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

by Peter Lance

  “There’s little doubt,” says defense attorney Ellen Resnick, “that tactic was designed to contain the potential damage to the government that the CW’s statements might inflict at trial.”3

  Now, in her sworn affirmation—in a move that might be interpreted as an effort to deflect criticism that she had acted to slow the OPR investigation—Caproni stated that as early as March 1994 Fuentes and Barrett were no longer working on the investigation.4 Since SSA Robert O’Brien from DC then took over the OPR,5 Caproni said, “From that point on, the pace of the investigation was essentially dictated by the schedule of . . . O’Brien and not by trial schedules of CWs or AUSAs.”

  Having issued those disclaimers, Caproni nonetheless went on to state, under penalty of perjury, that “there is some reason to believe” the following leaks occurred:

  A. In 1987, DeVecchio told Scarpa that the DEA planned to arrest Gregory Scarpa, Jr. and his crew. This information was conveyed in advance of the arrests and led to Scarpa, Jr., becoming a fugitive. Further, Scarpa correctly knew that law enforcement believed that Cosmo Catanzano was a “weak link,” who might cooperate with authorities if arrested;

  B. On or about February 27, 1992, DeVecchio told Scarpa that Carmine Imbriale was cooperating with law enforcement;

  C. During the Colombo Family war, DeVecchio provided Scarpa with information on at least one member of the Orena faction who had a hit team that was looking for members of the Persico faction;

  D. Following the arrest of Joseph Ambrosino, DeVecchio informed Scarpa that although there were arrest warrants outstanding for Lawrence Mazza and James Del Masto (two of Scarpa’s closest associates), if they stayed away from their normal “hangouts,” they could avoid being arrested (as supervisor of C-10, DeVecchio could control who was assigned to find the fugitives Mazza and Del Masto and how extensive that agent’s efforts would be);

  E. In or around January 1992, DeVecchio told Scarpa that it was believed that Orena was staying at his girlfriend’s house, the location of which (as then known by law enforcement) was also conveyed;

  F. In or around January 1992, DeVecchio told Scarpa the address of the house in which Salvatore Miciotta, an Orena faction captain, was residing; and

  G. In early 1992, DeVecchio provided Scarpa subscriber information for telephone numbers of two of Scarpa’s loan shark customers.

  Additionally, in the mid to late 1980’s Scarpa had information that his social club was subject to court ordered electronic surveillance and that he would soon be arrested on charges involving dealing with fraudulent credit cards. It is believed that the source of that information was also DeVecchio.6

  Later in that sworn affirmation, Caproni made the extraordinary admission that “DeVecchio may have personally wished for the Persico side of the war to be victorious.”7 Here was the chief criminal prosecutor in the Eastern District effectively embracing Chris Favo’s view of DeVecchio’s “We’re going to win this thing!” cry: “Mr. Organized Crime” was a cheerleader for one of the Mafia factions in the bloody conflict that left at least a dozen dead.

  Finally, in her affirmation Caproni wrote, “Because OPR conducted a criminal investigation, Agent DeVecchio was not compelled to submit to an interview. Last fall, however, he was asked to appear voluntarily [but] ultimately DeVecchio declined.”8

  Although the OPR investigators couldn’t prevent DeVecchio from taking the Fifth, his reputation as the preeminent organized crime agent in the New York Office was at stake. Also, as Judge Jack B. Weinstein later noted, DeVecchio faced “serious criminal charges and certainly civil and administrative charges” as a result of the allegations surrounding his relationship with Scarpa.9 “So, concluding that Lin might have to testify in future war trials,” says Flora Edwards, “the Justice Department made the extraordinary decision to grant him immunity.”10

  To make that happen, according to section 13-6.2 of the FBI’s Manual of Administrative Operations and Procedures, the OPR Inspection Division had to determine whether the “the allegations, if true, would have potential” for DeVecchio’s criminal prosecution. Once that determination was made, Lin was allowed to sign a Form FD-645, captioned “Warning and Assurance to Employee Required to Provide Information.”11 After he had signed it, any potentially incriminating statement he made would be inadmissible in any future criminal prosecution, state or federal. That effective grant of immunity ended up having enormous consequences down the line. As we’ll see, the FD-645, which DeVecchio acknowledged signing,12 effectively prevented the DOJ from prosecuting him based on anything he said relating to the OPR charges—and it almost derailed the Brooklyn DA’s murder case against him even before the start of the trial in 2007.

  DeVecchio’s Version of Events

  On May 5, 1995, DeVecchio made his “compelled statement” to Supervisory Special Agent O’Brien. Throughout the twenty-eight-page statement, DeVecchio professed his innocence of the OPR allegations. It’s notable, however, that he made several admissions that bore on his credibility.

  First, he stated that before reopening Scarpa in 1980, he conducted a “review” that determined that Scarpa “had been opened as an informant early in the 1960s.” He even identified Scarpa’s previous FBI contacting agents, giving their names (though they were redacted).

  If Lin had read “34’s” file dating back to the 1960s it’s difficult to understand why he would continue to deny that Scarpa was a captain. As noted previously, as early as June 18, 1962, an airtel sent to J. Edgar Hoover on a debriefing of Scarpa identified him as “a Caporegima [sic] in the JOSEPH PROFACI family”13 (see Appendix D). But in his memoir, Lin states emphatically that “34” was “never a capo.”

  He later confided in me that he would never agree to be a capo because it would draw too much attention to himself. He remained a soldier.14

  How could DeVecchio have reached that conclusion when even the OPR documents identify “34” as “COLOMBO LCN CAPO GREGORY SCARPA SR.”15 But Scarpa’s status in the family was only one of the assertions in DeVecchio’s compelled statement that raised questions. After describing his unique one-on-one relationship with the Top Echelon informant, DeVecchio went on to discuss how he met Scarpa at least once a month, and on some occasions “a few times per week.”

  They met in various locations in New York City and on “one or two occasions” in New Jersey. He admitted to multiple phone contacts with Greg via the “Hello” phone, but he stated to SSA O’Brien that Scarpa “never made any emergency calls to” him.16

  That assertion conflicts with the statement that AUSA George Stamboulidis made to O’Brien and SSA Kevin Donovan on September 9, 1994, when he described the 1992 incident in which NYPD detectives saw Scarpa tossing a gun from his car and said Scarpa was so worried about a possible arrest that he contacted DeVecchio “in a panic.”17

  Continuing in his compelled statement and asserting that the code name he and Scarpa used for each other was “Dello,” Lin then wrote, “Scarpa Sr. never told me that he referred to me as the ‘Girlfriend.’”18

  DeVecchio then stated emphatically that Linda Schiro “was never in a position close enough to have overheard anything we discussed.” But that allegation was contradicted by multiple cooperating witnesses, including Carmine Sessa, Larry Mazza, and Billy Meli, who told OPR investigators how Scarpa “would talk about all kinds of criminal efforts including murders, right in Schiro’s presence”—most notably the Joe Brewster murder the night it happened.19

  Later in the statement, DeVecchio admitted that he “did make an official contact with Judge I. Leo Glasser” on Scarpa’s behalf in the 1986 credit card case and that “the contact was endorsed by the FBI and AUSA Norman Bloch, who approached Judge Glasser on behalf of Scarpa Sr.” That intervention resulted in Scarpa’s getting a sentence of probation.20

  But in that instance DeVecchio’s sworn statement conflicted with his testimony under oath during Michael Sessa’s war trial of November 1992, when he told defense attorney Gavin Scotti that h
e had never intervened to help an informant get “back on the street” in return for helping the FBI.21

  On the next page of his compelled statement, Lin seemed either disingenuous or downright clueless about Scarpa’s drug-dealing activities. “I had no idea that Scarpa Sr. or Scarpa Jr. were involved in drug distribution,” he said. “It was my understanding that the Colombo Family had a disdain for drugs.”22

  “You have to ask,” says Flora Edwards, “how DeVecchio’s own CI, Scarpa Sr., is grossing seventy thousand dollars a week selling marijuana and cocaine in a Staten Island drug ring and Lin somehow misses that. It’s just not believable that DeVecchio was that incompetent, especially when you consider that he was running two FBI organized crime squads.”23

  Indeed, former AUSA John Kroger, who prosecuted Greg Scarpa Jr., among others, theorizes in his own book that DeVecchio may have fallen prey to what he calls “moral capture.” Kroger writes that agents like DeVecchio who run informants like Scarpa “spend so much time living in the underworld with crooks and crooked informants, they come to adopt [their] perspective.” He concludes, “It is possible that happened to DeVecchio as well. But only he knows for sure.”24

  In the next several pages of his statement, DeVecchio proceeded to deny, point by point, each of the disclosures made by Valerie Caproni three weeks earlier in her sworn affidavit regarding his possible leaks to Scarpa. He then blamed the revelations of intelligence on “sources in law enforcement, in police departments and prosecutor’s offices.”

  Then, in a stunning suggestion that the leaks to Scarpa had come from Detective Joe Simone, he wrote, “The Colombo Family war investigations resulted in charging a New York police officer with providing information.”25 At that point—early May 1995—DeVecchio surely knew that Simone had been entirely vindicated by a federal jury more than six months earlier. But even though he feigned sympathy for Simone in his 2011 book, in this 1995 compelled statement he was clearly hinting that Simone was the source of the leaks.

  On the next page, DeVecchio made an interesting admission that pointed to the inaccuracies in many of his Scarpa 209s. He wrote, “I knew Larry Lampesi [sic] was a Colombo Family member but he was not very active. I do not believe that Lampesi [sic] was a prime player in our investigations.”

  Interestingly, just two years into his tenure as Scarpa’s contacting agent, DeVecchio filed the following 209 with Washington on a debriefing he’d had with Scarpa on October 18, 1982:

  Source advised that “Nick Black” Grancio has become more active in the Colombo family illegal activities, particularly with Dominick Montemarano, and was in on the hit of John Aratico who was shot in front of his house on 21st Avenue Brooklyn New York in April, 1982. The source noted that Aratico was the stepson of the late Colombo member Larry Lampasi.*26

  Apart from the fact that Scarpa was blaming Nicholas Grancio for a murder he claimed was committed with “Donnie Shacks” Montemarano, DeVecchio’s reference to “the late” Larry Lampasi came ten years before he was shot to death in front of his house by Scarpa, Mazza, and Del Masto. “When you read that,” said Andrew Orena, “you come back to that same old question. Did Lin know that Scarpa Sr. was lying to him through his teeth? If he did, did he care?”27

  “An Unusual Twist”

  Three days after DeVecchio submitted his sworn OPR statement, the trial of seven Colombo members, including Vic Orena Jr. and his brother John, began in EDNY federal court before Judge Edward R. Korman. In advance of the trial, Korman, who later served as chief judge of the Eastern District,28 ordered the Feds to provide the defense with details of the possible leaks from DeVecchio to “34,” since they clearly amounted to “Brady material.” The result was a two-page letter from lead prosecutor Ellen Corcella to Gerald Shargel, Alan Futerfas, and the five other attorneys representing the battery of defendants.

  As Selwyn Raab reported in the Times, “In an unusual twist that could damage the government’s campaign against the Colombo crime family, Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said yesterday that an F.B.I. agent had for years disclosed confidential information to a high-ranking member of that Mafia group. . . . In effect, the prosecutors indicated that while Mr. Scarpa was a mole for the Federal Bureau of Investigation inside the Mafia, he was also getting potentially valuable information from Mr. DeVecchio.”29

  Corcella’s letter echoed the earlier sworn affidavit of Valerie Caproni. Curiously, it was originally dated May 2, three days before Lin’s statement, but when the letter reached the defense lawyers, the typed date had been scratched out and the date of the trial’s commencement, May 8, was written in by hand. Because the letter represents such an extraordinary series of admissions by the government, we’re reproducing it here in its entirety:

  (Peter Lance)

  At an earlier hearing, Judge Korman had shaken his head in disapproval of DeVecchio’s alleged conduct, declaring that Scarpa’s control agent “had certainly crossed the line by a fairly wide mark.”30 Now, in a May 10 story on Corcella’s letter, Douglas Grover, Lin’s attorney, told the Daily News, “It’s a disgrace that the government has allowed these allegations to fester for so long without resolving them.”31

  In his opening statement at the Orena brothers’ trial, Gerry Shargel, who represented Vic Jr., called Scarpa “an insane mad dog killer” who used the Colombo war as an excuse for settling private scores with his enemies.32 Referring to the gang war as a “sham,” Shargel told the jury that Scarpa “shaped the FBI’s investigation by deciding what information to feed to DeVecchio.”33 Calling DeVecchio a “rogue agent,” Shargel argued that “the idea that this was a war with two sides is nonsense. This war was sparked and fomented, believe it or not, by a special agent of the FBI.”34

  Clearly the defense’s strategy was to put Lin DeVecchio on trial—and, if Ellen Corcella’s opening statement was any indication, it was working. Corcella actually hinted that DeVecchio might someday face criminal charges. “Don’t get distracted,” she told jurors. “We are not here to try an FBI agent.35 . . . You are not here to determine if Agent DeVecchio was incompetent or guilty of venality or if Scarpa compromised DeVecchio. He’ll get his day in court.”36

  The next day, it was Orena defense lawyer Alan Futerfas’s turn. Futerfas reminded the jury of Scarpa’s extraordinary run as a TE informant. “He’s committed oodles of crimes and . . . was he told [by the Bureau], ‘We don’t want you. We don’t want to mess with the likes of you’? No. The silence, ladies and gentlemen, was deafening.”37

  After nearly two months of trial, given the first opportunity to expose jurors to the full truth behind the Scarpa-DeVecchio relationship, which he termed “a Faustian pact,” Futerfas argued that DeVecchio must have known that his star source was committing crimes.

  “This is a Machiavellian scenario but it’s a true scenario. . . . This isn’t fiction,” he said in his summation. “DeVecchio is a thirty-year agent for the FBI. He taught informant development. . . . He’s been around the block. This is a seasoned agent. He knew just what he was doing. He knows what happens when you let Scarpa loose, when you give him information about people you want him to kill. Favo knew what would happen. Because when DeVecchio told Scarpa that Imbriale was an informant Favo went and said, ‘You can’t do that. Scarpa will kill him.’ And is it a mere coincidence . . . that the man, Scarpa, who had this corrupt relationship with DeVecchio, is the same man who’s the most prolific killer and provocateur in this so-called conflict?”38

  The best that Ellen Corcella could offer in response was to plead with the jury not to turn the proceedings “into the trial of the FBI and Lin DeVecchio rather than a trial about the defendants.” She warned them not to think that with “a verdict of guilty everyone will forget DeVecchio’s misdeed. This is not so, ladies and gentlemen. Do not let them lay Lin DeVecchio at the United States Attorneys’ Office feet, because I will not accept that.”39

  Then, clearly sensing that the jury had bought the defense’s arguments about the alleged “unholy a
lliance” between the SSA and his source, Corcella told jurors that their verdict was “not in any way going to cover up Lin DeVecchio’s actions. You are not going to let the FBI escape embarrassment. . . . Regardless of what your verdict says, there are legal ways to deal with the problem of Lin DeVecchio.”40

  “That’s when we had a sense that we’d won it,” Shargel told me in an interview.41 “Ellen Corcella had actually become a member of the defense team. That’s how shocked the jury was at the evidence of this unbelievable misconduct by DeVecchio.”

  “Black Eye for the FBI”

  That was the boldfaced page-one headline in Newsday the day after the jury came in on July 1. “7 Acquitted in Mob Case,” ran the subhead. “Brooklyn Jury Says Federal Agent Fueled Mob Feud.” The story on the inside ran under the banner headline “FBI Guilty.” Reporters Joseph A. Gambardello and Patricia Hurtado noted that this was “the fourth defeat for Brooklyn federal prosecutors in a Colombo family case and the second in which Colombo captain Gregory Scarpa’s ghost dealt the fatal blow.”42

  Juror No. 186 told the reporters that “the defendants were a group of guys trying to keep themselves alive” while “Scarpa was running free doing what he wanted to do,” including murder. “It was him [Scarpa] who made it seem like a war,” said Juror 238. “It was a bit scary,” she said. “That the FBI was feeding information to anyone so deadly,” Juror 180 chimed in.43

  A Daily News piece by Greg B. Smith the same day listed the war trials scorecard. Of the seventy-five initial indictments, sixteen Colombo defendants had been acquitted and forty convicted, “including five who’ve demanded new trials.”44 Smith also reported that, with the clearing of his sons, Vic Orena Sr. was now going to petition the Feds for a new trial as well. In a New York Post piece, Al Guarte quoted Gerry Shargel as saying that “the jurors were all just absolutely shocked by the testimony about the relationship between DeVecchio and Scarpa.”45