. Yes. And it's like, you know, one of the murders that happened was the murder of a guy named Fred Weiss. So Fred Weiss was a Jewish. He was a businessman from Staten island, and he unfortunately got involved with the Gambino family and namely John Gotti. And he got arrested in June of 89, and John Gotti wanted to kill him because John Gotti thought he was cooperating with the government. The reason that John Gotti thought he was cooperating with the government was because he switched lawyers. And out of paranoia, because he switched lawyers, Gotti thought he was cooperating. He was not cooperating with the government. It was out of paranoia that he got himself killed. The reason that I bring that up is because the decalvacante family was close to the Gambino family. And as a favor to the Gambino family, the decal vacantes killed him. Anthony Capo was the driver in that murder. It became a race between the two families, the Gambinos and the Decalicantes, to kill him. That's probably the most indictable mob murder ever, where at least 15 people have either pled guilty or have been convicted of that murder. Where we had so many witnesses related to that murder that have come forward after that. They even described that they have seen both families driving by each other, seeing each other, doing surveillance on Fred Weiss. What I mean is, surveillance is trying to get his pattern down as to where he lived, where he worked, when he came and back and forth and went to work. So very horrible
- [32:59]
B
during the second world War, when you have German prisoners, I think that it was much more effective to be chummy with them, to get information than to try to hurt them in any fashion. And at least it's all humans. True. They play chess with them. There are all these stories about how people would play chess with them and get comfortable.
- [33:26]
A
You get more beast with honey, right?
- [33:29]
B
Yeah.
- [33:29]
A
Yeah.
- [33:31]
B
If the families themselves do they divide up the corrupt things that they're doing, like certain neighborhoods, how do they. Do they divide the business or do they compete?
- [33:44]
A
Well, one thing that we talked about there was the bid ringing, right? So what happened at times is they would have, like, a preset arrangement as to who was going to win what job. So the Colombos might win this job, The Decal vacantes would win that job. It would go around the table. So it would already be preset. So. And yes, there are certain areas that are controlled by one family and certain areas that are controlled by another family. So it does. It does happen.
- [34:12]
B
Do they get into violent feuds with each other?
- [34:17]
A
Not that often, but it can happen. You know, they try to be peaceful about it, though, when they. That's what it's called a sit down. A sit down is when, you know, the higher ups of the family get together and try to iron out a dispute without it being violent because you're not. Made men are not supposed to hit each other. When I say made men, that means a maid member of that particular family where they'd gone through an oath and became a maiden member of that particular particular family.
- [34:42]
B
And they go through these oaths to become members of the family.
- [34:46]
A
Right. So as I said, Anthony Capo was the driver on that particular murder. As a result of his participation in that murder, he later was rewarded and became a made member of the Decalvo Canty family because of that murder.
- [35:02]
B
So that's a way of proving yourself. I guess that's true in gangs. Gangs do the same thing. Fraternities do the same thing. I think, exactly, in their own way, flipping capo is not that different from flipping corporate insiders. In white car cases where you trade leniency for cooperation, staging trials where juries have to decide whether to believe compromised witnesses, what parallels do you see between organized crime work and corporate fraud on or corruption cases?
- [35:36]
A
Well, especially now when you speak about a jury. Right. It is really hard to get 12 people to agree on anything.
- [35:44]
B
Right.
- [35:44]
A
So that. That. That is a really hard thing to do, especially in today's society. Right. So the government doesn't bring cases unless they really have a solid, solid case. And I think the conviction rate is very, very high. And even so, as I said, getting 12 people to agree on anything is a really hard thing to do. What's the beauty of organized crime is the way it works in New York, the southern and eastern district. And you know, there's two districts in New York, the southern district and the eastern district. And there's also a northern district was in upstate New York. There is. With organized crime, as I said before, they tend to do crimes with each other. So it's not just one person versus white collar cases. There might not be so many people involved. Right. You know, you might be a couple of people, but not that many. When organized crime people, what they do is they have to plead guilty. And because they've done so many crimes together, I think this is my own opinion, right, is they might be a little bit more believable because when they plead guilty, they got to plead to all their crimes. So it's going to be a litany of crimes that they plead to, right? Like, for instance, when Anthony Capo, when he was first arrested, he was arrested on two crimes. The conspiracy to murder Charlie Maggiore, who was part of the administration of the dekalu Canty family. And on mail fraud, when he pled guilty In June of 2000, he pled guilty to two murders, 11 murder conspiracies, and every crime you could think of. So that kind of shows you how truthful he is, right? He went from facing, I think, like 20 years to exposing himself to a life sentence. You know, that's a big difference. So that, that, that right out of the gate shows you how truthful he is. Second of all, when you go to trial, the prosecutors, they want. They. They tell the jury that I want you to criticize and really examine a witness's testimony. They say that during their opening statement. They really want you to examine their testimony because they don't want you to think, okay, he's just up there saying whatever we want him to say. By the way, we never tell them to say anything at all. The witness's responsibility, he has to a, be willing to testify and tell the truth. If we win or lose, it doesn't matter. That's the only two things that he has to do. He or she willing to testify and tell the truth. That's it.
- [38:25]
B
What happened to Capo? Is he in jail now or is he.
- [38:29]
A
Well, he actually went to jail for four years. He testified for me for seven trials. That doesn't even include the times that he was prepped for trial where people actually pled guilty as opposed to going to trial against him where he was going to testify. And then he went into the witness security program, and he became a success story. He used to say, I want to be a success story for you. And I used to tell him, don't be a success story for me. Be a success story for yourself. And he became a successful businessman, like trying to sell cars, you know what I mean? Because I used to say that he could sell steam crap to a blind man, you know, because he had the gift of gab. You know, I don't want to give away the whole story about him. You know, if you read the book, you'll actually see. But, you know, he was a very successful witness first. You know, as I said, he testified seven times and that doesn't even include all the times that he was prepped for trial.
- [39:30]
B
Are you still in touch with him?
- [39:32]
A
Haven't spoken to him in a while. I'll just say that.
- [39:36]
B
Okay, but he's, he's not, he's not using the same name right now.
- [39:40]
A
No, no, no, he went into program, he got a new name.
- [39:43]
B
Right. It's not like you can give, I need a new car, can you get me.
- [39:48]
A
Right, right. And it's like what happens is, you know, related to, as I said, the window security program is very strict. So being in the program, you just can't pick up the phone and call me. And he couldn't just get on a flight and come see me? When you're in the program, there's very strict rules. So for him to call me, it has to go through the marshals and then a certain number would come up and I would know that it's someone from the witness security program trying to call me. And that's why it works.
- [40:18]
B
When you bust like 70 people at a time. Do they all get separate trials?
- [40:22]
A
Well, we didn't. This was a series of indictments. The first indictment was in December of 99 where we arrested, I think 30. 39 people. Yeah, we arrested 39 people. And that's when I arrested Anthony Capo. And Anthony Capo was the first maid member of the Decal Volcante family that ever cooperated. So in their hundred year history at that particular time, so that became a big deal, you know what I mean? It's like as a result of that, there was a contract out to kill him and his family and then there was a contract out on law enforcement. So. And then as a result of his information, we had more indictments and then more people started to cooperate. So in a two year time period, we had seven people cooperate. Again, no one in a hundred years. And then we had seven people in a two year period cooperate. We had Vincent Palermo, who is the acting boss. We had Anthony Rotundo, a captain. We had Tommy Detoura. We had Frank Scarabino, who had the contract to kill capoeiras. He actually decided to cooperate. We had Ralph Guarino, we had Victor D. Kiera. So we had like seven people cooperate in that two year time period. And when everyone cooperated, that would just lead to more indictments. And then one of the things, what happens is when you come in and you decide to cooperate, then you have a proffer. And what a proffer is, is you're protected. You have a lawyer and the government is represented, and you're protected where as long as you tell us the truth, we can't use it against you, but you have to tell us all the crimes that you've done. And when capo came in, the first thing that he told us was that he was the driver on Fred Weiss, that the Southern district had a leak in their district where someone told them that we were coming to arrest them that day in December of 99. Because when I went to go arrest Anthony Capo that day, he wasn't there. When I went to his house, his wife said that he was at his mom's house. And then the third thing, he told us that he was the shooter in the John d' Amato murder. So again, he was telling us the truth from the very beginning.
- [42:35]
B
In white collar crimes, how is it, again, how much resources do the FBI put to white collar crimes Right. Right now and in the past, and how similar it's the white collar crime process to this?
- [42:54]
A
Okay, so with white collar in New York, they have a dedicated white collar branch. And then under white collar, too, would be public corruption. Public corruption has been a big thing over the last several years, right? There's a lot of public corruption, as you know, as you know yourself. And it's the same process, right? It's like people would get arrested, and then people might decide to cooperate and try to flip on others as it's like bad guys do bad things, and then they try to get themselves out of a bad type of situation. So it's the same process that you would be arrested, you might decide to cooperate, which you would proffer, and then a proffer would lead to a cooperation agreement, and then you use that information to have another indictment. So you try to build a case. But there's a dedicated. In New York, there's a dedicated white collar branch.
- [43:43]
B
Like in the case of a mob, you knew these families, so you knew how to. You. You knew where to put your scrutiny. But in the case of white car crimes, how do you. How do you know where to put your efforts here? How do you get loads? I guess there.
- [43:58]
A
There could be a victim that might call up that lost money, unfortunately, right? It's like after I retired, I worked at a bank, right? I worked at a bank for about four and a half years. And I just saw, unfortunately, so. So many scams there, right? So many people just being defra, you know, going after the elderly. And that's how cases could start where someone scammed or defrauded. You know, these. These fraudsters are Good, right. By clicking on a link on your phone or getting a phone call, you think it's someone from a bank and they, you give them access on your computer. You know, you see something on Norton, right? There's a Norton pop up, like where you think it's a spyware, but it actually was a fraudster. Like there's so many. So a lot of victims report their losses in white collar. That's how a lot of things start. You know what I mean? Or there could be a whistleblower, right? A whistleblower at a firm that might see something and they, they actually might call the FBI. You know, there is each local FBI office has a complaint line, right? You can actually call there. You know, there is. I'm just trying to think there's a website that you can actually go to. I think it's FBI.gov, where if there's someone that loses money via a wire, like electronically, you can report it there, you know. So that's how a lot of cases do start, unfortunately, because of victims tips and victims.
- [45:29]
B
What roughly. And how is it decided? What are roughly the priorities of the FBI between like organized crime, white car crime, gangs, terrorism, or maybe even like, what are the, the different areas that the FBI focuses on and how do they decide on the priorities of those areas?
- [45:49]
A
Well, if you know, New York is a major field office, right? So in New York there are separate branches because you have a lot, a lot of personnel here. So there might be a thousand agents just dedicated to the New York office. If you're in a smaller office, you could be doing a bunch of different violations. But in New York it's a big office, so it's separated into like a white collar branch, a counter terrorism branch, organized crime branch, a violent crime branch. So there's different branches in New York because it's one of the major field offices. Same thing like in la. It's a major field office, but if you go to like Utah, it might be a smaller field office. So that agent might work multiple violations. He could be doing a bank robbery, he could be doing a white collar case. He might do, you know, an organized crime case, which there might not be organized crime there, but he could be doing various types of cases. But in New York, New York is such a big office that there's that.
- [46:53]
B
So how do you decide, let's say in New York, to allocate to these different.
- [46:58]
A
So, you know, it's like when I got, when I got sent to, to, to, to New York, I don't have a Choice where I'm going to go, they decide where I'm going to go. So when I, when I first got here in 1998, I was going around like, your reputation is all that you have. Right. So you're trying to show you have a good rep. You, you offer to do things, you sign up for arrest, you work wires. You're just trying to show that you're a hard worker. And I was interested in or in or an. Or an organized crime. So I went to some of the bosses trying to show that, hey, I'd like to work here. And I just got lucky that they selected me. But back then they had the embassy bombings, so a lot of people in my period or rotation, they got sent to that. They got sent to Africa. I just didn't get selected for that. You know what I mean? It's always the needs of the Bureau. Wherever the main priority is or wherever the main threat is at that particular time, you're going to be sent there.
- [47:59]
B
How does the Bureau decide what those main threats are?
- [48:02]
A
I guess it's just the current events, really.
- [48:06]
B
And will they switch their priorities?
- [48:08]
A
Oh, yes.
- [48:10]
B
They're very adjustable, it's very flexible. And even though you have a specialty, different agents, they do. You can move from one specialty to another.
- [48:21]
A
Feeling like, I remember back in 2008 when you had the white collar, the crisis, then a lot we. I, as a supervisor of the Columbo squad, then I had to give up bodies because we created some new squads to kind of tackle that, you know. Yeah. So you're constantly, you're constantly adapting.
- [48:41]
B
I guess some people would complain that white collar crime doesn't get the attention that it deserves. And for example, after 2007, 2008, I don't know if any, maybe one or two people were prosecuted. And we were very minor figures in this thing.
- [49:00]
A
I think the white collar branch, it's like my brother is a supervisor for a white collar squad now.
- [49:08]
B
Okay, so you think they're out there, they're doing their thing. We shouldn't think that the Waikara criminals are getting away with it.
- [49:17]
A
Oh, no, no. Just because you don't see the headlines, it doesn't mean that there's not investigations, that there's things not behind the scenes. Because as I said, unfortunately, there are so many scams out there right now. And that's the thing. There's business email compromises. Right? That's when you get an email that says, okay, we switched banks, and it's like, just pay here as opposed to there's. And it's unfortunate, right? Because we live in a world where no one likes to speak to each other. It's become a golden opportunity for the bad guys. The days of going in to rob the bank are becoming fewer and fewer because it's much more easier for me to rob you blind online. And that's what's happening. Because no one likes to speak to each other. Everything is email or text. And as I said, after I first retired, I worked in a bank for four and a half years. I saw that all day, every day. Where people, because they don't talk to each other, this happened. And they like to prey on businesses. Why? Because of the relationship me and you could be doing. We could know each other for 10 years. Right. And we're doing business for 10 years. It's ideal for me to try to defraud you because we might have payment terms of 60 to 90 days. What does that mean? I'm like, okay, Alfie, you haven't paid me in 60 days. It's a little awkward. But I'm going to call you now and be like, all right, I and gotten that payment. And then when I call you that 70th day, you tell me I got that email from you that you said you changed your banks from TD bank to Chase. And I'm like, what are you talking about? The bad guy already has a 70 day head start on us. Where you got an email from me, which was a fraudulent email where I give these safety tip trainings right now, where the email was manipulated just a little bit. For instance, you ever put an R and an N together? It's an M. You ever an I, an L or A1? They all look the same. Adding an extra letter or a number to an email address. These fraudsters are good. You ever hear about someone trying to. This is horrible. Ever hear about someone trying to purchase a home? There's so many emails that go back and forth with lawyers and the banks how one email can be manipulated. I've seen people show up to closings and find out that their money has been sidetracked. Their down payment. So a, can you imagine going to a closing and hearing that you lost your down payment and you're not getting the house? That's a double whammy.
- [51:58]
B
Yeah. And I guess a lot of these are also cybersecurity breaches right now. Where a huge part of it. And these are. And they. And the criminals are global in nature and they're not because the Internet is open and I guess the FBI has to go after people in all over the world. This is not just a, an American problem. And of course, yeah, it is real. I just go ahead. I think I almost felt where I was going to. It was only a hundred dollar payment and I don't understand what the ultimate scam was, but I was ready to make the payment and I went on Vembo and the Venmo said this, this is a known scam. Yeah, see that, I mean I'm, that was helpful because I guess they had that experience and then they still wouldn't let me go. They said, I got back to them, I said this is a known scam. And they said, oh, they're just saying that.
- [52:52]
A
Exactly.
- [52:54]
B
Try our payment system. I also, I was very impressed when you'd said that Capo, I mean was capo, he wasn't a high up person, but just one person, even fairly low down, they have the information and if you get that one thread, the whole thing becomes unraveled. Is my understanding correct or was he higher up?
- [53:17]
A
He was a soldier, he was a maid member in the family. But he was so violent and hard to control that he actually reported to the acting boss and that was the downfall. Because he was so hard to control, he reported to the acting boss and he did a lot of violent acts with that person and then the acting boss cooperated and that was the downfall of the family. So where is, where, where he was positioned really hurt the family.
- [53:46]
B
But again it's, it's you, if you get one person that leads, it snowballs and it leads to any other people.
- [53:55]
A
And in the book, I think I describe it as a spiral effect of cooperation. And that's what it was.
- [54:00]
B
Yeah, yeah. And so looking back about what work means, lessons about organizational strategy and ethics, do law enforcement, regulators, even corporate leaders, take from your experience, are there practices you would change now, knowing what you know about the human cost?
- [54:19]
A
Well, a, I, I think it, it takes courage to come forward. Right. You know, wherever it is, either in the mob or in the corporate world. Right. It does take courage to come forward. And I, I think it does show that oversight is needed, especially in the corporate world. Right. You definitely need the, the oversight because if you don't, things can run amok. Right. And I think just ethically, just always remain true to yourself, how you're raised and always have that fine line not to cross the line. That's the main thing. I think ethically, always remain true to yourself and don't cross that line.
- [54:59]
B
I taught corporate ethics for many years. I think it would be more difficult today. Because it seems like some corporate criminals seem to get away with things that are in a very public way, which is a bad lesson for students. And I did speak about whistleblowing and whistleblowing. It seems like the whistleblowers, their fate is not particularly happy afterwards. You have any comments about whistleblowing in general, what you were seeing before? If we were going to tell my students about it, what would you say? How would you, what would you say?
- [55:38]
A
I think just the whole corruption thing, I think greed is a horrible thing. Right. I think that's how it all starts, the greed part. But trying to be a whistleblower, yes, it, it's a courageous act to do, but I think it goes to the heart of your soul. Right. If it doesn't, doesn't feel right, you know, do, do you really want, want to work there? Right. I think that's what it goes back to. Right. It's like if it's, if it's not right, you know, you should, you shouldn't be there. So it takes guts to come forward, but it's the right thing to do. Yeah.
- [56:14]
B
And it's very hard to come forward. I mean, I think the way I would advise students, try to resolve this internally, and this is your last resort, it's not going to be a happy outcome for anybody. So what are you working on now? Are there other stories from your time in the Bureau that you think are important for the public to hear?
- [56:38]
A
Well, a, you know, this investigation took six years. And then after that, I went down to run the Columbo squad. It was funny because they wanted me to go down there, and I, I only had six years on the job. I was like, I'm way too young to be a supervisor. That's what I thought. And I was voluntold to go down there as opposed to volunteer. So I thought I still needed to learn a lot. And I went down there and I was going down. I went from a squad where it was young agents that each other, you know, we were just really gelled together. And I was going to a squad that had eight supervisors in eight years. And I'm like, what am I getting myself into? I don't really want to go down here. So I went down there and I told them just a couple of things. A, this squad needs stability. And two, if you're going to send me down here, I'm not a yes man, so be careful what you ask for. So I, I, I, I went down there and I got down there in December of 2004, and I ended up staying there until June of 2013. I was there for almost nine years. I acted for a year and a half, and then I was there for seven years. The FBI had a policy where you can only be a supervisor for seven years, and then you had to either step up or step down. And what that means is stepping up means going down to headquarters in D.C. for two years, and then they could send you wherever they want, which I wasn't going to do, or yet you could step down. So I was there for nine years, and I actually was able to turn that squad around and have people try to get on the squad as opposed to get off the squad. And we actually ended up dismantling that family. And I mentioned one of the highlights there was we executed the largest FBI mob arrest ever in January 2011, where we arrested 127 people. During my career, I had been blessed to uncover five body recoveries, you know, where unfortunately, victims have been buried. And we were able to find them, which is very hard to do. It's like there could be a body buried in your room there, and it's even hard to find. But we did, you know, there was a case related to Goodfellows, the movie, where we actually found a body in the basement of Jimmy Burke's basement, the main character in that movie. So I've been really blessed. And we think. I mean, I have the future. There could be a second book maybe, who knows, related to the Columbos. Because this book at first was really only supposed to be a couple of chapters, but there's so much information there, they decided that this would have to be split up into two books. I just have to get the energy to write the second one. Currently, I'm global head of security for a financial institution. So that's what I'm doing right now. I've been there for about two and a half years. I'd rather not say the name of the firm, but I've been there for about two and a half years. And as I said, once I. Once I retire again, maybe I'll. I'll write a second book related to the Colombos and the Bonanno family.
- [59:31]
B
What you talked about when you went down there, things were very unstable and you turned it around. How did you turn it around? And what was the causes of the instability and what did you do to turn that around?
- [59:44]
A
Well, as I said, they had eight supervisors in eight years. So people just kept on going and leaving. And they were kind of known as the redheaded stepchilds. So, you know, I Always believe in leading by example. You know, as I said, in my world, everyone has a voice. It doesn't matter if you've been there for 20 minutes or for 20, for 20 years, I'm going to give you the respect to have you have a voice. At the end of the day, I'm going to have to make that hard, that hard decision. You know, I had a lot of fights. Like there's a lot of fights that you have between different districts, eight agencies, squads. And my squad always saw that I was going to protect them and stand up for them. I always fought for the right reason, you know, whatever that may be, you know, so. And I think they just, I just developed a lot, a lot of trust, you know, and I always lead from the front, whatever they do. I wouldn't ask someone to do something if I wasn't going to do it, try to do it myself.
- [60:42]
B
How many people were you supervising at that point in time? How many people were in the whole unit? I guess, you know, how many people?
- [60:47]
A
Well, on my squad I had about 18 people. And then there's support people too, people that would not be an agent. So you could have another four or five people there as well.
- [60:59]
B
And you busted the entire Columbo family with those.
- [61:02]
A
Yeah, we even had greater stats there. And one thing that I had to do is right, because at that point in time there was a lot of shows that came out. Right. So there was ncis and jury started to think that you should be able to solve a case in 32 minutes, 32 to 40 minutes, you know, types of minutes or so. So I had to really change the philosophy. And what I mean by that is you can no longer just put a historical witness on the stand and have a jury believe him. I really had to get into having consensual recordings. And this squad was amazing. We made over 1800 recordings in a seven year time period, which is unheard of. These guys worked around the clock and they just did a tremendous job.
- [61:55]
B
We want to look at that.
- [61:57]
A
Yeah. You know, and, but like just getting crimes on tape and getting voices on tape was just tremendous. And as I said, I remember the first big arrest we had was in, I think it was in September of 2007. And then we had another one in June of 2008. And then it just started to spiral where we had people cooperate and we would just put them back on the street to make tapes and it just kept on going and going. And as I said, my last official act was in June of 2013 and I was mentioning before about stepping up or stepping down. I actually decided to step down. And I was. I think I was one of the few supervisors who stepped down and then worked cases again. I wanted to prove to myself that I could work cases again. And I went and I worked violent gangs. So in Mount Vernon, New York, they had a gang problem where you literally had these young gangs killing each other, and they couldn't get anyone to cooperate. So they tasked me to go to Mount Vernon, up to our White Plains office and work gangs. And I was able to get cooperation, which they hadn't done before. And we basically dismantled these two gangs and, you know, in my eyes, saved a lot of young kids lives because these young kids were just killing each other. And then I did that for a couple of years, and then I was getting close to retirement, and I said, you know what? I need to get back to my roots so I can make some money. So I went to a white collar squad, and I worked white collar for a couple of years. I did some fraud cases, and then I retired in April 30th of 2019.
- [63:37]
B
Are you compelled to retire or did you do well?
- [63:41]
A
The FBI has a very odd retirement system where you have to retire at 57. You can't retire before you're 50, and you have to have 20 years on the job. So not knowing all this when you're young and you start. I actually started when I was 30. That's when I got into the FBI. So I kind of nailed it, right? I did my 20 years, and when I was around 50 years old, I started to look, I didn't have to leave right right away. I was extremely successful. And I want to put this on the record. It's never just me. It's always the teams that I had, the mentors, the partners, my teammates, always part of the success. But I didn't have to leave right away, so I could be very selective as to my first job. And I actually went to a place called Signature Bank. I don't know if you've heard of them before, but they were one of the first banks that had crypto customers. They didn't deal in crypto, but they had crypto customers. Big mistake by the public. The media thought they. They dealt in crypto. They did not. They had crypto customers. So I went there. It was a great bank. They unfortunately ended up getting bought, and I went on to another company. But I went there for about four. About four and four and a half years.
- [65:02]
B
Miss the FBI.
- [65:05]
A
I miss the people. You know, things have changed last couple like few years. As you know yourself, they've been in the press a lot. I think they've taken a lot of hits. But I definitely miss the people.
- [65:16]
B
Okay. This has been great talking to Seamus.
- [65:22]
A
Yeah, McAlerney, I know it's tough.
- [65:25]
B
I'll give. Seamus McIlarney, thank you for joining me on on the Cusp between strategy and ethics. The book is Flipping Capo how the FBI Dismantled the Real Sopranos from Chicago Review Press. For listeners who think about power, governance and the uneasy trade offs between justice and expediency, it offers a vivid ground level look at strategy and ethics in one of the hardest domains there is. I really appreciate all the work you've done for all of us in the United States and in the world, really in protecting us. And thank you for listening to on the Cusp on the New Books Network. If you have comments or suggestions, you can reach me@amarcusmn.edu. amarcusmn.eduardo.