#2343 - Joe Pistone

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joe Rogan Experience #2343 – Joe Pistone

Release Date: July 1, 2025

Hosts and Guests:

• Joe Rogan – Comedian and podcast host.
• Joseph Pistone – Former FBI agent known for his undercover work as Donnie Brasco infiltrating the Mafia.

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Introduction to Joseph Pistone

The episode begins with Joe Rogan welcoming Joseph Pistone, famously known by his undercover alias, Donnie Brasco. Pistone shares a glimpse into his double life:

"[00:03] Joseph Pistone: Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day."

Joe Rogan remarks on Pistone's signature sunglasses, hinting at his need to conceal his identity even post-operation.

Pistone's Early Career and Entry into the FBI

Joseph Pistone delves into his career trajectory, starting with his three-year tenure in Naval Intelligence. His aspiration to join law enforcement led him to the FBI, where his street-smart background from an all-Italian neighborhood in Patterson, New Jersey, proved invaluable.

"[00:56] Joseph Pistone: ...I became friendly with some FBI agents and I figured if I... I'm going to go into law enforcement, so I might as well try for the best, the FBI."

First Undercover Assignment: Gambling Operations

Pistone recounts his initial undercover work within the FBI, focusing on gambling cases. His first assignment involved infiltrating a craps game in Jacksonville, Florida.

"[02:47] Joseph Pistone: First was infiltrating a gambling house in Jacksonville, Florida. Actually, that's what was my first office."

His familiarity with gambling and gangsters from his upbringing made him comfortable in these environments, allowing him to identify key players effectively.

Transition to Infiltrating the Mob

After approximately four to five years handling various cases, Pistone was approached to infiltrate the Mafia. His journey into the mob began with building trust and establishing his cover as a jewel thief, Donnie Brasco.

"[03:38] Joseph Pistone: ...I knew the streets. So when I went into the FBI, I was, you know, I was street smart."

He underwent rigorous training, including attending diamond school and learning lock-picking, to convincingly portray his undercover persona.

Entering the Colombo Family

Pistone details his infiltration into the Colombo crime family, highlighting significant moments that tested his cover:

• Initial Interaction with Charlie: Pistone met Charlie through an informant who introduced him as a car thief. The introduction was pivotal in gaining acceptance within the crew.

• The Test with Patsy: A critical moment occurred when Pistone was threatened by Patsy, a made man, with a .38 revolver if he couldn't demonstrate his theft skills.

  "[30:08] Joseph Pistone: ...he said, well, if you don't convince me that you're as good a thief as Julie says you are, the only way you're going out of this room is rolled up in that rug."

Pistone's quick thinking and refusal to crack under pressure solidified his standing within the mob.

Building Relationships and Gathering Intelligence

Throughout his undercover tenure, Pistone formed relationships with key figures like Lefty Ruggiero and Sonny Black, which allowed him to gather extensive intelligence on Mafia operations. He emphasizes the importance of remaining authentic and not altering his personality to fit the gangster façade.

"[93:07] Joseph Pistone: ...and I never changed my personality."

Challenges and Risks of Undercover Work

Pistone openly discusses the constant threat of discovery and the psychological toll of living a double life. From being banned from Christmas parties to witnessing violent confrontations, the dangers were ever-present.

"[86:01] Joseph Pistone: ...you never really do [stop worrying]."

He also touches on how modern technology, such as cell phones and the internet, complicates undercover operations by making it harder to maintain anonymity.

The Climax: Induction and Operation Shutdown

As Pistone integrates deeper into the Mafia, he approaches the moment of being inducted as a made man. However, unforeseen complications, including betrayals and external law enforcement operations, lead to the eventual shutdown of his undercover mission.

"[98:45] Joseph Pistone: ...we just shut the operation down."

Despite nearing his goal of full induction, the operation's termination marked the end of his deepest infiltration.

Aftermath and Reflections

Post-operation, Pistone reflects on the impact of his work on the Mafia and his personal life. He discusses the cultural shifts within organized crime and the lasting effects of his undercover efforts.

"[140:31] Joseph Pistone: ...we don't study our enemy. Remember..."

Pistone also shares his admiration for Johnny Depp, who portrayed him in the film adaptation of his story, and the genuine friendship that developed between them.

"[118:42] Joseph Pistone: ...I love that."

Current Endeavors and Legacy

Today, Joseph Pistone is involved in writing and supporting law enforcement initiatives. He speaks passionately about educating future agents and the importance of understanding criminal organizations at a fundamental level.

"[142:16] Joseph Pistone: ...It's really, you know, like I said, I've been with them for 14 years."

He also highlights his involvement with the Southern California Gang Conference, emphasizing community support for law enforcement families.

Closing Thoughts

The conversation concludes with Pistone sharing insights on maintaining integrity during undercover work and the enduring challenges posed by modern surveillance and societal changes.

"[141:10] Joseph Pistone: I just wanted you to know... you have to study your enemy."

Joe Rogan expresses profound appreciation for Pistone's experiences, underscoring the podcast's deep dive into the complexities of undercover operations and organized crime.

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Notable Quotes:

• "I never changed my personality." — Joseph Pistone [93:07]
• "Anybody I went against, I always knew who they were." — Joseph Pistone [140:50]
• "The only thing that's changing undercover is building your legend because of the Internet." — Joseph Pistone [140:38]
• "You have to study your enemy." — Joseph Pistone [140:24]

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Conclusion:

Episode #2343 of The Joe Rogan Experience offers an in-depth exploration of Joseph Pistone's legendary undercover work as Donnie Brasco. Through candid discussions, Pistone sheds light on the intricacies of infiltrating the Mafia, the psychological challenges faced, and the lasting impact of his efforts on both law enforcement and organized crime. This episode serves as a compelling testament to Pistone's dedication and the lengths to which agents go to dismantle criminal organizations.

Transcript

[Joe Rogan]

Joe Rogan podcast.

[Joseph Pistone]

Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[Unknown]

Nice to meet you.

[Joseph Pistone]

My pleasure.

[Joe Rogan]

You always wear sunglasses? Is that to hide your identity still force a habit?

[Joseph Pistone]

Actually, it's, I have to say, number one. But where I reside now, my neighbors have no idea that they're living next to Donnie Brasco, so.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, you have a very distinct voice.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, I know.

[Joe Rogan]

I don't want to ask where you live, but you know what a wild life you've had, sir?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, pretty much, yeah. Never expected to go like that, but it took off.

[Unknown]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

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, you know, the FBI.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

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 Patterson, New Jersey. I grew up in an all Italian neighborhood. New 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 I started doing some little undercover work on gambling cases because back then the FBI was big into gambling, interstate gambling cases.

[Joe Rogan]

So what was your first undercover work?

[Joseph Pistone]

First was infiltrating a gambling house in Jacksonville, Florida. Actually, that's what was my first office.

[Joe Rogan]

What kind of gambling were they doing?

[Joseph Pistone]

Craps. I had a regular casino going. And, you know, I felt comfortable around that stuff because I grew up with that stuff. You know, I grew up, like I say in the neighborhood, crap games, card games, it wasn't anything new to me. And being around gangsters was not like intimidating because I was around gangsters growing up, so 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.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

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, it wasn't where they were facing, you know, 15, 20 years. You know, they might get a year or two years and then, you know, get some time knocked off their sentences. So most of it, they plead. And so you never have to appear in a court.

[Unknown]

So.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, not too much with these cases. No, not too much with those cases. And then I, I worked a lot of stolen art buying, you know, buying stolen art, buying stocks and bonds, swag, stuff like that.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Let's see, probably four or five years. Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, what happened was, is that I'm working out in New York, the New York office of the FBI, and there's a, there's a big case in, 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. So they had, they grabbed one of the guys and they, they flipped him and they grabbed his son. And 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, 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 at a 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 gotta know how to steal cars. So he gave me about a week's lesson on how to steal cars, how to hook cars, hot wiring.

[Joe Rogan]

This is like, what year was this?

[Joseph Pistone]

This was in 19. Let's see, 1970, maybe 73, 74.

[Joe Rogan]

So you essentially just pop in the ignition.

[Joseph Pistone]

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 Jim to get in the door, and then how to, how to pop the ignition. And once I learned, you know, I figured I could do that. Then he introduced me and I got in with this crew. There was a crew 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. I knew how to drive tractor trailers because I did that in college during the summertime. I drove a tractor trailer during the summer.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

No, we just stole the cars and I bring them to you. But I mean, we stole rigs too.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, I see.

[Joseph Pistone]

Because we were dealing with companies too.

[Joe Rogan]

Got it.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know these guys that own some, some trucking companies that.

[Joe Rogan]

So you have to trust this guy though, to get you inside. Right. You have to trust this guy to not fuck this up and say, hey, this is a car thief.

[Joseph Pistone]

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[Unknown]

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[Joe Rogan]

That's got to be hair raising.

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, it is because, you know, the guy's an informant and he's already in trouble. He's in trouble, but he was in. His basic reason for, for getting me in was he wanted to get his son out of trouble. So, you know, we, we had him by the short hairs there that, hey, you know, if this goes good, your son is free. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna 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, we, they make the arrest. I went to trial in that case, but that case was in, in Florida. And a funny story on that case is, if you want to hear it. Sure. We, we had, I hooked one, hooked up 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. And give her the keys. And because he had already paid. And 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, she says, aren't you Donnie? I said, yeah. She said, you delivered a car to my house, right? I said, yeah. He said, we 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Was she hot?

[Joseph Pistone]

I can't remember, Joe. So long ago I would have remembered that part if she was. I would have remembered.

[Unknown]

Yeah, you probably would have remembered.

[Joseph Pistone]

So I get back to New York and I had a real good supervisor named Guy Barratta. 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 40 some foot trailers. So you're talking a lot of money, but they were all run by the mob. So he. 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, you know, we can get something going with these truck hijackings. So the idea was, you know, nobody had ever infiltrated the mob before. You know, actually the Mafia. Mafia had some informants in. In with them, but nobody had actually gotten in. So the idea was let's. Let's try to hit the fences. Fences are the, you know, the guys that. That sell the goods, sell the swag and sell the goods. So, you know, 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, you're. 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 got to know diamonds and precious gems. Right? All right, so I went to. I went to school. I went to diamond school. Diamond, impressive. Gem school.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, so you have to be able to identify.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, I mean, use a lens. Well, that's how you're going to get. That's how you're going to get caught.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, Right. Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right. How long is the school for?

[Joseph Pistone]

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.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

So pick locks. I had to learn how to pick locks. Right. What else you got to know?

[Joe Rogan]

Crack safes.

[Joseph Pistone]

You got to know about safes.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

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 Donnie Brasco. I rented an apartment, I bought a car, utilities, you know, phones, everything. Everything as a. As a citizen. In quotes, Donnie Brasco, Michael.

[Joe Rogan]

They get you a Social Security number.

[Joseph Pistone]

And the Whole deal, Social Security, everything. But, you know, I don't want to get into how they do that. But, you know, nothing could be at that time. They couldn't, 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, you know, and say, hey, you know, I'm a jewel thief, right? It doesn't work that way. You gotta, you gotta get seen. You gotta be around. So I moved out of my residence. Of course, my family wasn't, wasn't in, 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.

[Joe Rogan]

How do you go and get your face seen? You just show up by yourself.

[Joseph Pistone]

Just show up.

[Joe Rogan]

Is that suspicious, though, a guy shows up by himself? Not from the neighborhood, no.

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, that's the thing. And 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, right? So it was up to me if I got into conversation with anybody, my story was. And then again, you have to, you have to, 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 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?

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

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, they couldn't check that. I mean, these are all things that if you're going to send somebody into an undercover operation that is deep cover. And remember, I had no informant bringing me in. 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 a 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you have a family at the time?

[Joseph Pistone]

I did, yeah. But they lived, they lived across country at the time.

[Joe Rogan]

That ought to be crazy difficult for them.

[Joseph Pistone]

Very difficult. It was, it was, yeah. So.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. And my only conversation with anybody was is what I'll have to drink and what I'll have to eat. And I'm not a drinker. I never was a drinker, so. And you know, for young undercovers, you don't have to be a drinker and you don't have to do shit that you know, that you think gangsters do. My, 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 girl that he was always with was there. So I'm at the bar and I guess she gets up, she goes to the ladies 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, 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. I don't have any. Any interest. So now what does this guy know? He knows that I'm a street guy, all right? So he. Now he comes over to me and now we start talking, all right? Talking about baseball, talking about how screwed up New York City is at the time. And 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 like to gamble? I said, sure, why not? He said, when I bang up here, I'm going to go to a. I'm going to go to an all night game. He said, 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. All right? 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. So. But now I figured now I got to try to set. Set the hook. So I come in one night and I got a packet of diamonds, all right? So I put them on a bar and I said, 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 him, you know, make money himself. So he, 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, you know, we're. I'm still hanging around with him. He comes in one night, puts an envelope on a 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, right? So now what does he know? He knows I'm a. I'm a thief because I'm giving him diamonds. I'm not asking him at prices for Tiffany prices. Right? Now we get to the game, and he entered. You know, he introduces me as Don the Jeweler. So he introduces me to this Colombo guy. Guy's name was Jilly. So Jilly said, hey, you know, Don, where you from? I said, well, you know, I hung around and hung around some in Florida, hung around, you know, California. I said, you know, just. Just move around a lot. So why don't you come out to my place? I'm out in Brooklyn. 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 so he was at the Columbos. So I started hanging out there with the Colombos. And I got in with him and got in with his crew, did some stuff with them, you know, because you got to do something otherwise, right? If you ain't producing. If you ain't producing, you ain't worth it, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, they had. They did some hijacking and, you know, unloaded some trucks for them and different things. So that went on with the. With the Colombos. And I was getting. I was getting good information with these guys 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 maid guy. Made guy's a guy that's been officially inducted into a particular Mafia family. And these guys were with the Colombos. I think Patsy was a maid guy and Frankie. Frankie was an associate, right? 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 him, you know, hey, Donnie's. You know, Donnie's a good thief. And he knows. He knows. 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. 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 get 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 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. 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 Frankie and Patsy what, you know, what a great thief you are. And they're pissed off because, you know, Fancy's pissed off because you turned down. You turned down the two scores. I said, well, what do you want me to tell you, Gillian? 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 Julie says you are, the only way you're going out of this room is rolled up in that rug.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, boy.

[Joseph Pistone]

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 on the $50,000 rug. So we're in there, and. And where 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 the 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. 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 it's. Why isn't Donnie pissed off? Right? My only recourse here is some kind of physical recourse. But I can't do. 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, Jesus.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Right? So now, was Frankie questioning you too?

[Joseph Pistone]

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. I mean, he's. He's punching the hell out. But I can't.

[Joe Rogan]

Can't hit him back.

[Joseph Pistone]

I can't hit him back. I can just protect myself. But I figure, well, you hit me once, I hear 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, you know, you can't get into an altercation with made guys and have it come out. So after, 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. 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 Bonanno guy by the name of Tony Mirra. 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. And I start siding up to this mirror who was a complete psycho case. A complete fucking psycho case. Which I find out later on he's a big brawley guy. And he says, you know, why don't you come downtown? I said, yeah, okay. So he was from Little Italy and that's where he hung out. He had a bus stop luncheon at down a little lately, but he was psycho. So I started hanging out with him at my first Bonanno guy that brings me around. So we're out one night and he was shaking down nightclubs and I was helping him. When I say helping, I was with him, you know, shakedown owners and at nightclubs and stuff. So it's about 3 or 4 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 a. 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 you? Why are you taking it out on her? You know, she's here 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, you know. So the next day, now this guy, as I had gotten to know him, I had seen him in action. And 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 Bonannos and then he introduced.

[Joe Rogan]

So even after that?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, after that.

[Joe Rogan]

So after that. Did you get his respect by saying you can stab him?

[Unknown]

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[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he knew that, you know, he knew that. I. I wasn't bullshitting him. I mean, you know, he just beat me down in front of other people. I mean, not. 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 Ruggiero, another maid guy in the Bonannos from downtown Knickerbocker Village. They all lived in Knickerbocker Village. And introduces me to Lefty. So now, Mira had just gotten out of the can. Now they send him back, right? So he goes back to the can. He was a big money maker for the Bonannos in dope. He was a big narcotics guy for the Bonannos, 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 Ruggiero did is his captain was a guy by the name of Mike Cebella. And once I got. Once Rogero got to know me a little better, he brings me to Mike Cebella, 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 the 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.

[Joe Rogan]

So, all told, how much time are you undercover now?

[Joseph Pistone]

Now, this is probably going over a year.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Over a year now. Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Now, you reporting to anybody during this time, do you have to go back to the FBI?

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

So you're totally on your own.

[Joseph Pistone]

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 11:00 o' clock in the morning to maybe 3, 4:00 the next morning. Seven days a week. So, you know, your only lifeline is. Is the phone to this, to your contact agent. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

And so I'm doing a lot of stuff like that with. And I'm. I'm gaining all kind of intelligence, though, you know, identifying made guys, identifying guys in other families that are made.

[Joe Rogan]

Are you writing this stuff down? Do you just keep it all in your head?

[Joseph Pistone]

No, in your. And what I do is I. 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. 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 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 did was I had a mini cassette recorder that I bought at. What's that? Radio Shack. Radio Shack.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know, and I just put it in my. I just put it in my sport cone pocket.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

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. You know, if they kiss you on the lips, then you're done. You know, that that's the last day you're gonna 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, Right. I mean, when I was. I was with Mirror one time and we stop. He said, hey, pull over, Donnie. I pull over and he tears my. He tears my. 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 wires.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Does he suspect in you or suspecting somebody else when he's tearing your dash apart?

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Joseph Pistone]

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 the Bonannos. 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. 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 a 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, Donnie'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.

[Joe Rogan]

You knew the protocol.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, I knew. 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 Balustrari 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 right? They had a vending machine company set up. And the undercover was a undercover, actually, that I knew, which is because I had a. I have a. 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. We got trucks. We got. 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 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 mobs machines. I said, all right. So I said, well, what's the plan? Well, maybe you can bring the Bonannos out here and we can get a sit down with the balustraris. I said, well, let me. Let me see. So I went, roger, one day, and I just. I dropped a. Hey, Left. You know, I got a call the other day from a guy that I. 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, let 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, 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. 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. I got a warehouse full of machines. I got everything set up. That's okay. So I go back to Lefty. I said, left, he's got. 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 Cello 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 that they're not spending their own money. So the Bureau, you know, Tony puts. Gets his two plane tickets. Me and Lefty fly out there and he takes us to the warehouse. And he's, you know, they got. 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 Bonanno's 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 consigliere, the consigliere, the Bonanno's, right? Guy by the name of Bobby Badhart. You know why they called him Bobby Badhart?

[Joe Rogan]

Because he had a bad heart.

[Joseph Pistone]

A bad heart. Easy, right? So he goes, and Bobby Badart now has to call Chicago, right? And tell Chicago that, hey, we got a guy that's been with us for 10 years. He settled now in Milwaukee. He's been in Milwaukee for a couple years and he wants to go into the business. And he has machines and everything. And we'd like to have a sit down with Balistrari, the boss of Milwaukee, okay? Chicago now calls Balestrari's consigliere and relates the whole story to him. So now we 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 sit. He'll have a meet with you guys. Who's coming out? Well, be Lefty Ruggiero and Donnie Brasco. Now, Lefty's a made guy, so, you know, so they say, okay, come on out, check into this hotel and wait for a phone call, all right? 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. We said, okay, come to Snug's restaurant. Such and such a day, such as a time. It's Balisteri'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 mob, 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 Balustrari the boss, his underboss, his consigliere, and his two sons, who are both lawyers, right? So we have a big spread where he and the. Why do you want to be here? Well, you know, Tony's been with us this. Now Lefty's doing all the talking because he's the main guy. Tony's been with us for 10 years. You know, him and. Him and Donnie. They did a lot of art theft together and stuff. And they've all. They've both been with us. And Tony, Tony thought he, you know, he could get the best. He can get the business going with. With the machines and stuff. So after this whole dinner, probably about five or six hours, he said, okay, we'll get back to you. All right? So a couple days later, he called, why don't you have dinner at my house? A 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 lefties, 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, 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, Bonanno's and the Balustraris, through Chicago. First marrying two mafia families to do business together, right? Me and Lefty go back to New York. Everything's going good. Tony's meeting with the Sons, because that's who 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, what do you do? Try to, you know. I said, tone. 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. 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 vouched for Tony.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

So we're trying to get in touch with Chicago. Chicago's not, you know, Chicago say, we don't know why they. Why they stopped. You know, we don't have any idea. So that goes. Now, that's. I got that hanging on me. Right?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

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, though the cops told it, you know, it's all, of course, but I got to cover, you know, what happened to this guy. So now we got to go tell Mike Sabel, our captain, because, you know, our money source dried up. So we go sit down with Mike. 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.

[Joe Rogan]

That's it.

[Joseph Pistone]

That's it. I mean, he was. He was ripped.

[Unknown]

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[Joseph Pistone]

But he banned me from the Christmas party.

[Joe Rogan]

Because you introduced him to the cop.

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, he didn't know he was a cop because, you know, the operation just shut down and so the money stopped. Wasn't coming in anymore.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. And they don't tell you why?

[Joseph Pistone]

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. This is what I'm So they don't.

[Joe Rogan]

Suspect you at all?

[Joseph Pistone]

No. Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

How do they not suspect you? How do they not question you?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, I had been with them so many. I have been with them now, you know, joke. Over two years now.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

And, you know, so. But I'm always on edge because I, I don't know. Why aren't the balustraris telling Roger O.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

Unless they're too embarrassed. You know what I mean?

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

I don't, I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

To this day.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

And whatever happened to Tony?

[Joseph Pistone]

Oh, we just shut the operation down. They just shut it down, you know, so I'm, I'm going on again. We're going on. Nice cup.

[Joe Rogan]

You can have it.

[Joseph Pistone]

No, thank you. I got some swag coming for you.

[Joe Rogan]

All right.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, I got swag, too. You have one of them, Jerry.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

All right, cool.

[Joseph Pistone]

It was supposed to be at the hotel. It never made it, so.

[Joe Rogan]

But this has to be hair raising.

[Joseph Pistone]

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.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

But I got to stick to the story, you know, so, So I, I, I kind of squared things, square things around with him and. Because I, you know, and Mike. So now what happens is that at the time, Carmen Gallente was the boss of the Bonannos. All right? And they kill Galenti. They whack him, right? Because there's this kind of a beef within the family, and, and one side didn't like Galente, so they, they whack him. Mike Cebelo now was associated with Galeni. So they tell Mike, mike, either step down or we're gonna, we're gonna 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, was a guy by the name of Sonny Black Napolitano. He was out in Brooklyn. So they put me. And remember, we were with Mike Zabella. So they put me and Lefty now with. Under Sonny Black. 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 check in with your captain every day. So every day me and Lefty would report out that the motion lounge on Graham and Wither 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 are going to give you all this stuff. And. And I'm meeting different people again. I'm meeting people from different families through these guys. So I'm rocking out there in Brooklyn under Sonny Black. And I get another. They want to. The headquarters wants to talk to you. About what? Well, we got another cover operation going in Tampa, Florida. Yeah, we want to see if you can bring your Bonannos in. I says, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I just went through this in Milwaukee. Well, 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 got a nightclub, and it's pretty, you know, it's pretty good. But we can't get into Santo. Traffic Canti. 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 didn't. I never worked with him. I said, but as long as Steve is. Is involved, I'll see what I can do. But I don't know how long it's going to take. So you gotta 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 fuck a thief with, Right?

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right.

[Joseph Pistone]

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. 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 we're. Well, whenever we go to a restaurant, I'll let you know what restaurant we're going to go to. And you Guys just happened to be in the restaurant, and you, You. Steve saw Mary, 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right, right.

[Joseph Pistone]

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? Good. 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. You know, what are you doing? And I think it's a nice club. Why don't you come by? Now that, you know, again, you talk about a nightclub and, you know, so everything is dollar signs. So I said, left. Do 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's. He was a good. 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 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 know, it was open from, I don't know, nine o' clock. All it was wanted, you know, open all night. So he said, nice place. He said, 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 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, hey, we ran into one of Donnie's old friends. Boy, they got a nice club. Oh, 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 has been with us for, you know, Chico has been had to be with the Bonannos again for five, six years. Excuse me. So we go through that same routine, and finally, you know, that 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 a day. Get to meet another boss of Florida. Me and Sonny meet him. We actually. 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's Restaurant. That was the name of it. And Sonny had never met him before, but, you know, he'd go through all the niceties. And Sonny tells him, you know, we got a nightclub and we want to start running gambling out of it, you know. So he said, okay, I'll. 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 next couple 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 married two fucking Mafia families together. So he said, all right, 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 blackjack and stuff, 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 were 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, said, donnie says, a bunch of sheriff's deputies outside. Whoa. So right away, I get on the phone. I can't get. I can't get our contact in the sheriff's department. He's not answering his phone and that we had just paid him that day. All right? So I said, all right, clear. All the money off the tables. 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 was every so often, we collect the money and we stash it in the furnace room, right? There was a lot of money stashed. What we had was an old time. One armed bandit. The thing had to be 100 years old. Nobody ever put money in it. It was just there. So they come in and they don't see any money. One of the deputies puts a, I don't know, nickel dime, pulls a handle, and what do you think happens? He fucking wins. You're running a gambling operation. Said nobody's ever played that thing, right? Well, they wrecked the joint. They wrecked. We all get arrested.

[Joe Rogan]

Why? Why did he get arrested? Because it. I don't understand.

[Joseph Pistone]

It was a gambling charge, right? They arrest us.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, because. But why? Because of the one armed bandit.

[Joseph Pistone]

Because they won. And they said that that's. That was gambling. Nobody even knew there was any money in it or anything. It was just there as a decoration.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, boy.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know, it was. It was an antique.

[Joe Rogan]

So they just used it as an excuse.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, just use an excuse. Because we were the. We were the. The mafia guineas from New York, right? That's what we were. Right. So they throw us in a can.

[Joe Rogan]

And just for the one armed bandit.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

They never find the money.

[Joseph Pistone]

We didn't. But somebody did.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, boy.

[Unknown]

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[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Unknown]

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[Joseph Pistone]

Somebody did.

[Joe Rogan]

How much money?

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

So they swiped that?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, I don't know. Somebody did, probably. Somebody did, yeah. So we had Traffic Canti's lawyer, when 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. Now I'm in another fucking bind because now we got busted and we did, you know, we were paying the guy off.

[Joe Rogan]

And what happened to the guy you paid off?

[Joseph Pistone]

He committed suicide later on.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, how convenient.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah.

[Unknown]

Did he really commit suicide?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, he did.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Joseph Pistone]

Because when he got a subpoena. Oh.

[Joe Rogan]

He knew they were coming for him.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that. That kind of screwed that thing up and. But, you know, you know, Sonny knew that. That we were paying the guy off and everything, so, you know, they were just a.

[Joe Rogan]

Hazards of doing business.

[Joseph Pistone]

Hazards of doing business as a mob, you know. But when we got back to the club, like I say, the statue was gone with the money. Somebody took it. And so we go back to New York, and again, now there's another beef in the. In the Bonanno family, because after they whack a lenti, they make Rusty Restelli the boss of the family, but Rusty's in a can. He's in a can. So Sonny Black is. Is running a family along with another capo. And then there's a Sicilian faction of the Bonanno 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 Rastelli and they're against Sonny and the other capos. So now there's more friction in the Bonannos. So in order to solve this, they. 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, the deal is when these other three capos get to the sit down, they're going to whack them. They're going to whack them. So 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. The Last minute. And then they. I was supposed to be on the cleanup crew, but they cut me out at the. You know, at. At the last minute.

[Joe Rogan]

Why'd they cut you out?

[Joseph Pistone]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know because I wasn't told until after, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

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 would. One of the capos in Delicato, 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 them, I'd call the FBI and they would snatch them and we'd stage a hit. Or if they found them, 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Was that unusual?

[Joseph Pistone]

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.

[Joe Rogan]

Got it?

[Joseph Pistone]

Right. The only time they carry a piece is when they're gonna go. Go do some work.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know?

[Joe Rogan]

So did you see guys get killed?

[Joseph Pistone]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

I don't believe you.

[Unknown]

So that was the sneakiest no I've.

[Joe Rogan]

Ever heard in my life.

[Joseph Pistone]

So we. We. Let's move on.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, let's move on.

[Joseph Pistone]

We made me lose my train of thought, Joe.

[Joe Rogan]

Sorry. Sorry.

[Joseph Pistone]

No. So we're in the club. So I get the contract for Bruno, but obviously I can't find him. Bureau can't find him.

[Joe Rogan]

Did anybody ever find him?

[Joseph Pistone]

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, but Bruno probably is a dead man. And, well. How could you say that? Well, because when you're given a contract, it's your responsibility. That guy gets killed. And if you refuse the contract.

[Joe Rogan]

You get killed.

[Joseph Pistone]

You're gonna. You're gonna get whacked.

[Joe Rogan]

So would you have had to do it?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, if you found him I could have given it to some. To 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. You know, that's.

[Joe Rogan]

He's gonna get whacked either way.

[Joseph Pistone]

He's gonna go either way, right? So I'll take my shot with the government, right? It's. It's, you know, it's not. It's not, you know, a lot of people can't deal with that, but I get it, you know, so it's the job. That's the job. You know? I mean, look, I'm there to put you in jail. I'm. I'm not there to. To get you killed. I'm not there to kill you. I'm there to arrest you and, and try to, you know, hopefully send you to jail. But I'm not going to die for you, right? I'm not putting, you know, so it's.

[Joe Rogan]

A situation where your back is against the wall.

[Joseph Pistone]

Exactly.

[Joe Rogan]

Got it.

[Joseph Pistone]

So. But I. But, you know, that. That didn't happen.

[Joe Rogan]

Did they ever find him?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah, they found him. They found them. 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Sloppy.

[Joseph Pistone]

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, the books on the. The books on the Mafia are opening up in. In December. He said, and I already proposed you for membership into the Bonanno family, so you're gonna. You're gonna get inducted into the family in December. He said so. Congratulated him, thanked him, kissed him on both cheeks, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

So you're going to be a made guy.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, I was going to be a made guy. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Oh, forget it.

[Joe Rogan]

Must be so much fun.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Part of the problem, right?

[Joseph Pistone]

So, no waking up every day to think, is today the day I go to jail later 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 the cash, you know, you walk into a restaurant, they Know who you are. You know, you get the. You get the VIP treatment. You get the VIP treatment. You don't order off the menu, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know, get his perks. There's those perks.

[Joe Rogan]

But, you know, too scary.

[Joseph Pistone]

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.

[Joe Rogan]

It is crazy.

[Joseph Pistone]

It's crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

But I've talked to guys in that life, and they love it.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That's what's crazy about it.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Yeah, they could. I, I know guys that became informants, and, you know, they wish they could go back. I see. You know, No, I, I, I, I, I wouldn't want, you know, but that.

[Joe Rogan]

Is a problem with guys who do undercover work, right?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, some of them. Some of them fall in love with it. Yeah, they fall in love with the undercover aspect. And I think. I think the reason that. 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?

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

I mean, that I grew up in that environment, and I was never attracted to it as a kid.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know?

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Did you ever run the risk of running into someone that you knew who knew you as Joe Pistone?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Did you see the movie?

[Joe Rogan]

I did, but I don't remember.

[Joseph Pistone]

In the airport.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's right.

[Joseph Pistone]

With the lawyer.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's right.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

That's what really happened.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

How did that go down?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, I saw, you know, we saw. Made eye contact, and, you know, I just clocked them.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

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? You know? But no, I never got attracted to the life other than as a job. And I. And, And I think another reason to joke where a lot of undercovers go wrong is they think they have to act like gangsters. They change their personalities.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

And you can't be A in the daytime and B at night.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

I never changed my personality.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know, and a lot of undercovers are extroverts, and I'm the exception to that rule when I'm really an introvert.

[Joe Rogan]

So you didn't need the attention?

[Joseph Pistone]

I didn't need the attention.

[Joe Rogan]

Thrive on her.

[Joseph Pistone]

I don't, you know, and I never changed my, My, My values. Like, I. 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Probably lucky.

[Joseph Pistone]

Probably.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

Or, you know, you never have more than one glass of wine. That's all I. That's all I can ingest is one glass. And see, too many undercovers think, oh, all. All bad guys are drinkers. All bad, you know, Donnie, you ever. I never do drugs.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because they have to do it with everybody.

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, you know, they think.

[Joe Rogan]

They do.

[Joseph Pistone]

They think to do. I mean, I was in the. In a nightclub in Miami, and the guy offers me coke, and I slapped his hand. You know, coke is all over the place. And I said, don't ever offer me that. 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. Why would I do that? I said to me, it's a money maker, see? But too many young undercovers think, oh, you know, I gotta drink, right? You know, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. I gotta act tough, right? You don't have to. All you do is you have to be yourself. That's all.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

That's exactly right. You never have to get caught. You never get caught yourself. 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 a wall, you know, And I never got into anybody's face to make myself look tough.

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Joseph Pistone]

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. The only time I. I screwed up, I'll tell you. We're in Miami, all right, And I'm in another undercover's car. So it might have been. 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 it's a strip club. And it said 20. 22 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.

[Joe Rogan]

That's just simple math.

[Joseph Pistone]

But what I'm saying is, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

So somebody remembered you saying that?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, it was on the tape.

[Joe Rogan]

On the tape.

[Joseph Pistone]

On the tape.

[Joe Rogan]

So they were trying to use that against you?

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know what I mean?

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right, right.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right, right.

[Joseph Pistone]

So, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You just got caught up in it.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So what happened when they open up the books?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, they closed the case down. So I got them. I got him to, to postpone it to July because we had one more meeting with traffic county set up. So I, I got him to postpone it until after that meeting, but I couldn't get him to. To wait until after I got inducted into the. Into the family. They wouldn't wait.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

So they, they closed the operation July 27th. Yeah. Yeah. And six years undercover, seven years of testifying.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, really?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What'd you do over there?

[Joseph Pistone]

I have 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 they, they were, they were manufacturing credit cards. And I won't. I won't say which, which companies. And you can bang them out for like 50,000 before, before they were discovered. Because they had, they had the numbers.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I knew a guy who did that.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, they had the legit numbers.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's back when they had, like, the carbons, right?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. So, Scott, Scotland Yard was, Was trying to get to. 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 money man, wants us to have it 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. 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. I'm sitting down with him, and I said, they. I said, you know, I got my gun, but I didn't bring any bullets. You. Any bullets. The guy goes apeshit. He said, you can't. I said, calm down. I'm just breaking your chops, right? 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 the. He turns it. He. 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 gonna 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 Guard guy on the COVID guys, and the Triad. So now he. Before we go to the meeting, the supervisors tell me, look, you can't insult this guy. You got to be nice to him because he's the number two guy. So I says, hey, look. I said, I. I don't tell you how to run your serious crime crime squad. Don't tell me how to work undercover. I says, whatever you need, I'll get. I said, but don't tell me how to do it. So he's all nervous. So we're in. In a resort. They rented a. 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 with the Triad. So the guy keeps fucking interrupting me. So finally he says, hey, Chin, I said, why do your sentences always start in the middle of mine, Will you? 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 whole McGilla.

[Joe Rogan]

Do you feel like you had to do that to have his respect?

[Joseph Pistone]

Of course. I mean, I'm a mob guy. What do I know about the. The Triads?

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know what I mean?

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Joseph Pistone]

So if I would have let him. Kept stepping on me.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. He's been out of character.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, right. You know, so, yeah, that had to be 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

So. But what a life. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

How do you stay calm in these situations?

[Joseph Pistone]

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.

[Joe Rogan]

Don'T, it probably seems off.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

[Joe Rogan]

But that's gotta be just nerve wracking.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Right?

[Joseph Pistone]

You know, you can never be off.

[Joe Rogan]

You never relax.

[Joseph Pistone]

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 Bonanno family. He was one of the top captains in the Bonanno family. But Sonny, I don't know how many hits he had. Now, all these guys I dealt with, don't forget, all these guys had hits under the belt. These weren't. These weren't novice guys. I mean, they all had, you know, 5, 6, 10, 15 hits under their belt. You know, I mean, I got into a fight one time in a bar with Tony Mirror. I mean, me and him against three guys. And I mean, he grabbed a beer bottle, broke it on the broken. On the. The bar, and just, boom, raked the guy's face, you know, now there's another guy. You know, I always brings it up to Young undercover is that this was probably the. The meanest guy I ever fucking met. I mean, flat out mean, you know, These other guys were mean, you know, because they kill people. But, I mean, he was just a mean guy. The other guys, the other gangsters didn't like him. I never saw him. I never saw him overindulge in any. In any liquor. Never, never. And. And he would stab you as soon as look at you. And after that incident, I told you when I. I had to go around with him, I always made sure I was an arm's length away from him.

[Joe Rogan]

What was his name?

[Joseph Pistone]

Tony Mirror.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, okay.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Now, after it was over and they found out who I was, they killed Mirror. His own nephew killed him, actually.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

Because he introduced me to all the Bonannos.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Lefty was on his way to get killed, but the. 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.

[Joe Rogan]

So all the people that had let you in the.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah. Tell you how Sonny Black got killed. You talk about a gangster, right? When it came out that I was undercover 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 informants. But once, you know, once their lawyers told him, hey, he really is an undercover agent. So Sonny Black gets a call. You got to 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, says that a bartender. I just got called to a sit down. I'm probably not coming back. Is that a gangster?

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

Calls his girlfriend, and this is. 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 have a meeting with Donnie Brasco. I said, why? He said, because I got something to tell him. That Sonny Black. She called 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 D.C. 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 a bartender, you know, I got called to 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

Is that a gangster or what?

[Joe Rogan]

That's a guy that's living that life, huh?

[Joseph Pistone]

Wow, is that a gangster?

[Joe Rogan]

That's crazy. How did that make you feel?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, 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. You know, even mirror. I don't want to see him get killed. I mean, although I. I might have done it myself. I mean, he was. The guy was just plain mean. But, you know, that's not my job. My job is to gather evidence, bring it to trial, and hopefully you get convicted, right? But, yeah, Sonny was Sonny. You know the difference. Me and Sonny, we could sit just like we're having this conversation. He wasn't 24 7, gangster. You know what I mean? Yeah, we'd break chops, we'd break balls. Roger Jerry was 27, 247 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, 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 Bonanno family. He'd go out there 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 tell that to. I tell that to the guys at the FBI, and they say, no, I'm telling you this, you know, and then he had a weight bench in his. In his apartment. And back in the day, I. I used to lift pretty good, you know? I mean, you can't tell me now because, 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 if I. You know. So one day he says to me, donnie, I'm going to beat you today in arm wrestling. I said, sonny, you'd never 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. I told you I beat you. But, I mean, that's the kind of guy he was, right? You know, And I couldn't get po' Adam, right, You know, but with Lefty, you couldn't. You couldn't joke around like that, right? You know, I mean, he was. He was. He was something else, man. He. He couldn't stand. He couldn't stand air conditioning.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Joseph Pistone]

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.

[Joe Rogan]

Jeez.

[Joseph Pistone]

And I'm dying. I'm. I'm dying. I put the window down. Donnie, put that window up. I put. I turned. He turned the air conditioner off. He couldn't stand air conditioning.

[Joe Rogan]

Why?

[Joseph Pistone]

I don't know. I don't know. He had cancer. Maybe it was. I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

He had cancer at the time while he's smoking with the windows rolled up.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, but he had been cured of that, you know? He had been cured. He had testicle cancer years before, yet eventually died of lung cancer. 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 turned the air off. He turned 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. All right? So I said, left. I got to go to the. I got to go to the head. I'm going up to the room. I go up. I take the COVID off the air conditioner, I crank it where you could hang meat in there, right? And I put the COVID back on, and I. I put a thing in there. So, you know, if you move the thing back, we get upstairs. I mean, it was freezing. So we get in that room, we get in that suite, and he's like, donnie, 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 broke. Could you send somebody up? But I'm not talking to anybody because I want him. I want him to freeze as long as he could freeze. So he. 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, our air conditioning. So they send somebody up, and the guy takes in, okay, there it is. But he blamed me. But, you know. But that's how you keep your sanity sometimes, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

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?

[Joseph Pistone]

Oh, God, what an experience that was.

[Joe Rogan]

Has to be so weird.

[Joseph Pistone]

It was. And you know Johnny Depp?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I know him.

[Joseph Pistone]

I love that.

[Joe Rogan]

He's a great guy.

[Joseph Pistone]

I could cry, I'm telling you. I mean, what he's done for my family. Excuse me.

[Joe Rogan]

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.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

In la. Very, very nice guy.

[Joseph Pistone]

I love him. He loved my wife. Yeah. He. He just flew in in January to have dinner with my whole family. And my grand 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.

[Joe Rogan]

He really is.

[Joseph Pistone]

I mean, he's genuine.

[Joe Rogan]

Is genuine. And it's odd. It's odd for a movie star.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, I meet movie stars and I always have this wall up because I always feel like, okay, I'm just gonna talk to some person, you know what I mean? Like, I've met a bunch of them and they're not really there.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

[Joe Rogan]

But when you meet one, then 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.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Where they're incredibly famous. And, you know, they're. They're famous in a very weird way. They're famous for pretending to be other people.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And acting in films and, you know, you know them so well as, you know, a pirate. Whatever.

[Joseph Pistone]

I mean.

[Joe Rogan]

Or you.

[Joseph Pistone]

We met in 96 and have stayed friends up until.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

Up until now. And he has stayed friends with my girls, my grandkids that he, you know, that he knew since they were, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

And now as adults, I mean, he takes. He takes phone calls from my one granddaughter.

[Joe Rogan]

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.

[Unknown]

He's like, hey, Johnny wants to talk to you.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

What a crazy trial.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

But that trial showed you who he really is.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Who he really is. And who she really is, too.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And it just shows you, you know.

[Joseph Pistone]

I didn't know her.

[Joe Rogan]

You're lucky.

[Joseph Pistone]

I tell you a funny story. Is that. Do you know Vanessa?

[Joe Rogan]

No.

[Joseph Pistone]

This is when. Excuse me. Well, 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 Stone Crab. I'm gonna be in Miami. He said, meet us at Jones Stone Crab. 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, in the movie and everything. Right. We hung out. So he introduces us to Vanessa, right. You know. You know who she is, right?

[Joe Rogan]

His ex, who's Vanessa.

[Joseph Pistone]

Paradisi. She's the French singer. That's the one who was. Kids Are by Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now my wife wouldn't. When she ate, she would not touch anything. She had to eat with a knife and fork. You know, a rail of muddy. Gone. Right. Irish. So, you know, you're at Joe Stonecraft. What are you gonna do you gotta eat? You know, you gotta. You gotta break. You gotta touch him. So Vanessa says, maggie, you don't like? He says, oh, I like him, but I don't. I don't like to touch him. She broke all the claws, everything. Took all the meat out so my wife could eat him with a fork. I'd say, only you could do that, you know. Only you could get somebody to, you know. But how long did you know him.

[Joe Rogan]

Before he played you in the movie?

[Joseph Pistone]

I didn't. I didn't.

[Joe Rogan]

You didn't know him at all?

[Joseph Pistone]

No. I mean, did you get to meet.

[Joe Rogan]

Him before he played you? I mean.

[Joseph Pistone]

Oh, yeah, yeah, we met. I guess we met maybe three or four months before we start shooting.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you want to talk to.

[Joseph Pistone]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I spent time with him. And what's amazing about him, Joe, is that he just. It's like a sponge, you know? Like, we would just go out, go to dinner, go to lunch, hang out. 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 clear. 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

Because the way he walked, the way he had that little gimp and. 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.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

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.

[Joe Rogan]

Why'd they add that in there?

[Joseph Pistone]

Ask the director.

[Joe Rogan]

Damn. Those asked.

[Joseph Pistone]

Because that wasn't in the script.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, Jesus Christ.

[Joseph Pistone]

Ask the director. I almost went. I went. And you know, it's funny because Johnny used to pick me up every morning to go to work, right? And here's the kind of guy. I tell you, the kind of guy. We'd stop at a bodega and he'd run in and get. Get the coffee and hard rolls. I said, I got. No, I'll go in. I mean. I mean, you know, to get to just a regular guy.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

And I. That day, he was kind of like, 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. You know, you know that the director's the captain of that ship, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

They always have to do something like that.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

They always have to add some. That didn't really happen. It drives me nuts.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yep. So. But what are you gonna do?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So how, 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.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Well, what happened is, once they found out the. The Commission put a $500,000 contract on me and the New York officer, the FBI went to every boss and told them they better not think of, you know, trying to cash in on that, you know, So I was working out of. Out of Washington, 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. Legitimate gangster. You know, it's some cowboy that thinks, hey, you know, God. Yeah, there's.

[Joe Rogan]

Get on their good side.

[Joseph Pistone]

There's Donnie Brasco, you know, if I take him out, we're in Butch. And I don't think anybody was going to pay anybody 500,000. You think the mob is. They don't use their own money for, you know, for squat. So. Yeah, but that's the only thing that you worry about is, you know, some cowboy, you know?

[Joe Rogan]

How long was it before you stopped worrying about that?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, you never really do.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, you know, even to this day.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Yeah. You know, because there's always somebody that thinks they're, you know, they're going to be famous about doing something.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know that.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, right.

[Joseph Pistone]

So. But it was. It was more prevalent back in the. You know, back in the day, you know, as most of my guys now are. I don't know any of them that are alive, actually.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you keep in touch with any of those guys?

[Joseph Pistone]

No, no, no. 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. It was funny. You know, you always sit down with the. After the case is over, you sit down with the. The profilers and everything, and they said, well, we think this guy will turn. This guy. Not one of my guys, when I say my guys ever became an informant.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Joseph Pistone]

Never.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

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. He did 15. He did 15. Never cracked. The only reason they let him out was he had. He 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

But he didn't crack. Of course. Sonny. Sonny had a shot. He said, no, none of them. None of them.

[Joe Rogan]

They tried to turn all of them, huh?

[Joseph Pistone]

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. As soon as they put the last click on the handcuffs, they're all. They all want to talk right now? Yeah, now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they all. They all got hits under their belt, but soon as they put those cuffs on them, you know, some of the guys, they do their time, but eventually they turned on. None of those guys became snitches.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

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 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 life, you know, they were really committed to it. It was the younger guys. It's. It's. It's a me generation. Just like normal citizens. They want it now, right? They don't want to. I mean, I don't know. Like, the old timers, they could. 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. Drugs is a big, big downfall of mob because now the guys start. Some of them start using it.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

No. The only secret is when one guy's alive.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Especially with cell phones.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Internet.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Surveillance. Surveillance is so easy now. Everything you do Is surveilled. Every phone call.

[Joseph Pistone]

You're on camera all day long. I read a. I read somewhere or heard where the average individual is on the camera over 500 times a day. Just walking around.

[Joe Rogan]

Just walking around wherever you go. And then your phone's listening to everything you say.

[Joseph Pistone]

Everything.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And everybody has a phone.

[Joseph Pistone]

Everybody. Yeah, everybody today. And that. And that's what's tough. And undercover today is building your legend because it's hard to do 100% backstopping.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. How can you.

[Joseph Pistone]

With the Internet.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Also Google image search.

[Joseph Pistone]

Bam.

[Joe Rogan]

Put your face up there. Oh, that's that guy.

[Joseph Pistone]

Exactly.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Instantly.

[Joseph Pistone]

So I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

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. They controlled every bit of commodity that ran. In fact, when I was in it, they still had the skim out of Vegas. And Balestreri 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 bodanos. That, you know, that was before the thing went south, you know, that's so.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy that you got in that deep.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Yeah. And everybody else that. That went in, you know, they had an informant. I had no informant.

[Joe Rogan]

You just made your way in slowly.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

And I wasn't. I wasn't a mark, you know, where I. I didn't have all this money.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know what I mean?

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Where they could exploit you.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

So, you know. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy life, Joe.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, it was.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, you know, sometimes I think I can't believe I did that.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. That's what I mean. Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. And then other times, you know, I say as deep as I got, I could have done more.

[Joe Rogan]

Like how?

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, I mean, if I. If I would have got made.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, Right, right. Do you wish they had gotten you made?

[Joseph Pistone]

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.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

The Mafia inducted one of our own, you know, I mean, that would have really kicked their ass.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

But, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, it's funny that you think back and that's the thing that you wish.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, it's kind of crazy.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

It's the ultimate. You.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, you.

[Joseph Pistone]

I mean, I did. We pretty much decimated them anyway.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know, but it is kind of.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy when you think about the chokehold that the mob had, and then it's nothing.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Joseph Pistone]

It's crazy. All right.

[Joe Rogan]

Did that all come about because of prohibition? Is that what it all started? Is that when they really get. Got a stranglehold in this country?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't that crazy?

[Joseph Pistone]

Pretty much. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

It's the same thing.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And it's like we never learn.

[Joseph Pistone]

No. Yeah. It's. History repeats itself, right?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think our problem is we don't. We don't study our enemy. Remember. Remember what I said before? Any. Anybody I went against, 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. You know, I want to know your history, how you became what you are as far as 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?

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Joseph Pistone]

The Art of War. And I tell all my. In any 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. It's kind of crazy when you think that people don't change that much over time.

[Joseph Pistone]

No.

[Joe Rogan]

Human nature is still the same, and the same strategies apply.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

It's nuts. And, you know, and like I said before, the only thing that's changing undercover is building your legend because of the Internet.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Joseph Pistone]

Nothing else has changed.

[Joe Rogan]

Now it's got to be almost impossible.

[Joseph Pistone]

You ingratiate yourself the same way.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Joseph Pistone]

You know, you do all that the same way.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Or become cop.

[Joe Rogan]

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

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah. Yeah. It's Nuts.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, but. But there's other ways they catch people now, obviously, with all the surveillance. Did you make a bunch of notes?

[Joseph Pistone]

No, I just wanted to.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you make sure you covered everything?

[Joseph Pistone]

I just wanted to mention my. My grandkids set me up with an Instagram and they said make sure you mention the.

[Unknown]

Did they run it?

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe, forget it. I just about to turn my phone on, to be honest with you. And the real Donnie Brasco. And then a cameo page.

[Joe Rogan]

You have a cameo page where you send people cameos?

[Joseph Pistone]

Joker Stone. You just go into Joker Stone. Yeah, the real Donnie Brasco.

[Joe Rogan]

How do you spend your time these days? There it is. The real Donnie Brasco.

[Joseph Pistone]

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

[Joe Rogan]

That's great.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm kind of. Right now I'm writing. I got another book writing on the Bonanno's 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 it 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.

[Joe Rogan]

Really.

[Joseph Pistone]

Nobody gets paid. They do it all on their own time. And the conference usually gets between 7 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. Their email is. It is a scgc.inquirymail.com Go on and get information about it or if they want to attend it, you know, that's, that. That's how you can sign up.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Joseph Pistone]

And they have great speakers every year. And yeah, I. And some of my merchandise you can see I have a shirt here. Since Southern California Gang Conference, Donnie Brasco, we sell these shirts. I give 100% to the, to the organization. I don't. 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. You know, their time is donated. So yeah, it's, you know, who's there to help you when you're. When your spouse or your, you know, one or the other dies in the line of duty, so. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

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.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, to help them get started after.

[Joe Rogan]

That's awesome.

[Joseph Pistone]

Yeah, yeah. And it's great conference. Like I said, they get between 7 and 800, either police officer or Department of Corrections. You know, anybody that's in law enforcement is eligible to attend it. And it's a week. It's in San Diego. Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, Joe, thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it. Hey, what a crazy life you've had.

[Joseph Pistone]

Thank you. Thank you. I'm really excited to get the invite. And my. My grandkids were. Whoa, you're going on Joe Rogan. They all love you, man.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, tell them I said thank you.

[Joseph Pistone]

They all love you. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And thank you for being here.

[Joseph Pistone]

Well, my pleasure.

[Joe Rogan]

It was my pleasure, too. Thank you very much.

[Joseph Pistone]

Thanks, part.

[Joe Rogan]

Thank you.

[Joseph Pistone]

Thank you.

[Joe Rogan]

All right. All right. Bye, everybody.

[Joseph Pistone]

It.