I knew where we wanted the arrest to take place, and which bank would work best from the FBI SWAT point of view. But I had to be careful not to appear to be directing Drown to that particular bank, since his lawyer could potentially use that in court as part of an entrapment defense. So my brain had to be working on several levels at once—hard-ass criminal, FBI Agent, prosecutor. It was a form of multitasking that came natural to me now—talking with bad guys about committing serious felonies with one part of my brain, while going through a checklist of FBI evidence needs with another.
As we were casing the bank we wanted—TD Banknorth on Route One—an armored car pulled into the parking lot and started unloading bags of currency. Totally unplanned. Imagining he was about to make a big score, Drown decided to hit the bank immediately.
My adrenaline soared. Realizing that I needed to control the subject instead of letting the subject control me, I calmly informed Drown that before rushing the bank we had to change into our disguises and get our weapons ready.
“Yeah, right.”
I drove to the SWAT arrest position I had selected the previous day, then handed Drown the inert .45 Smith & Wesson, all the time talking to him calmly about what was going to happen next.
Turning to him, I said, “Joel, you wait here while I make sure the license plate is covered up.”
I stepped out of the car taking the keys with me so Drown had no means of escape. As I walked to the rear of the car, I signaled to the SWAT team to move in and make the arrest.
Drown initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea to guilty when he was told that the guy he tried to rob the bank with was an FBI Agent. I never saw him again.
After Drown’s arrest, I changed out of my black wise guy clothes and went back to preparing to go up against The Cheese Man. In my third Mob case, I was going to be a state official assigned to inspecting loam, so I had to bone up on soil science and learn the terminology—PH, anion and cation exchange capacity, clay mineralogy, etc. Real Massachusetts state officials were cooperative, providing me with a huge lime green state transportation truck. For my wardrobe, I selected a yellow hard hat plastered with union stickers, a lime-green vest, and shit-kicker boots.
I knew by this time that the Mob was tough to penetrate, and DiNunzio was going to try to remain in the background. It was my job to lure the big man out of his cheese store and get him to incriminate himself on tape.
The first meeting between me—calling myself Michael Moretti—and one of the DiNunzio’s Mob associates named Anthony D’Amore was set to take place at the dirt farm called Acton Sand & Gravel in September 2006. Knowing the first impression I made would be important, I drove the huge green state transportation truck into the farm like a bat out of hell and tore right past D’Amore and farm owner Andrew Marino, who were standing with our informant waiting to meet me. I spent ten minutes circling the mounds of dirt, then stopped and took a long piss against the wheel of the truck.
Then without bothering to wash my hands, I walked over to D’Amore and Marino and greeted them with handshakes. On purpose, I addressed D’Amore, a Mob tough guy, by the wrong name.
“Hey, Lenny, how’s it going?”
He looked fit to be tied. Then I walked away and pretended to make a ten-minute phone call, while the two of them simmered.
There was no scientific term for what I was doing. I borrowed some of my techniques from previous UCOs and others from my favorite TV show at the time, Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan. In the show, dog trainer extraordinaire Millan gave endless examples of how to tame the meanest, nastiest dogs by simply establishing that you (not them) were in control.
I used a different term when applying the technique to bad guys. I called it mind-fucking. In this instance, I wanted these knuckleheads to think I was an asshole state official who didn’t give a shit about them. I was strictly in it for the money, and wanted to be the last person on earth they’d suspect of being some tight-assed FBI Agent.
It’s amazing how well dog control techniques work on human beings. Fifteen minutes into our conversation, D’Amore and Marino offered me a $15,000 bribe for approving the 300,000 cubic yards of contaminated loam and fudging the state paperwork. Now we had to tie the bribe back to The Cheese Man.
Mike Sullivan and the other FBI Agents working the case didn’t think there was a chance in hell that DiNunzio would agree to meet me. I disagreed.
Knowing that Mob guys were always hot to make a buck, and there were as many as six million to be made in the sale of the tainted loam, I told D’Amore and Marino that I didn’t trust them and wouldn’t agree to any deal unless I got a direct guarantee from DiNunzio himself.
Everyone in the office except me was shocked when The Cheese Man agreed to meet me in the parking lot of the Hilltop Restaurant in Saugus, Massachusetts, a week later. I chose this location in the burbs because I wanted to avoid the North End or Providence, where I might run into one of the Mob guys I had met during previous UCOs.
While I was preparing for the initial encounter, Mike Sullivan said, “I really want you to push DiNunzio’s buttons. Fuck with him big-time and get him upset. Maybe he will threaten you, too.”
“My specialty,” I replied. “As you know, I’m really good at pissing people off.”
I call it “poking the beast.” Knowing how much stock Mob guys put into punctuality, I deliberately showed up to our first meeting fifteen minutes late. The Cheese Man looked like he wanted to wring my throat. Weighing four hundred pounds and standing in the hot early October sun, he was already sweating through his shirt.
The atmosphere was tense, and Dominic (our informant), also in attendance, looked like he wanted to disappear into the parking lot asphalt. I remained relaxed and ornery—my default mode.
I started egging the big mobster on, and questioning whether Marino could deliver on the promise of the 300,000 cubic yards of loam.
DiNunzio was captured on tape assuring me that Marino would come through. At one point, he said, “You need to understand. I’m not even supposed to step out like this, my friend. I was going to throw this fucking kid off the roof for fucking up something like this. I never met him, but he’s going to go along on a number of things. If you know anything about me, we’re taking a beating so you can get your end.”
Was The Cheese Man actually trying to convince me that he had come out of the shadows to deal with me like this out of a sense of altruism? Yes, he was.
I pushed him further by bringing up the subject of the $15,000 bribe money. I said to him: “I had a number.… My end is now the same as the first time, and that’s all I give a fuck about. We haven’t started out on a good note here. What about my 5 percent?”
“Yeah, 5 percent,” The Cheese Man responded. “You’re getting 20, 20, and 20. He gave you 15 already. And then 5 percent. If you want to take 4 percent and leave us something, that’s fine.”
Already, in a first meeting with a complete stranger, we had DiNunzio on tape verifying all of the criminal elements of a serious federal criminal violation.
He was asking me to take less of a percentage on the entire deal to “leave us with something,” as though he and his associates wouldn’t be making a substantial profit on a $6 million contract. Unbelievable. In my role of corrupt state official and asshole, I turned him down.
His head had turned beet red, and his eyes narrowed as though he was imagining plunging a hatchet into my head. I’d never seen a Mob guy so pissed off.
DiNunzio pleaded, “We’re taking a beating here. That’s why we went and grabbed this other kid (Marino) earlier. We’re talking to him, and we’re not talking normal, like we’re talking here. You know what I mean?”
I did. The Cheese Man was saying that if the dirt farmer Marino didn’t do what he wanted and consent to being extorted, he was going to hurt him.
Poking the beast a little more I said, “What I need on my end.… I need a guarantee.”
DiNunzio looked like he was a second away from
exploding all over the parking lot. He took a deep breath and responded, “I don’t ever come out.… I’m The Cheese Man. You ask anybody about me. We straighten out a lot of beefs, a lot of things, and Marino’s gonna do what he’s gotta do.”
The conversation lasted approximately twenty minutes. When Mike Sullivan listened to the tape, he not only laughed his ass off, he also acknowledged that in those twenty minutes we accomplished more in terms of making a case against The Cheese Man than the traditional investigation had in the past two years.
At a follow-up meeting with DiNunzio held three days later at the Green Tea Restaurant in Newton, Massachusetts, I tied up a couple of legal loose ends. This time I told him how I had switched samples gathered from Acton Sand & Gravel with uncontaminated ones in order to get the contract approved. But since D’Amore and Marino hadn’t submitted the necessary paperwork in time to meet the state’s fall 2006 deadline, we would have to wait until spring 2007 to sell the loam.
The Cheese Man’s face turned beet red again.
“You know how much money, at a minimum, walked out of your pocket?” I asked him, continuing to embarrass him and piss him off. “Three hundred thousand, minimum. You guys fucked it all up … blew a simple straight deal.”
I got up and threw a twenty on the table. The Boston Underboss sat stunned in his chair as a $6 million deal was about to walk out of the restaurant.
Not only was I killing the loam deal on the spot, which the FBI obviously never had any intention of completing, I was also keeping the bribe money for my time and troubles.
“This is a shame,” The Cheese Man groaned, dumbfounded. “You’re not going to find a bag of money tomorrow. You know what I mean? He (Marino) just fucked everything up. What a shame.”
Pretending that I felt bad for him, I returned to my seat and discussed other possible illegal schemes we could run in the future. At the end, I reminded him: “Carmen, in the inspection business, the man who holds the pencil wins. Just remember that, please. I’ll be happy to help you, or anyone you refer.”
“One good thing came out of it,” DiNunzio responded, “I got to meet you, Mike. It’s not dead yet.”
I said, “I consider I got a friend in the North End now.”
“And a good friend, too.”
Having completed my undercover role, I went back to my Undercover Coordinator work. Meanwhile, Sullivan and other Agents continued collecting the last bits of evidence needed to prosecute a major LCN prosecution. The Cheese Man, D’Amore, and Marino were arrested early the morning of May 2, 2008.
Unaware of the timing of their arrests, I was in the office early for my customary 5 AM workout. When I exited the gym an hour later, I walked past the elevator just as it pinged opened. I turned and saw two of my fellow Agent friends with their arms around Carmen DiNunzio.
He looked at me standing in workout gear and I looked back at him.
Using the morning salutation I give to most acquaintances, I said, “Hi, Carmen. How’s it going?”
At that point, The Cheese Man hadn’t been to court yet and didn’t know why he’d been arrested. It took a split second for the implications of what he saw to sink in.
Then The Cheese Man turned to one of the Agents and said, and I quote: “I’m so fucked.”
All of us, including DiNunzio, had a good laugh.
He was right. We had him firmly by the legal short hairs, which is why despite the fact that he hired the best defense attorneys money could buy, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds. The Cheese Man was sentenced to six years in federal prison. D’Amore and Marino followed his example and pled guilty, too.
I’d had quite a run. Over the course of nearly ten years, as the primary UCA in three major Mob cases, I’d helped deliver a series of debilitating body blows to Organized Crime in New England. Nobody was keeping score, but the Case Agents, other UCAs, and I were directly responsible for putting a Mob Boss, an Underboss, two Capos, corrupt local and national Union Officials, and dozens of Mob associates behind bars for a cumulative total of well over a hundred years. Some of them never returned to a life of crime.
The Case Agents, my UCA colleagues, and I were just doing our jobs—jobs we loved doing. We didn’t get parades or trips to Disneyland when we successfully concluded a case, we simply rolled up our sleeves, rubbed some dirt on it, drank some beers, and went to work on new ones.
15
THE OUTLAWS
By 2007, I was at the top of my UCA game. The skills I’d acquired going up against a series of heavyweights in the Italian and Russian Mobs gave me a new level of professional confidence. I loved the psychological gamesmanship of undercover work, and the thrill of the hunt.
Physically, I wasn’t the same. Twenty years of chasing bad guys, combined with a serious leg injury suffered while on SWAT had left me with a permanent limp, and taken a toll on other parts of my body. My colleagues marked this new stage in my career by giving me another nickname—“The Old Man,” or El Viejo in Spanish.
Mentally, I was as eager and ready as I’d ever been. After concluding my UC role with The Cheese Man, I jumped into two very different investigations—one involving Public Corruption subjects in Florida, and another against the notorious Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
The first one, known as “Flat Screen” had been underway for some time when I got involved. It started back in October 2003, with a tip from a Blood gang member informing the Miami FBI that Miramar, Florida, City Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman (Yes, that’s his real name) had been buying drugs, stolen property, and soliciting prostitutes—sometimes in the city hall parking lot. You can’t make this shit up.
The tip precipitated a meeting between Salesman and a respected FBI UCA I’ll call Victor in a Miami strip club. Over the next several months, Victor and other Florida UCAs discussed possible money laundering and real estate deals with Salesman, who bragged that he was someone who “could get things done in Miramar”—meaning that he was open to do business at a price. I was brought in as the veteran UCA to make the Public Corruption aspect of the overall case.
August 2005, I traveled to South Florida, where Victor introduced me to Salesman at a barbeque joint in the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino near Hollywood. I was Michael Moretti again, but instead of a Massachusetts state soil inspector, this Michael Moretti was a wealthy construction contractor from the Northeast who was looking to retire in South Florida and didn’t care whose palm he had to grease in order to secure lucrative Broward County government contracts.
I dressed in a $1,500 Armani suit, exuding money and confidence, while everyone else plopped around in flip-flops and Tommy Bahama flowered shirts.
Fitzroy Salesman struck me as a typical criminal, despite the fact that he was wearing a well-tailored business suit and had an impressive public official title. His favorite subject—like that of so many criminals—was himself. He regaled me with story after story about how important and impressive he was, and like all good UCAs, I keep the tape recording running and my mouth shut.
Over the next several months, Salesman introduced other UCAs, who played the role of local lobbyists and financial managers who reported to me, to school board members, Broward county commissioners, and other politicians who might be willing to grant State government contracts for money under the table. One of them, County Commissioner Josephus Eggelletion of Lauderhill, offered to secure a contract to build city sidewalks for our FBI-created company, but ultimately never delivered. He later bit on a parallel $900,000 FBI-created money-laundering scheme we developed in the Bahamas, and ended up pleading guilty to state corruption charges. School Board member Beverly Gallagher was also convicted of accepting bribes.
Fitzroy Salesman took a little longer to snag.
The Miramar City Commissioner chose to remain in the background until April 2006, when he came up with a plan to start our company off with smaller jobs, and then move us up into the higher million-dollar range contracts.
“You take the shit nobody else wants,” he explained to me during one of my visits. “When the big shit arrives, I say: ‘They earned their turn.’”
First, Salesman convinced Miramar City Manager Robert Payton to hire our backstopped firm to build a city gazebo for $34,000. Then, we were given a contract to install a gym floor at the city recreation center. For his services, Salesman took a 1 percent bribe of the total projects costs. It didn’t amount to much in the beginning, but would become extremely profitable for him when the big jobs came, or so he told us—on tape.
Needing a legitimate contractor to do the work and keep his mouth shut, we turned to the family friend of one of the other UCAs, who ran a licensed construction firm in Fort Lauderdale. All the contracting work was completed to specifications and done above board.
By the summer of 2007 it was time for us to take on the “big shit” in Salesman’s terminology. On July 28, he and I met in my oceanfront room at the Westin Diplomat Hotel. With audio- and videotape recording equipment running, Salesman told me about an upcoming county building renovation project that could be worth as much as $500,000 he wanted to push our way.
“Can we get our hands on that?” I asked.
“That is what I’m working on,” answered Salesman. “There is growth,” he added. “As a matter of fact, we’re building a $22 million state-of-the-art cultural center right now.” He then went on to boast about how he could help our company secure part of $80 million in capital improvement projects earmarked for Broward County in the upcoming year, including a new police department building and a command center for fire rescue.
He said, “I’m in there, and that is what I do. I have a good relationship with the rest of the commission and the city managers.”
“You’re my special friend in Miramar,” I offered.
“You give as much as you get,” Salesman responded, leaning back in his chair as relaxed as a snake sunning itself in the warm Florida sun.
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