Ghost
Page 17
He was warning me, because he still thought I was with them.
The following day, the front pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Boston Globe, and Boston Herald announced the spectacular arrests of eleven mobsters. News channels led with footage of the mobsters being taken into custody. A high-profile FBI press conference was held, but when I saw the photos of the speakers later I didn’t remember any of them accompanying us on a 2 AM meeting with Luisi and his associates. They had their jobs and I had mine. While they were bragging about the arrests, I was at home sleeping.
I took the greatest amount of pride not in the media coverage or newspaper headlines, but in a simple paragraph in the sworn arrest warrant for LCN Boss Joey Merlino, filed with the District Court in Philadelphia on June 17, 1999, which stated:
On June 10, 1999, the CW (Cooperating Witness, or Ron Previte) met Merlino in Philadelphia and paid him $1,000 for Merlino’s role in authorizing the cocaine deal. The CW also told Merlino that he had a $25,000 to $50,000 deal set up in Boston. After being told about the deal, Merlino told the CW that he would tell Robert Luisi Jr. to take care of the UCA like “he was one of us.”
A Mob Boss telling his crew to treat an FBI undercover Agent like one of them. Not bad.
A year later, I testified against Merlino, Luisi, and the other defendants in federal courts in both Boston and Philadelphia. Representing them were the best attorneys money could buy. Boston defendants Carozza, Vetere, and Wilson pled guilty and received double-digit sentences. Luisi elected to go to trial, and had to be convicted twice because of a court procedural error. He was later sentenced to sixteen years in federal prison. There he wrote a book entitled From Capo to Christian. After agreeing to testify against another mobster, he was released in 2012, changed his name to Alonso Esposito, and moved to Tennessee to become a Christian minister. Yes, you read that right. You can’t make this shit up.
In the Philadelphia trial, Merlino was convicted of racketeering, illegal gambling, and extortion in the 2001 trial, but beat the drug charge. His defense attorney Edwin Jacobs argued that the evidence against Merlino in Philadelphia was not as clear as that collected during the Boston UCO, which he called a “textbook example of an undercover operation.” Citing the Boston UCO where every conversation, negotiation, and transaction was recorded on video and/or audio, Jacobs argued that Merlino’s Philadelphia conversations were open to interpretation or not recorded at all. In the end, Merlino was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
After his release in 2011, Joey Merlino relocated to Boca Raton, Florida. In 2015, he was accused of violating his parole and put back in prison. He was arrested again a year later for entering into an illegal business arrangement with New York–area organized crime figures. Apparently, he hadn’t read Luisi’s book, or if he did, chose not to follow his path to redemption.
Ron Previte retired from his dual occupations of mobster and FBI informant, and passed away in August 2017. To this day, I consider him a good friend, and one of the funniest guys to ever roam this earth.
12
THE ITALIAN MOB—CASE #2 (DOUBLE SESSIONS)
The summer of 1999, after completing two difficult UCOs back-to-back, I was mentally and physically wiped out. I needed time to recharge and my FBI bosses understood that. So I spent the rest of the year working out daily; going into the office to prepare evidence for the upcoming trials of Luisi, Merlino, and their associates; and then returning home to spend time with my kids.
By January 2000, I was eager and ready to jump into a new case. Opportunity came in the form of an experienced Organized Crime Agent who walked up to my desk one day and said, “Nice job on Luisi, Mike. Are you ready for something else?”
“Sure,” I answered. “What have you got?”
“You know who Matty Guglielmetti is?” he asked.
“Who doesn’t know who Matty Guglielmetti is?” I asked back.
“Well, we got a shot at him.”
“Sign me up,” I said without hesitation. I was totally hooked on undercover work at this point, and was being offered a chance to infiltrate the Mob a second time—something that almost never happens in the FBI.
Matty “Good-Looking” Guglielmetti was a very interesting character—a second-generation gangster who began his criminal career in 1984 when he and his father were arrested for hijacking a load of Canadian whiskey. On October 29, 1989, he crossed from Rhode Island to Massachusetts to attend a Mob induction ceremony in Medford, Massachusetts. It turned out to be the first time ever the FBI bugged an entire Mob initiation and listened as New England mobsters like Robert “Bobby” DeLuca and Vincent Federico had their fingers pricked and swore an oath of loyalty to La Cosa Nostra.
One of the mobsters at the ceremony was recorded as saying, “We get in alive in this organization, and the only way we’re gonna get out is dead. No matter what. It’s a hope. No Jesus. No Madonna. Nobody can help us if we ever give up this secret to anybody. This thing cannot be exposed.”
In 1991, as a result of his attendance at the 1989 Medford induction ceremony and other crime activities in Connecticut, Guglielmetti pleaded guilty to federal racketeering and was sentenced to five years in a federal prison in Sandstone, Minnesota. We knew that following his release Guglielmetti, who was now a Capo in the Rhode Island faction of the Patriarca family, had resumed his criminal activities and was now positioning himself to become the new Boss.
The infamous Raymond Patriarca had reigned over all the family’s various criminal activities from his base in Providence, Rhode Island, for three decades starting in the 1950s. Since his death in ’84, the Mob in New England had been in serious disarray. Internal warfare had claimed many members, and others were serving time on extortion and racketeering charges. The current Boss, Luigi Giovanni “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, was in his seventies and under constant federal investigation. My job was to gather evidence on Guglielmetti and lock him up before he established himself as the new Boss.
In January 2000, when I joined the case, Guglielmetti was fifty-one and extremely paranoid about returning to prison. He’d worked with John Gotti in New York and was reputed to be a lot smarter and more cautious than Bobby Luisi. That meant I had to be at the top of my game. One of his closest associates—a thug named Bobby Nardolillo—had a blood relative named Vinnie Salvatore (not his real name) who was an FBI informant. He would be my way in.
One of the first things the Case Agent asked me was how long I thought it would take me to get close to Guglielmetti.
“Two years,” I answered.
“Luisi took six months,” he responded. “Why so long?”
“Because Ron Previte brought me in at the top level of the Philadelphia Mob and was trusted by the Boss. Your informant doesn’t have that kind of access. It’s going to take me a year to gain the trust of Bobby Nardolillo, and another year to get to Guglielmetti, maybe.”
Unlike almost all other FBI Agents, I’d spent six months kibitzing with wise guys on a daily basis. I knew how they acted and thought, and understood that the biggest hurdle to doing business with them was gaining their trust.
“We want to do this in six months,” the Case Agent concluded. “We’ll find someone else.”
“Okay, no problem.”
A week later, the Case Agent came back to me and said, “Okay. We want you to meet the informant.”
Vinnie Salvatore turned out to be a whack job—a wannabe street hustler, who grew up stealing cars and breaking into houses and couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was cooperating with the FBI because he was jammed up on charges of selling stolen property.
I went back to the Case Agent and said, “I’m going to try to get Vinnie to bring me somewhere where I can meet Nardolillo and some of Guglielmetti’s guys. I don’t want him vouching for me for obvious reasons.”
The Case Agent agreed.
Vinnie Salvatore told me about gambling games the Mob was running throughout New England, including the town of Rochester,
New Hampshire—in the middle of nowhere. The people who attended them were hicks with nothing else to do. The Mob would basically set up gaming tables and steal their money. I considered it a perfect place to start.
First, I had to prepare and do the requisite backstopping. Who was I in my undercover role? What were the details of my background? And most importantly: What about me would attract Guglielmetti and the Mob?
Like I said before, I’d learned a massive amount about the LCN during the Merlino/Luisi case. The prime motivation for all mobsters was to make money. Easy money was their Achilles’ heel—and the only way I knew for an outsider to gain access.
I also knew that Guglielmetti, like lots of other wise guys, was involved in the construction business. He actually came from a construction background and had served as a steward with the local Laborers’ Union while an LCN member. He was very tight with both local and national officials of the Laborers’ Union, and well as some Rhode Island politicians. At the time, Rhode Island was one of the most corrupt states in the country and the focus of many federal law enforcement investigations.
Armed with this knowledge, I chose to become Michael Jameson—a highly successful businessman from the Midwest, who had recently moved to the Northeast and was now looking to get into construction and possibly invest in strip clubs. He also loved to gamble. Since we wanted Jameson to be involved in an all-cash business, we decided that he had made his fortune in parking garages. Cash businesses were ideal for money laundering, which often led to drug trafficking—my favorite violation.
We spent about six months creating our undercover company, which included joining the Parking Garage Owners of America, preparing fake tax returns, renting office space, and printing business cards. I also bought a new expensive wardrobe to suit the role.
On a frigid night in March 2000, I launched what the FBI called Operation Double Sessions by walking into the Mob gambling den in Rochester, New Hampshire, dressed to the nines. The fifty or so patrons and a dozen or more mobsters stopped what they were doing for a second to check me out. I felt like I was in a Joe Pesci movie.
Poker machines lined three of the four walls of the smoke-filled room and lights blazed and bells rang. Games were underway at the four or five cards tables at the center of the room as a horserace simulcast played on a monitor overhead above. Rochester, New Hampshire, would never be confused with Las Vegas. The women present, to be kind, were not anyone you have ever seen in any fashion magazine, and the men tended more toward flannel than Hugo Boss. It didn’t matter, the bad guys were in the room, and that’s all I cared about.
With many eyes on me, I reached for my wallet and joined in. I’d come a long way from my days as a green Agent in the Philadelphia social club. I knew the role I was there to play and I had a very defined target and purpose.
Minutes after entering, Vinnie Salvatore introduced me to Bobby Nardolillo—a huge biker type with a Fu Manchu mustache. I shook his hand and blew past him. Subconsciously, I was telling Nardolillo that he wasn’t important to me. I had a successful life and money and he should be more interested in me, than me in him.
Nardolillo dressed all in black, smoked nonstop, and thought of himself as a tough guy. Eventually, we grabbed a table away from everyone else and started to bullshit for three hours about our backgrounds. We even discussed potential business deals. Bobby dropped Guglielmetti’s name often, which led me to believe we were on the right track.
One of the deals we discussed was my potential investment in gentlemen’s clubs. This had been strategically planned by the FBI after many hours of discussions. By way of preparation, I had already traveled to another city and trained to run a strip club by an FBI informant club owner. He taught me the nuts and bolts—how to order the booze, hire girls, schedule shifts, monitor the cash register, manage the floor, etc.
What I didn’t know that first night was that it would take more than a year and half of gaining Bobby Nardolillo’s trust before he introduced me to Guglielmetti. I was prepared to take as long it took and was backed this time by FBI management, which appreciated the importance of patience when it came to infiltrating the Mob.
Most of those days and nights I spent hanging with Nardolillo took place in a high-end strip club in Providence called Centerfolds, run by Guglielmetti’s crew. They were trying to get me to invest.
Most red-blooded heterosexual males would probably consider getting paid to spend time in a club in the company of attractive naked women a dream job. It was for the first couple weeks, but after that it became a headache—a real headache, in fact, because I have a severe allergic reaction to cigarette smoke. Minutes after Nardolillo lit up, which he did every time we met, day or night, I’d develop a splitting headache. Sitting in a car with him was almost unbearable.
Another problem was that as an undercover trying to gain evidence about illegal Mob activity, I had to wear a recording device every time I went to work. But with the state-of-the-art music system in Centerfolds blaring rock music nonstop, it was hard for the device to pick up what Bobby and his associates were saying. Also, my relationship with the young, attractive dancers working in the club, many of whom saw me every night hanging with mobsters and throwing around money, had to be strictly above board, because everything I did in the club would later be scrutinized by defense attorneys, and a judge and jury.
Since I was trying to win the trust of a gallery of rough characters, I couldn’t act like a prude either. I solved this problem by introducing Bobby and his associates to an attractive female FBI UCA, who played the role of my out-of-town girlfriend. She’d show up at Centerfolds every so often to let the dancers know I was off-limits. I made it clear that as a potential investor I wasn’t interested in mixing business with pleasure.
Another problem was the booze. I’d learned during the Russian UCO that I couldn’t slam back shots of vodka with my targets and still be effective. So I established with Nardolillo right away that I enjoyed an occasional beer, but wasn’t a big drinker. I’d also learned mobsters, for the most part, were light drinkers, and many didn’t touch the stuff at all.
Night after night, Bobby and I would meet at Centerfolds and talk. I was the savvy businessman who was willing to stretch the law to make a buck. He was the Mob insider who introduced me to a number of his associates and explained the workings and nuances of organized crime. His thorough course in Mob culture and practices was captured in more than three thousand body recordings, which were eagerly listened to and analyzed by the FBI.
In addition to my undercover role in the Guglielmetti case, I was still the Boston Undercover Coordinator, which meant that I had to report several times a week to the Boston office, usually in the dead of night sneaking into an underground basement to avoid being seen. There were plenty of other UCOs going on, so I was essentially basically working two jobs at once. On top of that I had responsibilities at home, which included coaching my kids’ baseball games and getting the car fixed.
I wasn’t getting a lot of rest, but I wasn’t complaining. At least I got to go home every night and sleep in my own bed. I tried to keep Michael Jameson and my real life as a husband and father separate.
As in the Luisi case, information began to surface in early 2001 that my real identity might have been compromised. The fears this time were based on the release of certain court documents in Luisi’s and Merlino’s upcoming trials, and my required appearance in court to testify against the Boston and Philadelphia defendants. When our SAC heard about the problem, he summoned the Case Agent and me into his office to discuss. Obviously, if I testified in the Luisi trial and one of Guglielmetti’s associates walked into the courtroom, I was done as an undercover and the Guglielmetti UCO was toast.
The SAC, who was a kind man, had a brilliant recommendation: Shave off the bushy walrus mustache I had worn for years. The Case Agent and I looked at one another in shock. Did the SAC really think mobsters I had been sitting in a club with for the past year wouldn’t recognize me if I
shaved off my mustache? Apparently so.
We told him we would consider his recommendation and left. The Case Agent, who was a complete wiseass, decided to make fun of the SAC’s suggestion and drafted the following memo on official FBI letterhead:
3/14/2001—Request for approval for case expenditures in the amount of $11,820.63 for UCA identity concealment.
Referenced meeting discussing concealment of the identity of the UCA during his testimony during the XXXXX trial, and remains an outstanding issue. Numerous methods have been discussed to attempt to obfuscate the UCA’s appearance to include: the use of multiple screens to block the gallery view, the use of blue dot technology during televised testimony, and the utilization of brown paper head apparatus during the actual testimony.
After a long and somewhat heated debate, in conjunction with SAC endorsement, it is recommended that the UCA change his physical appearance. Although the SAC has mandated that the UCA remove his facial hair, it is believed that stronger and more proactive measures should be taken.
Therefore, it is requested that the following procedures be approached at the estimated amounts that have been quoted by (local hospital). Assurances have been given that these are government rate figures and that the recuperation period should not exceed 2–3 weeks.
1. One year enrollment (HAIR CLUB FOR MEN) $426.50
2. Hair removal (Facial and Posterior) $142.67
3. Face-Lift $1,372.83
4. Tummy/Fanny Tuck $3,594.21
5. Selective Liposuction $6,239.42
6. Bikini Wax $45.00
FBIHQ has opined that it will reimburse the Field Office for 60% of the overall cost of $11,820.63 for the UCA’s alterations due to the fact that he may be a more valuable asset in future UCOs once additional augmentations are performed. Therefore, it is requested that these funds be approved for the UCA’s makeover.