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

by Peter Lance

  Favo later testified that he asked DeVecchio at the time to pressure Scarpa to give up Mazza and Del Masto. According to Favo, Lin told him that he’d asked “34” to do that, but he’d refused to reveal their locations. The reason, Favo told a defense lawyer, was that Larry and Jimmy were “collecting loan shark payments for Scarpa.”3 The implication was that their arrests would interrupt the flow of vig back to Greg, so he needed them on the street.

  Astonishingly, one of the disclosures that federal prosecutors made in 1995 was that DeVecchio may have assisted Scarpa in locating his loan-shark victims by providing him with their addresses.4

  In his book, DeVecchio acknowledges that Favo did ask him to lean on Scarpa to turn over Mazza and Del Masto, but he cynically mocks Favo’s requests. Referencing SSA Chris Mattiace, who ran the C-10 squad before him, Lin writes, “Maybe Chris Mattiace and I should have escorted Scarpa into the men’s room for a little head-in-the-toilet-bowl persuasion.”5 “To me,” said Andrew Orena, “that line in Lin’s book raised the question we’ve always been asking: Who was ‘running’ who? Was DeVecchio and the FBI in charge of Scarpa Sr. or was it the other way around?”6

  Demanding Payment in Cash

  While Scarpa had been in virtual hiding since March, his lawsuit against Victory Memorial Hospital was coming to a head. On July 30, his AIDS-tainted-blood case alleging negligence by Dr. Angelito Sebollena had advanced in his favor. As it turned out, the Philippines-born doctor and his secretary were arraigned on charges of conspiring to have two male patients killed with injections of cocaine.7 In a plot that seemed even more bizarre than the story of how Greg Scarpa had received the infected blood in the first place, Sebollena, forty-seven, had previously been charged with four counts of sodomy and six counts of sex abuse for allegedly attacking two male patients, ages twenty-four and twenty-five.

  According to the criminal charges, Dr. Sebollena had fondled and sodomized the young men after sedating them during office visits. The July 30 complaint alleged that, after his release on bail in May, Sebollena conspired with his secretary to murder his two accusers by shooting them up with cocaine.

  While Scarpa was off the grid, on August 17, the New York Daily News ran a piece reporting that he was due to testify against Sebollena in Brooklyn Supreme Court in pursuit of his $1.5 million claim against the hospital.8 Two days later Scarpa took the witness stand in open court—and gave such riveting testimony that he caused one female juror to weep.9 Now sixty-four, the Mafia capo, once a strapping 220 pounds, was reduced to 150. His eye sockets and cheeks were hollowed out and he had to stop continuously to catch his breath. Speaking quietly and directly to the jury, he compared himself to a man on death row:

  We all know that our Creator is somehow, someday going to uncreate us. . . . The best example I can give to what this is like is that I now know the feeling of a person that’s condemned to death, and each time he walks the corridor to the execution, he gets a reprieve. But I do know each time that I walk down that corridor, I might not be coming back. . . . To have something like this is pretty devastating.

  At that point, according to Newsday reporter Patricia Hurtado, who covered the hearing, one of the six members of the civil jury began to cry and Linda Schiro ran from the courtroom in tears. Scarpa’s testimony lasted more than four hours and he nearly broke down himself several times. Later, his personal physician testified that he had between two and six months to live.10

  But a week later, Scarpa bounced back with the ferocity of a loan shark after Dr. Sebollena and the hospital agreed to settle his case for $300,000. Demanding the entire payment immediately, Scarpa literally insisted that the full settlement be delivered to him forthwith and in cash.

  With respect to the fatal transfusion, Scarpa was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “I wasn’t given ample warning. It was never something that should have been left to the prerogative of the patient.”11 After the verdict, Scarpa and Linda were surrounded by jury members. Several of them told reporters that if he hadn’t cut the deal, they would have been inclined to give Greg Sr. a judgment “in the millions.”12

  Scarpa emaciated by HIV at the time of his trial

  (New York Daily News/Getty)

  Scarpa was jubilant after the victory, telling reporter Hurtado, “I’m going to line up all my kids around me and I’m going to play Santa in August and hand this stuff out,” adding that he didn’t know if he would “be around to play Santa in December.” Hugging Linda, he also announced that he was “looking forward to a vacation in Florida and relaxing for the rest of my life.”

  But that wasn’t to be. Scarpa’s high-profile appearance in the Brooklyn courtroom had alerted state and federal prosecutors to his presence. Two days after the verdict, he was arrested on New York gun charges and federal racketeering and murder counts.13

  According to Fred Dannen, who interviewed DeVecchio for his seminal 1996 New Yorker piece, “even after Scarpa’s arrest, DeVecchio did not abandon his top-echelon source. He got in touch with prosecutors at the Brooklyn United States Attorney’s Office to ask them to request bail for Scarpa.”14

  Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann, who would go on to prosecute Vic Orena Sr., told FBI agents in the course of DeVecchio’s OPR that he was “incredulous” that anyone would want Scarpa out of jail. He said he believed that the court “should be told that Scarpa Sr. was a criminal while he was a confidential source.”15 Weissmann then said, “The U.S. Attorney’s Office decided to bring the matter to the attention of Judge [I. Leo] Glasser who knew of Scarpa Sr.’s status as a confidential source from a previous case.” That was the 1986 Secret Service credit card case, which resulted in a $10,000 fine and probation for Scarpa, rather than the $250,000 fine and the seven-year prison term for which he was eligible. That deal had been cut after Lin DeVecchio intervened with Glasser, who was told—even back then—that Scarpa had only a short time to live.

  But Judge Glasser never got the case. Instead, after a bail hearing before Judge John L. Caden, it was assigned to Jack B. Weinstein, the same judge who would soon preside at the trial of Vic Orena Sr.

  AUSA George Stamboulidis later told FBI agents that he had gotten calls from DeVecchio “attempting to let Scarpa out.” He said that DeVecchio had told him that if the U.S. attorney’s office would agree to release Greg on bail, that he “could be trusted and that he was not going anywhere since Scarpa had given DeVecchio his word.”16

  As Dannen recounted, at the bail hearing after Scarpa’s arrest, Judge Caden was unaware of Greg’s Top Echelon informant status. More surprisingly, so was Scarpa’s lawyer at the time, Joseph Benfante, who expressed shock after learning that for years his client had been a secret FBI mole.

  “That would be tantamount to me thinking that Mother Teresa is assisting Saddam Hussein,” Benfante said, “because no F.B.I. informant goes out and engages in a Colombo war—it’s insanity.”17

  At the initial bail hearing, Benfante argued to Caden that Greg’s T-cell count had now reached zero—down from two thousand. He reiterated the prediction of Scarpa’s doctor from the August trial that he had just months to live.

  In a 302 recording his debriefing during DeVecchio’s OPR, Judge Caden insisted that “no one from the government ever suggested that Scarpa was anything other than a crime boss who was a risk of flight.” But he did admit that an official from the Metropolitan Correctional Center—the federal jail in lower Manhattan—had testified that “temperatures in the prison” might impact “Scarpa’s problems with AIDS.” So Scarpa was allowed to go home to Eighty-Second Street on house arrest wearing an ankle bracelet.18

  If anyone in the FBI or EDNY was naïve enough to think that Scarpa’s incarceration at home would stop the violence, however, they were mistaken. On October 7, Colombo associate Steven Mancusi was gunned down in a hit attributed to the war.19 And before the year was out, “34” himself would go on another violent shooting rampage through the Brooklyn streets.

  DeVecchio Threatens Fav
o

  During the early fall of 1992, EDNY prosecutors held several meetings regarding Scarpa’s status. Attending the meetings were AUSAs Weissmann and Stamboulidis, along with Scarpa, DeVecchio, and Special Agent Chris Favo. In the course of Lin’s OPR, both Weissmann and Stamboulidis recounted their memories of those meetings for FBI agents. At the first meeting, attended by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gleeson, Stamboulidis recalled, “DeVecchio did not want Scarpa indicted,” but he was overruled. At a second meeting, on September 27, Scarpa’s Top Echelon informant status was revealed to Stamboulidis, who remembered how, at that point, Scarpa agreed to cooperate. But apparently SSA DeVecchio was not happy. Later at the same meeting, Stamboulidis remembered, DeVecchio “looked at Favo” and said, “If this ends up in an OPR, I’ll have your ass.”20

  When it comes to the dozens of murders Scarpa committed on DeVecchio’s watch, and the question of what DeVecchio knew and when he knew it, George Stamboulidis’s memory is important. The first prosecution in this third Colombo war would be the trial of Michael Sessa in late October, and Lin DeVecchio would testify for the government as an expert witness, as he would in Vic Orena’s trial in December. At each trial, the judge presiding would be Jack B. Weinstein. And the Feds would stick to their argument that the war was propagated by Orena, who was bent on taking over the family. But in neither prosecution would the jury know about DeVecchio’s controversial relationship with the cold-blooded killer or get a hint of the compelling evidence the FBI and prosecutors now had that Scarpa was principally responsible for the war violence.

  Naturally, in prepping him for trial, one of the questions prosecutors like Stamboulidis would want to ask DeVecchio was how much he knew about his source’s role in the killings. If DeVecchio had known that “34” was whacking victims and yet allowed him to remain free—in defiance of the Attorney General’s Guidelines—that information could have been very damaging to the government.

  In his OPR debriefing, however, Stamboulidis told SSAs Kevin P. Donovan and Robert J. O’Brien that “at the time of his preparation of DeVecchio for his cross examination, he was told by DeVecchio that DeVecchio had never asked Scarpa if he was involved in any of the Colombo war killings.”21

  How truthful was that answer?

  As we’ll see, in at least two instances over the years when he was under oath, DeVecchio flip-flopped on the question of how aware he was of his source’s murderous activities. Further, his immediate subordinate clearly knew. Chris Favo knew of Scarpa’s involvement in the murder of Nicky Grancio four days after it happened. Favo even testified under oath in Vic Orena’s 2255 hearing in 1996 that he’d told DeVecchio that “Scarpa, the confidential informant, had murdered Nicky Grancio.”22 But even if Favo hadn’t told him, once he’d debriefed “34” immediately after the Grancio rubout, an experienced SSA like DeVecchio should have known that Scarpa had supervised the drive-by hit.

  The AG’s Guidelines mandated that when special agents became aware that their CIs were involved in violent activity—particularly crimes as egregious as murder—they were bound to inform their superiors and consult federal prosecutors right away.

  Favo testified at that 1996 hearing that he couldn’t remember if EDNY prosecutors had been brought into the loop following Grancio’s hit, but that he certainly told his supervisor about Scarpa’s role. His supervisor at the time was Lin DeVecchio.23 The question is, what did Lin do with the information?

  In 1995 and 1997, under penalty of perjury, DeVecchio gave conflicting accounts of what he knew about “34’s” involvement in the Colombo war homicides.

  At a hearing before Judge Weinstein in February 1997, under direct examination by defense attorney Gerry Shargel, DeVecchio discussed the Scarpa debriefing that gave rise to the 209 of December 11, 1991, blaming “the Persico faction” for “34’s” murder of “Tommy Scars” Amato:

  Shargel: Did he tell you who in the Persico faction had shot and killed Gaetano Amato?

  DeVecchio: No. In this particular 209 he did not. Just said it was done by the Persico faction . . .

  Shargel: Did you ask him whether it was Scarpa himself?

  DeVecchio: No. I did not. . . .

  Shargel: Never asked him that?

  DeVecchio: That’s correct. Never asked him that.

  Shargel: Did you ever say to him you are my TE. You are my Top Echelon source. I’m paying you thousands of dollars. Can you go out and find out who did that?

  DeVecchio: Yes. Sure. Absolutely I would say that to him. . . .

  Shargel: Did he ever come back and tell you who did it?

  DeVecchio: On some occasions . . .

  Shargel: He came to you . . . Gregory Scarpa came to you and said . . . that the hit on Vincent Fusaro was done by the Persico faction? Did you ask him that day . . . who was it?

  DeVecchio: Had he told me I would have recorded it.

  Shargel: There is no record of it there [in the 209s].

  DeVecchio: Obviously he didn’t tell me. . . .

  Shargel: You wouldn’t do anything as absurd as lie, right? . . .

  DeVecchio: Certainly not . . .

  Shargel: So when Gregory Scarpa says to you that it was the Persico faction that did it, we are not talking about some large population right?

  DeVecchio: Yes.

  Shargel: At no time, according to your document there . . . on December 11th do you say to him “I’m not satisfied with ‘the Persico faction,’ I want to know who exactly did it so I can safeguard the streets of New York? . . .”

  DeVecchio: I didn’t ask him directly if he killed somebody, knowing he would not tell me that.

  Shargel: He wouldn’t tell you?

  DeVecchio: Absolutely not. He wouldn’t tell it to me. No informant will tell you.

  Shargel: Did you ever ask him?

  DeVecchio: No.

  Shargel: So at no time, right up until the day he died in June of 1994, at no time did you ask Gregory Scarpa if he, in fact, committed murders?

  DeVecchio: I don’t recall talking to him about that up until that time. We may have had discussions but I don’t recall it.24

  Moments later, Shargel reminded DeVecchio of a sworn statement that he’d given twenty-one months earlier, in May 1995, during the OPR investigation.

  Shargel: On page 20 of the affidavit that you swore to you said, “I do recall asking Scarpa Sr., prior to his incarceration, who did the work, meaning who killed the four victims and wounded Waverly. He said he believed the violence took place as a result of spontaneity and not a plan, and he denied involvement in these killings.” Do you remember saying that under oath?

  DeVecchio: If you have it printed, I have said it under oath obviously.

  So did Lin DeVecchio ask Greg Scarpa about the murders or didn’t he? In both instances, each time under oath, DeVecchio gave two different answers to that question: He didn’t and he did. A few minutes later during that 1997 hearing, after discussing the FBI’s practice of submitting its agents to polygraph tests, Shargel got DeVecchio to admit that the OPR investigators had asked him to take one.

  Six months before that hearing, the Justice Department had concluded that DeVecchio’s prosecution was “unwarranted.” But that was only after he’d been given a grant of immunity that would have made it virtually impossible for him to be convicted for the underlying allegations in the OPR.

  Before agreeing to testify at this subsequent 1997 hearing, DeVecchio had insisted again on a separate grant of immunity and Judge Weinstein had agreed to it. Now, as the hearing wound down, Shargel brought up the issue of the polygraph again:

  Shargel: There is no more prosecution. They are not going to prosecute you, right? Right?

  DeVecchio: Prosecute me for what?

  Shargel: For any of the crimes that they were investigating. You are not going to be prosecuted. You got a letter from the Justice Department.

  DeVecchio: They found out I committed no crimes to be prosecuted for.

  Shargel: You got immunity here
today, right?

  DeVecchio: Yes.

  Shargel: My question to you now is, would you take an FBI polygraph test to determine whether or not you are telling the truth? Would you agree right now on the witness stand to take a lie detector test administered by the FBI or any expert on polygraph?

  DeVecchio: Why would I?

  “Think about that response,” says Shargel. “How could a supervisory agent with Lin DeVecchio’s experience—a man who had taught informant development at Quantico—not have been aware at the height of the war that his principal TE informant was killing people on the streets of Brooklyn and not intervene to stop him? Whether or not Justice could have prosecuted him in the face of that immunity, or whether or not he would stand for a polygraph, how is it conceivable that he didn’t know those murders were happening and not take immediate action to stop them?”25

  Fredric Dannen, the author of that groundbreaking 1996 New Yorker piece on Scarpa and DeVecchio, read Lin’s book and sent me this comment:

  On page 166 of We’re Going to Win This Thing, DeVecchio says it was his “sworn duty to prevent violence and stop the war if I could, and I took that duty very seriously.” But starting on page 172, DeVecchio begins digging his own grave on this very point. He admits that Scarpa’s team killed Nicky Grancio on January 7, 1992, and that Scarpa pinned the murder on Richie Fusco’s hit squad. DeVecchio believed this misinformation—or willed himself into believing it—and he still manages to complain that “I got accused of being ‘duped’ by Scarpa over this one.” What else do you call it? Later on the page [DeVecchio writes,] “In my heart, as Scarpa’s handler, of course I knew he was doing hits.” This is an extraordinary admission. DeVecchio told me in one of our 1996 interviews that he did not know Scarpa was a multiple murderer until after the Colombo War had ended.