#2343 - Joe Pistone
02:28:13 Share

Nice to meet you. My pleasure. You always wear sunglasses. Is that to hide your identity still? Yeah, actually, it's I have to see, number one. But where I reside now...

My neighbors have no idea that they're living next to Donnie Brasco. Well, you have a very distinct voice. Yeah, I know. I don't want to ask where you live, but, you know. What a wild life you've had, sir. Well, pretty much, yeah. Never expected it to go like that, but...

It took off. So when you first started working, it was with the FBI, correct? Well, I was with Naval Intelligence for three years. And then I always wanted to be in law enforcement. And I was working in Philadelphia, actually. And you do a lot of work with the FBI because, you know, on the government installations, government bases. So I became friendly with some FBI agents and agents.

I figured if I, you know, when I get up, when I finish this tour with NIS, I'm going to go into law enforcement. So I might as well try for the best and the best, you know, the FBI. And so how does that lead to you infiltrating the mob? Well, you know, I didn't infiltrate the mob right from the get-go, you know. Look, I grew up in Patterson, New Jersey.

I grew up in an all-Italian neighborhood, knew wise guys, went to high school with sons of wise guys. And when you're in a neighborhood, you know who the wise guys are. They let you hang out at the social clubs because, you know, you're a neighborhood kid. They know it. So I knew the streets. So when I went into the FBI, I was, you know, I was street smart, basically, Joe. That's what it comes down to, you know.

And my first assignments were bank robberies, fugitives, gambling cases. And I started doing some little undercover work on gambling cases because back then the FBI was big into gambling, interstate gambling cases. So what was your first undercover work? First was infiltrating the...

A gambling house in Jacksonville, Florida, actually. That was my first office. What kind of gambling were they doing? Craps. I had a regular casino going. And, you know, I felt comfortable around that stuff because I grew up with that stuff. You know, I grew up, like I say, in the neighborhood. Crap games, card games. It wasn't anything new to me. And being around gangsters was not like...

intimidating because I was around gangsters growing up. So I didn't have any problem, you know, getting into these games and identifying the major players and who was running them. And that's basically what it was. So when you do this, did you have to testify in court with these guys? Yeah, later on after the case goes down.

But most of these guys plead guilty so you never go to trial because it wasn't where they were facing 15, 20 years. They might get a year or two years and then get some time knocked off their sentences.

So most of it, they plead, and so you never have to appear in a court. But was there an issue with you being discovered and then getting found out and worrying about your safety afterwards? Well, not too much with these cases, no. Not too much with those cases. And then I worked a lot of stolen art, buying, you know—

Buying stolen art, buying stocks and bonds, swag, stuff like that. So how many years did you do stuff like that before you started being undercover in the mob? Let's see, probably four or five years. Yeah, yeah. So you slowly sort of got acclimated with being undercover, you do a bunch of cases, and then how do they approach you?

Well, what happened was is that I'm working out in New York, the New York office of the FBI, and there's a big case in Tampa, Florida. They have a case going on guys that were stealing automobiles, high-priced automobiles. In other words, you go to them and you say, hey, I want a Cadillac. Okay, what color you want, all right? What model you want.

And then they'd go out and hook it. So they grabbed one of the guys, and they flipped him. And they grabbed his son, and they said, hey, look, you help us, and we'll cut your son a break. He said, okay. So he said, look...

We want to put an undercover agent in with this crew. They operated all up and down the East Coast, from Baltimore all the way down to Florida. And the guy that was running it was what we call a half-ass wise guy out of Baltimore. So he says, all right. So he introduced me to this guy as a car thief. But before he introduced me, I said, look, I got to know how to steal cars.

So he gave me about a week's lesson on how to steal cars, how to hook cars. The hot wire. This is like what year was this? This was in 19, let's see, 1970, maybe 73, 74. So you essentially just pop in the ignition. Pop in the ignition. Crossing wires. Crossing wires. And some cars had alarm systems, told me how to get under the car.

how to disarm the alarm system, how to use a slim jim to get in the door, and then how to pop the ignition. And once I learned, you know, I figured I could do that, then he introduced me and I got in with this crew. There was a crew about, he was running like five or six guys. And I did that for a year and a half. Stole cars,

Stole the tractor trailers. I knew how to drive tractor trailers because I did that in college. During the summertime, I drove a tractor trailer during the summer. So you take the cars, load them on a tractor trailer? No, we just stole the cars and I bring them to you. Oh, okay. But I mean, we stole rigs too. Oh, I see. Because we were dealing with companies too. Got it. You know, these guys that own some trucking companies that...

So you have to trust this guy, though, to get you inside, right? You have to trust this guy to not fuck this up and say, hey, this is a car thief. Exactly.

America's beverage companies are investing in America. We're American companies making American products with American workers in America's hometowns. We're local bottlers and manufacturers operating in all 50 states, employing more than 275,000 Americans in good-paying jobs, delivering for the nation because we believe in the promise of America and the American people.

the people who make it great. Learn more at wedeliverforamerica.org. Paid for by the American Beverage Association. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Have you ever been shopping online and the website just gave you the ick?

Let me tell you, that wouldn't happen if they used Squarespace. Squarespace design intelligence empowers anyone to build beautiful, more personalized websites tailored to your unique needs. And with Squarespace payments, it's super easy to manage payments with just a few clicks. Plus, with Squarespace's integrated and optimized SEO tools, there's all the help you need to get people to your site. Head

Head to squarespace.com slash Emma for a free trial and use code Emma to save 10% on your first purchase. That's got to be hair-raising. Well, it is because, you know, the guy's an informant. And he's already in trouble. He's in trouble. But his basic reason for getting me in was he wanted to get his son out of trouble. So, you know, we had him by the short hairs there that, hey—

you know, if this goes good, your son is free. We're going to cut your son free. So that's what happened. So I did that for a year and a half. And I get back to New York. They make the arrest. I went to trial in that case, but that case was in Florida. And a funny story on that case is, if you want to hear it. Yeah.

I hooked up Mercedes and delivered to this guy and go to his house and he wasn't home, but his wife was there. So I said, "Hey, I'm delivering this car for your husband." And she says, "Oh, okay." I give her the keys 'cause he had already paid. So me and the other guy, we leave. Fast forward now to court. I'm sitting outside the court getting ready to testify.

And there's this lady, she looked familiar. It was two ladies. And so she walks up to me. She says, aren't you Donnie? I said, yeah. She said, you delivered a car to my house, right? I said, yeah. She said, we know my husband's on trial now. I said, yeah, I know. I'm going in to testify. She says, after he goes to jail, you want to go to dinner? Yeah.

Dirty lady. No thanks. She might poison you. Yeah. So I get back to New York and I had a real great supervisor up there. Was she hot? I can't remember, Joe. It was so long ago. I would have remembered that part. If she was, I would have remembered. Yeah, you probably would have remembered.

So I get back to New York, and I had a real good supervisor named Guy Barada. He was an Italian guy from the Bronx, good street agent. And he was a supervisor of the truck hijacking squad. And back in the day, they were hijacking, and all these hijackings were orchestrated by the mob, the mafia. And they were probably doing...

you know, eight to 10 hijackings a day, which was big time money because they were pharmaceuticals, high value food items like lobsters, coffee. You know, you're talking about the 40 some foot trailer. So you're talking a lot of money, but they were all run by the mob. So he, I get back to New York. I get to New York and he says, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this undercover operation. And,

see if we can get something going with these truck hijackers. So the idea was, nobody had ever infiltrated the mob before. Actually, the mafia mafia had some informants in with them, but nobody had actually gotten in. So the idea was, let's try to hit the fences. Fences are the

You know, the guys that sell the swag and sell the goods. So, you know, you need to have a profession. I mean, nobody's going to do anything with you without a profession. And it has to be one that's attractive to them. And plus, in the government, if you're going to go undercover, your profession can't be one of violence. So who's not violent? Jewel thief. So I figure, okay.

I'll go in as a jewel thief. Well, if you're going to go in as a jewel thief, what do you have to know? You got to know diamonds and precious gems, right? All right. So I went to school. I went to diamond school, diamond and precious gem school.

Oh, so you have to be able to identify. Yeah. I mean, it's a lens. Well, that's how you're going to get. That's how you're going to get caught. Right. Right. Right. Is if you get in a conversation, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Right. Right. How long is the school for? I went, I think, for a couple of months until I got, you know, where I was comfortable. Now, take it another step further. If you're a jewel thief, what else do you have to know?

You got to know how to get in places. Right. So. Pick locks. I had to learn how to pick locks. All right. What else you got to know? Crack safes. You got to know about safes. Yeah. You got to know about alarm systems. So I had my guys, when I say my guys, our guys, you know, our tech guys, school me on lock picking, different types of safes and alarm systems. So all that took a few months before I felt comfortable, you know.

And then I went out, and on this operation, we didn't do anything with contacts. In other words, everything I did, I did under Donnie Brasco. I rented an apartment. I bought a car, utilities, you know, phones, everything. Everything as a citizen, in quotes, Donnie Brasco. They get you a Social Security number and the whole deal? Social Security, everything. But...

You know, I don't want to get into how they do that, but, you know, nothing could be, at that time, they couldn't uncover anything. So once I got my apartment, I bought a car, had all that set up. And again, you have to know the mafia. You have to know New York City. You don't just walk into a place, you know, and say, hey, you know, I'm a jewel thief. Right.

Doesn't work that way. You got to get seen. You got to be around. So I moved out of my residence. Of course, my family wasn't in New York anyway. But I had to move into my apartment. And we had certain bars and restaurants that we knew these fences were.

And wise guys hung out in. And the idea was just go in, get my face seen, and hopefully get into conversation with somebody. How do you go and get your face seen? You just show up by yourself? Just show up.

Is that suspicious, though? A guy shows up by himself, not from the neighborhood? No, well, that's the thing. Because I couldn't say, hey, I'm from Brooklyn. I'm from Manhattan. I'm from the Bronx because these guys have the contacts everywhere. So it was up to me if I got into conversation with anybody. My story was, and then again, you have to know your enemy, okay? And the enemy was the mafia, right?

So you have to know about the mafia. You have to know if you do get into conversation with these guys and they're trying to check you out, what's your backstory? Where are you from? My background was I was an orphan, okay? And I moved between Florida and California. Why an orphan? Because then I wouldn't have to produce a mother and a father. Because again, if I was lucky enough to get in, they'd say, well...

Where are your parents at? Right. I couldn't have any siblings that I knew of. Right. I couldn't have been married, so I couldn't have an ex-wife or anything because I would have had to produce somebody. Right. So my backstory was I was an orphan. To back it up, we found an orphanage that had burnt down and all the records were destroyed, so they couldn't check that. I mean, these are all things that

That if you're going to send somebody into an undercover operation that is deep cover, and remember, I had no informant bringing me in. This had to be a cold entree. So I hung around maybe five, six months. That's all I did. And that's another thing, too. It's a seven-day-a-week job because if they see you Monday to Friday and then they don't see you Saturday and Sunday, where the hell are you Saturday and Sunday? Right.

So it's seven days a week. It was seven days a week. Did you have a family at the time? I did, yeah. Wow. But they lived across country at the time. That ought to be crazy difficult for them. Very difficult. It was. It was, yeah. So you just kind of just hang around restaurants, bars? Yeah, and my only conversation with anybody was is –

what I'll have to drink and what I'll have to eat. And I'm not a drinker. I never was a drinker. So, and, you know, for young undercovers, you don't have to be a drinker and you don't have to do shit that, you know, that you think gangsters do. My extent of drinking was, and it still is, is a half a bottle of beer and maybe a glass of red wine. That's it. And I never, I never...

Went outside those boundaries because that's me. I didn't do it. Right. So I used to go to this one place. And actually, this place wasn't too far from my apartment up in Yorkville. And wise guys would come in there. I don't remember if it was Wednesdays or Thursdays. I don't remember. With their girlfriends for dinner. And I always would sit at the bar, you know.

Never talked to the bartender other than, what do you want? What do you want to eat? What do you want to drink? So one night I go in there and the wise guys are there. One of the girlfriends, but there's one guy missing. But the girl that he was always with was there. So I'm at the bar and I guess she gets up. She goes to the ladies room. She comes by and she says hello. And I just said hello.

Now, again, knowing your enemy, know how they operate. So the first thing I do is I call the bartender over, right? Now, I know his name, but I don't call him by his name because I was never introduced to him. So I just said, sir, would you, you know, I said, I want to go on record. That's a mob term. I want to go on record. I didn't ask that young lady to stop and say hello. And he just nods and that's it.

Well, fast forward, this happens like three or four different times. And they're in there. She's in there. He's not there. About the fourth time, the same thing, you know, she would come over and I would call him over. So finally he says, hey, he said, if you want to talk to her, go ahead. Her boyfriend went bye bye. He didn't go to Disneyland, Joe. They whacked him.

So I said, no, I don't have any interest. So now what does this guy know? He knows that I'm a street guy, right? So now he comes over to me, and now we start talking, talking about baseball, talking about how screwed up New York City is at the time. And finally he says, hey, my name is Charlie. I said, my name is Donnie.

Now, that's another thing. These guys don't introduce themselves like normal people, you know, like, hey, my name is Joe Rogan or hey, my name is Donnie Brasco. It's nickname or first name. So that's another notch with him that this kid knows something. So a couple of weeks maybe go by and then one night he says, hey, you like to gamble? I said, sure, why not?

He said, when I bang up here, I'm going to go to an all-night game. He said, you want to come? I said, yeah. So we close up the joint with him and takes me to a game. And obviously it's run by the wise guys. You know, they got a whole casino set up. And doesn't introduce me to anybody, but I'm okay because I'm with him. All right.

So now this is a couple more weeks maybe. So now I figured now, and he don't ask me what I do and I don't say anything about jewelry. So, but now I figured now I got to try to set, set the hook. So I come in one night and I got a packet of diamonds. All right. So I put them on a bar and I say, Hey Charlie, I need X amount of money for this envelope. I don't tell him what's in it. I just said, I need X amount of money.

But I give him a street price where he can make money himself. So he takes it, says, okay, puts it under the bar. A couple weeks go by. I don't ask him about it. He don't ask me. But, you know, I'm still hanging around with him. He comes in one night, puts an envelope on a bar, and he said, Donnie, somebody left this for you. I said, okay. I put it in my sport coat pocket, get back to my apartment, and there's the money in it.

So now what does he know? He knows I'm a thief because I'm giving him diamonds. I'm not asking him at prices for Tiffany prices, right? Now we get to the game and he introduces me as Don the jeweler. So he introduces me to this Columbo guy. Guy's name was Jilly. So Jilly said, hey, you know, Don, where are you from? I said, well, you know, I

Hung around some in Florida, hung around California. I said, you know, just move around a lot. He said, well, why don't you come out to my place? I'm out in Brooklyn. And I said, yeah, okay. So I go out there and I go out to his club and he has a store, you know, all swag. And so he was at the Clumbos. Mm-hmm.

So I started hanging out there with the Clumbles, and I got in with him. I got in with his crew. Did some stuff with them, you know, because you got to do something. Otherwise, if you ain't producing, you ain't worth it, you know. Like what's the first thing you have to do with them? Well, they did some hijacking and, you know, unloaded some trucks for them and different things.

So that went on with the Clumbos, and I was getting good information with these guys. That went on for a couple months, and finally I get to the club one day, and there's two guys there that I didn't know. So he introduces them to me as Frankie and Patsy. He said, Donnie, you know, Frankie, Patsy. Okay. As it turns out, they just got out of the can. They were part of Jilly's crew.

One of the guys was a maid guy. Maid guy is a guy that's been officially inducted into a particular mafia family. And these guys were with the Columbos. I think Patsy was a maid guy and Frankie was an associate. But they had just gotten out of the can. So they're looking to set up scores because, you know, they've been away for a few years. So...

Julie tells him, you know, hey, Donnie's a good thief, and he knows alarms, he knows locks, he knows safes. So they had a couple scores lined up. So we go out, case this place, and I tell him, hey, I can't bypass that alarm. Because, you know, if you say you can do everything, nobody can do everything, no matter how good you are. So I said, no, I can't defeat that alarm. Okay.

A few days later they got another one set up and it's a safe. We go in, I said, "You gotta blow this safe. You'll wake up the whole neighborhood." Okay, so now this pisses them off. So a couple days later I get to the club and Jilly, he says, "Donnie, let's take a walk and talk." I said, "Okay." So we walk and we're talking.

That's what a walk and talk is. You're walking on the street and you're talking because they don't think the FBI or anybody can hear you. I said, what's the matter, Jilly? He said, well, he said, you know, I told Frankie and Fancy what a great thief you are and they're pissed off because, you know, Fancy's pissed off because you turned down the two scores. I said, well, what do you want me to tell you, Jilly? I said,

I couldn't bypass the alarm. I'm honest with you. And I don't want to blow a safe that, you know, you got to blow, blow, blow. So he said, well, they want to have a sit down. I said, OK, so we go back in the club and then they have a back room. So we're going to back room, sit down. They lock the door. Patsy pulls out, pulls out a 38, lays it on the table.

And I said, Donnie, if you don't convince me that you're as good a thief as Julie says you are, the only way you're going out of this room is rolled up in that rug. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. So it's crazy what goes through your head. So I look at the rug. I said to myself, I hope it's fucking Persian. If I'm going to go out of here, I might as well go out in a $50,000 rug. So we're in there. And where are you from, Donnie?

Now, you know, in these situations, you want to be on the offense. You don't want to be on the defense. But I can't really disrespect him because he's a made guy. And, you know, if you know anything about the mob, you can't disrespect the made guy in front of other people. So I said, hey, look, you know, I'm an orphan. I'm not from here. I travel the country, you know. Well, tell us some people that you stole with.

I said, "No disrespect, but I'm not giving you any names of people that I stole with." I said, "Why would I do that? Why would I give up anybody that I did scores with?" Right? So this goes on and on and on. After about four hours, finally, Julie says, "Hey, Donnie's been with us for months now. We know what he can do. It's over. It's over." I said, "Okay." Now I got a problem. The problem is they just called me out.

So in their world, I can't go shake their hand because it's why isn't Donnie pissed off, right? My only recourse here is some kind of physical recourse. But I can't do anything to Patsy because he's the made guy. I can't touch him. And that's one of the rules of the mafia. You don't lay your hands on a made guy. It'll get you killed. It'll get you killed. So...

The only guy he can hit is Frankie. He's not a made guy. So we get up, start to walk out, and I call Cock Frankie. Oh, Jesus. But that's the only thing that's going to save me because otherwise it's, why isn't Donnie pissed off? Right. So now I'm in a— Was Frankie questioning you too? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. But he's not a made guy. Right. So he's fair game. Boy. So I hit him. He goes down.

Now Patsy's jumping, I mean, he's punching the hell out of me, but I can't hit him back. I can just protect myself. But I figured, well, you hit me once, I hit Frankie twice. So it went on. So then finally they broke it up. But now I know I can't stay around here. I can't stay with these guys because, you know, you can't get into an altercation with made guys and have it come out. Yeah.

So after everything settled down, I'd say to Jilly, Jilly, let's take a walk and talk. So we do. We get outside. I said, Jilly, look, no disrespect to you. I said, but I can't come around here anymore. I said, because you know how it's going to end. He says, yeah, Donnie, I realize that. He said, but no real feelings between you and me. I said, okay. So at the card game,

I was introduced to a Bonanno guy by the name of Tony Mira. I had never done anything with him, but I was introduced to him. So I go back with Charlie, you know, to the card games, and I start siding up to this Mira, who was a complete psycho case, a complete fucking psycho case, which I find out later on. He's a big brawly guy, and he says, you know, why don't you come downtown?

I said, yeah, okay. So he was from Little Italy, and that's where he hung out. He had a bus stop luncheonette down at Little Italy, but he was psycho. So I started hanging out with him, my first Bonanno guy that brings me around. So we're out one night, and he was shaking down nightclubs, and I was—

Helping them, when I say helping, I was with them, you know, shakedown owners at nightclubs and stuff. So it's about 3 or 4 in the morning, one morning, and we go to a diner for breakfast, and the eggs come out cold. So he starts berating the waitress. And, you know, we were with other wise guys and stuff. So I said, Tony, I said, you know, I said, she's only doing her job.

I said, why are you taking it out on her? She's here 4 o'clock in the morning waitressing. So he tore the shit out of me. He tore into me in front of everybody. But I really can't go back at him. But I have to let him know that I'm not a pushover. So the next day, now this guy, as I had gotten to know him, I had seen him in action and

So the next day I told him, I said, Tony, nobody else is around. So it's my word on his. I said, don't ever talk to me like that again in front of people. I said, because I'll fucking stab you. I said, you won't even know what's coming. I said, don't ever embarrass me like that and call me those names in front of other people. And he was like, so. But he introduced me to Tony.

Kept introducing me to other Bananos and then he introduced me... So even after that? Yeah, after that. So after that, did you get his respect by saying you'd stab him? I don't think people realize how disgusting the data collection industry really is. Experts say that data brokers already have an estimated 1,000 data points on every person with an online presence.

That includes your name, credit history, medical history, who your friends and family are, and your current location. Imagine if it were just some guy in his mom's basement collecting all this info about you. It's fucking gross and scary, right?

But there's a way to stop these creepy data brokers from invading your privacy, and that's with a product called ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is an app that hides your IP address and reroutes all your online activity through a secure encrypted tunnel. So any third party trying to harvest your information can go kick rocks. ExpressVPN can also help you access content from all around the world.

There are titles that streaming services like Netflix aren't showing you just because of where you live. With ExpressVPN, you can change your location up to 105 countries.

unlocking thousands of extra titles. And right now, you can get four extra months free if you tap the banner or go to expressvpn.com slash rogan. That's expressvpn.com slash rogan. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can get your four free months by scanning the QR code on screen or by clicking the link in the description. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he knew that, you know, he knew that I wasn't bullshitting him.

I mean, you know, he just beat me down in front of other people. I mean, not physically, but, you know, just calling me, you know, because I was standing up for this waitress. But that was him. So he introduces me to a guy by the name of Lefty Ruggiero, another made guy in the Bananos from downtown, Knickerbocker Village. They all lived in Knickerbocker Village. And he introduces me to Lefty.

So Mira had just gotten out of the can. Now they send him back, right? So he goes back to the can. He was a big moneymaker for the Bananos and dope. He was a big narcotics guy for the Bananos. But he had violated his parole, so they sent him back. So I started hanging out with Rogerio. And what Mira never did and what Rogerio did is...

His captain was a guy by the name of Mike Sabella. And once Rogerio got to know me a little better, he brings me to Mike Sabella, who's the captain of the crew. And he said to Mike, I'm going on record that Donnie's with me. And that's what you do. When you're a made guy, you have an associate, you go to your captain and you go on the record. So now nobody else could fuck with you.

Nobody else could take you. Mirror never did that. Even though I spent a lot of time with Mirror, he never went to his captain and said, I'm going on record that Donnie's with me. So I get to know Jerry pretty good, start doing stuff with him. So all told, how much time are you undercover now? Now this is probably going over a year. Wow. Yeah, over a year now. Yeah.

Now, are you reporting to anybody during this time? Do you have to go back to the FBI? Once I stepped out of the office, I never went back to the office. What you have is a contact agent, Joe, and that's somebody that if you have a problem, you call him and he helps you solve it. So you're totally on your own. You're on your own. I had no surveillance because you're in New York City. You're working seven days a week. My day would go from maybe...

11 o'clock in the morning to maybe three, four o'clock the next morning, seven days a week. So, you know, your only lifeline is, is the phone to this, to your contact agent. Yeah. Wow. And so I'm doing a lot of stuff like that and I'm, I'm gaining all kinds of intelligence though, you know,

identifying made guys, identifying guys in other families that are made. - Are you writing this stuff down or do you just keep it all in your head? - No, in your head. And what I do is I would regurgitate it over the telephone to my contact guy and he would reduce it to paper. Yeah, because these guys would come to my apartment, I couldn't take the shot of, you know, and I didn't wear a wire with these guys.

You know, very seldom did I have a wire on. Most of my recordings are on the telephone. I wore a wire a couple times when I knew I was going to get a contract to kill people. And when I had the feeling that I was going to be told about hits. And what I did was I had a mini cassette recorder that I bought at, what's that? Radio Shack. Radio Shack. Oh, wow. You know, and I just put it in my...

I just put it in my sport coat pocket. You ought to be really worried about getting caught with that. Yeah, but at least nobody's tapping. Because once you get in with these guys, when you meet them for the day, they all hug each other and they kiss each other on both cheeks. If they kiss you on the lips, then you're done. You know that that's the last fucking day you're going to be there.

So, yeah, so I didn't make many body recordings because you're always, and they're very touchy-feely guys, you know. Right. I mean, when I was with Mirror one time, and he said, hey, pull over, Donnie. I pull over, and he tears my car, the dashboard apart.

Now, if you saw the movie, that was, they had Lefty do that, but that was, in real life, that was Tony Mayer. I mean, you know, so I couldn't have my car wired. Right. Does he suspect in you or suspect in somebody else when he's tearing your dash apart? Well, it's, well, I'm new, you know. Right, right. You know, nobody could go to anybody and say that they knew somebody, that they knew Donnie. Right. You know, so that's how they, that's how they, yeah.

check you out, you know, because they had no other way of checking me out, really. So, you know, hanging with Rogerio, doing stuff with him. And now we come to a point where I'm really in with the Bananos. I mean, they're starting to talk. They would talk business with me there, you know, and they felt comfortable with me because, again, reverting back to my childhood,

My early years growing up, you know, hanging out at the social clubs in the neighborhood, you know, I knew that if you don't have any interest in the conversation, walk away from it. And that's what I did with these guys is if they started to talk about something, I would get up and walk away because it puts in their mind, you know, Donnie's not really interested. You know what I'm saying? It's not, he doesn't want to.

Get into our real business so That made them trust me more that made the trust knew the protocol. Yeah, I knew I knew the protocol exactly so Now what happens? Is that the FBI FBI had an operation going in Milwaukee undercover operation against the Milwaukee family, right the balustrade family who's connected to Chicago and

Now, this will give you a little hint how the mob works. So they're not really going anywhere. They had a vending machine company set up. And the undercover was an undercover actually that I knew, which is because I had a rule. If I didn't know you, I don't care if you're an FBI agent or not, I'm not introducing you. I'm not vouching for you because I don't know if you're any fucking good or not. Right. You know?

So they reach out to me and they say, hey, we got an operation going in Milwaukee. Yeah. And this is what it is. We got a vending machine company. We got trucks. We got a warehouse. We got machines. But we're not getting anywhere. You know, the undercover. Who's the undercover? Ty Cobb. That was his name.

Yeah, that was the agent's real name. I said, Ty's the undercover. They said, yeah. I said, okay, now I'll listen to you. Because I know Ty and I had done undercover work in Chicago together. I said, okay. So I'm talking. I said, well, tell Ty to call me. I want to talk to Ty. So he tells me what's going on.

He said, you know, I'm going to all these bars and restaurants and they won't take my machines because the mob, it's all the mob's machines. I said, all right. So I said, well, what's the plan? Well, maybe you can bring the Bananos out here and we can get a sit down with the Balistreros. I said, well, let me see. So we were at Gerio one day and

I just, I dropped, I left. You know, I got a call the other day from a guy that I used to steal artwork with down in Baltimore. And he's out in Milwaukee. He said, what the fuck's he doing in Milwaukee? I says, he's got a vending machine company and he wants me to come out and help him. He says, is he crazy? He said, they'll blow him up out there. He says, he can't do a vending machine business out there. That's the mob.

I said, well, he doesn't know. He doesn't know anything about the mob. And we drop it. A couple days later, I said, they left this guy calling me again. He needs help. He said, Donnie, what do you think? He said, you can't just go out there. And then he looks at me. He said, this guy got any money? I said, I don't know. Let me ask him. I said, I'll call him tonight and find out if he's got any money. So I called Ty. He was going by the name of Tony. And I said...

Hey, Tony. He said, I said, Lefty wants to know if you got any money. He said, all right. He said, tell him I got $200,000 in the bank. And, you know, I got a warehouse full of machines. I got everything set up. I said, okay. So I go back to Lefty. I said, Lefty, he's got, he told me he's got $200,000 in the bank. And he's got this big warehouse set up. He says, all right. He said, let me talk to Mike. Now, Mike Cibolo is the captain, right? Yeah.

So Mike said, all right. He said, you and Lefty go out there. Just sit down with him and make sure that he has what he says he has. Don't tell anybody you're going. I said, okay. So the first thing is call Tony and tell him to send us airplane tickets. Because, you know, wise guys, they're not spending their own money. So the Bureau, you know, Tony gets us two plane tickets, me and Lefty fly out there.

And he takes us to the warehouse. And, you know, they got the whole operation going on. And Lefty said, okay, so we go back and report back to Mike. And he said, okay. He says, now here's the story. Tony's been with the Bananos for 10 years. He's been an associate of ours for 10 years because that's what he has to tell Chicago and Milwaukee. Because if they just say...

Donnie just met this guy. They're going to say, well, he's not with you. You didn't claim him. So we'll take the whole business. Right. So here's the way it works. Now we go to our consigliere, the consigliere, the Bananos, right? A guy by the name of Bobby Badheart. You know why they called him Bobby Badheart? Because he had a bad heart? Bad heart. Easy, right? So he goes and...

Bobby Badhart now has to call Chicago, right? And tell Chicago that, hey, we got a guy that's been with us for 10 years. He's settled now in Milwaukee. He's been in Milwaukee for a couple of years. And he wants to go into the business and he has machines and everything. And we'd like to have a sit down with Balistrieri, the boss of Milwaukee. Okay. Okay.

Chicago now calls Balistrieri's consigliere and relates the whole story to him. So now we got to wait and see if he wants to have the sit down. A week or so goes by. Chicago calls back and said, OK, he'll sit. He'll have a meet with you guys. Who's coming out? Be lefty with Jerry O and Donnie Brasco. Now lefties have made guys. So, you know, so they say, OK, come on out.

Check into this hotel and wait for a phone call. So me and Lefty fly out, check into this hotel, and we wait about three or four days. It's hanging around the hotel. We can't go anywhere because we can't miss the phone call. So we get the phone call. He says, okay, come to Snuggs Restaurant. Such and such a day, such and such a time. It's Balistrieri's restaurant. He owns a hotel, and it's a restaurant in his hotel.

So me, Lefty, and Tony, the other undercover, we go there. And now if you know the mob, Joe, you don't get to sit down with a boss unless you're another boss. You know what I mean? Guys, made guys that are just made guys in other families don't get to sit down with a boss. So now who's there is Balistrieri, the boss, his underboss, his consigliere, and his two sons.

who are both lawyers, right? So we have a big spread. Why do you want to be here? Well, you know, Tony's been with us. Now, Lefty's doing all the talking because he's the main guy. Tony's been with us for 10 years, you know, him and Donnie. They did a lot of art theft together and stuff, and they've both been with us. And Tony...

Tony thought he could get the business going with the machines and stuff. So after this whole dinner, probably about five or six hours, he said, okay, we'll get back to you. All right. So a couple days later, he called, why don't you have dinner at my house? A fucking boss is inviting us to dinner at his house. It doesn't happen if you know the world of the mafia. Gives us the address.

Me, Lefty, and Tony. And Lefty's like, you got to know wise guys, right? Lefty's like, we're going to the dinner at a mob boss's house, at his house. He's like, you know, I mean, we know it's a big deal, but to a wise guy, it's a big fucking deal too. So we go to his house and he's right on the lake. He has a big, big table, you know, like you see in the movies. Yeah.

and got the maids serving us. And he said, okay, he said, we'll go in partners. We'll be 50-50 partners. Tony does all the work. You know, we'll tell you where to go to put your machines in. They'll take your machines. So now, what did we just do? We just married two mafia families together, Bonanos and the Balistreros through Chicago at first.

marrying two mafia families to do business together, right? Me and Lefty go back to New York. Everything's going good. Tony's meeting with the sons because that's who, he said, you meet me with my sons, right? After a few months, nothing. They stopped meeting with him. Don't know why. They won't take his calls, nothing. So I tell Lefty, they're not responding, right?

What do you mean they're not responding? I said, they're not taking his calls anymore. He said, well, what'd he do? Try to, you know, I said, Tony, I said, Lefty, this guy's not like that. Make a long story short. Tony had been a cop in a city outside of Milwaukee after he got out of the Marine Corps before he went into the Bureau. And somehow they found out there was a leak somewhere, but they don't, they don't tell anybody.

We find this out later that this is how they, they don't tell this to Lefty, which saved my ass because I vouch for Tony. Right. Right? So we're trying to get in touch with Chicago. Chicago's not, you know, Chicago say, we don't know why they stopped, you know, we don't have any idea. So that goes, now that's, I got that hanging on me, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So Lefty sends me to Milwaukee, go find out, go search for this guy and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I come up with a story. Left, I found this car. It's in the parking lot. I mean, it's in the parking lot of the airport. Then when I went back, it was gone. So I go and they said, oh, the cops towed it.

It's all bullshit, of course, but I got to cover what happened to this guy. So now we got to go tell Mike Sabell, our captain, because our money source dried up. So we go sit down with Mike. This is hard to believe, and he's ripping, right? You know what my punishment was? What? I couldn't go to the Christmas party. That's it? That's it.

I mean, he was ripped. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. In a survey, 76% of employers plan to grow their teams in 2025. Now that we're halfway through the year, how are those hiring goals going?

Have you filled all the roles you wanted to, or are you still looking? If you're struggling to find the right people, or if you want to streamline your hiring process going forward, try Zip Intro. It's ZipRecruiter's latest feature that lets you post jobs and talk to candidates the next day. You can try it out for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. And it doesn't just speed up the hiring process.

It also does a lot of the work for you. All you have to do is post your job and pick a time. Zip Intro will find and schedule meetings with qualified candidates. You can even do back-to-back video calls to move things along even faster.

Save time hiring for the rest of the year with Zip Intro. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan right now to try Zip Intro for free. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. Zip Intro, post jobs today, talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. This episode is brought to you by Visible. I want to let you in on something. Your current wireless business

Carrier does not want you to know about Visible because Visible is the ultimate wireless hack. No confusing plans with surprise fees, no nonsense, just fast speeds, great coverage without the premium cost. With Visible, you get one line wireless with unlimited data powered by Verizon's network for $25 a month, taxes and fees included. Seriously, $25 a month flat.

What you see is what you pay. No hidden fees on top of that. Ready to see? Join now and unlock unlimited data for just $25 a month on the Visible plan. Don't think wireless can be so transparent, so Visible? Well, now you know. Switch today at visible.com slash rogan. Terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. But he banned me from the Christmas party. Because you introduced him to the cop.

Well, he didn't know he was a cop because the operation just shut down and sort of the money wasn't coming in anymore. Right. And they don't tell you why? No. So I said, well, if that's the best that could happen, I don't go to the Christmas party. You know, because each crew has their own party. I'm saying to myself, my God, this is what I'm doing. So they don't suspect you at all? No. No.

How do they not suspect you? How do they not question you? Well, I had been with them so many... I had been with them now, you know, Joe, over two years now. Right. And, you know, so... But I'm always on edge because I don't know why aren't the balustreries telling Rogerio. Right. Unless they're too embarrassed. You know what I mean? Right. I don't know. To this day. Well, I mean, after we found out that...

Yeah, to this day, I have no idea why they didn't tell him. And whatever happened to Tony? Oh, we just shut the operation down. They just shut it down, you know. So I'm going on again. We're going on. Nice cup. You want it? You can have it. No, thank you.

I got some swag coming for you. All right. Yeah, yeah. Well, I got swag, too. You got one of them JRE cars. But I mean, I got a lot of Donnie Brasco swag that I'm going to mail to you. All right, cool. It was supposed to be at the hotel. It never made it, so... But this has to be hair-raising. It is, because now I'm like... And Lefty said, you know, now he's...

he's grilling me again about my relationship with, with Tony. Right. Uh, but I got to stick to the story, you know? Um, so, so I, I, I kind of, uh, squared things, uh, squared things around with him and because I, you know, um, and Mike. So now what happens is that, uh, uh, at the time, Carmen Galante was the boss of the Bananos. All right. And, uh,

They kill Galente. They whack him, right? Because there's kind of a beef within the family, and one side didn't like Galente, so they whack him. Mike Sabella now was associated with Galente, so they tell Mike, Mike, either step down or we're going to whack you too. So he gives up his captainship and just becomes a regular soldier again, right? So...

One of the originators, when I say originators, instigators, whatever, is a guy by the name of Sonny Black Napolitano. He was out in Brooklyn. So they put me in. Remember, we were with Mike Sabella. So they put me and Lefty now under Sonny Black. Sonny Black becomes a captain. They put me and Lefty under Sonny Black out in Brooklyn. So that's who we report to every day.

And, you know, you have to check in with your captain every day. So every day me and Lefty would report out to the motion lounge. It's on Graham and Withers Street in Brooklyn. Sonny's our new captain. And, again, you know, the intelligence information I'm gathering is like no other than anybody else can get because, you know, informants are going to give you all this stuff.

And I'm meeting different people. Again, I'm meeting people from different families through these guys. So I'm rocking out there in Brooklyn under Sonny Black. And I get another call. The headquarters wants to talk to you. About what? Well, we got another cover operation going in Tampa, Florida. And we want to see if you can bring your bananas in. I says, hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

I just went through this in Milwaukee. Well, supervisor wants to talk to you. I knew the supervisor. Supervisor's a good guy. So I called him. I said, Tony, what's up? He said, we got a nightclub. And it's pretty, you know, it's pretty good, but we can't get into Santo Trafficante. And maybe, you know, maybe you can do the same thing you did in Milwaukee. I said, I don't know, man. I said...

If I do it, number one, who's the undercovers? Because they had two undercovers running a nightclub. And they said, well, one of them is an agent by the name of Sal Mary, Steve. I said, okay. I said, I know Steve. I did undercover work with him too. I said, I got no problem with Steve. And they gave me the other guy. And the other guy I knew, but I never worked with him. I said, but as long as Steve is involved, I'll see what I can do. But

I don't know how long it's going to take. So you got to just let me think about this. All right. Because I don't want to come up, you know, I'm not coming up with a story. Hey, I got a call from a guy that I used to fucking thieve with. Right, right, right. So I figure, okay, after a while, okay, here's what we'll do. We used to go to Miami a lot. When I say we, I'm talking about me, Lefty, the wise guys. We'd fly to Miami for a long weekend.

We had a hotel down there that put us on the arm, right? Give us a suite and stuff and stay for the weekend. So I says, okay, here's what we'll do. The next time we go to Miami, right? You guys go down there and we're, we'll, whenever we go to a restaurant, I'll let you know what restaurant we're going to go to. And you guys just happened to be in a restaurant and you, you,

Steve Salmeri, who was going by Chico, I said, Chico just happens to notice me and comes over to the table. And, hey, Donnie, how you been? So it's like a bump, right? It's not like... Right, right, right. So that's what we did. So we're out at this restaurant, and we set that deal up. And Chico comes over. And, Donnie, hey, I haven't seen you in years. How you doing? What are you doing down here? Well, we got a nightclub.

You got a nightclub where? It's outside of Tampa, up in Tampa, Florida. No kidding. How long you been down there? I don't know, three, four years. What are you doing? Nothing. It's a nice club. Why don't you come by? Now that, again, you're talking about a nightclub. So everything is dollar signs. So I said, look, do you want to take a ride up one day? He said, yeah.

So when they leave, he says, you know these guys? I said, well, I know Chico. I said, I don't know the other guy. I said, but, you know, Chico, he was a good thief, you know. I said, I haven't seen him in a while. I haven't seen him in like maybe five years. But he's always was, you know, he's always a good thief. So I said, all right, let's take a ride up. So we take a ride up and it's a nice nightclub. It's on like five acres. They got tennis courts.

We'd hang out, a lot of business, you know. It was open from, I don't know, 9 o'clock. It was open all night. So he said, nice place. He said, we have to tell Sonny about it when we go back to Brooklyn. Okay. So we go back to Brooklyn.

and tell Sonny about it. Now, you know, now I'm like in my fourth year with these guys. So we go back to Brooklyn and tell Sonny, lefty, hey, we ran into one of Donnie's old friends. Boy, they got a nice club there. Oh, yeah? Well, maybe we'll go down and see it. So we go down, and they see a lot of potential. But now we...

They can't operate anything illegal because Santo Trafficante owns Florida. So now we got to go through the same routine, right? The consigliere has to call Trafficante's guy and say, hey, we got, you know, one of our guys has a club down there who hasn't been with us for, you know, Chico has had to be with the Bananos again for five, six years. Excuse me.

So we go through that same routine and finally, you know, this takes a while. It's not like overnight. So we go through the routine and he says, okay. His guy says, all right, Santo will meet you at such and such a hotel on such and such a day. Get to meet another fucking boss of a Florida. Me and Sonny meet him.

Oh, no, the first time we met him was at a restaurant right outside of Tampa, the Greek fishing village. I've drawn a blank. But at any rate, we meet him in a restaurant. And actually, it was Pappas' Restaurant. That was the name of it. And Sonny had never met him before. But, you know, he'd go through all the niceties, everything.

And Sonny tells him, you know, we got a nightclub and we want to start running gambling out of it, you know. So he says, okay, I'll meet you. I'll come up and look at it. I'll meet you. So I don't know if we met him the next week or the next couple weeks. We meet him again. Now this time it's in a hotel room. He comes to Sonny's hotel room and sets everything up, right? Forms the marriage, right?

Again, this is the second time we married two fucking mafia families together. So he said, all right, you want to do a casino night? Yeah. He said, I'm going to send my two guys up. Okay. A couple days later, two guys come up from Miami, card sharks. I sat in a hotel with these room guys, Joe, and they were marking all the decks of cards. I could not believe.

After they get done, I had no idea how they marked these cards. They were for blackjack and stuff, right? We had craps tables. The dice were fixed. I mean, it was like everything was, you know. So we set the club up, and we're advertising a casino night for the veterans of foreign war. We even had a certificate and everything, right? We're paying off somebody in the sheriff's department.

to protect us. Well, we got the game going and doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. The place is jammed. So what happens is that all of a sudden, I'm knocking on the door. One of the doormen slides. He comes to me and says, Donnie, there's a bunch of sheriff's deputies outside. Whoa. So right away, I get on the phone. I can't get...

I can't get our contact in the sheriff's department. He's not answering his phone. And we had just paid him that day. So I said, all right, clear all the money off the table so we get all the money off the tables and put chips back on the tables. I said, all right, let him in. Because we had the certificate, we had everything. And what we had done was every so often we collect the money and we stash it in the furnace room. There was a lot of money stashed.

What we had was an old-time one-armed bandit, right? The thing had to be 100 years old. Nobody ever put money in it. It was just there. So they come in, and they don't see any money. One of the deputies puts a, I don't know, nickel and dime, pulls a handle. What do you think happens? He fucking wins. You're running a gambling operation. He said, nobody's ever played that thing, right?

Well, they wrecked the joint. We all get arrested. Why did he get arrested? Because I don't understand. It was a gambling charge. Right. They arrest us. Oh, but why? Because of the one-armed bandit? Because they won and they said that that was gambling. Oh. That was gambling. Nobody even knew there was any money in it or anything. It was just there as a decoration. Oh, boy. You know, it was an antique. Yeah.

So they just use it as an excuse. Yeah, just use it as an excuse because we were the mafia guineas from New York. Right. That's what we were. Right. So they throw us in a can. Just for the one-armed bandit. Yeah. They never find the money.

We didn't, but somebody did. Oh, boy. This episode is brought to you by ShipStation. Managing an e-commerce business is challenging enough without the added chaos of shipping and order fulfillment.

It can feel like trying to herd cats on roller skates. That's where ShipStation comes in. With its simple dashboard, ShipStation lets you handle all your shipping needs in one place, automating tasks, securing the best shipping rates, and even printing labels with a single click.

Whether you're shipping a few packages a day or thousands, it grows alongside your business. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with all the services and selling channels you already use so you can keep your existing workflow intact while making it even more efficient. Ready to bring calm to the chaos? Go to ShipStation.com and use the code JRE to sign up for your free trial.

Somebody did. How much money? It was over 30 grand that I know that was stashed. So they swiped that? I don't know. Somebody did. Probably. Somebody did. Yeah. So we had Trafficante's lawyer. He gave us a, I don't know who it was. So we called the lawyer and he gets us out of the can the next day. And now I'm in another fucking bind because now we got busted at

And we did, you know, we were paying the guy off. And what happened to the guy you paid off? He committed suicide later on. Oh, convenient. Yeah. Did he really commit suicide? Yeah, he did. Really? Because when he got a subpoena. Oh, he knew they were coming for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that kind of screwed that thing up. But, you know, Sonny knew that...

that we were paying the guy off and everything. So, you know, it was just a... Hazards of doing business. Hazards of doing business as a mob, you know. But when we got back to the club, like I say, the statue was gone with the money. Somebody took it. And so we go back to New York. And again now, there's another beef in the Bonanno family because after they whacked Galenti...

They make Rusty Rustelli the boss of the family, but Rusty's in a can. He's in a can. So Sonny Black is running a family along with another capo. And then there's a Sicilian faction of the Bonanno family, and they're running their faction. Now there's a faction of three capos that are against Rusty Rustelli, and they're against Sonny and the other capos.

So now there's more friction in the Bananos. So in order to solve this, they call a sit-down. Sonny Black, the guys on his side, the capos on his side, call a sit-down for the other three capos to straighten this out. Well, the deal is when these other three capos get to the sit-down, they're going to whack them. They're going to whack them. So...

I was supposed to be in on that, but they cut me out at the last minute. I was supposed to be in on the hit, but they cut me out at the last minute. And then I was supposed to be on the cleanup crew, but they cut me out at the last minute. Why'd they cut you out? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Because I wasn't told until after, you know? Right. So they whacked these three guys, and the next day Sonny calls me into the club.

And he said, Bruno never showed up. That was the fourth guy that was one of the capos in Delacato. His son was supposed to come and he didn't show. So he gave me the contract to kill him. So he said, we think he's in Florida. So he sends me to Florida to look for him. But he wasn't down there. And the deal was that if I did find him, I'd call the FBI and they would snatch him.

and we'd stage a hit, or if they found them, you know, we'd do the reverse. They'd stage a hit, but we never found them. So now, all this time, I never carried a gun.

I never carried a gun in this whole operation. Really? Yeah. Was that unusual? No, because these guys don't carry guns on a daily basis, the mafia guys. They don't? No, no, because they're always getting rousted by the cops. Got it. The only time they carry a piece is when they're going to go do some work. Right. You know? Did you see guys get killed? No. I don't believe you. So...

That was the sneakiest no I've ever heard in my life. So we, let's move on. Yeah, let's move on. You made me lose my train of thought, Joe. Sorry, sorry, sorry. No. So we're in the club. So I get the contract for Bruno, but obviously I can't find him. Bureau can't find him. Did anybody ever find him? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what happens is we're in a club one day.

in the motion lounge and Sonny gets a phone call and he says, "Hey Donny," he said, "I think Bruno's at such and such a place," but it was bad info. It was bad info. So I was asked, "Well, what would you do if he was there?" I said, "I hate to say it, but Bruno probably was a dead man." And, "Well, how could you say that?" "Well, because when you're given a contract, it's your responsibility that guy gets killed."

And if you refuse the contract-- - You get killed. - You're gonna get whacked. - So would you have had to do it? - Well-- - If you found him? - I could have give it to one of the other guys to do it, but it's my responsibility. - Right. - You know, and my whole, look, my mindset in undercover is I'm not dying for a gangster. - Right. - I'll die for a citizen. I'll take a beating for a citizen.

but not for a gangster. He's going to get whacked either way. He's going to go either way. So I'll take my shot with the government. A lot of people can't deal with that. I get it. It's the job. That's the job. Look, I'm there to put you in jail. I'm not there to get you killed.

I'm not there to kill you. I'm there to arrest you and try to, you know, hopefully send you to jail. But I'm not going to die for you. Right. I'm not, you know. So it's a situation where your back is against the wall. Exactly. Got it. So, but, you know, that didn't happen. Did they ever find him? Yeah, yeah, they found him. They found him actually, I don't know if it was a year or so later. I'm not too sure. But, yeah, he eventually got arrested.

Yeah. He was a coke. You know, he used coke. Sloppy. Yeah. So now, you know, now with the war going on, the Bureau decides that, well, we got to shut the operation down. So those hits took place on May 5th. So and prior to that, I had a sit down with Sonny Black. And he said, Donnie, he said, the book's on the books.

The Mafia are opening up in December. He said, and I already proposed you for membership into the Bonanno family. So you're going to get inducted into the family in December. He said, so I congratulated him, thanked him, kissed him on both cheeks, you know. So you were going to be a made guy. Yeah, I was going to be a made guy. How attractive is that life when you're in it? Oh, forget it. Must be so much fun. Yeah.

It's part of the problem, right? No. Waking up every day to think today, the day I go to jail or today I get whacked. No, I didn't... Joe, I didn't find it that fucking attractive. Believe me. I mean, it's all right. They flash the cash. You walk into a restaurant, they know who you are. You get the...

VIP treatment. You get the VIP treatment. You don't order off the menu. You know. Yeah. So there's perks. There's those perks, but, you know. Too scary. I didn't want to wake up every day saying, do I go to jail or do I get whacked today? Right. That's their mindset. Right. It's crazy. It is crazy. It's crazy. But I've talked to guys in that life, and they love it. Yeah. That's what's crazy about it. Yeah. I know guys...

That became informants and, you know, they wish they could go back. I said, you know, no, I wouldn't want to, you know. But that is a problem with guys who do undercover work, right? Yeah, some of them fall in love with it. They fall in love with the undercover aspect. And I think the reason that I was successful in all my cases and that I'm still successful

98% sane is I didn't fall in love with it and I grew up on the streets. You know what I'm saying? Right, right. I mean, I grew up in that environment and I was never attracted to it as a kid. Right. You know? Right. Did you ever run the risk of running into someone that you knew who knew you as Joe Pistone? Yeah. Did you see the movie? I did, but I don't remember. In the airport? Yeah.

Oh, that's right. With the lawyer. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. That's what really happened. Yeah, yeah. How did that go down? Well, I saw, you know, we saw, made eye contact, and, you know, I just clocked him. Oh, wow. And Sonny says, Donnie, why'd you do that? I said, Sonny, you guys are looking at my prick. What do you want me to do? Oh. You know? Oh.

But no, I never got attracted to the life other than as a job. And I think another reason too, Joe, where a lot of undercovers go wrong is they think they have to act like gangsters. They change their personalities. Right. And you can't be A in the daytime and B at night. Right. I never changed my personality. Right. You know? And a lot of undercovers are extroverts, right?

And I'm the exception to that rule when I'm really an introvert. So you didn't need the attention. I didn't need the attention. You didn't thrive. I don't, you know, and I never changed my values. Like I mentioned before, I'm not a drinker. I never was a drinker. I worked in bars as a bartender, you know, during my college years when I got out.

And I wasn't going to become a drinker just because I was working undercover. You know, I mean, I had guys say, Donnie, you never finish a beer because I can't. I only can drink half a bottle of beer. That's all I can drink. Probably lucky. Probably. Yeah. Or, you know, you never have more than one glass of wine. That's all I can ingest is one glass. And see, too many undercovers think, oh, all bad guys are drinkers, all bad, you know.

Donnie, I never do drugs. The coke is a real problem with guys who go undercover, right? Yeah. Because they have to do it with everybody. Well, you know, look. Or they think they do. They think they do. I mean, I was in a nightclub in Miami, and the guy offers me coke, and I slapped his hand. You know, fucking coke is all over the place. And I said, don't ever offer me that shit. I said, I make money off of that.

I don't put that stuff in my body. I go to the gym every day. Why would I do that shit? I said, to me, it's a moneymaker. See, but too many young undercovers think, oh, you know, I got to drink. Right. You know, I got to do this. I got to do that. I got to act tough. Right. You don't have to. All you do is you have to be yourself. That's all. That way you don't have to ever...

Change it up. That's exactly right. You never have to change caught You never get caught yourself and you don't have to act tough. You don't have to talk tough You just got to back up what you say and that's it never say anything that you can't back up And that was always my motto, you know, I never promised anything that I couldn't do I never let anybody back me against the wall, you know, and I never got into anybody's face or

to make myself look tough. Right. You know, I mean, and that's where a lot of young undercovers go wrong, that they think, you know, they watch too much television. Be honest with you. The only time I screwed up, I'll tell you, we're in Miami, right? And I'm in another undercover's car. So it might have been Chico's, I don't remember.

So there's three bad guys, you know, and he had his car wired up. So we're riding by and it's a strip club. And it said 20, 22 naked dancing girls. And I said, 44 nipples. That's all I said. Well, that came out at trial by the defense attorney.

And I had to explain why I was such an expert on female nipples. That's just simple math. But what I'm saying is, you know. So somebody remembered you saying that? Well, it was on the tape. On the tape. On the tape. So they were trying to use that against you? Yeah, that was, you know, my character was, you know, was questioned.

But, you know, it goes back to what I say is that I would not normally say that. Right. You know what I mean? Right, right, right, right. It was just a dumb statement, but it's always going to come back to bite you in the ass. Right, right, right. Gotcha. So. Yeah, you just got caught up in it. Yeah. Yeah.

So what happened when they opened up the books? Well, they closed the case down. So I got them to postpone it to July because we had one more meeting with Traffic Candy set up. So I got them to postpone it until after that meeting, but I couldn't get them to wait until after I got inducted into the family. They wouldn't wait. So they closed the operation July 27th. Yeah.

Yeah, and six years undercover, seven years of testifying. Wow. But I was lucky enough that after that case, I did undercover work overseas. I did undercover work for Scotland Yard. Oh, really? Yeah. What'd you do over there? I had one case, and so they had two Scotland Yard detectives who I knew. I did a lot of work with their undercover unit. And so they were into the Chinese triads.

And there's stuff I can't disclose, but they were manufacturing credit cards. And I won't say which companies. And you can bang them out for like $50,000 before...

before they were discovered because they had the numbers. Yeah, I knew a guy who did that. Yeah, they had the legit numbers. Yeah. That was back when they had like the carbons, right? Yeah. So Scotland Yard was trying to get to the location in another country, right, where they were actually, everything was going down. So they were meeting with the number two triad in London. So they said, hey, look, our guy from New York said,

Mafia guy from New York who's the money man wants to have a sit down with you. He says, okay. So I fly over to London and I knew this Scotland Yard guy because I had done other stuff with them. So they introduced me to the supervisor of the serious crime squad. He was the guy that was running this case.

So I would break his chops. You know, you can't, they don't carry guns or anything. You know, even the undercovers don't, they don't, they don't carry guns. So I, uh, I'm sitting down with him and I said, they, uh, I said, you know, I got my gun, but I didn't bring any bullets. You got any bullets? The guy goes, ape shit. He said, you can't carry. I said, calm down. I'm just breaking your chops. Right. So then he says to me, what are you wearing to this meeting?

I said, ìIím wearing slacks, sport coat, and a shirt.î He said, ìNo, no, you got to wear a suit.î I said, ìWhy do I have to wear a suit?î He said, ìBecause all these triad guys wear suits all the time.î I said, ìWhatís that got to do with me?î He said, ìNo, no, you got to wear a suit.î I said, ìWell, I donít have a suit.î I said, ìIím telling you, I got slacks, a sport coat, dress shirts, thatís what Iím wearing.î So he turns to the undercover guy from Scotland Yard and

And he turns around, opens his safe, pulls out money, says, go buy him a suit. I said, you're going to buy me a suit? He said, yeah. I said, what do I do with the suit when I'm done with it? He said, you keep it. I said, all right. So me and Graham, we go. I buy two suits, one for me and one for Graham, right? So we go to the meeting, and I'm wearing his suit. So there's me, the two Scotland Yard guy on the cover guys, and the triad.

So now before we go to the meeting, the supervisor's telling me, look, you can't insult this guy. You've got to be nice to him because he's the number two guy. So I says, hey, look, I said, I don't tell you how to run your serious crime squad. Don't tell me how to work undercover. I says, whatever you need, I'll get. I said, well, don't tell me how to do it. So he's all nervous. So we're in a resort. They rented a...

A suite, big suite in a resort. And they're next door. So they got the suite where we are. They got it wired audio video, right? So we go in and we're sitting there and we get through all the niceties with the triad. So the guy keeps fucking interrupting me. So finally he says, hey Chin. I said, why do your sentences always start in the fucking middle of mine? And he looks at me.

And you can hear there's dead silence, right? Then he says, oh, Mr. Joe. I was going by Joe Marino at the time. He said, oh, Mr. Joe, I apologize. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Graham tells me, he says, when you said that, he thought the supervisor was going to have a heart attack. He just blew it. He just blew it. It's over. After that?

The guy gave us everything. The location of the factory, the whole McGill. Do you feel like you had to do that to have his respect? Of course. I mean, I'm a mob guy. What do I know about the triads? Right. You know what I mean? Right. So if I would have let him kept stepping on me. Right. He's been out of character. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. Yeah.

That had to be fucking scary. Yeah, well, the triads are, you know. They're scary. Yeah, they are. They are. And he was the number two. And I give these guys credit. I mean, he got to the number two guy, but they couldn't get, you know. Right. So, but. What a life. How do you stay calm in these situations? Me, Joe, I just stay who I am. You know, I get that Sicilian in me. And, you know, you go at it when you have to.

And if you don't, you know... If you don't, it probably seems off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So... But that's got to be just fucking nerve-wracking. I... You know, it is. Because what's nerve-wracking is you always have to be on. Right. You know? Yeah. You can never be off. You never relax. No. I mean... And... I mean, not many guys could say...

that they had sit-downs with two mafia bosses of different families, right? I used to stay at Sonny Black's apartment with him in Brooklyn, and this guy was running the Bonanno family. He was one of the top capos in the Bonanno family. But Sonny, I don't know how many hits he had. Now, all these guys I dealt with, don't forget, all these guys had hits under their belt. These weren't novice guys. I mean, they all had...

you know, five, six, 10, 15 hits under their belt. You know? I mean, I got into a fight one time in a bar with Tony Mira. I mean, me and him against three guys. And, I mean, he grabbed a beer bottle, broke it on the bar, and just, boom, raked the guy's face, you know? Now, there's another guy, you know, I always bring this up to young undercovers, is that this was probably the

The meanest guy I ever fucking met. I mean, flat out mean. You know, these other guys were mean, you know, because they kill people. But I mean, he was just a mean guy. The other guys, the other gangsters didn't like him. I never saw him. I never saw him overindulge in any liquor. Never, never. And he would stab you as soon as look at you.

And after that incident, I told you when I had to go around with him, I always made sure I was an arm's length away from him. What was his name? Tony Mirra. Oh, okay. Now, after it was over and they found out who I was, they killed Mirra. His own nephew killed him, actually. Wow. Because he introduced me to all the Bananos. Wow. Yeah. Lefty was on his way to get killed.

But the FBI picked it up on the wiretap, so they snatched him, you know, surveillance team snatched him off the street. They killed Sonny Black. Sonny Black got killed. Yeah, he got killed. Yeah. So all the people that had let you in. Yeah, yeah. Tell you how Sonny Black got killed. You talk about a gangster, right? When it came out that I was, you know, undercover. In the beginning, the mob didn't believe I was an undercover.

an FBI undercover agent. They thought the FBI had kidnapped me and was trying to turn me because we picked it up on the wiretaps and informants. But once their lawyers told them, hey, he really is an undercover agent. So Sonny Black gets a call. You got to go to a sit down. So he walks into the motion lounge. He had a diamond ring. Takes off his diamond ring. All right.

Takes his money out of his pocket. Takes all his keys except his car keys. Puts them on a counter. Says they're the bartender. I just got called to a sit-down. They're probably not coming back. Is that a gangster? Wow. Calls his girlfriend. And this is how we found this out. Calls his girlfriend and tells her the same thing. So what happens is that after they find his body and everything...

His girlfriend calls the FBI, and she says, I'd like to have a meeting with Donnie Brasco. I said, why? She said, because I got something to tell him that Sonny Black, she calls him Sonny, she didn't call him Sonny Black. She said that Sonny wanted me to give him a message. They said, okay. So they fly her down to D.C., and myself and the agents, the other agents, go out to a restaurant, and she said...

Sonny wanted me to tell you this is what happened. She said, this is what happened. He got called to a sit-down, and he goes into the motion lounge, gives his ring, his money, his car keys to the bartender and tells the bartender, you know, I got called to a sit-down, and I'm probably not coming back. And then he calls me, and he says her name, and he said, if I don't come back, he said, I want you to get in touch with Donnie.

and tell him I loved him and he was just better than we were. I don't hold anything against him. Wow. Is that a gangster? That's a guy that's living that life. Is that a gangster? That's crazy. How did that make you feel? Well, it kind of threw me for a loop. I mean, I had a good relationship with him. And like I said, I didn't want to see anybody get killed. Even Mira, I didn't want to see him get killed. I mean, although I...

I might have fucking done it myself. I mean, the guy was just plain mean. But, you know, that's not my job. My job is to gather evidence, bring you to trial, and hopefully you get convicted. But, yeah, Sonny was... Sonny... You know, the difference between me and Sonny, we could sit just like we're having this conversation. He wasn't 24-7 gangster. You know what I mean? Yeah. We'd break chops. We'd break balls. Yeah.

Rogerio was 27, 24-7 gangster. I couldn't, I liked him because he was a great cook. He was, man. Boy, I'll tell you, Joe, he could cook. But you always, there was always something you know he was digging for, you know. But like Sonny, look, I'm staying over at the,

the main capo in the family, one of the two main capos in the family's apartment. He'd get up in the morning. I sleep on his couch. We'd get up in the morning. He'd go, here's a guy that's running a goddamn Bonanno family. He'd go out to get coffee and hard rolls and butter and bring them back. And me and him would sit there in our shorts and watch cartoons on television. Yeah.

I tell that to the guys at the FBI, and they say, no, I'm telling you. And then he had a weight bench in his apartment. And back in the day, I used to lift pretty good. You can't tell me now. Of course, I'm old now. And I was pretty good at hand wrestling. I mean, arm wrestling, right?

And he could never beat me. And he was built like you. I mean, he was built, right? He's about your size and everything and big arms like you got. But he could never beat me in arm wrestling. And I don't know what it was if I, you know. So one day he says to me, Donnie, he says, I'm going to beat you today in arm wrestling. I said, Sonny, you'd never fucking beat me. Why today? Because I'm going to beat you. I said, okay. So the day goes on. So then he says, all right, let's go. All right.

We're going on. He spits in my eye. Boom. He said, I told you I'd beat you. But I mean, that's the kind of guy he was. Right. You know? And I couldn't get P.O.ed at him. Right. You know? But with Lefty, you couldn't joke around like that. Right. You know? I mean, he was something else, man. He...

He couldn't stand air conditioning. Really? Never. We'd be in the car in Miami. The windows would be up, and he'd be smoking English ovals with no air conditioning. Jeez. And I'm dying. I'm dying. I put the window down. Donnie put that window up. He turned the air conditioning off. He couldn't stand air conditioning. Why? Why?

I don't know. I don't know. He had cancer. Maybe it was, I don't know. Oh, he had cancer at the time while he was smoking with the windows rolled up? Yeah, but he had been cured of that, you know. He had been cured. He had testicle cancer years before. He eventually died of lung cancer. He used to smoke English Ovals. We'd go in the hotel room, and we always had a big suite, so, you know, we didn't have different rooms. We'd have a suite with two bedrooms. Yeah.

He turned the air off. He turned the air off. So, you know, you have to do things to keep your sanity sometimes, right? So we're down in Miami. So I figured, son of a bitch, I'm going to get you today, right? So I said, left, I got to go to the head. I'm going up to the room. I go up. I take the cover off the air conditioning. I crank it where you could hang meat in there, right? And I put the cover back on.

And I put a thing in there so, you know, if you move the thing back up here. We get upstairs. I mean, it was freezing. So we get in that room. We get in that suite. And he's like, Donnie, turn that air conditioning off. So I go over there and I said, left, I don't know if something's wrong. I don't know. He said, call the front desk. Get maintenance up here. So I pick up the phone, but I don't. I make believe I'm talking. Okay.

I said, yeah, this is room so-and-so. Our air condition is broke. Could you send somebody up? But I'm not talking to anybody because I want him to freeze as long as he can freeze. So after a while, did you call that? I said, left. You saw me call him again. And I do the same thing.

And now he's calling me, Joe, every name in the book. It's your fault. You did this. You broke it. I said, I didn't do a thing. I don't know nothing about air conditioning. Right? So finally, after about a half an hour, now I call and I say, hey, your air conditioning. So they send somebody up and the guy takes it. Okay, there it is. But he blamed me. But, you know.

But that's how you keep your sanity sometimes, you know. God. What is it like to experience all that and then see it in a movie? Like, what is it like to see a guy like Johnny Depp play you in a movie? Oh, God, what an experience that was. It has to be so weird. It was. And you know Johnny Depp? Yeah, I know him. I love that boy. He's a great guy. I could cry, I'm telling you. I mean, what he's done for my family.

Excuse me. It's all right. He's a sweetheart of a guy, like genuinely. I've hung out with him a few times at the comedy store in LA. Very, very nice guy. I love him. He loved my wife. Yeah. He just flew in in January to have dinner with my whole family and my grandkids. Flew in from Spain, and my wife couldn't make the dinner. So the next day...

He went and spent almost five hours with her. And then she passed away a little while after that. Yeah, he's a great guy. He really is. I mean, he's genuine. He's genuine. And it's odd. It's odd for a movie star. Yeah. You know, I meet movie stars, and I always have this...

Because I always feel like, okay, I'm just going to talk to some bullshit person. You know what I mean? Like, I've met a bunch of them and they're not really there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But when you meet one and they're really there, it's amazing. You know? Like, you realize, oh, they're just human beings who are in this very unusual position. Yeah. Where they're incredibly famous and, you know, they're famous in a very weird way. They're famous for pretending to be other people. Yeah. And acting and films. And, you know, you know them so well. Yeah.

As, you know, a fucking pirate or whatever. Or you. We met in 96 and have stayed friends up until now. And he has stayed friends with my girls, my grandkids that he knew since they were, you know. Yeah. And now as adults. I mean, he takes phone calls from my one granddaughter. Yeah, he's a genuinely good guy.

Before his trial was going on, I had a conversation with him for half an hour on the phone in Hawaii. I was in Hawaii drinking margaritas in a lounge chair. And my friend Doug, Doug Stanhope, calls me up. He says, hey, Johnny wants to talk to you. And me and Johnny were on the phone for like a fucking half an hour. Yeah, I used to keep in contact with him when he was in trial.

what a crazy trial yeah but that trial showed you who he really is yeah who he really is and who she really is too yeah and it just shows you you know i didn't know her you're lucky i tell you a funny story is that do you know vanessa no this is one excuse me well i mean i met johnny he was first going out with uh kate moss and uh they all love my wife so then he was uh

One day he calls me and he says, hey, I'm going to be in Joe Stonecrab. I'm going to be in Miami. He said, meet us at Joe Stonecrab. I said, okay. So me and my wife go down there, and there's Johnny, his father. His father's a great guy. You know his father? No. His father's a great guy, too. Really good guy. And I had met his father during the shooting and the movie and everything, right? We hung out. So, uh...

He introduces us to Vanessa, right? You know who she is, right? His ex? Who's Vanessa? Pepper Deasy. She's the French singer. That's the one whose kids are by. Yes, his ex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now my wife wouldn't... When she ate, she would not touch anything. She had to eat with a knife and fork, you know? A real de madigan, right? Irish. So...

You know, you got Joe Stonecraft. What are you going to do? You got to break him. You got to touch him. So Vanessa says, I like him, but I don't like to touch him. She broke all the claws, everything, took all the meat out so my wife could eat him. With a fork? With a fork. I'd say, only you could do that, you know. Only you could get somebody to, you know.

How long did you know him before he played you in the movie? I didn't. You didn't know him at all? No. Did you get to meet him before he played you? Oh, yeah, yeah. We met... I guess we met maybe three or four months before we started shooting. Did he want to talk to you about the life? Yeah, I spent time with him. What's amazing about him, Joe, is that he just...

It's like a sponge, you know? Like, we would just go out, go to dinner, go to lunch, hang out. And the next thing you know, he's talking like me. He has the same rhythms. Every once in a while, I clear my throat. He's clearing his throat. He was walking. We were on set one day, and my mother happened to be on set.

And Johnny's walking away, and she's calling me. Wow. Because... The way he walked. The way he had that little gimp. Yeah. I mean, he's just amazing, you know? And he doesn't, like, prod you about stuff. He just absorbs it. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. He's something. But I've stayed in touch. I've stayed friends with Chrissy, his sister. You know, I've stayed in the whole family, basically. Yeah.

How strange was it to watch the finished product, to watch this version of your life, of your story? It was. Now, for you and your audiences, I just want you to know in that movie, I never slapped my wife in real life. Why'd they add that in there? Ask the director. Those motherfuckers. Because that wasn't in the script. Oh, Jesus Christ. Ask the director.

I went bullshit. You know, it's funny because Johnny used to pick me up every morning to go to work. And here's the kind of guy, I tell you the kind of guy, we'd stop at a bodega and he'd run in and get the coffee and hard rolls. I said, no, I'll go in. I mean, you know, to get to just a regular guy. And that day was kind of like...

Wasn't himself on the right in and then I saw them rehearsing that scene. I went I went I went ballistic man I went ballistic, you know, you'd you know, you know that the directors the captain of that ship, you know They always have to do something like that. Yeah, they always have to add some bullshit that didn't really happen. It drives me nuts Yeah, so but what are you gonna do? Yeah, so

How, after the case is closed, what is life like for you? Like, how do you, I mean, you had to be worried about your life. Yeah, well, what happened is once they found out, the commission put a $500,000 contract on me. And the New York office of the FBI went to every boss and told them they better not think of, you know, trying to cash in on that, you know.

So I was working out of Washington, out of Quantico, and families moved. I think we got like five or six moves since then. You know, you try to back everything. The Bureau was good about that. But, you know, what's in the back of your mind is not the legitimate, legitimate gangster thing.

You know, it's some cowboy that thinks, hey, you know, God, there's not any. Get on their good side. There's not any Brasco. You know, if I take him out, we're in. Right. And I don't think anybody was going to pay anybody $500,000. Probably not. You think the mob is, they don't use their own money for, you know, for squat. Yeah. But that's the only thing that you worry about is, you know, some cowboy, you know. How long was it before you stopped worrying about that?

Well, you never really do. I mean, you know. Even to this day? Yeah, yeah, you know. Because there's always somebody that thinks they're, you know, they're going to be famous about doing something. Right. You know that. Right, right. So, but it was more prevalent back in the, you know, back in the day, you know. Most of my guys now are, I don't know any of them that are alive, actually. Did you keep in touch with any of those guys? No, no.

My whole thing in undercover, Joe, was I never arrested anybody that I worked against. My whole thing was I did the undercover. You make the arrest, I'll see him in court. I'll see him in court. It was funny. You know, you always sit down with the—after the case is over, you sit down with the profilers and everything, and they say, well, we think this guy will turn this guy—

Not one of my guys, when I say my guys, ever became an informant. Really? Never. Wow. One of the prosecutors in Milwaukee, he said, I think we should go talk to Rogerio. I said, are you fucking crazy? I said, you walk in there and mention my name, he'll go crazy. He said, exactly what happened. Exactly what happened.

Yeah. They, he did 15. He did 15, never cracked. The only reason they let him out was, uh, uh, he had, uh, they found out he had, I don't know if it was gum cancer or whatever. And then he had one lung taken out and then he had cancer in the other lung. So he had like three or four months to live. So he was such a pain in the ass and for the department of corrections that, uh,

They let him out. He died at home. But he didn't crack. Of course, Sonny had a shot. He said, no, none of them. None of them. They tried to turn all of them, huh? Yeah. They all went to the can. They all did like 15, 20 years. And Wilde is right. I mean, now, as soon as they put the last click on the handcuffs, they all want to talk. Now? Yeah, now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they all...

They all got hits under their belt, but as soon as they put those cuffs on them, you know, some of the guys, they'd do their time, but eventually they turned. None of those guys became snitches. What do you think happened to the culture of the mob where these guys started snitching? They didn't want to do the time. I mean, some of them did time. Some of them did seven, eight years, you know.

But then I think when they still, when they kept getting beat over the head, you know, they figured what good is it. And you know what? The culture of the mob has changed too. I found near the end, these guys didn't, to the old timers, this was like their life, you know. They were really committed to it. It was, the younger guys, it's a me generation, just like normal citizens, you know.

They want it now. Right. They don't want to, I mean, I don't know, like the old timers, they could cultivate politicians. They could cultivate law enforcement. These guys today, you know, they can't cultivate politicians and judges like the old timers did, you know. And drugs is a big downfall of the mob because now the guys start, some of them start using it.

But it's also, you can't keep secrets anymore. No. The only secret is when one guy's alive. Yeah. Especially with cell phones. Yeah. Internet. Yeah. Surveillance. Surveillance is so easy now. Everything you do is surveilled. Every phone call you make. You're on camera. All day long. I read somewhere or heard where the average individual is on the camera over 500 times a day.

Just walking around wherever you go. And then your phone's listening to everything you say. Everything. Yeah, and everybody has a phone. Everybody. Yeah. Everybody. Today, and that's what's tough in undercover today is building your legend because it's hard to do 100% backstopping. Right. How can you? With the internet. Right. Also, Google image search. Yeah. Put your face up there. Oh, that's that guy. Exactly. Yeah. Instantly. Instantly.

So I don't know. I mean. How much of the mob even exists now? It's still there, but, you know, they don't control what they did. They don't control every label. You know, when I was in it, they controlled everything. I mean, they controlled unions. They controlled every bit of. Vegas. Vegas. They controlled every bit of.

commodity that ran. In fact, when I was in it, they still had the skim out of Vegas. Balistrieri had offered me with Lefty, he had offered me the job of running the skim from there to Kansas City. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's how tight I was with the Badanos that

You know, that was before the thing went south, you know. That's so crazy that you got in that deep. Yeah. Were you the deepest that anybody had ever infiltrated the mob? Yeah, yeah. And everybody else that went in, you know, they had an informant. I had no informant. You just made your way in slowly. Yeah. And I wasn't a mark, you know, where I didn't have all this money.

Right. You know what I mean? Right. Where they could exploit you. Yeah. Right. So, you know. Crazy life, Joe. Yeah, it was. When you look back on it now, does it seem real? Must seem insane. Well, you know, sometimes I think I can't believe I did that. Right. That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. And then other times, you know, I say as deep as I got, I could have done more.

Like how? Well, I mean, if I would have got made. Right, right, right. Do you wish they had gotten you made? Only because I had spent so much time. I spent six years, you know, and then to cap it off with getting inducted. And not only that, think of the feather in the cap of the FBI. Right, yeah. The mafia inducted one of our own, you know. I mean, that would have really kicked their ass. Yeah. But, you know...

It's funny that you think back and that's the thing that you wish. You know, it's kind of crazy. Yeah, but still in all, I mean, you know, it's like. It's the ultimate fuck you. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, you fuck me. I mean, we pretty much decimated them anyway. Yeah. But. It is kind of crazy when you think about the chokehold that the mob had. Nothing moved in this country without them getting a cut of it. Wow. It's crazy, all right.

Did that all come about because of prohibition? Is that when it all started? Is that when they really got a stranglehold in this country? Yeah, yeah. Isn't that crazy? Pretty much, yeah. Because that's exactly what's happening right now with the cartels. Yeah. It's the same fucking thing. Yeah. And it's like we never learn. No. Yeah, it's history repeats itself, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think our problem is we don't,

We don't study our enemy. Remember what I said before? Anybody I went against, I always knew who they were. I wanted to know your structure. I wanted to know how you treated each other. I want to know all the crimes you're involved in. I want to know how violent you are and who your violence is against. I want to know your history.

how you became what you are as far as a criminal organization. And we don't do that. I mean, I'm talking about as a whole, you know. I don't want to get into politics, but you got to study your enemy. You got to know your enemy. The art of war, right? Yes. The art of war. And I tell all my, in any undercover class, you got to read that book, The Art of War.

Because it was written thousands of years ago, but it'll serve you today. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of crazy when you think that. People don't change that much over time. No. Human nature is still the same. Yep. And the same strategies apply. Yep. Yeah. It's nuts. And, you know, and like I said before, the only thing that's changed in Undercover is

It's building your legend because of the internet. Right. Nothing else has changed. Now it's got to be almost impossible. You ingratiate yourself the same way. Yeah. You know, you do all that shit the same way. Well, especially if someone had any kind of social media before they got in the bureau. Yeah. Or become a cop. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everybody's kind of ratting on themselves. Yeah. Yeah. It's nuts. Yeah. But...

But there's other ways they catch people now, obviously, with all the surveillance. Did you make a bunch of notes? No, I just wanted to... Did you make sure you covered everything? I just wanted to mention my grandkids set me up with an Instagram. And they said, make sure you mention the... Did they run it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe, forget it. I just about could turn my phone on, to be honest with you.

And The Real Donnie Brasco. And then a cameo page. You have a cameo page where you send people cameos? Joppa Stone. You just go into Joppa Stone. Yeah. The Real Donnie Brasco. How do you spend your time these days? There it is. The Real Donnie Brasco. That's from January, Joe, when he flew in for the dinner. Yeah. Yeah.

That's great. Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm kind of right now, I'm writing, I got another book writing on the Bananos and spend time with helping out with that Southern California gang conference I mentioned. It's really, you know, like I said, I've been with them for 14 years. I've actually been doing it 12. One year COVID and one year I was sick. And these guys are, these coppers that run it,

They all do it on their own time. There's no administrative. Nobody gets paid. Really? Nobody gets paid. They do it all on their own time. And the conference usually gets between 700 and 800 people at each conference. And like I say, it's held once a year. It's held in San Diego, but it's the Southern California Gang Conference. And if anybody's interested...

You have to be a police officer or in law enforcement, you can be Department of Corrections. Their email is scgc.inquiry at gmail.com. Go on and get information about it. Or if they want to attend it, you know, that's how you can sign up. Okay. And they have great speakers every year. Yeah, I...

And some of my merchandise, you can see I have a shirt here. It says Southern California Gang Conference. Donnie Brasco. We sell these shirts. I give 100% to the organization. I don't keep any. And the mugs we sell and stuff, I donate. My books, I...

sign books there and I give all the money to the organization. I don't take anything either. Because these police officers don't take anything, you know? Their time is donated. So, yeah. It's, you know, who's there to help you when your spouse or, you know, one of the other dies in the line of duty? So, yeah. Yeah.

So you were telling me before the show that all that money gets donated to the spouses of people who were killed in the line of duty. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, help them get started after. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a great conference. Like I said, they get between 700 and 800, either a police officer or Department of Corrections. You know, anybody that's in law enforcement is eligible to attend it. And it's a week. It's in San Diego. Yeah.

Well, Joe, thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it. Hey. What a crazy life you've had. Thank you. Thank you. I'm really excited to get the invite. And my grandkids were, whoa, you're going on Joe Rogan? They all love you, man. Well, tell them I said thank you. They all love you. And thank you for being here. Well, my pleasure. It was my pleasure, too. Thank you very much. Thanks, partner. Thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye.