Scores

by Blutrich, Michael D. ;

  Not knowing where my intended actions might lead, and moving in reaction to what could have been reasonably misinterpreted as sexually aggressive caresses from Urgitano, I leaned into the mobster’s chest with my back and floated my hand into his crotch. Brushing gently at first, I located and squeezed the dick of this eighty-year-old man sitting beside me. I instantly felt waves of disgust pour over me as Urgitano’s member quickly reacted to my practiced touch.

  When the realization of what was actually happening hit Urgitano, he jumped so high into the air it appeared he might fall off his stool. Stabilizing his balance, he looked over at me with eyes of confused hatred and scorn, but I simply shrugged off the whole matter, returning to the business of counting the remaining cash bundles. Still concentrating on the bundles, I softly mumbled in Urgitano’s direction, “I’m sorry, I thought that’s what you were after.” Receiving no response, I added in a louder voice, “After all, you started the whole touching business.”

  Sergio seemed to remain happily oblivious throughout the episode, recounting each cash bundle after me. To my relief and joy, from that moment on, Urgitano stayed as far away from me as polite social propriety would allow—certainly beyond searching range.

  When it was confirmed that twenty-five thousand dollars had been delivered, I placed the bribe funds into my briefcase and prepared to leave. As I rose from the bar, as instructed by Karst, I turned to Urgitano. “Don’t be concerned if your son’s parole hearing gets postponed. We have to wait until we get him the ‘right’ panel. Understood?”

  Angelo nodded in agreement, but his gaze never met mine again. Sergio approached and planted another kiss on my cheek, expressing his appreciation on Angelo’s behalf. I headed toward the door and, glancing at Urgitano one last time, had the sure feeling both extreme embarrassment, as well as a fear of screwing up his son’s freedom, would keep the man silent about the evening’s “personal” moments.

  At the FBI debriefing later that evening, the agents looked concerned; they’d already been apprised of the disjointed and confusing events witnessed at the bar by the IRS representatives. However, when I explained in detail what had taken place, my tale was greeted with wide-eyed stony silence.

  Karst and Ready cast sidelong glances at each other, their unusual silence continuing. Finally, Ready said, “You actually played with his dick?”

  “No, Bill, I didn’t ‘play’ with his dick, I grabbed him, sort of. Anyway, what else could I have done? You tell me, he was inches from the fucking F-Bird!”

  “I don’t know,” Bill countered, and then paused, “but not that, anything but that!”

  Both agents simultaneously burst into unrepressed belly laughs, and they kept coming. Karst stood up with tears in his eyes, declaring, “I’m so sorry, Michael, but that’s the funniest story I’ve ever heard.”

  Now I was growing angry. I jumped from my chair and yelled, “Hey, listen to me, I did what I had to do. I could’ve been killed and I saved the whole damn investigation. And you two are amused; this is the thanks I get?”

  With each defensive declaration from my lips, the laughing from the agents grew deeper and wilder. In defeated frustration, I just sat down. As I thought about what had happened and what I’d done, I began laughing too, slowly at first but building as the moments slipped by.

  In the end, I laughed without control until I became nauseated, not knowing whether I was agreeing my actions were hilarious, or whether I was just thrilled and grateful to still be alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Meeting with the Florida Prosecutors

  1997

  When the Scores undercover operations began in December 1996, New York prosecutors and Justice Department executives in Washington reached the decision not to advise Florida prosecutors of our cooperation. The need for maximum security, fueled by a certainty of our deaths if discovered, led to only a handful of law-enforcement personnel becoming aware of the covert operation.

  The government’s decision in favor of secrecy was a concern, because it meant a substantial delay in securing Florida’s consent to the single most important precondition of our cooperation: transfer of the insurance fraud sentencing from Orlando, a district whose reputation for severe sentences is unsurpassed nationwide, to a Manhattan federal court far more experienced in mafia prosecutions. Because mob influence and crimes abound within their constituency, the New York federal judiciary is far more attuned to the risks taken by cooperators, the rarity of securing undercover cooperation at all, and the need for sentencing leniency both as reward for those who risk their lives and to encourage others to do the same. New York criminal lore is rife with shocking tales of cooperating businessmen going undercover and not living long enough to attend their own sentence hearings—a bullet to their heads their sole posthumous award for joining with the government in its war against La Cosa Nostra.

  New York judges, with their urban counterparts in every major city in America, are acutely aware that fewer than 1 percent of those who agree to cooperate also agree to wear a wire. After all, those who dare to work against the mafia spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders in public places; their sentences are truly life sentences and their rates of recidivism markedly lower than the general prison populations. For judges in Central Florida, where mafia atrocities and intimidation are not part of daily life, the need for special leniency for undercover operatives seems beyond the scope of their understanding.

  Despite this temporary disappointment, I clearly understood the government’s rationale for the imposed security measures. Indeed, since the grand jury had been empaneled in Orlando, local defense lawyers had obtained steady streams of astoundingly accurate reports on the supposedly “secret” progress of the investigation. The information network was alive and well in Orlando as names of scheduled grand jury witnesses, dates for secret investigative trips out of town, names of potential witnesses earmarked for interviews, and dates and times of “surprise” search warrant raids regularly trickled back to New York through the unrelenting gossip mill.

  In this environment, a bombshell piece of news such as “Blutrich and Pearlstein, owners of Scores, are cooperating undercover against the mafia in New York” would surely have spread through Orlando’s defense bar within moments of being shared. And with the information spreading like wildfire, the New York investigation would have been publicly exposed and Andrew and I surely executed by our less-than-understanding underworld targets.

  Even if the task force might have held their silence in this one particular instance, was it worth the risk to find out?

  The government itself decided it was not.

  Insecurities over the delay in obtaining Florida’s consent to the sentencing transfers weighed heavily on me and I repeated those concerns regularly at ongoing proffers. Every time I expressed myself, I received the identical answer, “The transfer deal was worked out and approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department.”

  I’d come to take great solace in Sipperly’s often-repeated 99.9 percent assurance of transfer likelihood. And I had made it perfectly clear repeatedly that, unless we were satisfied with the government’s promise to transfer our sentencing from Orlando to Manhattan, there would have been no cooperation at all: no proffers, no cameras, no F-Birds, and no case against the mob at Scores. The agreement to risk our lives first, and reap our rewards later, was a conscious “leap of faith.”

  Word finally arrived that a meeting had been scheduled at the World Trade Center with the Florida prosecutors. On the morning of the meeting, I arrived at my office to find Andrew talking with his attorney of longest standing, Myles Malman. Joining the ongoing session, I listened to Malman sharing his worries, which seemed centered upon the personality and proclivities of the Assistant United States Attorney leading the Heritage investigation, Judy Hunt.

  Talking about his experiences with Hunt, Malman recounted his view of her. It wasn’t pretty.

  “In my opinion, she carries
prejudices and hatreds inappropriate for a federal prosecutor. She guesses at the truth in her cases and then refuses to consider conflicting facts—even when those facts turn out to be true. She lies easily, breaks her word without compunction, and despises cooperators.”

  Malman’s last remark seized my immediate attention.

  “Michael,” Myles continued, “there are prosecutors, such as myself, who take their cooperators to heart, believe in them and their desire to change, welcome them to the case’s team, and forgive them their prior transgressions. Those prosecutors work their butts off to ensure their cooperators get the benefits of promised deals. But that’s not the kind of prosecutor Judy is; she literally hates her cooperators, never releases her initial loathing for them, views them as ‘necessary evils’ for the government, and harbors no concern over whether they get fairly treated in the end. In fact, she actually seems happy when cooperators get screwed.

  “And in my opinion,” he summed up, “knowing her as I do, she’ll be off-the-wall pissed and offended at not having been told of your cooperation six months ago, and she’ll hold New York’s decision to keep her in the dark against you—and them—forever. I couldn’t sleep last night after we learned Hunt was coming up for the meeting. Mark my words, she’s probably already put together a plan to sabotage your cooperation.”

  Walking into the echoing chamber reserved for the meeting in the World Trade Center, accompanied by our attorneys, Weinberg, Malman, and Ginsberg, it was hard not to feel insignificant in proportion to the high-ceilinged, robustly chandeliered ballroom. I was no longer confident the meeting would bring us the long-promised guarantee of a soft landing, and a sense of dread was filling me.

  Marjorie Miller was the first to arrive for the government and tersely informed us that New York’s First Assistant United States Attorney, Michael Fishbein, would be chairing the meeting, and that a Florida contingent, including Judy Hunt, the lead prosecutor for the Heritage matter, had arrived.

  Almost immediately, Fishbein stiffly quick-paced into the room with Sipperly and the Florida visitors, and took charge of the meeting. When everyone was seated, he opened with earth-shattering news. Apparently, after a conference between districts, it’d been agreed there would be no sentencing transfers for us. After negotiating pleas and becoming cooperators in the Heritage trial, our sentencing hearings would take place before a Florida judge.

  I felt as if I’d been struck with a baseball bat. This simply couldn’t be happening; our entire agreements wiped away in one unanticipated wave by someone I’d never met before.

  I’ve been fucked with my pants on, I silently moaned.

  Ginsberg was the first to respond. “You all know me from my time as a prosecutor in your office, and I’m appalled. I’ve never known the Southern District of New York to act so underhandedly. Our clients were induced, and it would now seem fraudulently induced, to cooperate, to proffer, to wear wires, and to risk their lives, all on the basis of one major promise. Without that promise, we would have packed up our bags, thanked you all very much, and wished you the best of luck in finding some other parties to strap on wires and tape mobsters. You convinced Michael and Andrew to trust you by promising transfers, and you now just take it back?”

  Fishbein blandly responded he was aware of no absolute promise, but rather a “best efforts” agreement to obtain the transfers.

  “That’s a lie,” Ginsberg shouted. “There was a 99.9 percent promise put on the table by your office. Would you call a 99.9 percent promise a ‘done deal’ with your district, or a ‘best efforts’ deal? You tell me?”

  Fishbein wouldn’t answer. He simply stared off into the distance, refusing to meet Peter’s eyes. “I admit 99.9 percent was a very high percentage chance your clients took; it just didn’t pan out.”

  With everyone in the room stunned into silence, Judy Hunt took the floor. She described a deal her office was prepared to offer: If we were accepted as cooperators in Florida, and if we fully and satisfactorily cooperated, and if our cooperation proved valuable in both New York and Florida, we could earn recommendations for sentences as low as sixty-one months.

  I sat back, unable to gather in a satisfying breath, my mind imploding. I’d been talked into risking my life by federal prosecutors with assurances of only serving zero to twelve months in a country-club prison; that sentence maximum reaffirmed by the FBI when I was getting “cold feet” about the F-Bird; and now the number was multiplying. This time the government was throwing out “maybe” sixty-one months—more than five years—and there were a shitload of “ifs” in the new proposal.

  Before anyone could say a word, Hunt stood up. “Oh, just one more thing, gentlemen. Our deal is non-negotiable, and if you don’t take it, I personally guarantee no judge sitting in Florida will ever hear a single word about your mafia cooperation in New York.”

  For the first time, Fishbein looked embarrassed and edgy.

  We took a break. As we exited the ballroom, Sipperly waved Andrew and me over to an alcove in the hall. Before we could say a word, she opened, “Don’t you think I did everything I could for you? Don’t you realize I was misled as well?”

  Am I supposed to feel sorry for her? I thought in disbelief.

  As if reading my mind, she continued, “You guys really need a reality check. These Florida people are looking to put you away for twenty-five years. If you take their deal, you get sixty-one months. With good time, that turns into fifty-two months. Now take off twelve months for a sentence-reduction program and six months for a halfway house. You’re out in thirty-four months—around two and a half years. If I were facing twenty-five years, I’d grab at a chance for two and a half.

  “And that’s just the Florida recommendation; remember we’ll all be coming down to your sentencing—me, Marjorie, Jack, Bill, and others from Washington. Your judge will hear about your extraordinary cooperation against the mafia, how you’ve risked your lives, and about how such cooperation is regularly recognized everywhere.”

  So there it was: betrayal complete. We could now either fight both districts at once, or continue to cooperate and fight for leniency later. We were completely alone and helpless.

  In desperation, we took the Florida deal.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Investigation Moves Up the Mafia Hierarchy

  We were now back undercover with no sure promise of lenient sentencing, but determined to avoid the twenty-five-year sentences we faced if we’d backed out of all cooperation. Our next move in the Scores investigation was to involve Gambino family acting captain Craig DePalma in a fictionalized Scores capital-raising IPO.

  Greed turned out to be the magnetic attraction needed to grease the investigation’s path into the upper regions of mafia hierarchy. Having planted a seed through Willie Marshall that Scores was willing to pay up to ten million dollars to each strip club owner approved for participation in the IPO expansion, word came back of a DePalma request for a meeting. Through Marshall, a dinner was scheduled at Chin Chin, a midtown Chinese restaurant favored by DePalma.

  At the pre-briefing, Karst and Ready quickly motored through all the topics the FBI wanted DePalma to discuss. I was barely listening; I already knew exactly how I intended to approach DePalma and how I would get him talking. With our plans settled, the F-Bird was attached to my leg and we readied to depart together: the FBI agents for a night in the van, Andrew and I for some Chinese food with our “friends.”

  Stepping into the restaurant, I paused at the front door to read a critic’s review of the menu posted in the window, noting strong recommendations for vodka shrimp and barbequed pork. We found ourselves in a small, overcrowded bar area, and I spotted Marshall at the right end of the bar reaching over the heads of seated customers to accept two bottles of beer from a straining bartender.

  I pressed my way to Marshall, screaming my greeting over the noise despite our close proximity. “Hey, Michael,” he acknowledged with a broad, easy smile, “we got a table in the back, so gr
ab Andrew and follow me.” Bouncing in Marshall’s wake, his sheer size parting the throng of patrons like Moses at the Red Sea, we made quick progress to a table where a lone man in a blue Adidas running suit sat watching our approach.

  The man was Craig DePalma, acting captain in the Gambino crime family, temporarily in charge of the family’s relationship with Scores while his father, Greg, was in prison. Having no detailed memory of DePalma on the day he came to the Scores office to supervise delivery of the one hundred thousand dollar extortion payment to Junior Gotti and Mikey Scars, I was surprised by Craig’s appearance. He was shorter than I expected, thinner and leaner as well: gaunt, wiry, with short dark hair and brown eyes.

  Knowing exactly how I wanted to open this interaction, I extended my hand after Marshall’s introductions. “Craig, my pleasure to finally meet you.” I next silently counted to three and added with deliberately squinting eyes, “Wow, for some reason you look really familiar. Have we met before?”

  DePalma politely ignored the question, choosing to simply smile knowingly in reply. The opening gambits complete, Craig announced he was famished and wanted to order right away. The table deferred to the captain’s choices for dinner, which happily included both the vodka shrimp and barbequed pork. I studied the man as he launched into a detailed and boring description of a road-paving construction job he was required to maintain in order to comply with terms of his state prison parole.

  DePalma immediately made me uncomfortable. The capo’s eyes were in constant motion, darting nervously in every direction, revealing a man riddled with emotional impulses requiring persistent effort to control.

  As DePalma continued to casually speak, the aura emanating from him continued to disconcert me. The man’s gaze had a cold cruelty to it, and allowed for no doubt of his capacity to react with violence to any threatening situation. Words like “amoral,” “sociopathic,” and “without conscience,” kept reverberating through my mind.