Blake wanted to hire someone to rob and possibly kill a seventy-one-year-old man named Michael Gosselin, who lived with his seventy-year-old wife in the town of Hudson, New Hampshire. According to Blake, Gosselin had been skimming money from the gambling games he ran every Thursday and Saturday for twenty-five years. The two-to-three thousand he ripped off each week was kept in a safe in his house.
On Thursday nights, a local police officer would escort Gosselin directly to the bank where he would deposit the proceeds that averaged between $20,000 and $25,000 cash. On Sunday evenings, however, the banks were closed, so the police would follow Gosselin home. It was Gosselin’s practice to deposit the money from the Sunday night game on Monday morning.
Blake wanted me to jump the old man early Monday morning before he had a chance to go to the bank. That way I could grab the previous night’s take as well as the money he had skimmed over the years, which he stored in his safe. He instructed me to carry a gun and warned me that Gosselin kept a small pistol in his house and owned a small dog. He suggested that I might have to pistol whip Gosselin before he relinquished the combination to the safe. And he warned that the stress of the robbery might cause Gosselin to have a heart attack.
Should that “worst-case scenario” occur, Blake said he could “live with it.” This admission was important from a legal standpoint.
We agreed that if I recovered less than $100,000 from Gosselin, my share would be 70 percent. If the amount was more than $100,000, I would be paid an entry fee and we would split the remainder of the stolen money fifty-fifty. I needed to haggle, negotiate, and establish that a violent crime was about to occur at Blake’s direction for legal reasons.
Naturally, our conversation was recorded. A day later, Blake was arrested. The whole case took less than twenty-hour hours and thwarted a potentially violent crime—a slam dunk for the FBI.
Most of the time, I had no problem wearing a wire. I took exception when Matty Guglielmetti’s father passed away in late 2003, and, as his business partner, I was expected to attend the wake and funeral service. Since this was a highly personal event that had nothing to do with the case, I asked my FBI bosses if I was still required to wear a wire. They answered with an emphatic “yes.” The rule was that once you wore a recording device in a case you had to continue wearing it unless you could justify taking it off for security reasons.
Matty Guglielmetti had been extremely close to his father, and the wake was extremely emotional. FBI Agents and police officers waited outside the funeral home photographing everyone who entered—many of whom were members of the Mob. My photo was snapped, too, by State Police officers who had no clue about my real identify.
Then, with my body recorder running, I approached Guglielmetti and his family and expressed my condolences. With tears in their eyes, they thanked me for coming. I couldn’t help it, I felt like a heel.
The following day, I attended the church service, and then drove in the funeral procession to the cemetery. It was a very cold winter day, and the burial took place in a family crypt where standing room was very limited. I was about to turn and leave, when Bobby Nardolillo escorted me inside. I stood shoulder to shoulder with Guglielmetti’s family and his close associates as they struggled to contain their grief.
Since it was impossible to turn off the body recorder without attracting attention, I moved away as far as possible to allow the family some privacy. I felt like a complete shit bag. Yeah, Guglielmetti was a bad guy, but on this day, he was simply a grieving son.
By the fall of 2004, as Double Sessions approached the five-year mark, it was time to make the awkward jab. The Christmas holidays were approaching—a time when Mob guys liked to entertain and throw around money. I explained to Matty that our construction business wasn’t doing so well, and we had to consider other ways to make money. As my silent partner, I told him I wouldn’t do anything without getting his approval first.
Matty stood looking at me from a few feet away. I could tell from his face that he knew where this was going. I half-expected him to turn and walk out, but he didn’t. So I told him about my relationship with Manny—the Cuban drug dealer who was really a UCA. Guglielmetti indicated that he’d heard Manny’s name before, and even mentioned the past protection details Bobby Nardolillo had provided.
I said, “Matty, the quickest way I know to make a buck is to clean some of Manny’s money. I’ve done it many times in the past.”
What I was doing was tying money laundering to an SUA (Specific Unlawful Activity)—in this case drug trafficking—so the charge would hold up in court.
Guglielmetti nodded and said, “I know but I don’t want to know.” He later added, “Mike … you’ve been more than direct with me … you’ve told me more than I want to know.…”
His dilemma was simple: He wanted to do things, he just didn’t want to get caught. It was Bobby Luisi five years earlier whispering in the stairwell.
I left the dilemma squarely in Guglielmetti’s lap by telling him I wouldn’t do anything with Manny without his approval. Legally, I was whacking an entrapment defense by giving him the opportunity to say no and walk away.
But Mob guys can’t help themselves—they only see the green. And Matty gave me the green light to clean up Manny’s money. Less than two weeks later he happily accepted $18,000 in cash, which he believed were laundered funds from Manny’s drug-trafficking business. He was now legally cooked.
We pushed a little harder. On December 6, 2004, I told Guglielmetti that Manny had a huge load of cocaine that would soon be transiting through Rhode Island on its way from New York City to Canada. While it stayed overnight in Rhode Island, Manny needed someone to protect it. Guglielmetti wanted to know how much he would get for babysitting the drugs and how many people were required. I told him that Manny was sending sixty-seven kilos of coke and was offering $1,000 a kilo for protection—a $67,000 payday for a night’s work!
I could see Guglielmetti doing the math in his head. Contrary to my regular undercover practice, I used the specific words “coke” and “kilos” so a jury wouldn’t be confused.
Matty didn’t flinch. During a conversation a week later, he gave me instructions on how he wanted the drug protection detail to work: “I don’t want people in and out of there … I don’t want a guy taking three … running out … coming back … taking four.… You might as well just hang a sign out and say we’re doing drugs.” A jury wouldn’t need help interpreting that either.
On December 22, 2004, I informed Guglielmetti that the shipment would arrive in Rhode Island the week of January 17 and would be kept under guard in a hotel room. Then I gave him another chance to walk away. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “I trust you, Mike … who would walk away from $67,000?”
January 18, 2005, I handed Guglielmetti the key to a hotel room in Cranston, Rhode Island, and told him to make sure his boys were there at 6 PM. When his associates Alan Blamires and Anthony Moscarelli entered the hotel room, they were met by four undercover FBI Agents who opened up one of the suitcases to show them the cocaine.
A couple of miles away, Matty and I sat in another hotel room, coordinating our teams from afar while we watched TV, ate a leisurely dinner, and talked about future plans. At one point, Guglielmetti said, “Relax, Mike, everything will work out fine.” He was right.
Two days later, he settled into a chair in my private office looking pleased with himself and expected me to hand $67,000 in cash for babysitting the shipment of coke. I actually had about ten bucks in my pocket.
As he sat facing me, I saw two FBI Agents arriving to arrest him. Hearing them approach, Guglielmetti turned and recognized one of the Agents as someone who had interviewed him before. A look of sheer panic came over his face.
I stood and said, “Matty, do the right thing.”
He looked back at me in complete shock. We had worked together for more than three years and he had no clue that I was an FBI Agent.
Guglielmetti’s arrest and th
e arrests of a number of his associates including Bobby Nardolillo, and other subordinates and union officials made national news, and destroyed a dangerous faction of the Patriarca crime family. Later that same day, January 20, 2005, I took a deep breath as I exited the office of Hemphill Construction for the last time.
After almost five years, I no longer had to pretend I was someone I wasn’t, or carefully monitor every word I said for fear of being discovered and shot. Double Sessions was over. I went home to my family, played basketball with my sons, then put my feet up and sipped a gin and tonic with my wife.
Guglielmetti was so embarrassed by being duped by the FBI that he pled guilty within days of his arrest. He was sentenced to twelve years in federal prison.
The next time I saw Bobby Nardolillo was a year later when I testified against him in court. As I sat in the witness box reciting the facts of the case, he glared at me like he wanted to choke me to death. He later pled guilty and was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison, three more than Guglielmetti because he had instructed the protection detail to carry guns.
Their half-dozen or so LCN underlings all received double-digit sentences ranging from ten to thirteen years. One of them told us Nardolillo considered shooting the undercovers and stealing the cocaine during the second protection detail. Thank God they didn’t.
Three local Laborers’ Union officials, including Nicholas Manocchio, nephew of LCN boss Luigi Giovanni “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, pled guilty to labor law violations and accepting cash bribe payments from me. In a separate civil action LIUNA’s General President Emeritus Arthur Coia Jr., who I had hired as a consultant at the direction of Guglielmetti, was charged and found guilty of allowing LCN Capo Matthew Guglielmetti to exercise control or influence over the Union and other charges.
As a result, Coia’s membership in the national union and status as General President Emeritus were both revoked. A 2004 news article by a nationally syndicated columnist written at the exact same time the FBI was investigating the relationship between the LCN and Laborers’ Union described Coia Jr. as a close associate of former President Bill Clinton. I wonder if they’re still friends.
14
THE ITALIAN MOB—CASE #3
As the primary undercover in Double Sessions, I had just completed one of the longest undercover assignments in FBI history. Five years is a long time to pretend you’re someone else and parry with wise guys on a daily basis without committing a potentially deadly slipup. It was also my second infiltration of a Mafia family, and although the FBI didn’t keep a scorecard, I knew I was one of a very few, if not the only FBI Agent, to infiltrate the Mob twice.
The FBI didn’t hand me a trophy—nor was I expecting one. My reward, starting in January 2005, were the free nights and weekends I got to spend with my family.
That didn’t mean I didn’t have work to do. With more than three thousand recordings of Guglielmetti, Nardolillo, and their associates to transcribe and analyze, and other evidence to categorize, I spent the rest of 2005 and most of 2006 either prepping for their various trials or testifying in court.
Additionally, I was still the Boston Undercover Coordinator—a full-time job in itself—responsible for assigning, training, and mentoring UCAs and developing credible scenarios in various UCOs. And I squeezed in time to bust balls around the office, and go out after work with other Agents for beverages, companionship, and laughs. I was back to being a normal FBI Agent, and it felt good.
Sometime in the fall 2006, Mike Sullivan, my right-hand man in Double Sessions, approached my desk with a gleam in his eye. He’d pretty much avoided me since the end of the case, which didn’t come as a shock since I’d browbeaten the poor bastard day and night for several years.
“What’s up, Mike?” I asked.
“I need a little help in another case.”
“What case is that?” I knew that Sullivan was now the Case Agent of an operation targeting Boston’s current Mob Underboss.
“We have a case against The Cheese Man,” Sullivan answered. “You in?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Of course I’m in. What have you got?”
Carmen DiNunzio—aka The Cheese Man or Big Cheese—was notorious in Boston for taking over the local Mob after a series of recent successors had bit the dust and Bobby Luisi and his crew had been locked up. He tipped the scales at four hundred pounds and owned and operated the Fresh Cheese Store on Endicott Street in the North End of Boston. The cheese store had allegedly been given to him by organized crime associate Steven (Stevie Junk) Giorgio to repay a gambling and loansharking debt.
Fifty-year-old Carmen and his younger brother, Anthony, were straight out of Mob central casting. Born and raised in East Boston, they were schooled in criminal activity at an early age. After a falling out with famed Boston Mob Underboss Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo in 1983 and having a murder contract on his head, Carmen DiNunzio fled to the West Coast. There he and his brother worked as bookies and collectors for the Chicago Mob’s California and Nevada crews.
In 1992, both brothers were indicted and charged with racketeering and the attempted takeover of a casino on a Native American reservation in San Diego. They pled guilty to extortion and were sentenced to four years in federal jail. During their stint in prison, the DiNunzios befriended some influence-heavy New York wise guys, who helped them regain their standing in the Massachusetts underworld, which they returned to in ’97.
By 2006, when Sullivan approached me, The Cheese Man was big, made, and in charge of the decimated Boston Mob. And like most Organized Crime bosses, he was willing to do practically anything to make a buck. Recently, he’d gotten involved in a scheme with a local dirt farmer named Andrew Marino and Mob associate Anthony D’Amore to sell 300,000 cubic yards of toxic loam (soil composed of sand, silt, manure, and clay) to the State of Massachusetts to be used in the Big Dig project—a massive multibillion construction project that involved rerouting Interstate 93 through the heart of Boston and connecting it with the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Tunnel. The problem was that the soil was highly contaminated.
DiNunzio spoke to an associate named Dominic about the dirt scam and the challenges they faced because it was toxic. What The Cheese Man didn’t know was that Dominic was an FBI informant (another guy jammed on other charges who offered to cooperate with the FBI).
Like I said before: You can’t make this shit up.
All of this had been set up before Sullivan approached me. He and I came up with the idea of me playing a state official willing to take money under the table in exchange for fudging the paperwork and approving the soil.
Sullivan liked the plan, but expressed a concern: “You sure you aren’t too exposed to the Mob already?”
He had a point. In the roles of Irish Mike O’Sullivan and Mike Jameson, I was well known to the New England Mob. No doubt, associates of Luisi, Merlino, Nardolillo, and Guglielmetti would like nothing more than to get their hands on the FBI Agent who had fucked their bosses. And since I had never taken up on the offer of the physical makeover approved by the FBI, I was still easily identified by my bushy walrus mustache.
On the other hand, I’d never played a state official before and my exposure this time would be minimal—less than a dozen meetings at most.
Whether it was out of foolish pride, or because of something in my blood since my days of playing baseball in Haverhill, Massachusetts, or the adrenaline rush I got from working undercover, I’ve always found it hard to turn down a professional challenge.
But something unexpected and somewhat less challenging came up first. In January 2006, just before I started preparing to take on The Cheese Man, I was asked to take on a “quick hitter” type case. This was a situation like the Blake murder for hire where the FBI needed a UCA to intervene quickly to prevent a violent act that could endanger the public.
Since this one involved a planned bank robbery, and my FBI superiors apparently thought I looked like a bank robber (Thanks, guys!), I was asked to pitch in. The subj
ect this time was a suspected bank robber named Joel Adam Drown, who had approached an FBI informant for help in robbing a bank in New Hampshire.
The informant had convinced Drown that the two men needed a third accomplice to procure weapons and drive the getaway car, while they went inside to steal the cash. I was to play the role of the third accomplice.
Why not? I always keep a suit and tie in my car, as well as an all-black “wise guy” outfit, in case I was needed for a quick UCO. On this occasion, I again chose to model myself on some real wise guys I’d been associating with recently and had studied carefully. Dressed in black, I assumed a tough guy, asshole attitude. Basically: Don’t fuck with me, I’m a professional criminal, and do this bank robbery shit all the time.
I had two days to secure the getaway and switch cars, prepare the informant, coordinate with FBI SWAT and the local PD to make the arrest. I also had to procure the guns, which included a .45 caliber Smith & Wesson for Drown that had to be mechanically disabled without being visible to the naked eye. We wanted to make sure no one was shot.
On a bitter cold day in January 2006, the informant drove me to Drown’s house—a ramshackle doublewide trailer perched above a frozen lake. Joel Drown turned out to be a pale, fidgety man in his midtwenties. According to the informant, he was also a drug user.
Drown bought my wise guy act hook, line, and sinker, donned his “work” outfit—Jesse James reversible hat, black bandanna, red stocking cap, black leather gloves, jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and sunglasses—and we took off to rob a bank. Not your usual nine-to-five job.
I showed him where I had parked the “switch” car, then the three of us spent the next three hours driving around, shooting the shit, and casing banks on Route One in Seabrook, New Hampshire. The recording device I wore ran the entire time.
Ghost Page 19