Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Mike Tyson's Stolen Bike Leads to Major Bust Inside the Chinese Auto Theft Ring

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Mike Tyson's Stolen Bike Leads to Major Bust Inside the Chinese Auto Theft Ring

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I go, well, where is it? He goes, it's in Horatio's apartment. I'm like, great, give us Horatio's apartment. We're going to kick down his door and get the bike back. He goes, well, he goes, it's kind of problem. It's in pieces. He's bubble wrapping it, and he's shipping it to the Dominican Republic. It's like, all right, we're going to turn this into a shipping case.

This is probably the summer of 1999, and Audi A6s are just vanishing off the face of the earth. They go into the shipping containers, they let the air out of the tires so the vehicles sit low. Then they build a wooden frame above it, so they're able to hoist and put in another one or two cars. So each shipping container contained between three and four stolen Audi's. You've got this international shipping case, right? And the NYPD is so big with 40,000 members. We were able to pull Chinese cops from their assignment. to use for wiretaps because our Asian guys spoke Mandarin Cantonese.

I get into this Dodge Caravan. I sit on the milk crate, right? I grab the steering wheel. I pull the door shut and then I realize I'm trapped. He had taken out all the interior panels of the Dodge Caravans. So now there's no door handle. The dashboard is missing. So I threw the thing in drive and I took off.

So now I'm getting chased by a police van through the 4-7 precinct. So they do an old gypsy trick. They bring an attractive female They knock on the door And they put the girl's face in front of the door He sees the girl He opens the door The precinct cops

Go running into the warehouse Now the Chinese had a false wall When you first come in So you couldn't see the cars Unless you went in through the gated area So they come in And they see a bunch of Chinese guys And they go

Do you have cars in here And they go no They go where's your boss? We'll go get him The Chinese guys take off the out of the back Hey, this is Matt Cox. I am here with retired NYPD detective Vic Ferrari. And he's got a super interesting story about, well, actually, he's got a lot of different stories,

a lot of interesting stories. But one of the ones we're going to talk about today is a, it is an auto theft crime ring, Chinese auto I watched the document or the the yeah

so check out the video sorry let's go back to the beginning like where were you born in in New York yeah I'm a Bronx kid born and raised in New York City grew up in a lower middle class

family in the Throgg's next section of the Bronx went to Catholic high school as a kid all I ever wanted to do was become a New York City police officer when I was a little boy my mother would take me to the movies across the street or around the block from the movie theater was a police station. And I was more interested in the police cars and the cops standing outside than Herbie

the love bug. Right. And I used to watch the cops how they walked around the station house, how they used to rest their hand on the butt of their guns. I used to look in the police cars and look at the equipment. I'm like, I want to do this. Like, this is what I want to do. By age 10, well, a little older, 10, 12 years old, my friends and I would sneak into the local

post office and steal FBI wanted posters off the wall. and we go around the neighborhood conducting manhunt. So picture a bunch of little boys walking around like the little rascals. Going into a deli, there's some poor construction worker wants to get his sandwich and I'm sizing him up for a guy in a bank robbery in Alabama. Look, we didn't get our asses kicked. By 20, I took the police exam. By 21, I went into the police academy

and had a wonderful 20-year career with the New York City Police Department. Was, I mean, were your family in the police? No, no, my mom was a housewife. My dad was a butcher. my younger brother became a correction officer on Rikers Island for several years and then eventually he followed me into the department a couple of years after

but no I didn't come from a cop family Okay So should you say you were 20 when you 21? I took the test of 20 I got hired by I was 21 Okay And you were the police academy

And so how does it work with the With the police department Like at the sheriff's department They start almost everybody in the jail Right Where do you start with where do you start and so the new york city police department uh you take the test and i mean they really back then they really vetted you i had to go for psychologicals physical exams drug screening

once you clear all those hurdles you go into the police academy police academy at the time was in lower manhattan with six months of training when you're done what you're six months of training you go to back then it was field training so every borough would send 50 or 100 rookie cops to a field training unit. And New York City Police Department has between 30 and 40,000 members. So we hire in bulk. So a small police academy class can be 250 recruits. I was in a mid-sized class. I graduated with 1,200 police recruits. And then you're sprinkled out into these field training units. I wound up in the South Bronx. And basically back then, it was baptism by fire. So you got sprinkled out on these footposts in the South Bronx. And this was in 1988. You're in the throws.

of the crack epidemic in New York. You got a lot of burned out buildings. There's crackheads wandering around. Nobody knew how to combat this. And I just remember standing there. Like, yeah, I grew up in the Bronx, but like not the South Bronx. I don't speak Spanish. People are coming up to me with their problems.

I'm like, am I going to be able to do this? But after a while, you figure it out. You call the sergeant every now and then you don't want to piss him off. The training sergeant comes. He directs you every now and then you'll get in a car with a sergeant and another rookie. And that's when the fun begins because now you're going on a, all the crappy jobs, you're going on all the DOAs, you're going on the bad car accents, because before you get to a precinct, they want you to be able to handle certain calls

that come up. They don't want you hiding in a corner and then you go to a precinct and you don't know what you're doing. Right. After my six months of field training, I wound up in the 42 precinct, which there's a movie called Fort Apache the Bronx with Paul Newman, and it's about this burnt out police station in this really bad neighbor. And that's where I got assigned as a rookie cop. And I was there for about six to eight months. And there was a lot of old timers there. It was a dumping ground because you either wound up in that precinct if you were a rookie cop and had no family on the job,

like a rabbi or a hook to get you to a nicer precinct or you would screwed up somewhere else. And a rabbi is the guy, a guy, somebody in the police department that kind of helps direct you. Yeah, it could be another cop who's got a lot of juice, a lot of pull. It could be a supervisor. It could be a politician. But like I said, my dad was a butcher. I didn't know a person. So I sat there for six months.

And it was a weird place because you had a lot of Vietnam veterans that had screwed up in different places and they got dumped there. And it just was a depressing place to work. So a boroughwide unit opened up. I put an application and I went there. I was never afraid to raise my hand. Right. And they said, who wants to volunteer? Which is the first thing you're telling you the police department.

If they say volunteer, don't raise your hand, I always raid my hand. So, I mean, were you, like at that point, were you, what was your goal? Like, I mean, some guys are like, look, I just want to be a, you know, I want to be like a beat cop. Other guys like, no, I want to work homicide. Other guys like, did you have a specific goal in mind, like a career trajectory in mind or just, I just want to get a paycheck and I enjoy the work? You're right. And there's a couple of different mindsets with that.

Yeah, there's a lot of cops. They just love patrol. They want to be in the same place driving around in circles for X amount of years. They want to know where their lockers are. They want their steady days off. They have a familiarity with the precinct. They're comfortable there. And God bless them.

because those are the guys doing God's work. They're answering dirty calls a night. They're eating in the car. Sometimes you don't get a meal hour. It's all sorts of tour changes. I always wanted to be a detective. And I wanted to go to the auto crime division because I grew up in a neighborhood

where we probably had per capita more car thieves than anywhere in the country at the time. And growing up as a teenager, I worked in a gas station. And you always had guys blowing through the gas station with stolen cars. And back then you had the GMs. I would see the bandanas tied around,

the steering column, broken steering column. punched out door locks, broken vent windows, and they were always asking us to fix the car for him. You want to buy parts for the car. So I knew what to look for, and I was always picking off stolen cars once I went to patrols. I knew I wanted to go to order that. How long did it take for you to? It took 10 years because I had stops in a plane closed unit, anti-crime unit, where you're driving around it on a car. You're not under cover, but you're going after robberies and burglaries and progress in a precinct. And I put in for narcotics and they say, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. I wound up in the Manhattan North narcotics division.

And again, this is in the throw of the crack epidemic. And it was... What year? What years were the... What is... You're saying crap. That's early, that's what? Early 80s, right? No, no. Well, I got hired in 87, but I mean, crack was alive and well when I went into narcotics, 93, 94. I was working in Spanish Hall in Manhattan North, which is 59th Street to the Bronx border. And I mean, we were doing day in and day out buy and bust operations. And a buy and bust operation works like this. You're in a team with four or five guys. And one day, the sergeant comes up to me and you.

And he says, hey, Cox, Ferrari, you're getting on. Okay, he's going to hand us a $100 bill. We're going to go to a deli or store. We're going to break that dollar bill into fives and tens and singles. Then we're going to photocopy all the denominations. That's called pre-recorded buy money. This way, when we lock somebody up, it makes a stronger case if they have the pre-recorded buy money in their pocket right we're going to give that money to the undercovers usually two or

three undercovers they take the money me and you were going to ride in a call with a supervisor and we're going to have this little suitcase and it's called a kell receiver and we're going to be able to listen to conversations from the undercovers in case they get robbed or they're going to give the clothing description of the bad guys that just sold them drugs so back then we used to call it sets because you don't so we had done intel we know what they're selling on each corny you You don't want to send your undercover to a crack location asking for heroin. That's a quick way to get pointed out as a cop or get hit in the head with a baseball bat. So the undercovers knew where we would go in these different sets.

The undercovers would park their car. They would step off. The primary would make the buy. The guys following him, they're called ghosts. They're there to make sure no one messes with the undercover or in case the dealer steps off the set after the undercover turns his back. we make sure usually that the guy's selling after he sells the undercover sells to two or three people to make sure we don't want to burn the undercover like i just sold to this guy and he got arrested yeah right we want him and sometimes we'll watch him sell to a couple of people and we'll grab the people

that bought the under cover gives the description we roll in we grab everybody you handcuff everybody you separate their properties you put it in a manel envelope you call for the p van a prisoner van that's usually a panel truck that pulls up you put two individuals for however many you lock up at that location and you go to the next set and the next set till you have 10, 15 people. And it was just mass produce arrest. And I remember working in narcotics. I always had a cold because you're locking up street people in New York. Right. You're not locking up kingpens at first. So everybody's got hepatitis, they're homeless people, they're sleeping outside, always had a cold. You know, I was always afraid you're searching people with heavy duty drug problems. Right.

Always afraid of getting stuck with a needle because everyone back then was a heroin addict and it's like You got a spike on you. Tell me now so, yeah, I don't get stuck. So after a while, I said, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to go back to patrol. I went back to patrol. And you're not seeing the, it's not like you feel like you're making a difference, right? Like it's a non-stop.

Isn't it just non-stop arrest, arrest, arrest? Like, what you do. I mean, it's almost, it is shoveling. I know what you're saying about shoveling sand against the tide, but there are a lot of decent people living in these neighborhoods. And they got a right to go to the store with getting screwed with or, you know, and people are realizing, like in New York, a corner like 110 and Lex in its heyday.

On four corners, you might have had 80 people involved in the drug trade. You've got two or three guys pitching different stuff. You've got lookouts. You've got a manager. You've got an enforcer. Usually a guy with a gun to make sure the spot don't get ripped off. You got lookouts. And then you got people popping off that train.

And I've seen it. Crack lines of people just getting in line. The guy will come out of a building because you don't want to hold too much drugs because if the cops roll in and you get grabbed with a brick. yeah yeah or a whole bunch of crack it's you're gonna get screwed so a guy will come out quick boom boom boom they just hit that line and the line just disperses um so how so you were saying you went you basically wanted out of that yeah i put in i went back to patrol and uh i had worked for a sergeant that was a car guy and he got me into the borough auto loss in a unit which was like the triple a

affiliate like a minor league team for the major leagues and basically you're just driving around with a computer car and you're picking off car thieves. And you've got to remember, New York City in the 90s, we were averaging 150,000 stolen vehicles a year. So it was like shooting fish in the barrel because you had a little computer in the car and you're running plates and it was like putting money in a slot machine. And if you knew what you were looking for like I did, it increased your odds and you're running plates and boom, something comes back stolen and you're off to the races. Okay. So what, I mean, what was like, what was it? Well, what's you know what I'll give you're just finding the cars like at some point you know

it ends up becoming a bigger bigger than just knocking off one car at a time right like I mean yeah sometimes working rings or well not an order loss in order loss they just wanted us to pick off the pain in the ass car thieves right guys that'll hold on to a stolen car more than a couple of days and there's two groups of people that will hold on to a stolen car for a couple days teenagers right because stealing a car is a right of passage crime you steal a the car. You pick your girlfriend up from school. You're taking it to the movies. You're driving your friends around. They're driving the statistics because it's a pain in the ass. And then kids will figure out how to steal one type of car, like a Toyota Corolla back in the day they

was so easy to steal. They're all doing it. And then before you know it, you've got this problem where there's getting 10, 15 Toyota Corolla is getting stolen in like a one mile square area because all the kids are doing it. The other group of people that will steal a car and hold on to it for a while, usually drug addicts. And they do that because they're homeless. They're going to sleep in the car. They get a couple of bags of dope. They go to a park.

They park in an out-of-the-way place. They get high. They fall asleep in the car. They use it to get around. They commit other crimes with the car. They're easy to catch too because they usually steal older, beat-up cars. They're not going to steal something. A, they don't know how to steal a nicer car.

And B, they're going to stand out driving around in a really nice car. So they kind of steal what they know. and we would pick them off in the auto loss in a unit. But we did get a couple of search warrants, but my main objective was to get into the auto crime division because they were the guys going after the chop shops. They were the guys going after the professional car rings and all the sophisticated scams.

That was my ultimate goal to get in there. How long did that take? I was in the auto crime division. I had just hit my 10th anniversary. So, yeah, I had about 10 years on the job, and I did my last 10 there. Okay. So what, I mean, what were some?

of those cases? It depends. We did sophisticated scams. We would lock up car thieves and then we would flip them and try to get information to go after, get search warrants or major operations. I was assigned at first to the Manhattan North team. So that's Washington Heights, large Dominican area. And we used to laugh. We used to say we didn't know how the Dominican Republic didn't sink with all the stolen cars and heavy equipment they were shipping overseas because it just was unreal. I mean, these guys were stealing cars to chop them, chop up the parts and sell them at body shops and junkyards. They were tagging, changing the VIN numbers and resale, and then they were shipping them out of the country. So, I mean, they really, I mean, Washington Heights, they just had some really

heavy-duty prolific car thieves. And we had an informant, my partner did, who was, I mean, top-level, informed. We couldn't keep up with the guy. He was giving us so much stuff. It's like we were just catching up on paperwork from one arrest and going after a another rest. To give you an example, he calls my partner one day and he goes, you're not going to believe this. He said, but me and Horatio, Horatio was this prolific car thief at the time. He goes, we're going down the west side highway and we see Mike Tyson driving on a Dukati. Yeah. He goes, so Horatio goes follow him. Mike Tyson goes down to the Jabbit Center. There's a convention or trade show. Tyson gets off his motorcycle, signs a couple autographs and goes into the show. Horatio jumps on the back of

Mike Tyson's bike, which it takes balls within itself, breaks the ignition. And back then a Ducati, I'm guessing, was about $35,000. And he took off with Mike Tyson's dukata. I go, well, where is it? He goes, it's in Horatio's apartment. I'm like, great, give us Horatio's apartment. We're going to kick down his door and get the bike back. He goes, well, he goes, it's kind of problem. It's in pieces. What do you mean it's in pieces? He goes, he took a bar immediately. He took it apart. He's bubble wrapping it, and he's shipping it to the Dominican Republic. He goes, actually he's got like three motorcycles in his apartment right now. He goes, I'll call you with the shipping company.

So, like, all right, we're going to turn this into a shipping case. Does he not want you to bust his buddy? No, he used to rat him out all the time. He was going for a bigger thing. We were going for a shipping angle. Well, why is he cooperating? He's already, is he in trouble and trying to work all this time? The way my partner got a hold of him was years before I came around, my partner was on patrol.

He had chased him into a building and up a flight of step. And when he caught him, he had nothing. But in the stairwell, there was some cocaine. And he knew he threw it. Right. But he didn't put it on him. He just took the drugs, brought it back to the precinct and vouched his found property. And that guy always remembered that, that he didn't try to flake him or say, hey, that's your drug.

Yeah, I saw you throw that. Yeah, yeah. So years later, my old partner is detective in the auto crime division. He runs into this guy. And he says, you remember him? He goes, yeah, yeah. He goes, you owe me. He goes, yeah, I do, blah, blah, blah.

He goes, you ever get into trouble? Here's my card. He goes, okay. A week later, he gets caught trying to steal a motorcycle, and he's already done time. He doesn't want to go back. So he calls my partner up, and that's how we started working with him. Okay, okay. So he calls my partner up on a weekend, and he says, hey, you guys want to make overtime?

Like, it was funny. He knew our lingo. He goes, you guys want to make overtime? My old partner goes, what are you talking about? He goes, the ship and Mike Tyson's bike tonight. So we think it's going out to Newark or Red Hook Brooklyn, one of the ports. He goes, no, he goes, it's going out of JFK. It's getting air shipped.

He says, they're going to drive out to the shipping company and it's going to go on a cargo plane. It's going to the DR. So everybody went out there and Horatio and a couple of guys show up in a stolen van. With all this stuff, motorcycles bubble wrapped and crates and everything and busted them at the airport. Mike Tyson, I wasn't there the next day, but Mike Tyson was upset because he was compensated. Well, no, he wasn't compensated. So if you have comprehensive insurance on your car motorcycle, if it gets stolen, after 30 days, they cut your check. Right.

If it gets recovered within 30 days, you get your car back and they'll pay to fix it or put it back together. And from what I remember, Mike Tyson was not happy because, you know, he was over him. He's a wealthy man. Yeah, yeah. He didn't want this bike back in pieces. Or he's just now he's got to figure, find somebody. Right. He doesn't have time for this.

Right. I'm going to do this. This is just a big pain in the ass. I already got another bike maybe or I've already spent the money. Whatever. This is the Mike Tyson one. That's a good TikTok. Sorry.

No, you're good. Yeah. So what, what? You want more scams? Yeah, yeah. Like, listen, here's the thing. By the way, you might want to make a note if you want to cut this. But like, like, I mentioned on the phone, like, like, I don't.

like we're not working on like a 30 minute schedule like if it takes two hours like if we talk for the next two hours we talk for the next two three hours like you know what I'm saying like don't feel like you have to rush through anything no I'm glad yeah I was I was I that's what I was nervous about because you just did with your with your childhood you just like right through okay so sorry no it's I because I usually I give a speech but I don't think I kind of I not speech I usually have a thing like listen I'm looking for an hour if it's two hours great if it's more than that even better like Like, I'm perfectly, I don't want to be here for four hours. No, no, I got you. I got you. But yeah. Yeah, I'll give you a couple of good scams. Yeah. That story was good.

You liked that one? Yeah, I, I, I, I'm making notes. I'm like, yeah, that's going to go into the intro. Yeah, that's a good doubt. Waits I tell you about the two nuns that stole Mother Superior's car. Yeah. Two nuns. Oh, my God.

Immediately. So just ask me to say, what are the scams? Oh, yeah. I'll stop rolling into them. The Mother Superior makes me think of there's a famous picture of like three nuns sitting around smoking cigarettes. You know what I'm saying? No, they were young. They were young and attracted, believe it or not.

You're not going to believe the story, but. Yeah, so what other, do you have any other? Yeah, we got plenty of scams. You call them scams or like, what do you mean? That's what we used to call? Well, I mean, you have car thieves that ride around at night with tools, right? Back then it was a screwdriver or a slaphammer, right? Dent puller.

Now you've got high-tech guys, but not everybody is mechanically inclined to steal a car. And it's just as easy to steal a call with a pen and a phony check as it is riding around all hours of the night looking for a car. You know, unfortunately, like I've seen like, you know, gone in 60 seconds. There was a movie called, I want to say it was called like Manhunter or No Man's Land. It had like Charlie Sheen was in it in the, probably in the night air. 80s or 90s. Repo man? No, he was stealing like Porsches and I'll send it to you.

I actually used some footage from it on a TikTok the other day. But it just made it look so sexy. Like you're going up, they walk up. They're in the car. They pull out a little device. The car starts up and boom, they drive off. And it just always looked so, you know, but the truth is it's probably grunggy. Listen, I, for the department,

with search warrants, I stole a couple of cars to put, yeah, I took a couple of cars in the middle of the night so they could install surveillance equipment in and put the car back. I'll go into those stories too, yeah, that was fun. It's being on the other side of the coin, like in the middle of the night and you're in front of some guy's house, and

you're afraid he's going to come out and blow your friggin' head off. So you were asking me about scams. One day I'm sitting in the office, and the parts manager at the BMW dealership, it's like their flagship store on 57th Street. He calls up and he says, I got a situation over here. I'm like, well, what's up?

He says, there's this guy, young guy, he goes, he says he's a car dealer. He comes in once or twice a month with a title and a driver's license. He says he purchased this car and he wants a key made for it. He bought the car at auction. He goes, he's been coming in for months doing this, two, three times a month. I says, well, so what's the problem? He goes, problem is, he goes, he comes in today for this car. He says, I'm putting it in the system to put an order in.

And I realized that that seven series BMW is sitting in my garage getting an oil change and it belongs to some guy in New Jersey. I said, yeah, that could be a problem. I says, fax me, I'm showing my age, fax me all the VIN numbers of all the keys that he's ordered, right? So he sends me, it's like six or seven cars. I start running the VIN numbers. Stolen, stolen, stolen, all from this town in New Jersey. I think it was Gutenberg, New Jersey. So I said, when is he coming back for that key?

stay after tomorrow. I says, all right, I'm going to show up the morning of and we're going to work at a plan. He goes, okay. So my partner and I show up at BMW a couple of days later, and I throw on a jacket, a BMW jacket, and I tell the manager, I go, listen, I says, when he comes in, just pointing him out, but then go in the back. I don't want him seeing you next to me because he's going to figure it out. I don't want to burn you. He goes, okay. He reminded me of that undertaker and the godfather, the nervous wreck. He was just like a nervous guy, the parts manager guy comes in big thick Dominican kid comes in right he goes that's him i said okay go in the back goes in the back guy throws me the work order really arrogant he goes hurry up i don't have time i said

okay so i give him the key and he gave me a 50 or 100 it was the first time i had to make change since i worked in macdonald and i says hold on a second you're a hundredth customer so when i came from behind the counter my partner slid up behind him we put cuffs on him the manager comes out and goes good job. The guy looks at him, he goes, you ratted me out. And I'm like, what did I tell? Like, I says, what did I tell you? Like, just stay in the back. I'm not trying to get you jammed up. No. So what winds up happening is I'm going through this guy's pockets. He's got receipts to Mercedes and Range Rover. So we go to both those places. Same thing. We were able to put like probably about 12 cars on him. He made bail. And then he gets caught while he's out on

He gets caught up in Washington Heights with his shoebox with 30 grand and a small amount of drugs. So you can't explain where the money's from. And I think it was like misdemeanor drugs, but, you know, driving around in a shoebox with 30 grand and you don't have a job. Yeah. You got problems. So I think between everything, he probably got about four years. Okay. Well, I mean, you don't ever find out like, like, you don't ever try and find out like, hey, you know, what are you doing with these cars?

He was shipping them. He was shipping them. He was shipping them, and he was lazy, too, because he lived in this high-rise building in New Jersey, so what he would do is he basically used the parking lot of his building as his hunting grounds. So what he would do is he'd go into the parking lot or the underground garage of his building, and he'd write down the VIN number of a car he wanted to steal. Then he'd go across the river because he figured whoever's getting a car that lives here isn't going to the BMW dealership across the river, and actually that's what tripped him up. Someone had brought that car in there. And that's, yeah, he was shipping them out of the country. So I, I, real quick, I just want to, I, I had met a guy in Atlanta when I was locked up.

And I remember they called him Mighty Mouse. Have I ever talked about Mighty Mouse before? Little black guy worked out like shorter than me. Like he's like five foot two, five three. But Bill. Stack. Yeah. Even had a little, a tattoo of Mighty Mouse on his arm.

So he was there. He was already on federal probation. And his, what he was doing was, and I may have this messed up. Like I might not have it exactly right. But he was actually going out and he was having guys go to another state and get VIN numbers. Yeah. So he'd get another VIN, but an exact, let's say a Mercedes, like a $150,000. Mercedes or something. So he's got that VIN number, exact car, color, everything. Then he would go

to the local dealership and he would walk in and he'd say, hey, this was back when they used to mail out, you were pre-approved, they would mail out a check. You remember back in the, in, let's say, whatever, 2000, early 2000s, they'd mail out, your bank would mail out a check saying you've been approved. Yes. There's a check. And it had multiple parts. Like it had the check and And then it had a perforated edge. You could tear it off. And he would walk in and go, listen, I've been approved up to, you know, whatever, $200,000, you know, from my bank. And they would look at it and they'd go, and it was some bank, by the way, that, like, he'd completely made up.

And they'd look at it and they'd go, oh, okay. And he'd drive a car and come back. He'd go, I want the car. And he'd negotiate a little bit. And then I'd say, okay, well, you know, here's what I've got. He goes, they would look at it. Now, of course, it's the same one connected, same kind of car that was three states away that he already had a bin number for. So he said they would sit there and they'd look at it and they'd go, okay, okay,

no problem. You know, let me go ahead and call the bank because it has instructions on what to do. And he would, they would call the bank and his girlfriend would answer the phone. And she answers the phone and she's like, you know, hey, this is, you know, bank of so, or whatever. And he had it down. Like literally, they had, they could put him on hold. They could do a whole thing. And she'd come back. She'd say, can you give me the VIN number for the vehicle? They'd take the VIN number. They'd say, yes, he's approved. They'd go, how much is the vehicle? And they tell him and they'd say, Yes, he's approved for that. And they'd say, well, how do we get our money?

They say, well, we can do one or two things. We can, we can mail you a check or you can actually fill out the check that you have and just deposit it. And they'd say, typically that's what we do. But if you want, we can mail you like a cashier's check. That'll take about, you know, within 10 days, you'll get a check. And they said, well, I can just fill out this check. Yep, absolutely. So they would then process the whole thing.

Give me the, you know, the registration. They would do everything. The paper was everything. He said, just like I'd gotten a loan for the bank. He said, they have no idea. He said, and they would fill out the check. And they'd say, yeah, we're going to fill it out. And I want you to see.

He'd go, yeah, yeah, okay. And then they give them, by the way, one of the things they would do is they say, okay, so it is going through. Yes, okay, great. Fax me this. Fax me that. And they would give like a code. They'd give them a code. He said, because I've been through this before.

So we had the whole thing down. So they fill out the check. He gets everything. He gets the keys. He gets everything. He gets a registration. he gets a he's got um you know a temp tag everything gets in the vehicle leaves then goes and cracks he had a car guy that would crack open the window that would replace the vim number not a real one he said

i didn't have the actual embosser he said but back then it was he said you couldn't my law sticker right he said it was like a sticker so they had the sticker they did it on the side he goes we don't do anything up underneath it but they changed the sticker and then he said he would somehow or another they would then show they then filed a um they filed a fake title title with the state because they know that car for three or four two states away it will never be registered in this state he says so we would file that vehicle that so now i've got a now i've got um a title in the name right to that vehicle with this he goes as long as they never get pulled over or pulled the sticker or run it or whatever.

Then they would sell it to a drug dealer. Yeah. And they would sell them to drug dealers. And he'd been doing this for years. He had six vehicles parked in front of his $1.5 million house in Atlanta, Georgia. Now, this is almost 20 years ago because I was locked up. This was when I'd first gotten locked up. And he was selling it for cash.

His girlfriend got upset with him for sleeping with some girl and called. the cops said this guy's on probation he's got six stolen cars in the front here's what he's doing just ratted him out and he got arrested now he's sitting there and he's like yeah i'm probably going to do five or six years um but so does that make sense to you like he explained it i was just like oh there's so many so in the old days it was called tagging so in the old days to get a stolen car with a change bin number it's usually a guy that goes out and gets a second hand license and what those guys do is they go to the different auto auctions and they buy wrecks. So say for argument sake, you come to me and you go, hey, Vic, I want a five series

BMW. I said, all right, Matt, I can get you one for 15,000. That sounds good to me. All right. I go to an auction and I buy a salvaged wrecked five series, right? It's not coming back to life. Right. Really fucked up. I take all the VIN numbers off it, the public VIN, the door stickers, whatever identifying features I can get off that car. And then that goes to the scrap metal process. So now I have what's called a VIN kit. I have the title, right? And I have all the VIN plate, and I have all the VIN numbers. If you're smart, you steal the same year and the same color.

Right. Guys will get a VIN plate and a VIN kit for a 3-series BMW and then go out and steal an M3. Okay. Okay. What people don't realize is a VIN number is a 17-character mathematical formula. Right. And there's a lot of things in that VIN number. the country it was manufactured, the motor size, the year at the plant, the sequential production

number, options, every VIN's different and you can't just make one up because it's like Stephen Hawking created this thing and it won't conform in the computer if you just invent a VIN, it'll flag. If you say it's a four door and it's a two door and it's going to be lighten that. One character off throws the whole VIN off and if you run it, it'll pop up and it'll say VIN does not conform to standard. So then what I'll do is, hey Matt, come pick up your car. You give me 15,000. And people know, because A, the price is way too low. And B, I'm going to tell you, if something goes wrong with this car, do not take it to the dealer. Right. Especially BMW,

Mercedes, they keep great records. They're going to plug it into their computer and they're going to go, even if you reprogram it, they're going to know something's up with the car. They're going to call the police. So oftentimes, that's why these guys bring it to their guy. If you drive by and you'll see a brand new car in this place that, you know, you wouldn't bring your Hyundai. Right. something's not right. Then, so that takes money to do that because you've got to buy the salvage. You have to get rid of the salvage. What you were describing started probably around 2000, in 2000, it's called cloning.

So cloning is, I have a brother that lives in San Diego, California. I tell him to take pictures of VIN numbers of cars, of cars I want to steal. So he'll take a picture of a brand new Jeep. What I do is I go to a paper guy and I create a VIN kit. I create all the stickers, a phony title, right? I go out and I steal a Jeep, just like the one in San Diego, California, right? And I'm going to put all those numbers that I created over there. You need a phony out-of-state title because if you take, so if you're in Florida and you create a fraudulent Florida title,

chances are they're going to catch it at the counter. And even if they don't catch it at the counter when it goes up to Tala. they're going to look at it. They're going to get a title of a car. They're going to invent a title from a state that doesn't come into Florida a lot. North Dakota. Maybe a handful come through the state of Florida, Hawaii, something ridiculous. It's fraudulent, but it looks good enough. And they probably have like a chart and they go, oh, yeah, yeah, that'll work. And that's how they get those through. But the way they get caught is, like you said, somebody rats or the car goes to a dealership or it gets sold to a third party or if someone car fax it,

you put it for sale, right? And the car shows it's in two places at the same time. We used to get that all the time. Someone would say, hey, you know, I'm looking to buy this car or if this guy's got it for sale on Craigslist. And as we speak, it shows that it's registered in San Diego, California. So we might take a ride with that person to take a look at the car. And sometimes that's how we would pick off a lot of the clone cars.

Yeah, I thought, well, anyway, I thought what he was doing was like, I was like, wow. Oh, it's brilliant. And he had made a ton of money on it. And he was, he was, he was, actually, that guy was a super character too. I mean, he, you know, like I said, just the name. Yeah. And he went by the, you know, this is, you know, you meet these guys in prison. And they, he introduced himself, hey, Mighty Mouse.

Like, my. And it wasn't like, I was like, why do they call you Mighty Mouse? I immediately. Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, absolutely. I could totally see that. But everything. You know, he's, and he's, he's ball and like, he's not even trying.

to be to be um you know uh below go you know right below the radar he's he's living in a almost you know one and a half million dollar house he's got the cars parked in front i mean he's just a lunatic um he would be a great interview um you should reach out to him i don't all i know is mighty mouse so you can find him he's i know he's not registered of mighty else anywhere i'm sure you might have he probably has an instagram as mighty mouse um yeah i should look him up um but So what's what's the other one? What's the, tell me the nuns? Tell me the nuns.

The nun story. So early in my career, it's a Saturday morning. I'm in uniform. I got like three, two years on the job. And my partner are driving around. And there's two nuns in their habits standing on Broad when they flag us down. And in that neighborhood, you had two colleges. And you always had fraternity and sorority pranks to get initiations to get in.

So they were always doing crazy crap. So we pull up to the nuns and we're really skeptical. And they're two young women, like, you know, pushing dirty. and they're crying. And I'm like, what's wrong? And they said, we took Mother Superior's car without authorization. He said, what? They belong to a convent in Westchester County.

They took Mother Superior went out of town for a couple of days. They took her car. They came into the Bronx to do a little shopping. And they parked in like this pizzeria parking lot that's got one of those signs. If you're not eating here, we're going to tow your car. Right. I mean, they don't get out much. They're nuns.

They come back. The car is gone. So I take them to the tow yard and you and I'm sure everyone else, people in the towing industry do not have a heart. No. It's F you pay me and I was like, they're nuns and aren't you Catholic? And he's like, 100 bucks. I said, all right. So I went back. I says, I'll get to the money. So I went into my locker. I had like 40 bucks and I bummed the other 60. This is before ATMs. And it was a Saturday. So the banks weren't open. I give her the 100 bucks. And she says, I'm going to pay you back. I said, well, you don't have you. No, please. give me your phone. I'm going to pay you back. I said, all right. So you know, anytime you lend somebody money, it's a pain in the ass getting back, even from a nun. So I'm living with my parents because I'm in my early 20s. And one day my father, who's a smart

ass, goes, hey, Sister Samantha called. I said, all right. He goes, Sister Samantha. And I go, Dad, she's not a Motown singer. I go, she's a nun. He goes, what? Why is a nun calling? I says, don't worry about it. I call. I call the conference. I call the conference. I get her on the phone. And she says, well, you just can't come to the convent. She goes, I'll meet you at a park. Real cloak and dagger. I'm sitting on a park bench looking at ducks.

She comes like, it's like field of dreams. Like she came through like some shrubbery. She comes out quick. She's looking around. She hands me an envelope on $100. And I said, all right, well, you know, you didn't have to do that. I appreciate it. And I said, I kind of ask you.

I says, you're a young woman. I says, you're happy with the choices you made? I mean, you went into this really young. And she goes, are you happy with the choices you made? They said, oh, yeah. He says, I'm good. And I kept in touch with her for a while, and I haven't talked to her since. And I'm sure I could find her.

Like, you're looking for my emails. I might see if I can find that none. You think she's still. Who knows? I mean, that happened in 91 or 92. I have, I know, I hate to do this. I mean, I'd hate to do the whole, listen, I got a story. Go ahead.

But I actually was coming back from Puerto Rico. it's funny this uh these guys flew me out there to have lunch with them and uh i was flying back and this this woman i was sitting next to we were uh you know on the on the plane we started talking and she's i was going to say she was older but she's probably younger than me anyway we were probably both in our 50s at the time this is i just got out like literally i just got out of the halfway house i've been out like maybe 60 days 90 days and you went to porto Went to Puerto Rico on a, yeah. Like, you can't leave go anywhere for like 60 days, right, like on probation.

And I called and, but it was for work. They were paying me. It was an entrepreneur group. They were like six or seven of them. They asked me to come and have lunch with them. They paid me. So on the way back, and we were talking and she was saying, we're, you know, I told her, oh, she said, what do you come back from Puerto Rico?

And I told her, boom, oh, what do you? So, and I explain exactly what's happening. This is what's happening. And I write books and, you know, I wrote a bunch of true crime. And, and so, we're. talking and she said i've got a story for you and i went what's that she said listen to this she goes my whole family about three years ago did ancestry dot com you know our ancestry dot com yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's that ancestry thing they all did the blood testing right the DNA and her i'm sure i'm gonna

botch this but like literally like her uncle or her her brother like was was adopted or something along those lines so basically one of her family oh i know a cousin she had a cousin that had been adopted and it turned out that his DNA was linked to some guy you know like hey this is my father so he goes and he contacts that person with that he had passed away and but his and it's like and then he had kids so talk to the kids and the kids were like well you were how old are you they're like well he was a priest at that time and and he's like really he's like yeah and and he was a priest like I forget where but let's say it was Chicago or something so he goes oh he said really so yeah he was he was a priest and and so what happened was this he goes to where he had been a priest at that

time and they end up finding like the groundskeeper or somebody like so there were a couple people that were still there and they were like oh I remember and the one guy they ended up talking to and I'm all stream yard it turned out he had had an affair with a nun the nun they shipped to a special place where she had the baby and gave up the baby

for adoption now used to be like I have a brother and two sisters and they were all adopted through the Catholic Church they were born to unwed Catholic women

that had children and then they were adopted because that's how it used to be you could do it through the church now I think it's there all through the state right yeah I think so So anyway, that's what had happened.

So he was one of those babies. Then the nun went back to another. They didn't send her back to the same place with the same priest because they knew what had happened, obviously. So they sent her somewhere else. Then she ended up leaving. No, I think he left. And then like a year or two later, she left. And then I think they ended up getting married and having children.

And these people were. or his, now his relatives, his other brothers, you know, half brothers or brothers and sisters or whatever, ended up being, and I want to say that's how the story goes. I forget, but I remember, listen, I was riveted. Oh, and it's a good story. I mean, I was like, oh, and she had all the details, how he found out this, how he ordered this. Like, this guy was like a detective. He, he uncovered this. He got this piece of paper. He got that one. He talked to so-and-so. So-and-so was dead, but he talked to her children. Like, this took place over six months. And I was like, oh my god like that's an amazing that would be an amazing story and i was like let me give you my phone

number i'm begging you to give my phone number to your cousin and she's like we've been telling him he's got to write a book i'm like i want to help him write that book i never heard from her again but still yeah the nuns the you know i think a lot of them they go into it maybe they go into it you know i think maybe it's not it's like like a lot of things it's like going in the military or going in to be a let's say a police officer where you think it's going to be super exciting but the truth is you get in there and you're like yeah there's there's there's moments of excitement but it's a lot of paperwork or no you're right there was a kid i was in the police academy with great guy and i thought he'd make a great cop after six months he was like this

isn't for me it just and it wasn't that he was afraid he just he just didn't like it it just wasn't for him and it's not for everybody right so you got the money back from the nun i did get the money back from the nun but you you were asking about scams um right just about probably this is probably like 99 2000 there was this scam where um you have you had had these um pakistanian guys and what they would do is Mitsubishi had this program where no money down defer the payments for a year so they're just asking to get robbed so what the pakistanian guys would do is they would create driver's licenses and get people's credit history right and i'll go into how you can get a good driver's license under a phony name next but so they go to

Mitsubishi, everything checks out, sign and drive. So say back then a brand new Mitsubishi Montero was $40,000, let's just say. Guy drives off the lot with the $40,000. Montaro brings it up to Washington Heights, sells it to a Dominican guy for $5,000. Dominican guy drives it around for a while, puts it in a shipping container, sends it to the DR, and sells it for $20,000. It's still a deal. They're getting $20,000 off. And they would sell it the drug dealers over in the Dominican Republic. The way we caught onto it was, we caught the lazy ones. They held onto the car too long.

Right. And Mitsubishi was getting burned because what happened was six months a year later, the repo guys start going around looking for these cars, and they realize the address doesn't exist. The person says, that's not me. But it's been a year. Yeah, and it's been a year. And the cars are gone.

So we caught a couple of the guys, and then it went federal, because a couple of the guys were holding on to the cars longer than they should have, and we were able to pick them off. And the way you get back then, the way to get a drive is like, so say I want to be Matt Cox, right? There's always a middleman and a DMV employee. So what you do is you go to the middleman, and the middleman's got a friend or relative that works in DMV.

So I go with the middleman to DMV. He points me out to the clerk behind the counter, right? I fill out the application for a learner's permit, as Matt Cox right now when you go to DMV to get a driver's license or a permit you've got to present birth certificate utility bills social security number you got to prove who you are right and in New York at the time they weren't making photocopies of this so you would go up to the counter with this app I would go up to the app to the counter with Matthew Cox's information on it and either have bogus paperwork or no paperwork and the clerk would just circle things that

she saw it but she didn't then she I clear the first Now all I got to do is pass the permit, take the driver's exam, and I get mail to me a New York State driver's license with my face on it with all your information. Even if this person had a driver's license already, or they go to a state, like when I did it, because I've had like over two dozen driver's licenses issued, like I couldn't go to Florida. Did you get them printed out from a guy or you actually went to the DMVs and got him? No, I went to the DMV. Oh, okay.

I go in the DMV, but if I was, if I was going to be, you know, Vic Ferrari, I can't walk in if you have a driver's license in Florida because your picture would come up. You know what I'm saying? Like I, so I would go to Alabama or I would go to using that ID. Using that ID in another state. No, no, not the state using your information. So I'd use I'd order your birth certificate, your social security card, copy of your, a lease in that state. Not in Florida. I'd make a lease. You know, and then I'd get maybe I'd even register. to vote in that state, you know, or I get, you know, something else. Well, usually, you know, that's really all I need is social security birth certificate and proof I of residency, right? So it could be a utility bill or, and I would go into the DMV there and they can't, couldn't pull up the photograph of you in Florida. Like I'm applying here. I just moved here from Florida. I lost my driver's license in Florida. You know, I lost it in the move. I've been here about three weeks. I got to get a drive. I'm trying to open up a bank account. I need a driver's license.

They go, okay, and maybe sometimes I'd have to go take the test, you know, depending on whether or not, if they tried to pull it up and I already had a valid driver's license in the other state, sometimes they just give it to you. But if you don't, then they're like, yeah, you got to take the test. It can't tell you how many tests I've taken. So, but yeah, in Florida, it would pull up your picture and they'd be like, hold on a second. Go get Jimmy in the back and he'd come up behind me and arrest me. Oh, yeah.

So with the Pakistanians, was it? Because in New York, when you order, when you go in and say, hey, I lost my driver's license, they'll issue a new one, but they make a notation of it. Right. So you'll be able to see one, two, three. Like how many times? I don't remember. That's going to be 20-something years ago.

I know the Pakistanians definitely had the credit histories because that's how they were able to clear that hurdle for Mitsubishi finance. Yeah, you're approved, sign and drive. Now you got, I might have two stories confused. But, no, I was going to say in Florida, I would get like my own drive. got my own driver's license issued multiple times and it would say duplicate yes duplicate duplicate like he would like they would keep the duplicates because I think they realize that it's going to get out of hand is not right why do you have three driver's license issued in two years like something's wrong when I worked in autocrine we get a phone call from a couple of detectives that worked in a major case

narcotics and they said our undercover undercover our confidential informant I mean he's really good to giving us drugs but he's got this scam going on and DMV, just as I laid out for you. He knows the middleman and a couple of DMV employees. Would you guys be interested in? I said, yeah, we'd like to meet him. So we go up to Washington Heights. We're in the backseat of this call with these two detectives from major case, pouring out. Real cloak and dagger. It's the middle of the night. It's like 8 o'clock at night. The undercover gets in the car, takes off his hoodie. He introduces himself. He explains the whole scam. And I said, well, you know, we'd like to have a couple of our undercovers meet with you,

go into DMV, get them licenses, and we're going to find out how deep this goes in this department of motor vehicle's office. Would you help us with? He goes, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thanks to two detectives. He steps out of the car in the rain,

puts the hoodie on. So, you know, we're just shooting the shit the four of us in the car, myself, my sergeant, in the two major case detectives. All of a sudden, one of the detectives' phone rings, picks up the phone, it's the CI. And he goes, yeah, yeah, where?

That guy? Okay, thanks. hangs up the phone he goes you're not going to believe this and we go what he goes you see the guy that just walked past our car carrying it looked like a delivery guy carrying a bag full of food said yeah he goes the CI knows him he's a courier he's going to the pathmark parking lot he's the delivery guy he's got weight in that bag what's weight in that bag drugs drugs okay drugs not chinese food yeah yeah wait so he goes would you guys mind tells me and my sergey goes would you guys mind hanging around with a helping us grab this guy go yeah no problem so we follow him in the car we

lay back, goes into this busy pathmark parking lot, it's pouring rain out, goes to the back of this green Honda record, opens the back door, and just slides in with the bag. He's not in there 30 seconds. Comes out without the bag. He steps off. Now he starts going up 204th Street. So I asked the detectives, I go, you want me to jump out? I'll grab him.

He's got the money. He says, no, he says, because he just passed the CI. If he gets grabbed, he might put two and two together. We'll get him in another time. We want the wait. I said, all right. So we're able to cut this car off in the parking lot It's a guy and a woman from Trenton, New Jersey

They bought a kilo They were bringing it up to Trenton to whack it up, right? So we got them sitting on the curb We opened the bag, there's a kilo And the two detectives who made your case Are looking at each other And you can tell something's wrong And they say, oh, lieutenant's going to give us a lot of shit for this

And I go, what do you mean? He goes, they really want us making arrests Five kilos and more. Do you guys want to take this arrest? So I looked at my sergeant, I go, I'll take it. He goes, we're already on overtime. This is going to take like eight hours to process. All of the ten, it's going to break our balls.

The two, the two, wait. None of that should be a concern. The two perps on the sidewalk, the guy and the girl start motherfuckering us. They're like, I can't believe this shit. You two just locked us up with a keel of Coke. You can't figure out who's taking us to jail. It's actually pretty funny. I was going to say.

So who did you take it? No, the major case. My sergeant wouldn't let us go for it. What do you do? Give them the, do you tell them to get out of here? No, no, no. They took the arrest. Okay.

They took the arrest. But I think it was their supervisor didn't like surprises. You know, he wanted a whole field team and everything set up. Certain guys are like that. They don't like things done on the fly. I wonder if I was going to say, I wonder if those two, did they put together the guy that just gave us the fucking kilo? What, like, why did they think they got pulled over? Coincidence?

Well, they know they were set up. Yeah. You know what I mean? They drive all the way up from New Jersey. A guy drops off a kilo. And they've done this before because the guy got right into the car. He knew the car. It's not like he looked in the window and tapped on it.

He just went right up to that car and got right in and were right out. So that had been done before. So yeah, they probably figured it was, they probably figured A, it might have been the courier or B, the courier was being watched or their phones are tapped. You know, they don't know from what angle it gets you. It's like, you know, you find water, you come home and you find water in your house. Well, where did it come from? You know what I mean? Is it coming from the ceiling?

Did it come in from the floor? You've got to try to put too. with you together. So what does somebody get for a kilo? How much time do they get? I locked up early in my NYPD career. I did a car stop. They had three kids in the back seat of a cab.

And we were getting a rash of cab robberies. And when they drove by us, I saw one of the young guys' face. He was leaning over the seat. I guess he was giving the guy directions, but it looked like he was robbing him. So we make a U-turn. We go to pull over this gypsy cab.

He starts blowing red lights because now the guy's in the backseat to tell him the cab driver. Don't stop for those cops. We'll kill you. we finally get the car stopped in traffic part and I run up to the backseat of the cab and they're passing around a shopping bag no one wants to hold this thing

and there's four kilos of coke in it and I if memory cert I mean this is 1990 I and the Bronx it didn't go federal it was three or four keys I think they all took pleas to like three to life so what does three to life mean

so three you're eligible for parole after three right and then you're on lifetime parole can they get off lifetime parole like if they're good no they're just fucking you're you're in purgatory so you and do you do you do you in the state do you pay like do you pay for like in the state of florida if you're on probation they have you pay your probation fee in the feds you don't pay a fee that i don't know okay i never been on probation or parole i never got that far um okay uh there's a funny story with that arrest So I go to the precinct, I go to the, this is a really good story, I go to the precinct, and it's like I won the Stanley Cup.

I'm parading around with these kilos, everybody's taking photos of me, this is great, you're going to work in narcotics. I'm a young cop, everyone's blowing smoke up my ass. Now I've got to process these arrests. Coke goes downtown, the bodies go downtown. So that night, I had to go to the courthouse and meet with a district attorney to draw up charges. So I get down to the Bronx courthouse, I got a little bit of time. And that neighborhood, once court closes for the day, you know, most of the court, it's a ghost town. It's no real place to eat.

But they had just opened up this food court across the street. I'm like, great, get something decent to eat. I'm in uniform. I go into this little restaurant. I get some Italian food. I'm on top of the world. I'm eating this Italian food, chicken palm and spaghetti. Next thing, you know, my stomach goes.

I'm like, I got to take a dump. Like bad. And the bathroom across the street in the courthouse is a dungeon. No toilet paper, usually. I'm like, oh, look at this. The food court. It's going to be like going to a cathedral. It's brand new.

They just built this place, right? I go into the men's room. It's empty. Take off my gun belt. I hang it on the hook. I drop my pants, getting ready for a lift off, and I hear the bathroom door kicking. And it's a bunch of teenagers.

And they're hitting the hand dryers. They turn it on the sinks. They're laughing. They're beating the crap out of each other in the men's room. And then it gets quiet. And I'm saying, why did they get quiet? Did they see a pair of legs under the floor and figure out there's a cop in here or maybe they just left it just got quiet and yeah i'm a

cop but i'm really vulnerable with my pants down yeah ankles right one of the teens runs into the next stall jumps up on the toilet and looks over and sees me i look up and he goes to grab my gun belt oh hell no i jump up with my left hand trying to pull up my pants right my right hand i grab him around the neck and i pull him now he's really got my gun belt so now i let my pants go to the ground and it's a hockey fight. Now I'm punching him, let go with a gun belt. His friends run into the next storm. They're pulling his legs.

It looked like something out of a cartoon. And you know those shitty aluminum walls in a men's room. Like, it's bucking. Like the wall is going to collapse. Finally, he lets go with a gun belt. Gunbelt hits the floor. They run out of the bathroom. I put my pants on.

I put my gun belt on. I grab my radio. I go charging out in the food court. Ghost town. There's like a 300 pound porter buffing the floor with his Sony Walkman on. So I go up to him, I go, Poppy, I go, did you see a bunch of teenagers? No.

And I write in my book, I'm like, what should I have done at that point? Call the police on myself? Right. I would have been the laughing stock of the Bronx. Everybody would have said, see that guy over there? That's the guy, I mean, cops talk. So I kept that story to myself until I wrote one of my books. And that's a chapter in my book entitled Embarrassing moments.

Right. Because, you know, most people in their books like to paint themselves as a heroes. But, come on, everybody plays the fool from one time or another. And that was definitely mine. do you want to take a break where are we at right now about an hour do you want to go to the bathroom

do you want to yeah I'll take a break for a second so our queens so the auto crime division is 120 detectives and our main office was in Queens and then you had a satellite office in the Bronx that covered the Bronx in Manhattan and we had a Staten Island office but the meat and potatoes of the division

was out in Queens There's a section of Queens called Willets Point. It's right near where the Mets play at City Field. It's right on the water. And that neighborhood is all junkyards, body shops, glass places, engine places. So anything for a car is there. Well, John Gotti's son-in-law basically was in charge of that area. And if you wanted to open a business there, you had to deal with him.

So what our queen's office did was they set up a sting. They go out and they rent an empty junkyard. They put a trailer in there. They fill it up with salvage vehicles. They put in a couple of detectives as undercover's to work there. You got a guy, another detective is the owner. And within a couple of weeks, they get landed on. And Gotti's son-in-law comes to them and says, you just can't open up and do business in here without dealing with me.

So basically, the auto crime division was paying him to operate there. So basically, he runs the whole area. he shakes people down for cash yeah you just can't you just can't go in there and start up a business we're in we're in tampa floor we're in florida like that's yeah you're acting like you know of course like i could go open a business down here and never talk to anybody like yeah like yeah this is like sections of queens where you couldn't open up a deli because you'd be in competition with the local warlord and you know they'd burn the place down to the ground so paying him this extortion money also opened up other doors so then we realized that you could only use one sanitation company

and if you own a junkyard um when you you just can't chop up a car it's got to be done on a concrete slab they don't want the waste oils going into the ground so the waste oil is supposed to be collected and separated and then a company is supposed to come and collect these waste oils and dispose them properly well that was a scam we learned because what was happening was this woman owned a waste oil company, she would come around once a month, you'd give her 100 bucks and 200 bucks, and she'd give you a piece of paper that she's collecting the waste oils, and it's going right into the ground. So this was going on for about a year and a half, and this, you know, getting all this intelligence, getting indictments ready, and someone, a story leaked to the New York papers

that the Willits Point section is being looked at and there's going to be a major case takedown coming. So now everybody's on edge. Who's ratting? Who's, who's, who's, who's, who's, the informer. How does the paper know about this? And I'm not, I don't remember if it was Gotti's son-in-law or was another one of the mobsters. They get nervous and they start calling in legitimate business owners that are dealing with him like, hey, you better not cooperate or are you snitching or if you get, you know, you better get amnesia if you get sent to get calls of the grand jury. So they brought in two of these guys that own businesses. They get pulled into this trailer and as they're getting smacked around and getting a ton of lashing not to cooperate, they had two

of their guys take their cars while they were inside and crushed them into cubes so after they came out and got smacked around they went out to get their cars and they were cubed so then they had to go and report their car stolen which i think they got locked up for insurance fraud because they were cubed right so yeah that case came down um again i was a bit player on that case but um it was interesting to say the least and i think he got eight or nine years federal what's god he's uh what's his what's his what's his name uh cousin what'd you say it was a son-in-law son-in-law oh yeah i don't again it wasn't my case it's so funny it's like it's like um like your son-in-law like your daughter married a guy like couldn't even married a legitimate guy or do they immediately marry marry the daughter and bring

him in or is it just he's already a wise guy and you know i don't know how that i don't know how that world works um as far as getting married or different families but i i mean i'm i'm sure it's similar to cops where you date another cop's sister or this one's father's a lieutenant and you're the family depending on the family some of you know you date in some lieutenant's daughter's like oh Jesus Christ my daughter's dating a cop I don't want this or oh this is good you know I guess it depends on the guy or girl um so what's uh what's what's what's the what's the one that I watched oh the Audi A6 case yeah yeah yeah that was a big case it was an international shipping case so this is probably the summer of 1999, and Audi A6s are just vanishing off the face of the earth.

And, you know, New York City, you know, we're averaging, like I said, at one time, 150,000 stolen cars a year. It's usually, I mean, it's usually the Honda Records, the Toyota Corolla's, because those are the most cars out there. They're most involved in accidents, and then people need parts for them. So they're stolen the most, right? But Audi A6, it's an unusual car, and we'll lose in like 30 cars a month. How much are it? What did they cost? What's an Audi?

Oh, back then? Probably 30, $40,000, maybe a little more. I mean, this is 20, 23 years ago. And what we find out is they're getting stolen in New Jersey. They're getting stolen in Connecticut. They're getting stolen in Westchester County. And what was unique is when you've got a rash of stolen cars, the bones are going to turn up. You're going to find them stripped in lots.

You're going to pick off guys bringing them to the scrap metal processor, you know, the pieces of them left. You're going to arrest guys driving them, just vanishing off the face of the earth. So we knew they were getting shipped. So we start reaching out to different police agencies. And yeah, we got a problem. I lost 10 cars this weekend out of this dealership, 10 cars out of that dealership. So what winds up happening is one of the thieves gets... Are these all pretty much brand new?

Within a year or too old Audi A6, silver and black That was the order And this guy gets locked up In Rockland County It's another county about 30 miles north of New York City For trying to steal a BMW He's on lifetime parole down here in Florida

He does not want to go back So he starts spilling his guts The Rockland County police call us And Westchester County so we all get there And the guy lays out He says listen He goes, I'm involved with this organized gang of guys. He goes, there's a Jamaican guy. There's this guy, Mario. He goes, and there's about

10 of us. He goes, as many Audi A6s as we can steal. We parked them on the Bronx for a day or two on the street, make sure they cool off, make sure they don't have low jack or GPS. He says, then first thing in the morning, we drive them out to Brooklyn, and we parked them by this park. He says, I've only been in this warehouse once. He goes, but most of the time, Mario and Dean say, all right, go back. And they take them. cars and they bring it to this warehouse he goes and i think the cars are getting shipped out of the country he didn't know the whole piece but he knew the players involved so i'm writing down what's this guy do where's this guy live and um one of the thieves this guy fausto gonzalez uh it says well what

about him he goes he kills people he goes he kills people he's killed a lot of people i go how many people is he killed because i'm i'm trying to figure out what this is full of shit right yeah yeah i mean the car we that's a huge huge relief. It was a huge leap, but I mean, the car angle made sense because of the volume of cars. That he knew about the Audi's. But then I thought he was just throwing an extra log on the fire to buy himself some wiggle room to get out of this lifetime parole he had down in Florida. And I says, well, how many people is he killed? He goes, how many fingers and toes do you have? So, all right. I'll take that into consideration. So he goes to jail. We didn't spring him.

and but he was able to give us phone numbers which which was huge so we were able to go why didn't you spray why didn't you say okay put him back on the street you wanted to check everything out first or he had a violent he had a violent pass down here in Florida

and down in Florida did not want us letting him go okay he just they said well if his information proves to be fruitful maybe we can work something out but they did not he had a domestic violence thing he had a couple of things going that were violent and the state of Florida was like don't want you

We want them back here in Florida. So with the information he provided, we were able to go up on the middle man's phone. So the scam work like this. You had a Chinese X, they say X, I don't know, Chinese military intelligence officer. He's living in Brooklyn. He meets up with this Jamaican guy from the Bronx. Jamaican guy is in the car business. He's a car thief and he knows all these car thieves, just runs with a gang of car thieves.

So the Asian guy tells him, I want Audi A6's 25 to 30 a month. Can you provide this order? The Jamaican goes, great. The Chinese guy pays the Jamaican guy five grand a car. The Jamaican, depending on his relationship with the thieves, pays them between $500 and $1,000 a car. And this is really lucrative. I was going to say, that's a nice.

Yeah, and it takes next to nothing to steal one of those cars, and you're just parking in the street, and you're taking it out to Brooklyn. You don't even go into the warehouse. What the Chinese did was they rented out this. warehouse on Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn. It was big. They had Chinese nationals inside. And once they would square the block a bunch of times to make sure no one was watching the cars and they would drive two or three cars in. First thing in the morning, a lot of traffic

on the street. It's in an industrial area. It looks perfectly fine. It's not like something in the middle of the night or clandestine. They do it 7, 8 o'clock in the morning. A lot of traffic on the street. The cars go in. They close the gate. They drive the stolen out. Well, first they clean them. They make them in showroom condition. If they broke the lock, they replaced the lock. They clean them. They vacuum them.

I mean, it's like a wholesaler. Right. They go into the shipping containers. They let the air out of the tires so the vehicles sit low. Then they build a wooden frame above it. So they're able to hoist and put in another one or two cars. So each shipping container contained between three and four stolen outies. Yeah, they showed the, in the Mastermind's episode, they showed it right on top of each other.

Yeah. Yeah, it is really sophisticated. And then they had a phony bill of laden, right, for Customs, in case Customs was to look at the container and look at the paperwork. I mean, if they opened the container, they would have saw the card because they weren't changing the VIN numbers on them. And how, like things leaving the United States aren't really, are they expected? They're not really expected, right? They are. They are. But Customs is more concerned of what's coming into the United States.

So it's really up to, if they're shipping them to China or Bangkok or where, wherever they're shipping, they're the ones who are really in charge of checking out, make sure that this is. And you got to remember, China really wasn't on, China was not really on our radar as, you know, as a competitor or adversarial at that time. So they would have a trucking company come, a legit trucking company. They would pick up the containers that were loaded with stolen outies. They would drive them out to Newark.

They got put on trains. They got railed across the United States. They went to Long Beach, California, got put on cars. cargo ships and sent out to Shanghai. And I mean, this was going on before we caught wind of it, probably a year or two before. So it was going on for quite some time. And there was just so many facets to that case because you got this international shipping case, right?

And the NYPD is so big with 40,000 members, we were able to pull Chinese cops from their assignments to use for wiretaps because our Asian guys spoke Mandarin Cantonese. Right. So we were able to listen in on those wiretaps. Then we needed Spanish detectives because most of our thieves were Spanish to listen to their phone conversations. And in the middle of this international shipping case, we quickly realized that our car thieves, in addition to stealing all these cars, or also in the murder for hire business. And they're bragging about whacking this guy and bumping off that guy. So I'm like, wow, we've got homicides in the middle of this.

So now we're trying to figure out based on, you know, we know they ride motorcycles. Is there anything with a homicide with a motorcycle? We're trying to pinpoint these homicides. And if that wasn't enough to keep them busy, what they go and do is one weekend, they rent a U-Haul truck and they go down to Virginia. And I don't know why they pick this place, but they pick a Harley Davidson dealership in Virginia. Commercial burglary, they cut the power to the place. They get in. They take a bunch of bikes, helmets, jackets, whatever wasn't nailed out on that Holly Davidson dealership.

They loaded up this big U-Haul truck. They bring it back to the Bronx and they put it in one of the guys' garages. And they're selling stuff piecemeal. In addition to getting, you know, between $500,000 a car, you think they would just stick to that. Right. They're knocking off Holly Davis dealership. So they're selling stuff piecemeal out of the garage. One of the neighborhood kids figures out, so-and-so has got all this stolen stuff in the garage.

He's not going to call the cops. So one of these teenagers, a couple of them go and they rip off the stolen stuff out of the garage. Well, the guy they ripped off was a stone killer who had bodies on him. And him and another car thief from that case go and kill this kid for stealing stuff out of his garage. How old is the kid? What do you mean? Teenager, 19, 20, something like that. He was young.

Okay. So now we've got a problem. Now we've got an active homicide investigation. We want to pull these two guys that pull the homicide, that pull this homicide, pull them off the playing field. without kicking the legs underneath this case. Right. So we were able to work with Bronx Homicide, tell them who was responsible for the homicide,

and they grabbed them. And luckily for us, that case didn't go to trial because it would have been, came out in discovery evidence. Yeah. Right, how we knew that they were, you know,

because they were bragging about it on the phone. So, I mean, there was so many facets to that case. The Jamaican guy was chopping cars in his garage in the back of his house. So one day my lieutenant says, me. I want you to go up on the roof of this building across the street at night with a camcorder and videotape because we knew he was taking in a stolen car. So, all right, I'm up on

the roof. It's hot Bronx night. You're hearing gunshots all over the place, right? Guy brings in this Dodge caravan. It sits in his garage. He's working on it for about two hours. Car comes out of the garage, goes up his block, and it gets dropped off. He drops it off under the train on White Plains Road, comes back down the block, goes into his house and shuts the lights. So my lieutenant goes, all right, he's in bed for the night. He goes, Vic, go up to White Plains Road and get that car. So, all right, boss. And we only had a skeleton crew work.

And it was my lieutenant and another detective arm up on the roof. I come down. I mean, it's a rough neighborhood. I got a hoodie on and a knapsack. And there's this Dodge Caravan sitting under the train on White Plains Road. No one's gotten into it yet. And it's running. So he left it there for someone just to jump in it and take off with it, right?

So I'm trying to figure out, what did he take off this car? What, you know, why did he steal it? Why did he dump it up here? I open up the door and I look and the seats are gone there's a milk crate and believe it or not this isn't the first time

I had to drive a car in a milk crate took the seats out right I get into this Dodge Caravan to sell? Yeah they took the seats out I get into this Dodge Caravan I sit on the milk crate right I grab the steering wheel

I pull the door shut and then I realize I'm trapped he had taken out all the interior panels of the Dodge Caravan so now there's no door handle the dashboard is missing right on top of that i'm like what is this he sprayed the whole interior of the car with wd 40 for fingerprints so now i'm like oh i got all this crap on me right i can't roll down the windows so i'm playing with the radio to tell my field team what's going on with

that a precinct van drives by and they give me a hard luck and i go oh shit and macy's doesn't tell gimbals like we don't tell the precinct what we're doing and then This police fan must have run the plate, and they're coming around behind me. And I go, oh, shit. And they're on one frequency. I'm trying to figure out the other frequency, and they're putting the lights on. They're going to run that plate. It's going to come back stolen.

They're going to tell me to roll down the window. I can't roll down the window. I don't look like a cop. I'm coming out that window. Right. They're going to break that window and drag me out that car. So I threw the thing in drive, and I took off. So now I'm getting chased by a police fan through the 4-7 precinct, and I'm on point-to-point radio,

which isn't over citywide. I'm telling my field team, tell that fucking 4-7 van to stop chasing me. I lose them. And I drive into a commuter parking lot and I hear them, like racing around. And I can't get out of this goddamn minivan. So I crawl to the back of the van covered in WD-40. I get on my back and I kick out the back window. And I come out the back window and I got glass all over me.

I'm covered in WD-40. My co-workers thought it was like the funniest thing in the world that I'm covered in all this crap. But that's just one of many things that went wrong with that case. but we really wanted that case to go in other directions we wanted to see if it was involved with the chinese government i mean we really had big plans for this case because you guys on the you picked up a um an intercept that they were only accepting the the gray and black vehicles and the what was the one what was yeah yeah it was only silk they only wanted outy a six is silver and black and we surmise that it probably was going to government officials because

one of the guys stole a green one or a blue one I forget and the Chinese guy and the guy Ken on the phone was like I'm not paying for that I didn't order that and it was it was funny listening to the phone conversations because some of them were funny like one time the Jamaican guy was on the phone with the Chinese guy and the Chinese guy goes you're bringing cars today and he goes no man he goes it's valentine's there me teams want to be out with the ladies and the Chinese guy I goes, I don't care about that. I want cars. So it was funny listening to like the different cultural differences.

But what blew up that case was they got greedy. So our main thief Mario came up with a plan to steal 10 cars at once. And he was, he used to be a parking attendant at this garage. So what he did was he goes, he goes, he goes to his friend in this luxury parking lot on the upper east side of Manhattan. And he says, you want to make three grand? The guy goes, yeah, he goes, this is what we're going to do. He goes, I'm going to show up with 10 guys.

And we're listening to this on a phone intercept. He goes, I'm going to show up with 10 guys tomorrow night. He goes, you give us the keys to the cars I want. I'll go around. I'll pick out the cars. He says, and we'll tie you up. We'll put you in the trunk of the car. Give me a half hour.

Once a half hour goes by, start kicking and banging the trunk. We'll put you in a car up front. The cops will come. And you just tell him it was a bunch of guys with ski masks. Right. Guy goes, yeah, three grand, no problem. We videotaped the whole thing. We had a van.

outside and filming it. We had cameras on the location in Brooklyn. The 10 of them come in. They weren't all outies, which I could never figure out because there was like three outies. There was a couple of BMWs. So maybe they had changed the order. So anyway, 10 cars go racing out of this parking garage. They're in Brooklyn. The gate goes down in Brooklyn for the night. 911 call comes. The 19 precinct shows up. They're taking a police report. That night on the phone, the main thief Mario is talking to was, I think it was his brother-in-law or his cousin, and he says, did you sweep the cars for LoJack? And the guy goes, yeah. He goes, no, no. He goes, they went directly in this time. He goes, you got to be sure. And he goes, yeah. He goes,

you're sure. He goes, yeah. He didn't. He didn't. Following day, guy wakes up, goes to the parking garage, finds out his car stolen, goes to the precinct, follows a police report. Police report activates the LoJack. So now you got a LoJack beacon inside our international. shipping location, pinging. So when you work in auto crime or vice or anything in organized crime, Macy's doesn't tell Gimbles. We don't tell the precinct cops because cops are curious creatures. And if they know that place is shipping cars or stolen vehicles, they're going to be driving

around and looking at it. And then you never know with police corruption. Who's on the take? Oh, yeah. Like Uncle Vito. That's Uncle Vito's store. I should give him the heads up. You never know if you ever Mike Dowd.

Yeah. Oh, did you, did you have them on your show? Oh, we'll talk about that later. That's interesting. So, um, the lowjack is pinging. The precinct cops go running into the warehouse. Now, the Chinese had a false wall when you first come in so you couldn't see the cars unless you went in through the gated area. So they come in and they see a bunch of Chinese guys. And they go, um, do you have cars in here? And they go, no. They go, where's your boss? We'll go get them. The Chinese guys take off the out the back. So now the precinct cops think they've saved the world. They've got these 10 stolen cars. They've got these 10 stolen cars. They're pounding themselves on the chest. One of our detectives calls up the warehouse and says, would you please get the fuck out of that? You just blow up our case and like, oh, oh, we didn't realize. Like, yeah, you just, so now we've got to round up everybody as quickly as possible because we know the Asians are going to flee the country. We know they're going to be gone.

We'll get all the car thieves, but they're going to go underground. That's going to be a pain in the ass rounding them up. So in the first 24 hours before all those phones are blowing up, hey, they just found a location. so everybody's rushing back to the office and everybody's getting photos and packets of who to pick up and where to grab because at this point it's all hands on deck for whatever reason

my partner and I were given two photos of two of the Chinese guys that worked in the warehouse and we didn't have my deed all we had was photographs and two of our Chinese undercovers had followed them one time from work to a street in Brooklyn but didn't know what building they went into

so we just had photographs so I'm assuming there's more than two Chinese guys in New York exactly so we're driving I'm I got his photos and you just need two of them can't you just grab any two Chinese guys like no you can't no you can't do that we're circling the block and my partner goes I don't know if this is anything I said but he goes but I just seen two Chinese guys walk out of an alley with suitcases I go where I slam the car fucking reverse right I drive up we jump out of the car and they're carrying suitcases and I'm talking to him doesn't speak a word of English and I grab

his chest, and I could feel his heart going really fast, real quick. And then when I grabbed his chest, he had a plane ticket to Toronto in his front pocket. So I said, these could be the guys. So then we called our Chinese detectives that were doing the wiretaps. They came over. That's him, that's him. So we were able to round everybody up. And the main guy, Minjin, Yang, he got 10 years for conspiracy. And that's the former military Chinese intelligence officer. And he's in jail with Mario when he tells Mario listen when you get out don't worry about this he goes you do your time he goes I got a brother in California doing the same thing so then that was another thing because we could never figure out if he was you know blowing smoke up his ass or there really was we could never

find a police department or a county out there that had the same thing going on so Mario the main thief was the getaway driver on a lot of these homicides with this guy Fausto so we told Mario listen Mario you're going away for the rest of your life you better start talking in for a penny, in for a pound. And he did, chapter and verse. He gave up all the homicides. And, I mean, there were wild stories. Like, one guy was the leader of the Savage Nomads motorcycle gang in Hartford, Connecticut.

And he lent another guy a lot of money to start a drug business. And then this guy from the Savage Nomads gets pinched. He does time. He gets out. And he goes to the guy that he had lent the money to. Well, I want my money back with interest. And I want you to support my gang. And that guy's like, yeah, all right.

And it was, you know, treating him like a lackey, blowing him off. So what this guy from the Savage Nomads did was to prove a point, he kidnaps one of his couriers, puts him in a storage facility for a weekend and torches him, sends him and rips him off and sends him back to, you know, the guy that he had lent money to and says, I'm not screwing around. Next time, you know, there's going to be bodies dropping. So, like, we can't have this. So they reached out to our guys in the Bronx.

And it was a contract hit. Fausto and Mario and a couple of the guys that went up there. They got the guy's routine. And what they did was the guy, the guy that loaned the money and put the contract down on him, called the guy from the Savage Nomads to have a meeting at his location. The guy showed up. And then when he left, they followed him a couple of blocks off the set. Mario rides up on the bike.

Fausto shoots him like 11 times. They take off. The bike goes to the Bronx. It gets chopped. Gun goes into a lake. But this guy, Fausto had killed so many people. He killed this old Spanish guy in Spanish Hall that owned a pharmacy. He got a tip that the guy was taking the bank receipts at the end of the day, killed him, just shot him, took the bag.

There was an unsolved homicide that went on for years, and that actually cracked the case. It was this Manhattan club owner and restaurant owner. He had just bought this brand new motorcycle. And what these guys would do is they would drive around in Manhattan on bikes, sometimes, you know, a guy on the back. and then if they saw a bike you liked they would pull up along if they surround you so someone just looking just looks like a bunch of guys

just pulled up at a light on a motor cycle they're back basically boxing you in and Fausto got off his bike he pointed a gun and he says get off the bike and the guy didn't get off the bike fast enough and he killed him and then Fausto couldn't figure out how to get the bike around the body

he just ran him over so between the federal we got Fausto convicted on a federal homicide up in Hartford And then the Manhattan DA's office got him for, I did with more. I mean, I think they cleared between 13 or 15 homicides, but they went after the real airtight cases. And he was convicted on 6th in New York County. How much does it?

What is a, what does a hit cost? The hitting, the hit in, that's funny. You should say that. The hit in Connecticut, he got paid $6,000. I know. Okay. Okay. There was so much, they almost killed a guy. So Mario and Fausto wanted to, because we got this debriefing, Mario. There was a guy up in Greenwich, Connecticut. That's big money. And the guy drove a Porsche. He was a hedge fund manager. And I think that they wanted to steal his Porsche without doing any damage to it. And they got the guy's routine. And the guy every day worked at this hedge fund. And every day he would come down 995 and he would park this Porsche. He had a spot in this lot. So what Mario and Fausto did was they stole a van. And they parked it next to his space.

And the guy, you know, comes into work, gets out of his Porsche, got his briefcase. And Mario and Fausto were standing there with motorcycle helmets on, pointing a gun at him. And they handcuff him, take the keys to his Porsche and leave him in the back of the stolen van. They took off. Yeah, I was going to say, that could have been worse. Well, Mario was so afraid because the job was just to steal the guy's Porsche. and Mario didn't want to be involved in another homicide at this point. So he said he unloaded

the gun and Fausto figured out that he had taken the magazine out because of the weight. And he said, don't ever do that with me again. And he was like, you know, all right. So yeah, these were really bad guys. And another aspect of that case was you had two cops got fired because

they were riding around with them. The motorcycle, I don't think they were out stealing with them, but they were hanging with them. And from time to time, you know, they scrape the plastic on their bike or they blow a motor. These guys were more than happy to provide parts and stuff for these two cops. And then what we got on the wiretaps was Mario or one of the other guys would call them up and say, hey, yeah, I just had a fender bender. I got this license

plate. Could you just give me the information? And these cops were smart because they didn't run the plate in their terminal because that would come back to them. Right. So what they would do is so in the NYPD, three, four cops show up on a call. You're up on, you know, you're up on an apartment somewhere. Hey, Matt, I don't have a 61 on me. Can you give me the keys to your car? I'm just going to go down there and get a blank 61 out of your car. They go down there, start up the car.

The terminal is already open and run the plate. And then Mario and his guys would have the address. Right. And they would go and steal the guy's car. They lost their jobs and rightfully so. Criminals are tricky. cops are tricky people are tricky in general um so what else what's going on after the a six case i just tell you the story with the nigerians in craigslist

sounds that that's a good that guys walk in a bar that yes that's a good story so we had these nigerians and what they were doing was they would troll craigslist for lex rx is it rx 330 what year is this uh 2005 2004 somewhere i think rx 330 right um i haven't been in auto crime so more so i know i know i'm going to get pegged on your your message board that's not the model but so anyway these nigerians they see a car for sale they call up the owner and they go i like to come by and take a look at it can i bring my mechanic sure show up well dressed mechanics under the hood he's asking all the right questions right can i take the car for a test drive, takes the car for a test drive. Great. Doesn't blink at the price. Would you take a bank

check? Yeah. Okay. I'll be back tomorrow. I'll go to my bank. Next day, the guy comes back with a cashier or a bank check. You know, when it takes the check up and he doesn't know what he's looking at and he holds it up to the light. He said, oh, this is good. He goes to the bank. He deposits the check. He hands the Nigerian guy, the title and the keys, right? Three days later, the bank's on the phone. It got past the teller, but it gets snagged. A guy goes and reports it to the police. In the meantime, the Nigerians bring the car down to this crappy car lot out in Brooklyn, right? And the guy that they're selling the car to is a shifty character.

They give him this story. This is his story. That, you know, he was from Nigeria. He's got to get back home. He'll take 50. Now, the car's worth $25,000, the book value. He'll take 15. He'll take 10, right?

Gives him the title and keys, right? Great. A couple of days later, he comes back with another car and another car. So at this point, the dealer knows goddamn well what's going on. So what he's doing is to kind of remove himself from this. What he's doing is in New York, as a used car dealer, you have this thing called an MV50 book. So you've got to write in every car that comes into you a lot and who you sell it to and how much you paid for it. A, it's for taxes, B, it's a chain of custody of you're buying cars as a secondhand dealer and you're selling it to somebody, right?

He's not putting it in his books because he figures if one of these cars backfires, A, he doesn't want to pay restitution. He doesn't want to be in the hook for whatever he charged him for the car. And B, he doesn't want to get locked up. And he's not going to pay taxes on it. Right. Right. So what winds up happening is one of the cars he sells, some kid gets locked up in Manhattan driving one of these cars because it's got an alarm on it. So there was like a low before the guy put the alarm on it and the kid bought the car.

Kids got plates on it, but the vint is stolen. So some cop is going to, some cop went to give him a double parking ticket. He got Mowdy. And the cop wrote down the Vind number for whatever reason and ran it. And the car came back stolen from Connecticut, even though it's registered in New York. So we get called to interview this kid. And the kid, he wanted to kill the car deal. He's like, when I get out of jail, I'm like, don't tell me that.

I says, I'll look into it. I says, but don't do anything. I says, he goes, can you get me out of jail? I says, I can't let you out of jail based on you telling me you didn't do it. I go, let me go to this car dealership and see what's up. So my partner and I go to this car dealership and go to see the dealer. And have you ever had a Lexus RX 330 come through here in the last two months? Nope.

Oh, let me check my book. Nope. She gives us his books. Here, check my books. I says, are you sure? Yeah. I show him the kid's arrest photo. I go, did you sell this kid a car?

Nope. I said, you seem sure of this. He goes, Detective, I'm here seven days a week. If a car comes on my lot, I know about it. Ironically, I go, all right, I didn't believe a word he said, right? So my partner and I leave in the trail And we're just talking And my partner looks around the side of the building

And he sees a fender Coming out of the side Around the side of the building With trail on So we walk around And there's two Lexus RX330 sitting there I said, you fucking believe this guy? So I write down the VIN numbers

And they come back stolen I go right back into the trail I go Mohammed, you got problems He goes, what are you talking about? I go, you got two stolen Lexuses On your lot You forget, you know He goes, oh, they just came in

yesterday I forgot to put them in my books I go bullshit so he goes all right it's these Nigerian guys but they always give me the title and keys how can they be stolen I go why aren't you putting them in your books right so we lock up Mohammed right he's going to come in useful later so Mohammed goes to jail and my partner is like you now we got a subpoena Craigslist we got a subpoena phone records I go or we could sting them so what I did was I created a Craigslist ad RX-330 for $35,000. I'm getting the prices wrong because, again, this is 20 years ago, but I went $10,000 over the book.

So anybody, I didn't want to get bogged down with phone calls from legit people interested in this car. Right. Because these guys are never going to pay for it anyway. They're not now blinking at the price. Two days later, a guy with a heavy accent calls up. I'd like to look at the car. I says, great.

Can I bring my mechanic? Can I bring my mechanic? I say, great. I go, before you come all the way out here, I says, I'm not budging on the price. price. Price is the price. He goes, fine. So now I knew because anyone else would have told me to drop dead. So the plan was I was going to wait in this lobby in this building up in Rivadale and we were going to wait until they came into the lobby and I was going to give them this story that the cars is an underground parking garage and then we would grab them because you never know who you're dealing with. They could be armed. They could come with other guys. You never know. I've got this kell receiver taped under my armpit. It was like the size of a pack of cigarettes. I thought it was going to burn a hole in my arm. armpit. Damn thing got so damn hot. So I'm in this lobby waiting for this thing to go down. And back then we had the next telphones, the chirps. Nextel chirps, it's my lieutenant. He goes, hey, Vic, he goes, these two guys just pulled up in a Lexus RX330 with a temporary plate.

I go, you know what? We might as well just take them now. They're both in the car because what if one guy comes into the lobby and the other guy takes off? I go, let's just grab them. So I come running out of the lobby. My field team, they're pulling them out of the car. We handcuff him. You know, what do we do wrong? What do we do wrong? And then I told them. then they lawyered up. Inside the car, we find a briefcase with blank cashier's checks, titles to the Lexuses, right? So we've got them. The only person in this case that got in trouble was Muhammad. Because the two Nigerians, it's funny, the two Nigerians, as soon as they made bail, they were gone out of the country. Mohammed had to pay restitution to the

people that he sold them stolen cars without putting in his books, and he got five years probation. So that was a silver lining. I was going to say, how much was that? You think? Oh, I don't know. And I was going to say, how can he sit there and say, I didn't sell them the vehicle when obviously they paid him? Like, there's going to be a proof that it went into his bank account. Oh, I don't know. He didn't think we were going to scratch that deep. Oh, okay. He was used to, you know, sometimes auto crime comes in there and just scratches the books and stuff. But I mean, yeah, we were going to look at his, we were going to subpoena his financial organs. But he had those two Lexuses on the, on the side of trailer all right well so you sent me a uh a link to a story about a bonnie and

Clyde um husband and wife or something that were actually robbing mob social clubs yeah what was how were you involved with that or how well i wasn't involved in it but here's the thing i grew up in a neighborhood was irish and italian predominantly and you either went the civil service route very few people went to college I mean people did go to college but you didn't want the civil service route cop fireman sanitation worker or phone company or you got involved in organized crime and it's so funny

listen how many how many of these guys that we interviewed and they all say the same thing like it was kind of like doubt said the same thing it was like these were the two options like you know like well you make your own choices but it was it was right there in front of you you know what I mean it's like you pull up and you pull up to you're really hungry

and there's just a handful of restaurants you're going to drive to the next town or I'll just go in there that's kind of what happens but my neighborhood so you're right there was this guy Tommy Hoover him and his wife were a husband and wife

robbery team and what they were doing was well I'll give you that Tommy Uber grew up in my neighborhood he was a couple years older than me and they made a movie about his life called Rob the Mob and he had done time for a robbery, and his father was involved or owned his florist. And in the front was a florist, but in the back was a numbers place.

So before the state got involved with the lottery, you know, pick three, pick four, you had the illegal numbers in New York. And that was based on, I think it's the attendance at the racetrack from the day before or the following day. And unlike, you know, Lotto, you can bet a nickel, a dime, a quarter, the payouts are more so in poorer neighborhoods people would go in there and you know bet so his dad was he was involved with that florist and then the back of the place was was a numbers hole and his father died he was either loading his gun or playing with a gun something happened he shot himself

in the femoral artery in the leg and bled out in the back of this in this florist Tommy was a heroin addict and um again better and better yeah he's a couple of years old older than me, and he was a bully. Like, he wasn't a tough kid. He was like five, five, and 130 pounds soaking wet, and he was a heroin addict. The problem with Tommy was, he used to hang out with these rough guys that could handle themselves. If you got into a problem with him, these guys were going to pound you into the ground.

So it really wasn't worth going back at him. So when I worked in McDonald's as a kid, he lived across the street, and he would torment the workers, come in, break shit, just he was banned from McDonald's, right? Then I was working in a gas station in the neighborhood. It's like he followed me. All right. I'm in the gas station and back then gas is like 62 cents a gallon, right? He'd come in, give me $2, right?

You put $2 worth of gas in. He goes, oh, I got it's a buck 83 and he'd throw the change at you and drive off. He was just a pain in the ass. So one day, me and my friend, we met these two girls in McDonald's Park a lot and Tommy starts breaking up balls. And my friend had had it. And my friend went over. and beat the living shit out of Tommy Uva.

And I was just like, holy shit. Like Tommy's a couple years old and us. We know he's a badass. Like I said, Nicky, you shouldn't have done that. He goes, fuck him, right? So two days later, I'm in the gas station. Car comes in. It's Tommy Uva and he's running around.

Do you remember like those rolls of paper? Like, you know, when you're done with Christmas wrapping paper, there's that roll? Yeah. But like for bigger things, like for a poster or something, it's like dick. I thought it was a bat, but it was a cardboard roll. And he's chasing me around.

the pumps and his two tough friends are just standing this so if i pick my hands up to him i'm gonna get my ass kicked in the gas station so i'm running around the pumps like what the fuck did i deal when he goes you were there he's talked out of the side of his mouth they go what are you talking about he goes you were there i said yeah well that that's been established but i didn't put my hands on you he goes you tell you a friend come see me at the bar and i said all right and my friend who was crazy and he's dead now but he was like yeah okay he goes he goes probably he's got his friends behind the ball with machine gun terrorists he goes i'm not going up there like Like, it didn't, if I had that problem, I wouldn't be able to sleep.

My friend was like, I don't care. Like, he was just out there. But anyway, Tommy Hoover goes to jail for robbery, gets out. And he probably knew a lot about how the mob operated because of that number spot. And back in the day, the mafia operated at social clubs, bars, restaurants. But like, if you and I went into one of these bars, right, the bartender would give us a dirty look. We'd say, can we get two Budwises? I ain't got Budwis.

He says, can get a Coke. Yeah, and he charges $10 for a Coke, basically telling you to get the fuck out of there because it was for them. Well, sometimes they would just tell you to get out. And it's kind of like you see in the Sopranos, like in front of the pork store, they're out there, son of themselves.

But in the back, in a lot of these places, they're playing cards for big money, shooting dice. I mean, there's big money being exchanged in these places. Some of these places are gambling densens. They own and control it. It's for neighborhood people or people associated with organized crime.

Tommy knew about these places. So what Tommy is doing is he's, you know, guns ablazing, running into these places and ripping him off, sometimes not wearing a mask. Everybody knows who he is. And you've got five crime families in New York. And they know he gets ID'd. And now he's like on the endangered species list because it's like everybody was hunting him. Like everybody, he had a target on his back. And I don't know if they set him up, obviously, because he was out in Queens.

And the story I was told was, and I don't know what to be true, but there. were going to fence some stolen jewelry, like they had taken some jewelry off of somebody during one of these robberies and they were going to meet with somebody. And as they were pulling out of a driveway or if they stopped at a light of the Queen Street, two guys stepped on either side of the car and shot them like even the female, which the mob usually with females, they don't go that. Exactly. But she's the getaway driver. So I guess they figured in for a penny, in for a pound. And yeah, they just, you know, blew them up, shot them multiple times. But what I found ironic is They made a movie about this guy's life, but it's called Rob the Mob.

And my brother was like, you got to watch this. You got to watch this. I'm like, all right, I put it in. In like the first five minutes, I couldn't watch it because they got an Irish kid, that kid Michael Pitt that was in Boardwalk Empire. I mean, he's a good actor, but he's Irish. Like Tommy Yuval was, I mean, as Italian as it gets. And I just, it's like, listen, some criminals have really interesting lives.

I'm fascinated by it. I watch true crime all the time. I love it. I can't get enough of it. I just was like, you know what? I live that. You know what I mean? I wasn't a fan of him in life.

Why am I going to be a fan of him in death that I just turned it off? Yeah, I know a lot of time. It's, you know, it's like if you've read the book or you knew the person and you just can't, sometimes it's like, I can't watch this. Like that's not. You know too much. Yeah, I know too much. I know that's not what he looked like. I know that he wasn't that tall or that short.

I know that he wasn't that polite. I know he didn't talk like that. I know he didn't laugh like that. And that's how I feel about like ward dogs. Like I was locked up with that from Devereoli. So watching war dogs, I'm just like. that is not Ephraim Debroli. And Jonah Hill plays Ephraim Devoroli

makes them almost look like a sweetheart compared to Ephraim DeVroly. Really? Ephraim Devoroli is a vicious cutthroat backstabbing. Like, that guy was actually almost like a teddy bear in comparison. Like, you couldn't trust this guy for anything.

And so I watched, like, I watched that. I just, I'm like, no. No. Plus, of course, the movie I know that like 90% in the movie's just not true you know it's just like literally it just it ruins it for you yeah it's this scene that never happened this scene he never went there this scene neither one of them went there like I know too much about it they're like I can't I can't and yet I'll talk to somebody like that's my favorite movie bro I've watched that movie 20 times and I'm like ugh right they don't know any better right I wish I didn't know any better well that's true ignorance is bliss right yeah

yeah exactly um I've really only seen one or two books and then seen the movie and been like nice but you know those are always like the shorter if it's like a 200 page like fight club fight club is almost identical to the book you know um catch me if you can whether it's true or not very very similar to the actual book other than that i've never seen one where i wasn't just disgusted um what's the same when we were watching mypd movies or shows now now i mean when i was a child that couldn't get enough of it but now like someone'll say oh do you watch blue bloods i'm like no that's not real like i just get out of here You know, the ranks are wrong.

Everything's just, you know, guys, you know, crash and cause and not getting in trouble or, you know. Well, you know, it's funny is you sitting there saying, like, how many guys were on the, the department? No, no, just the auto. Just the auto. 120, detective. 120. You know, I went down to Ocichobie and interviewed the sheriff in Okachovie, right? So, Ocichobie, you know, county is in Florida.

It's a massive county, right? they've got the whole department is like 40 guys 50 guys you got like 40 people right your whole department and this is including the people that are taking that they're doing like this is including the people that are taking that are sitting in there you know the sergeants the guys are sitting there just filling out paperwork this isn't even the guys driving I mean this is the that includes everybody so that's not the guys on the street that's everybody and you guys have a hundred you know 120 people just looking into auto like that's how massive new york is. Oh, 40,000 NYPD members. So like on Times Square and New Year's Eve, everybody thinks that

that's a lot of fun. Don't go down there. I mean, that is a shit show because there's usually probably like 5,000 cops down there. And we get down there early. We get down there two, three o'clock in the afternoon. You get split up. You get your assignments. And like when you watch on television, when Ryan Seacrest is showing like from above, those people are packed in like cattle. Yeah. There wooden pens. And you can get in, but it's not that easy to get out. And you can't use the bathroom because all those restaurants down there, they've had their bathrooms trash before. So unless you've got reservations, you're not getting in there to use the bathroom.

And it's just people using the bathroom in there and drunk and felt up and getting beat up. And then after the ball drops, that's when the fun begins because then all the hood rats come up. And they're sober as a judge and they're watching. This guy's got a new cell phone. He's got a new camera. She's got an engagement ring. And they know most of these people got ahead for the trains. Right.

And they've been drinking and they're not. It's like watching the hyenas on the Discovery Channel. And then five minutes later, some guy comes running back with a knot on his head. Somebody just hit me in the head with a bottle and took my Rolex. And, you know, what do you look like? I don't know. Which way did he go? I don't know.

You're taking police reports all night after that ball drops. Well, I mean, you live where now? It's just outside Ocala or something. So, I mean, so, okay, well, never mind. I know Ocala. So keep in my wife and I, I've never been in New York. Like, I've been in New York, but I was upstate New York, right? it was it was uh we went to um niagara falls right so it was like uh was albany or something like

no no that's way above all buffalo no it's i forget what i'd have to ask my ex-wife woman where where i went but we actually drove like 30 minutes or an hour into like where niagara falls are like it so i it was new york but it was like yeah no that's up to you right so uh last year i did a program called uh my true crime story right it's on um um VH1 or something. And I could be wrong. But anyway, so they flew us to New York.

And so I'd never been to New York City. Like, I, you know, to me, it's big. Tampa was a city. Like,

that's a city to me. You know, I was like, well, and people were like, Tampa's barely a city. I'm like, do what are you talking about?

Like, that's a whole, that's like, it's insane. Driving from the airport, she and I were going, this is insane. There's nothing but buildings.

I can't, see anything past. There's buildings behind the buildings behind the building behind. I mean, it was fucking insane. Like, you know, you see it on TV, but until you go there. Right. And people watch this, probably be like, this guy's nuts. Like, he's never been like, I just, I never realized how much concrete and how densely populated.

It's insane. You know, and then, of course, we're walking around. The thing about walking around is, like, I've been to like San Francisco and stuff, but San Francisco and L.A. are just not even, you can't even compare either one of those to, to New York. But, you know, I got there, like, everybody was like, it wasn't like, I didn't see anything bad. And we were actually only a few blocks away from, uh, from Times Square. Where did you go? Last year.

Oh, okay. It's last year. Oh, Times Square was the Wild West when I was a kid. You went down to Times Square. Like, we used to go down there to get fireworks or fake ID to buy beer when we were kids. And like, I remember the first couple of times we went down there, we got robbed. And, uh, so then, you know, we're like, all right, we're going to go with like 10 of us. No one's going to fuck with us.

We come off the train and like a couple of transit cops. Where are you guys from? The Bronx. Get back on that train and go back to the Bronx. So you couldn't win going down there. We either got robbed or if we went down there with too many of us. The cops would kick us in the ass and send us back. But oh, it was like the Wild West down there.

You had all the sex shops, sex shows, a lot of drugs. It was a bad place. It really was. And then they cleaned it up. And now it's kind of, I think, slid back. Yeah, I was going to say that there was tons of like homeless people. Nothing compared to, like, I've been to. San Francisco and downtown San Francisco and downtown L.A. since I got out of prison, you know, the homeless, this homeless situation in both those, those cities is so you can't even imagine it. Like I never, I could not have, it could not have been described to me to have gone down there. Oh, their pants pissing in the street. They're shitting in the street. They're shooting in the street. They're shooting up right in front of everybody. The cops are standing there. They've got little tents. They're sleeping in the tent. We'd have got.

who was laying down taking a nap in the middle of the day with thousands of people walking on both sides walking around two cops standing over there and I was with a couple I was with three lawyers and one of the lawyers goes up to the cop and says you guys can't do anything about this

and he goes no he's like we can't do nothing we can't even ask them to leave and he's like well what do you even do it here he said waiting for something violent to happen we get a call he's like i can't do he's like there's tints everywhere he says i know bro i know and that was it they were just like sorry i know what you're saying like and they literally have pop-up tits they're sleeping on the sidewalks i mean tons of and then if you go to los angeles so there's a there's a there's a pod uh podcast channel a youtube channel right podcast yeah um mark later does one it's called soft white underbelly and it's actually off of skid row

in oh okay and so i used to watch his videos every once in a while and you can hear like people screaming but he interviews homeless people mostly or you know drug addicts homeless people prostitutes whatever and you can hear people screaming in the background and and sirens and i remember thinking that because he's interviewing a homeless heroin addict, he, that's background noise. Like, oh, I like the way he did that. You could hear like the side. You could kind of hear someone in the background yelling. Oh, I like the way he did that.

That's it. No. Then I went and did one. Called him. I sent him an email. Here's who I am. I'm going to be in L.A. I'd love to do your show.

He said, absolutely come. I came there, got there. And he brought me to, you know, to Skid Row. and I'm going, what the fuck? What's going on? When we walk in, you're literally five feet away from the street. Like, you know, you walk into his studio and you closes the door and he has, he pulls the backdrop, but you can hear people screaming outside, people yelling, people talk, and I go,

bro, I said, I thought you that was, piping that in. And he's like, no, man, this is it. This is it. He was phenomenal. That's authentic. Yeah. It's, it's, but going down there. and just seeing that whole thing was and new york wasn't that bad at least not darry tom's tom square

wasn't as bad as those were but you know i went there and like my wife and i went there and we came back and we were like because you know you don't you don't see homeless people here right like i see like there's one or two every now and right right in comparison it might as well be zero you know what i'm saying in comparison to that it's it's insane oh i remember a couple of times but then it's not like a city like that there's not the con con it's not condensed like that here oh I had a case where we had these guys stealing cars out of a car wash. And what they would do is they would get dropped off in a stolen car on the west side of Manhattan. And they would go through the, you know, you go to a car wash, you pay.

And then you walk through, you watch your, watch your, watch your, watch your car getting washed. Right. They would spot one of a weak attendant that's dry in a car, jump in and take off. And they were hitting these car dealership, car dealerships, car wash. for a while and one of the guys that owned a car dealership was an ex-Israeli car wash yeah and I'm getting tongue tied um ex-israeli musad some well shin bet one of the two and gets the guy's license plate gives it to us comes back to a car registered in pennsylvania and we see it comes in on a phony title we do a summons check we figure out that the car is in a certain neighborhood

in the Bronx so me and two other detectives we're driving around this neighborhood in the Bronx and I look up at the light and they're right behind us and I go you're not going to friggin't believe this my sergeant goes what I go the call we're looking for is right behind us he goes you got to be kidding me and typical Bronx fashion we were in unmarked car he didn't know who we were he starts driving around us to burn through the light and I go my man what are you doing right in front of the 5-0 and he goes I'm sorry office I'm kind of in a rush I go dude just do me a fair pull over a second is all right take them out of the car get the parking receipts, start recovering all these cars. It's changing the VIN numbers on them and resale.

So usually when you're doing lineups, I got a couple of funny stories like this, but when you're doing lineups, it's usually the Precinct Detective Squad or Homicide Squad will do the lineups. And the reason they do it is because they can, they've got street people and their phones that they can call up and say, I need a white guy about 40 years old, about 5'5 with blonde hair. he'll go and get those people for you it just saved so much time right so I got we'll get to another story after this

so um there was no one around to help us so I said shit where am I going to find five black guys that look like these guys so someone suggested he goes there's a homeless shelter

and we're in Midtown Manhattan I go all right you want to talk about the seventh circle of hell oh my God it made the subway smell like a scented candle place it just it was like just people like laying in piss and it was just crazy and like I pulled five guys out put him in the car took them did the lineup

they got picked out of lineups and I used the lieutenant's car and the next day goes who the fuck what did you put in my car I said he goes it stinks in there I'm like oh really I don't I didn't tell him but another time we had this crackhead that had done a lot of robberies and we're going to do lineups and it was in the Bronx and I was a cop at the time

I was an detective yet in typical Bronx fashion Saturday night there must have been two or three homicides there's nobody to help us we've got all these women and their husbands downstairs that are victims of these strong arm robberies and nobody to stand in a lineup we needed five white guys rough looking guys because our guy was a rough looking white guy

so you know what are we going to do we don't want the witnesses to leave so I told my partner I'll find five rough looking white guys I went to this dive bar in the Bronx it's not there anymore off the Fordham Road and I pulled five Hall of Fame Drunks off of bar stools I go up to the- Do you give them anything?

Yeah he gave him 20 bucks each Oh okay So I walk into the bar and the bartender knows I'm a cop immediately right And he was what can I do for your office So I says I need five guys to stand in a lineup for 20 minutes because you're going to have to fight them off with a stick So he lowers the jukebox

And I go attention to everybody I says I need five guys for 20 minutes for 20 bucks and it was I felt like a casting director no too many liver spots no too many missing teeth and I just pulled five Hall of Fame drunks got them in there right get them upstairs and when you do a lineup you don't want you don't want the victims to see the fillers it's got to be clean right so we agreed I would go downstairs and bring the victims up one by one to view the lineup my partner would be on the other side of the one way glass with the fillers and the crackhead right guy doing the robberies right so we're putting the fillers in right and we tell the

crackhead where do you want to sit and he goes I want to sit number three okay you're number three so everybody sits down and they're holding a number right so one of the one of the fillers one of these rough guys from the boss is what did you do he goes what are you a fucking cop and the guy goes how about I knock what's left of your teeth out so it's starting to get chirpy right so I can hear them grumbling in there and one by one woman comes up picks him out picks him out like by the fourth lineup it gets weird because now the crackhead wants to change his spot in the batting order he goes i don't want to be three anymore i want to be five i go fine change so he walks up to one of the drunks hold the number five he goes get up he goes the fuck did you just say to me right so it gets turpy again right

so they switch places i bring in my witness and her husband she's standing there she's just about to pick him up pick him out two junk two drunks jump jumps jump jump up jump up from this seat and start beating the crap out of the guy in the lineup he must have said the wrong thing right so i says wait here i run in with my part it looked like something that have a movie we're behind the glass like separating these two guys smacking him around right we pull them apart and the crackhead yells did she pick me out so we couldn't use the lineup but we had them on the other four so it all worked out so you can't make this stuff up that reminds me the story where they have the three guys or they have the guys

they have the guys that they're like they were wearing a mask and says I can't this was told by a defense attorney who said one of his clients had there was he was on a lineup and they all but the victim hadn't seen

his face so they're like she was like I can't recognize him but I can recognize his voice I've done that a voice lineup okay and the part and she said I remember this is what he said give me all your tens and 20 or give me all your tens and 20 or

give me all your tens and twenties bitch and so the first guy says give me all your tens and twenties bitch she says that's not him next guy give me all your tens and twenties bitch that's not him next guy give me all your twins and 20s bitch that's not him next guy says

that's not what I said listen that guy that was a defense attorney's same thing they have hilarious stories oh yeah because I mean they're on the other side of the coin they're dealing with the guy who's trying to get out of it

I was going to say especially in Florida like there was a guy who rode motor cross and went into a 7-Eleven with his helmet on and robbed the guy. And the guy, so when the cops show up, they said, so he had a mask on all, you didn't recognize him? And he's, no, but I don't know. And he goes, what? He can't be.

And he goes, what? He goes, it had a name across the helmet. He tells him the name. The cop goes, well, let's see. And he opens up the phone book and looks up the phone book in the general area. He goes, you know, like there's a Johnson that lives two blocks from here. And he drives up and knocks on the door. And the guy opens the, there's a motorcycle in the front yard, opens the door.

He's his helmet's right there. And he goes, fuck. How'd you get me? Listen, this guy had one thing after another. Oh, I'm sure. Like, you know, they're not the sharpest. Not all criminals are that sharp. So, hey, so I mentioned Mike Dowd.

Yeah. Do you, have you, do you know Mike Dowd? No, Mike Dowd was hired a couple of years from me, and the NYPD is so big. Like, I was on the other side of the city. I was in the Bronx of Manhattan, and I didn't know him. I mean, when that thing happened, I was active. We saw it all unfold. I knew a couple of guys that had dealt with him.

I knew when Dowd, they put him on modified assignments. So in the NYPD, they take your gun and shield, and they basically ship you off to one of the NYPD, Siberia's, to figure out what they're going to do with you before they fire you if they're going to fire you. And Dowd got modified for something. And I don't know if it was after his arrest, but from what I was told, he was at the Whitestone Pound out in Queens, and they said he would park his, he had a Corvette, and they said he used to park it on the other side of the Grand Central Parkway, on opposite the pound.

And then he didn't want to be followed by IAB. So what he would do is he would get out of the pound, he'd get out of work and run across like six lanes of traffic. so no one could follow him that's what the guys at the pound told me whether it's true or not now I don't know him but I mean I watched the 7-5

and now that you told me he was on your show I'm going to watch it tonight yeah he's he's a character yeah he is and you know the funny thing about him is like people love him and he is

he knows how to tell a story he does but he's you know like you know loud and obnoxious he would be a guy if you were at a party yeah he would have a whole circle

of people listen and they're hanging on every word he'd also be by the end of the party he'd be drunk and you'd be telling me you'd be trying to get him to leave and he'd be well i didn't see that side i didn't see that side of him but yeah maybe yeah but people do they love him they love him well think about what he was able to do he was able to get a bunch of cops to follow him yeah you know and i mean commit all these crimes you know with dangerous people so i mean you know he's charismatic yeah you know well he was also talking about like at that time he's like like like you you got paid nothing like you know he was he was saying yeah but that's not an excuse to go off the rails

i i i know i get it but first of all of course and you signed up it's not like you signed up and then they started paying you shit you knew what you were signing up for but he says the same thing like you either went in you were you either you either became you know police officer or garbage man you know like they're only that's what you did and um and so that's what that's what he did the problem was he said like you know i saw like there's you know there's there's there's drugs everywhere. I'm pulling thousands of dollars off of drug dealers. You know, there's, so, uh, he, he explains how, you know, it's slowly kind of creeped up

on him. And increments. Yeah. And then, and then his and even, and even when like the first time he took some money, he actually said something. He's got a whole story where he basically says to his like, like, lieutenant or whatever. He's like, what if, what if, uh, what if that hadn't been there when you got here? You know, like, and he's like, And his lieutenant was like, like, listen, I don't give a shit. But, you know, as long as it doesn't come up missing, you know, then what do I care?

And he said it was felt like it was like a pass. And I remember when he kind of said that, I might have the story slightly, you know, not quite right. But it to me, it always reminded me of like the first time, you know, I did something wrong. Like my manager suggested it, you know, not that doubt suggested that. But my manager and it was like if she had said, are you out of your fucking? fucking mind like it might have snapped you into reality it might have been like yeah yeah what do you but she she was so like listen this is if if i was you i was you just fucking white it out make a copy put it in the file they'll never catch it like but that's you know

that's if that's if you want to i mean i'm not you know i was like like and that just woo spun out of control because i hadn't at that time i hadn't even broached the subject or thought along those lines and that sent me down this massive you know, a trail that I hadn't, and it was the same thing like that. And then when you get away with something, you know, it just emboldens you. I don't know. I think I'd be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Yeah, you know, you asked me about that like being on the run.

Yeah. But I was never worried because I had, I had a driver's license. I had a passport. I was going in and out of passport control. I'm going to different countries coming back. Boom. Hey, they're scanning the thing. You know, no problem.

Hey, Mr. So and so. How are you? Good. How are you? Oh, vacation, yeah, vacation. Walking through, no problem left and right. I mean, it was, you know, I'm getting pulled over by the police, getting a ticket, you know. Like, yeah, here's my driver's license.

Like, you know, so I wasn't, I was never that concerned, even though it's funny because, like, I'd get pulled over. And the girl that I was with, like, we're both wanted. And she's like, oh, my God, oh, my God, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? I'm like, I don't know what am I got a fucking driver's license. The car's in the name of the driver's license. I've got full coverage insurance. It's got a, you know, a one.

loan on it. I have all the paperwork. Perfect credit. Not that it matters. Like I got more information on me that says I'm this person than the actual person. So it's like, here, no problem. Write me a ticket. I understand. I got it. Yeah, I know, I know. Speeding. I know. Ah, you know how it is. Yeah. He gives me a ticket. No, I was concerned at all. So, but yeah, everybody's always like, God, what are you worried? Weren't you scared? What you? No, but I could see, I could understand. Some guys go on the run like And you're like, well, do you have an idea? I didn't have an idea. It's like, then I would be like, are you serious?

You had a skill set. Right. Like, I couldn't imagine going on the run and not having. Right, like if you just had to run out the door right now and now you've got to figure it out. And six months from now, you're trying to like, how could you get a job? Like, how could you feed yourself? How could you like it? And you're going to stand out no matter where you go to do that.

And you're nervous. Your nervous means you're going to get at some point that's going to catch up. You're drawing attention. Where are you going to stay? How are you going to work? how are you going to get a job like it then i would be terrified like what if i couldn't get a driver's license couldn't get you know alternative id then i would be terrified um but you know that wasn't that wasn't my experience of being on the run again you had a skill set that enables you to keep making that next

step um yeah you ought to interview dowd you could probably interview dowd no my podcast right now I mean, I'm bringing on ex-NYPD guys that didn't get in trouble and, you know, telling their story. You know, I want to bring on homicide detectives, a guy from the bomb squad. I just had on a transit cop that had a lot of insight into what goes on in the New York City subway system. I bring on a guy like Dowd. You think you might lose some of them? Oh, I think so they wouldn't listen. Oh, he's, there's, I mean, you got a real beloved in the law enforcement community?

No, he's not, no, he's, well, you've got to realize something. He caused a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of. problems because what the NYPD does is they always overreact and they do treat i'll say this about them they get corruption right as far as from the minute you get hired they tell you're going to get fired i mean the police academy it is drummed into you they show they bring in cops and show videos of cops that threw their careers away into jail time they bring in special prosecutors that are tasked with prosecuting police corruption i mean it's not like you know i didn't know and they've got all these checks and balances in place and they're always they're always reminding you

of it so when things like dowd happened or the 30th precinct or the seven five the department always overreacts because they figure if these guys are doing it someone else is doing it and then they start pulling in the reins with different procedures and stuff so they they start screwing with everybody so you know doubt left a bad taste in a lot of guys mouths right so you know if i had them on my podcast. Yeah, it would be funny. It would be interesting. But right now, I'm just starting off to have him on, you know, like I just, I might as well just throw the thing of the garbage. So, you know. Not that I have anything against him, but, you know, I'm, so I, we interviewed, um, what's the guy he was in the documentary for? What, the 7-5? No, no, no.

I know. This is, this is, uh, the night stalker case. Oh, Richard Ramirez? Yeah, well, I didn't. Yeah, but i didn't he's clearly dead um i interviewed the detective right the the what's the the spanish detective the mexican detective um i can't remember his name yeah super nice guy like he he you could interview him yeah i can give you yeah gill gill cress no gill something or is it gill was the other guy was he gill um anyway really nice guy like did you ever see the night stalker documentary i just started watching that race it's great he's the the spanish guy okay yeah so i have his information you could probably interview him and i also have um um the guy he used to he was on like two seasons of the first 28 first first 28 oh which guy first 48 detective anderson detective

Anderson from which department uh Louisiana he was in louisiana right like that i'm i know him if i saw him because i yeah watched that show a lot super nice guy like we had a uh i don't know if it was an hour long you know um but same thing streamy did, you know, told a bunch of great, you know, different homicide cases and talked about the first 48. And he was also on a show called, um, uh, reasonable doubt. I've heard of that. Uh, that went like six or seven seasons or something on, I don't know if it was A&E.

I say A&E, but I think I think I think, no, I think you're right. I think it might have been Discovery Channel or something. It was one of those. It was definitely one of those. So, uh, but yeah, I talked to him. Um, who else have I talked to? I was going to say, like, we could probably give you. Yeah, we got quite a few.

the New York guys, the two cops that live from New York, that they did like PTSD. Oh my gosh, yeah, the suffering podcast. You know who that is? No. Kevin and yeah. Kevin and the bald guy. Yeah. Yeah.

They basically, it's NYPD cops? No, not like downtown, like in the general area. Like, you know, they explained like, look, we weren't like, you know, we were in. There's somewhere. Rochester or something.

You know what I'm saying? Like, and basically they had both been involved in shootings and they were talking about like that. So what they do is they bring, they bring anybody on really. But I think it's it focuses on police officers or people that have had traumatic events in their lives and the suffering that they go through. And they're they're they're great. Like they can and they it's not depressing like it sounds depressing. But it's not. They laugh and cut up a lot and fuck around.

Well, I mean, there's so many NYPD cops, and I know so many guys that were either in shootings, got shot at, got shot, and it affects them different ways. Right. I know a couple of guys, they were never the same after taking someone's life. They just was not the same guy. And we used to goof around. I worked with a guy who used to call him cancer because he killed more people than cancer. And I got a really good, if you want to hear the Hansel and Gretel story, that's a really good one. Can I take a break?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, is all right? Yeah. This is a good one. Yeah. So tell, so the Hansel and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel. Okay. So it's the early 90s.

I'm in my early 20s. And we're going to cop bars and meeting girls. And, you know, it's got the world by the bores are in your 20s. And we're going to this cop boy, and you got cops from different precinct. So there was one cop there who I later worked with, and we called them, because he killed more people than cancer. And he was working at the time with this guy that was an amateur magician. Guy, that was his side gig.

So we're at the bar talking to girls and stuff and the magician would show up. And he starts pulling the flowers out of his sleeve and he's pulling the gold coins behind the years. He's cock blocking us with magic. Right. So I told this guy who would become my partner later, I go, would you get him the fuck out of here? Like, how do you compete with this? He goes, you know, if he took his job as serious as he did making balloon animals for kids, He goes, he'd be the greatest one-man-kind crime fighter in the world.

He goes, but he's lazy. So a couple of weeks later, the magician and my old partner, they get called to a cause for help in the basement of a six-story walk-up. They go into the basement, and there's two doors. Door number one, they bang on. Nobody answers. My old partner, who's an active cop, goes to bang on door number two, and the magician stops him and says, come on.

We made all this noise. It's 12 o'clock at night. Our night sticks, the radios. If anybody heard us down here, they were to open the door. My partner goes to knock on the door again. He goes, come out, buy your coffee. That's the magic word.

Cops are cheap. He's going to pay for coffee. Let's go. They leave. What they don't realize is in behind door number two, the soup of the building is selling Coke out of there. And he gets addicted. And he falls behind.

And he starts blowing off his wholesaler. So in the drug world, you know, they don't cancel your cable or send friendly reminders that you're late. They're trying to kill this guy. And he's not leaving the, apartment. So they do an old gypsy trick. They bring an attractive female. They knock on the door and they put the girl's face in front of the door. He sees the girl. He opens the door. The three of them bumrush him. They start pistol whipping. Where's the money? Where's the drugs? He doesn't have an answer.

They shoot him in the head. They roll them up in a carpet. They take them out of the apartment and it's in the basement. They find the furnace and they throw them in the furnace. Then they go back to door number two when they ransacking the apartment when the cops are outside. So these guys are knocking on the door, and they're in the apartment. So they come up with a plan. It's these two Albanian hitmen. They tell the girl, who's in on it? They go, listen, if the cops knock on the door, let him in and just start yelling in Yugoslavia and start pointing in the kitchen.

It was like a railroad apartment, so it goes straight in and the apartments are off to the sides. He says, once you cross the threshold, throw yourself on the floor, we'll come out of the bedroom and shoot the cops. She goes, okay. but they never knock on the door because the magician talked to my buddy I'm not knocking on the door so what winds up happening is week or two later the super is nowhere to be found

garbage is piling up he's got relatives where is this guy they call the cops the detectives get involved and the detectives see there was a 911 call calls for help so they bring in my old partner and the magician and they said you know what happened they go we knocked on one door we didn't knock on that door

okay but was anything else suspicious or anything no but my old part was a really good cop and he said you know we were leaving there was a car parked in the fire hydrant i gave it a parking ticket that was the getaway car okay it's registered to the female so the detectives brought the female in she starts trying to distance herself from it but you know she's in on it she gives up the hit man she gives up the whole thing what happened the detectives go back to the building they had to shut the heat off to the building for like three days until that furnace cooled down to get the guy's bones and skull out. So that's a story in my book called Last Night a Magician Saved My Life because had he...

Had they knocked on the door, but they would have been gunned down. It would have been a triple homicide. Is that story in this book? No, I think that story is in the NYPD's Flying Circus, Cop's Crime and Chaos. What is this one? Is this like your... Do you have one? So this is Grand Theft Auto, the NYPD's...

Auto Crime Division. This is my 10 years in auto crime. So with sophisticated scams, how to steal a car, who steals your car, how to protect yourself. Interesting criminals I locked up, repeat offenders, guys that I dealt with all the time. There's a lot of funny stories in there. Okay. About the auto theft world. I was saying, Colby, that he should have used the grand theft auto letters and the whole grand theft. And he was like, yeah, I'm not doing it. It's like, I'm not, you're going to get sued. I'm not, yeah, I'm not looking to piss off corporate America. for this. Listen, the book is selling,

and now that I'm on this show, and I know you've got a million subscribers, I'm sure my sales will go through the roof as a result of being on this show. I think I might design an auto, a grand theft auto version for you. You put it up, you see what happens? I don't want to cease and just this letter.

And then can you imagine they contact Amazon and have it shut down, and Amazon won't put your shit back up? Yeah, I don't need that heat, man. you got to do it just tweak it a little bit just off those questionable kind of like the mcdowls oh no yeah coming to america coming to america did you ever see that so he's too young the guy i know he's he's 90% of what i say he doesn't he's like what um so and coming to america the chick that eddie murphy's character dates her father owns a mcdowls not mcdonald's

McDowell's and he doesn't have the golden arches he's got the golden something else he like it almost looks identical to him McDonald's ripping them off slightly and a couple of times like people from people show up and start taking pictures and he goes he runs out he's like get out of here get out of here he's that's the damn McDonald's people we're in the middle of the lawsuit so uh yeah it's funny so yeah you could do the McDowals oh oh no so How many books do you have? I mean, I've got, I've got six out. I'm working on a seventh.

They don't have a title yet. Do you, do you have them on audio? No, I don't. No, just an e-book and paperback. Bro, you got to do audible. I don't know if I have the time. I don't know if I could sit in a closet and hear and read my own stuff.

It's, listen, I don't even have somebody read mine. I had somebody else contact me and say, listen, I'll split it with you 50-50. And he reads them. He did the whole thing for me.

I didn't have to do anything other than send him a copy of the jacket cover and approve the whole thing. And that's, it's great. Oh, the audiobooks selling? Yeah, the audit, that's what I'm saying. The combination of the two is not bad. There's times. And what's great is, like, obviously, like, I didn't do anything. Like, that's a great thing about the book is like, I'm not expecting to get rich. Well, it's your story. You did. But, you know, I'm saying periodically, you just keep getting checks in. You get checks in. You get checks. And you're like, and then every once in all, I'll go and I'll read the reviews. just if I feel if I'm feeling down and sad I'll go read the reviews

I'm like I am awesome I am an awesome writer Macawks is the best what a great story talk I'm so good you know so you don't do that you don't read the reviews

I do but every now and then you get a kick in the ass that brings you down to reality I know someone doesn't like it and you can't that's the worst about Amazon

you can't get rid of them at least in the comment section if somebody says something really really just out there you can I think probably i've only deleted maybe five comments or six comments like the in the last three years and honestly it and i think maybe only deleted one or two that somebody said something about me most the time it was like i had somebody on here and they said something that was just completely

you know out of line and i was like yeah um delete but yeah you can't do that with amazon you just got to put up with it it's upsetting um yeah you want to hear a morgue story that dovetails into a guy moving a body yeah yeah yeah what's so you're in the police academy and um they take you to the morgue they want to see if you can handle death so at the time they they you're broken up into 30 people companies so they take like two companies at a time and you go down to the morgue and at the time the morgue was in bellevue hospital it's a big big hospital and i was expecting an episode of quincy where there'd be one guy a jacket, one body, you know, on a slab and a guy talking into a tape recorder.

It wasn't like that. It was like going to a jiffy loob in an eight-bay garage, and they're cutting. And there's bodies, and you've got assistants, and they're using the things to cut muffler pipe to soar the back of your head and pull your face off. And then back then you had the old produce scales that, like, if your mother was going to buy a head of lettuce, and they're taking out organs, and they're weighing them in a produce scale, and they're writing down the weight. and I remember there was an old-time homicide detective there

drinking a coffee and eating a Dunkin' Donuts and he's like hanging over the ME who's working on this kid who had been shot multiple times he's got this tool that looked like a needle-nosed pliers and he's pulling bullets out of the kids back and the detective goes eating his McMuffin and drinking his coffee goes what do you think and the Emmy goes suspicious suicide

and they're laughing I'm like holy shit so you know you go through the police academy and they teach you, you know, like little tricks about how to deal with the smell of death, be it Vicks, or if you're in an apartment with someone and after it's been determined that it's not a suspicious death, it's a natural death, and no one else lives there. You take coffee grinds, you put it in a pot, and you burn it on the stove, and the house will smell like coffee grinds as opposed to death. But I think the story you wanted to hear was the early 90s,

and there was this cop who had a footpost by the housing, projects. It was a Friday night and he had plans to go out. He's doing a four to 12. He gets hit with a DOA. So in New York, it's called sitting on a DOA. If someone dies in their house or apartment, the police show up and they're going to ask questions. They're going to talk to doctors. Obviously, the paramedics come. They pronounce them dead. But you have to wait for the medical examiner. And the medical examiner is going to come and ask questions. And then the medical examiner is either going to say, suspicious death, wait for the morgue wagon or, yeah, this is about right, 87-year-old woman, heart medication, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

tell the family to call the funeral home. But you have to wait with that dead body. And sometimes some of these people have been dead for days or months. And it's just a terrible job. So anyway, this old man dies in his bed. And his neighbor who used to check in on him every day finds him. And he's only been dead a couple hours. So cop gets on the radio, calls the paramedics,

the sergeant shows up. Everything's on the up and up. Okay, wait for the medical examiner. So the cop pulls the two EMTs to the side And he goes, can you take them? I want to go out tonight. And he goes, no, no, unless he's in public view, you know, he's in an apartment.

You've got to wait for the medical examiner. So the cop gets pissed off and they leave. About 20 minutes later, that cop gets on the radio and says there's a cardiac at that apartment. Well, the same two paramedics were downstairs having their lunch. They hadn't left. Same two paramedics come running up the stairs with all their equipment ready for a heart.

attack the old man is in the hallway so they're like what the hell is this and he goes now he's like oh shit it's the same two pounds he goes you're not going to believe this he got up he jumped up he said oh shit he ran through the apartment he opened the door and he collapsed again and they go no he didn't he's in the same now he's starting to get rigabortis he's in the same condition right supervisor shows up nowadays he probably would have gotten arrested and probably and should have lost a job unfortunately they just sent him up to to the Bronx so yeah that's a true story wow that must have been a hell of a date he was trying to get to i knew the guy wasn't a fan no all right what uh anything what else have we uh yeah

well i encourage your subscribers to just go on amazon and type in my name vick Ferrari like the car all my books will come up their paperback or we can also put the link in the description. I'd appreciate that. We can put the link in the description box and it will pull up I think you can go

straight to your Amazon page or we can go to the book yeah, we'll, yeah, exactly we'll put it in the description you can click and go straight there and any other do you have any other social media or anything like that?

Yeah, I'm on Twitter and Instagram at Vic Ferrari 50 and I have a podcast now called NYPD through the looking glass it's on Spotify and Spotify and BuzzSpore Sprout and it's just me interviewing NYPD cops who tell their stories. And a lot of stories are pretty funny.

Is it on YouTube? Yeah, I do on YouTube also. Yeah, you got to put it on YouTube. Yeah, we can put the link. We'll put the link on the link in the description box, same thing. Yeah. Is it serious? Are you guys like, is it like serious or no?

No, there's a lot of goofering on. I just interviewed a transit cop and he told the story. This is his story, not mine. But I asked him, I said, because people get electrocuted all the time in the subway. because he's got the third rail down there and sometimes like homeless people will step on the third rail they'll piss on the third rail and they blow up so I asked him

I go have you ever had anybody you know that happened to he goes there was a guy so hell bent on killing himself he tried to commit suicide and he jumped on the tracks because he heard the train coming he jumped on the northbound side and the southbound train came by so he broke his leg so he says we show up and we're like

no no we'll get you out and he goes no I want to die and like just stand still the guy dragged himself over to the third rail and grabbed the third rail with his arm to commit suicide it didn't kill him it just blew his arm off and it's just completely exposed well i think it quarterizes it no no i'm saying that the third rail that's just like an electric it's under a it's under a wooden board

you can get to it look see like we don't have i mean i don't know we don't have you know subways i've never read i've never i've never read this subway the closest i've ridden to a subway is like going to like Atlanta or the airport here and you get on like the tram. Yeah, no, no. It's not like Disney World. No, no.

That's too bad. All right. So, all right, well, listen, I I appreciate you coming out. You know, we definitely have to have you come back because I know you've got a ton of stuff. I appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor

if you like the video, share the video with your friends and family. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this. Leave a comment in the comment section. Check the description for any of Vicks books. And I really appreciate you guys watching. Thank you.

See you.