Deal With the Devil: The FBI's Secret Thirty-Year Relationship With a Mafia Killer

by Peter Lance

  LaRossa: And you wrote down that he got excited about it. Didn’t he?

  Favo: Yes.

  LaRossa: You said that he said to you, “We’re going to win this thing,” right? Meaning the war, right?

  Favo: Yes.

  LaRossa: Meaning the Persico side, right?

  Favo: Yes.

  In a 302 dated February 6, 1994, Favo went further: “I told DeVecchio that as law enforcement we did not support either side in the war. DeVecchio then stated that was what he meant.”17 But during that trial of the Orena sons, Favo offered more details about his own thoughts on the significance of DeVecchio’s comment:

  I had gotten the information about the two shootings in the morning. They both occurred before 9:00. It was approximately 9:00 when I went in to see Mr. DeVecchio. I walked in, I said my usual briefing, two shootings occurred, two Orena side people were shot, they’re not really sure who did it and so forth. . . .

  As I started into that, he slapped his hand on the desk and he said, “We’re going to win this thing,” and he seemed excited about it. He seemed like he didn’t know . . . we were the FBI. . . . It was like a line had been blurred . . . over who we were and what this was. . . . I just thought he was not—I thought there was something wrong. He was compromised. He had lost track of who he was.18

  In his memoir, Lin acknowledged the exchange, adding that Favo had told him, “We’re the FBI. We’re not on either side,” to which he agreed, writing it off as a harmless comment until it came back to haunt him years later, during his OPR investigation.

  Apart from the propriety of a federal agent slapping his desk on news of a murder—be it a mob hit or not—what about that conversation? Was DeVecchio really rooting for the Feds, as he insists, or had he allowed his loyalty to Greg Scarpa to push him across a line?

  There’s no doubt that since 1980, Lin DeVecchio had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep Scarpa free. Later, federal prosecutors were forced to admit that DeVecchio may have passed crucial intelligence to “34,” including the locations of potential war targets. But did he share his source’s sentiments about which side should “win” the war?

  We can get another insight into that question from an account given by Wimpy Boys crew member Joseph Ambrosino. Testifying at Teddy Persico’s trial after the war, Ambrosino described a Scarpa speech that was eerily similar to Lin’s “We’re going to win” exclamation. According to Joey Brains, in January 1992, right after the Grancio murder, Scarpa convened a meeting of his crew at a Steak and Ale restaurant. This is the FBI account:

  Carmine Sessa was arguing with Bobby Zambardi, telling him that he had to pick up his efforts; that he had to get out of the house; that he had to participate. . . . Greg Scarpa was doing a lot of talking. He was saying . . . the only way we’re going to win this war [is] if we stick together; that he’s been in other wars before and we have to stick together, all of us have to work together, we can’t not work with each other, else we’re not going to get nowhere.19

  So what was the “thing” Lin DeVecchio hoped “they” would win: the Feds’ war against the mob, or Greg Scarpa’s war against Vic Orena? As noted, defense attorneys theorized for years that Scarpa had fomented the war with DeVecchio’s advice and consent. The purported goal was for Scarpa to eliminate the competition in the family so that he could rise to the rank of “boss,” thus ensuring that the FBI had a confidential informant on the Mafia Commission. There’s little doubt that, despite his failing health, no single member of the Colombo family had done more to further the war violence than their own Top Echelon Criminal Informant “34.”

  The very day after the Lampasi rubout, Vincent Giangiobbe, an associate of the Bonanno family, was shot to death. But months later, testifying at the trial of Vic Orena, Lin DeVecchio would include Giangiobbe’s homicide in the total count of Colombo war dead.20 Now, in June 1992, as the violence continued, the most revealing admission about Greg Scarpa’s long-term goal came from Joseph Ambrosino himself.

  “With Greg on Top . . .”

  On June 4, the Feds installed a bug in Ambrosino’s car. Over the next six days conversations were recorded documenting how “the Scarpa faction” continued to escalate the war. According to what can be heard on those tapes, less than two weeks after killing Lampasi, Greg Scarpa had put together an elaborate plan to kill William Cutolo in a bloody machine-gun rubout at a Staten Island intersection in broad daylight.

  As Joey Brains later testified at the trial of Vic Orena, the plan was to manipulate a traffic light near Cutolo’s girlfriend’s house. Then, when “Wild Bill” was stopped at the intersection, the crew—consisting of Scarpa, Mazza, Del Masto, and Sessa—would flank his car. Using a stolen Audi on one side and a van on the other, they would pull out a machine gun and fire.21 The hit was supposed to take place on Saturday, June 13. But once the FBI got word of the plot, via the wire, Ambrosino was taken into custody.

  However, before his arrest, while he was driving around clueless about the FBI recording device in his car, Ambrosino had a conversation with a Colombo associate named Michael DeMatteo. The two of them discussed just how much money could be made once the war was over.

  “With Greg on top, we’ll see what we get,” Ambrosino said, suggesting that after the conflict, which Scarpa had fomented, Greg would take over the family.22

  At the time he decided to cooperate, Ambrosino had no idea how dangerous that decision was for him—particularly since he didn’t know that Scarpa might have access to FBI intelligence and word of his defection might get back to “34.”

  In fact, within days of Ambrosino’s decision to flip, Scarpa actually discussed a plan to kill Joey’s mother and leave a note signaling that “this is what happens to ‘rats.’”

  Larry Mazza testified to that plan during Teddy Persico’s trial.23 But as reflected in a 209 filed by Lin DeVecchio in the fall of 1992, the ever-deceitful Scarpa tried to blame that plot on “Frankie Blue Eyes” Sparaco:

  There was serious discussion concerning some members of the PERSICO faction to kill Joey AMBROSINO’s mother in retaliation for his cooperation with the government. The source Greg SCARPA put a stop to the plan and has advised the PERSICO faction that he has to be consulted before any further actions are taken in the war between the two factions. The source said Frank SPARACO was a major push behind the plan to kill AMBROSINO’s mother.24

  Even if Scarpa’s account had been true, it would have represented another low for the FBI, because we’ve since learned that Sparaco too was a confidential FBI informant at the time of the war. But Mazza was closer to Scarpa at that time than any living person other than Linda Schiro, and he swore that the plan to kill Joey’s mother had come from Greg himself.

  The question is: How did Scarpa find out that Ambrosino had decided to play for Team Fed? The fact that he was arrested didn’t necessarily mean he’d cooperate. The knowledge that Joey Brains had decided to flip was inside intel known only to the FBI agents and EDNY prosecutors who had turned him. How would Scarpa have known that Joey would become a CW to the point of ordering his mother killed in retaliation, unless someone on the inside had tipped him?

  Further, this 209 represents the clearest example to date of Lin DeVecchio sending “intelligence” to Washington from his Top Echelon informant that was patently false—particularly the assertion that “Greg SCARPA,” who actually hatched the plot to kill Ambrosino’s mother, had “put a stop” to it.

  Warning Mazza and Del Masto

  As soon as Ambrosino started talking, he confirmed that Scarpa had murdered Amato, Fusaro, and Nicky Black. In fact, he told Favo that Greg “had been at all the meetings; he had been as active in the war as anybody.”25 Four days after Ambrosino’s arrest on June 10,26 and based on the information he supplied, Larry Mazza and Jimmy Del Masto were indicted.27 Yet Scarpa, the FBI’s star informant, who had directed this killing pair, remained indictment-free. The question is, why?

  At the time of Carmine Imbriale’s arrest back in Feb
ruary, Chris Favo had insisted that he didn’t have probable cause to lock up Scarpa.28 But by June, with Ambrosino’s disclosures and the recordings from his car, Favo had what he needed to get Senior off the street. In fact, he later admitted as much at the trial of Vic Jr. and John Orena,29 testifying that Ambrosino’s debriefings had convinced him that Gregory Scarpa Sr. was “the most violent and active in a group of many violent and active people.”30 Still, Favo acknowledged, the Feds decided not to indict Scarpa at that time.31

  In June, once the charges against them had leaked out, Mazza and Del Masto went on the lam. In fact, Mazza, Scarpa’s principal backup trigger man, wasn’t arrested until February 9, 1993. In a letter to defense attorneys presented during the trial of the Orena sons, the Feds gave a hint as to why the two co-conspirators had known enough to take off. Prosecutors admitted that one of the disclosures DeVecchio “may” have made to Scarpa was that “there were arrest warrants outstanding for Mazza and Del Masto” and “that if they stayed away from their normal ‘hangouts’ they could avoid being arrested.”32

  As noted, following his arrest Mazza told FBI agents that Scarpa had a law enforcement source he referred to by a code name: “the Girlfriend.” In fact, Mazza disclosed that this source regularly called Greg via a phone in the basement of the house on Eighty-Second Street that was registered to Linda Schiro’s sister, and that the Girlfriend had leaked key information to Scarpa during the war. That intelligence included the addresses of “Big Sal” Miciotta and Joe Scopo, both Orena loyalists. Mazza also identified the Girlfriend as the source who had warned Senior about his 1986 credit card bust and the impending DEA arrests of Greg Jr. and crew in 1987. Further, Mazza told Favo and Special Agent Maryann Walker-Goldman, who debriefed him, that Scarpa had learned the address where the panel truck had been rented in the alleged shootout outside his house on November 18, 1991.

  That was information that Chris Favo himself had developed after the ski-mask attack. With that revelation by Mazza, Favo knew for sure that intelligence gathered during the war by him and the other agents in Squad C-10 had found its way back to the Killing Machine. Now, regarding Scarpa’s warning that Mazza and Del Masto were going to be indicted, Larry admitted this to agents Favo and Walker:

  THE GIRLFRIEND told SCARPA SR. that if there were no more shootings, MAZZA and DELMASTO might not be in too much trouble with the law.33

  Defense attorneys later alleged that this proved DeVecchio knew, through Scarpa, that Mazza and Del Masto were responsible (with him) for many of the war shootings—otherwise why would Lin suggest to Greg that they would be safe if they laid low?

  DeVecchio at 26 Federal Plaza

  (CBS News)

  DeVecchio Erupts

  By the end of June 1992, tensions were starting to mount inside Squad C-10 as Favo and fellow agents Howard Leadbetter, Jeffrey Tomlinson, and Ray Andjich gathered more and more evidence from cooperating witnesses that Greg Scarpa was getting special treatment from a law enforcement source. Andjich, whom DeVecchio had “parked” in front of the TV on several of his visits to Scarpa’s house while DeVecchio conferred with “34” in the kitchen, later expressed his chagrin at this treatment:

  I could hear discussions between SSA DeVecchio and Scarpa Sr. but I could not hear all of the words. On one of the occasions I do recall Scarpa saying something about a murder or “hit” but I do not recall a specific comment. I found this to be an awkward situation and didn’t understand why Scarpa Sr. could be saying something that I shouldn’t be hearing since I’m involved in investigations as well.34

  Andjich also complained about how limited one of DeVecchio’s 209s was, recounting a debriefing of Scarpa for which he was present at the Eighty-Second Street house:

  On one of these occasions, SSA DeVecchio did prepare an FD-209 and presented it to me for review. As I recall there were only a few sentences on the FD-209. This meeting took approximately 30–45 minutes and less than half a page of content chronicled the contact.35

  Emotions in the squad came to a head on June 25, 1992, when the Manhattan DA’s office executed an arrest warrant for Scarpa loyalist John Pate in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. To ensure that members of Pate’s crew were also held, the FBI arrested them on a federal warrant.36 It was a bust that Favo had deliberately chosen to keep from his boss Lin DeVecchio until after it had gone down.

  The next day when Lin learned of the arrest he erupted with anger. According to Special Agent Leadbetter, who was present in the squad, Lin yelled at Favo, “I’ve had it! You will not arrest another single individual without my specific approval!”37 When the incredulous Favo asked Lin what he should do when they had to make arrests, DeVecchio told him, “Just do the paperwork.” Favo later testified that he thought that comment by his boss was “ludicrous.”38

  Testifying at the same trial, Leadbetter acknowledged that he was struck by how “distressed” DeVecchio had been, but he didn’t understand why until the later trial of Alphonse Persico. At that point he found out that just before Pate’s arrest in New Jersey, Scarpa himself had been present with the crew and had narrowly escaped getting busted.39 The implication was that DeVecchio was upset over the possibility that his star informant might have gotten pinched before he could have warned him to stay away from the site.

  “The Guy—He Duped Us”

  As he got more and more information from cooperating witnesses like Joseph Ambrosino, Chris Favo, whom Lin DeVecchio had appointed “case agent” for the war, began to realize just how worthless “34” had been in providing the FBI with useful intelligence. Not only had he failed to give them actionable intelligence, he had downright deceived them. This was Favo’s testimony at the trial of Vic Orena Jr.:

  When Ambrosino came in and told us everything that Gregory Scarpa had been involved in and that we didn’t know about . . . I mean—there were meetings that occurred that if [Scarpa] had told us about we could have had surveillance there, we could have gotten photographs, we could have planted bugs, we could have done a lot of things. The guy—he duped us. At that point, I wanted to arrest him, but we just—I didn’t have the opportunity to. By that time I got the order [forbidding more arrests] I just can’t go out and arrest him without telling Lin DeVecchio.40

  By August, after Ambrosino came in, Favo could no longer, in good conscience, delude himself into thinking that Greg Scarpa had any intelligence value that outweighed his threat to public safety. But even then, Favo was concerned that if he moved on Scarpa he’d be accused of “insubordination.” So he came up with another tactic. When he found out that the NYPD’s OCID Task Force was going to arrest Greg Sr., he actually went to Lieutenant William J. Shannon,41 the supervisor, and told him to keep the time and date of the bust a secret until just before it was to take place. Why? Because Favo didn’t want to have the responsibility of informing Lin. Such was the junior special agent’s sense, at that point, that his own boss couldn’t be trusted with the information.42

  As it turned out, Favo’s fears weren’t entirely unfounded. On August 30, when Shannon told him that Scarpa would be arrested the next day, Favo waited until the morning of the arrest to inform DeVecchio. At the same time, Favo had secretly arranged for “34” to be arrested on federal charges. During DeVecchio’s OPR, Assistant U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis, who helped prepare the indictment, told senior FBI agents that “he did not trust DeVecchio not to tell Scarpa; and therefore, DeVecchio was not advised of the arrest.”43

  Favo later testified that when he finally told DeVecchio about the arrest, DeVecchio was visibly upset. DeVecchio called Scarpa right away to warn him, Favo recalled, but he’d already left where he was.44

  “When you think back on this, it’s astounding,” says Flora Edwards. “Here is Chris Favo, the agent Lin had given top ratings to, whom he’d trusted as his number two in the squad—and he’s literally having to go behind DeVecchio’s back to keep him from warning this mad-dog killer. The only thing harder to believe than all of this is that it took Favo,
Tomlinson, [and] Leadbetter another sixteen months before they finally went to their boss, Don North, to tell him the depth to which their own supervisor had been protecting the principal trigger in the war.”45

  In his later testimony, Favo stated that he wasn’t more forthcoming about DeVecchio sooner because he didn’t think anyone in the FBI would believe him:

  Deep in my heart, I believed that if I went to anyone and told them that there was a problem with Lin DeVecchio . . . they would regard this— Lin DeVecchio had been an agent for thirty years. He had been a supervisor for ten years. He was well known and was well respected. If I said this to somebody, they would take it about as well as I would take it if somebody came up to me and said my wife was unfaithful. They would not believe it. They would never believe it.46

  Chapter 30

  SCARPA’S WAR

  Using Little Linda Schiro’s metaphor from the Eighty-Second Street shootout that started the war violence, the arrest of her father on August 31, 1992, “was like something out of a Mafia movie.” Even though he’d been reopened as an FBI source in late April, Scarpa had been lying low for months. Clearly aware of Ambrosino’s defection and the indictments of Mazza and Del Masto in June, and with NYPD-OCID detectives camped outside his house with a warrant, Scarpa didn’t show his face in public.

  But that didn’t stop DeVecchio from communicating with him. On July 9, several weeks before the bust of John Pate’s crew, Scarpa told Lin that Carmine Sessa “had decided to remain in hiding.”1 Curiously, Scarpa’s surrogate in the war had disappeared not long after word had gotten back to Greg about the Ambrosino wiretap. Four days later, on July 13, with DeVecchio’s FBI agents prepping for the arrest of other “Persico faction” members, Scarpa told Lin that “a truce was called between the ORENA and PERSICO factions in view of the ongoing problems associated with a shooting war and the pressure being applied by law enforcement.”2