The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Secrets Of A Mafia Informant: A Sitdown With The Longest Serving Mafia Rat In American History

Episode Date: June 8, 2024

Joseph Barone Jr was raised with mob ties; his father was a hitman for the Genovese crime family. So it wasn't long before Joe started running with the same type of people. He got close with the Bonanno Family and started working for them. One day he was pinched by the Feds and when they revealed the truth about his father's death he agreed to flip. He spent the next 18 years giving the FBI information on the inner workings of the mob that led to countless takedowns. He's here to tell us all about it! Check Out Joe's Podcasts! Mafia Roundtable: https://www.youtube.com/@mafiaroundtable The Goodfellow Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGoodfellowPodcast Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow This Episode Is Sponsored By PrizePicks! Download the app today and use CONNECT for a first deposit match up to $100! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I was robbing drug dealers at one time for a while. I seen him driving, and he was like six, four, 500 pounds, big dude. I says, hey, Eddie, I says, where's my money? Bing, boom, bomb. I started, I knocked him to the ground. I put a telephone cord around his neck. My friend was choking with him. My other friend put the gun to his head.

You don't ever mess with my family. My guest today is Joe Barone. Joe is a former associate of the banana crime family and one of the longest serving FBI informants in mafia history. He was undercover feeding information to the feds for 18 years. Joe's father was a soldier and hitman for the Genevice crime family, but when he was brutally murdered by the mob in 1989, Joe decided to flip. In our conversation, he exposes what it's like living a double life,

working for the mafia and the FBI, and tells us who the biggest gangster really is. For more content with Joe, go over to patreon.com slash the Connect show. Without further ado, this is one for the books, everybody. I give you Joe Barone right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. They said, we want to show you something. Nowadays, a stack of photos like this of my father. The cemetery digging him up and him on a slab.

When I signed the papers that I'm going to cooperate with them, I says, listen, I want to find out. You think we're going to find out who killed my father? he says eventually yes that's when I see lights behind me start to flash and I didn't even think I just hit it I was driving like my life depended on and then I parked the car

hopped out closed the door and I started running and he pulls out a burner shang like six inches and he passes it to me and he goes here that's yours don't ever leave the cell block without this

he was the reason I made it out of that place alive yeah Dom and I are like yeah he's good Dominic right yeah yeah but he's a real like He's a real business-minded kind of dude. It was that way, he's all the way, all the while. Just that he, well, I can tell you that on the show. But he's because he got more refined.

But he got, when Vinny groomed him, he changed. And so everybody goes, wow, he really changed. He's more, more, more. Right. But yes, he was business, but he actually was a gangster, though. But he was more ruthless. Right, right. Which is probably why he moved up the way he did so quick

is because he's so good at both. You know, he's such a gangster, but it's such a good earner. That's why when you hang around with somebody like that, and I was saying before, was I really the good guy trying to be a bad guy, or was I really the bad guy pretending to be a good guy? Yeah. Because you get around people, because where we grew up and how I grew up, you be around like a guy like Dominic, he's real.

So you want to, you're with them, you feel that connection. Yeah. It's almost like when people go to prison. We're against the COs. You form a bond. You know, it's like weird. Did you feel fake? you know, all these years undercover, pretending to be somebody you weren't,

and then you look at a guy like Dominic, you know, a thorough, real dude. Did that eat away at you a little bit? It ate away at me a lot because I never expected to be friends with anybody. I didn't expect to get close to anybody. Like, with the feeling wise, I expect to be close because that's what I was supposed to do. You got to remember, these people, they're the ones who can send you out. They know when you're going to tell them a lie or, you know, They're not stupid.

You know, so the only way in with people like that, you have to become the real thing. And that's one thing the FBI never could understand. What was I supposed to do? No matter what I'd have to do, I'd have to be what I was supposed to be. Yeah, you can't not commit crime and be that deep undercover. They tell you you're not supposed to initiate crime. So, but if now say there was a fight that broke out into a bar, I'm not supposed to fight. Or I'm going to hide.

Oh, I can't do this. No. I mean, thank God I was able to fight too, which was good to. that helped, but still at the same time, I had to do that. That's why the FBI, the rules, it's almost like when you've seen the devil's advocate, he goes, yeah, you know, he says, God's a prankster. He says, he gives you these great senses. He goes, look, don't touch.

Touch don't taste. Right. Taste, don't swallow. You know, which one is it? How do you do it? You can't, you know, you can't split your body up in two. I'm a human being. I have emotions.

Do you regret it? I don't know I'm asking this is a question. I should ask at the end, but is there part of you when it got super stressful and you feel like you're getting torn by both sides? At the end of the day, do you sometimes say to yourself, shit, I should have just done the time? Yes. Because it's not that I was looking for any kind of pat on the back or anything because I did save the judge's life and I did save the AEOC's life and stuff like that. And that's kind of like in a way cool. Yeah.

Don't get me wrong. But at the same time, it's not really who I was. It's not really me. But my feelings overwhelmed my sense of kind of that honor, that justice that I was, well, that down deep, hardcore I was lived with, I was born with. Because like I said, I got close to Dominic. We were like almost like night and day. I mean, in the beginning, we picked like this.

And then we're like two peas in a pod. Well, let's talk about it and let's let them decide. So you, they call you the longest standing FBI inform it to inform on the mob, the American Mafia. One of the best they've had. Yeah. One of the best they've had. Yeah. Next to like a Greg Scarper.

He was a long time in there too. But he was the boss, wasn't he? No, he was a, I don't know, if he might have been a captain, but he might have been on the boss. I don't know. But he was high up there. He was the Philly guy, right? No, he was in the Colombo family. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah, he was, he was, oh yeah, they called him the Grim Reaper, not to his face. Yeah. But they called the Grim Reeb, and he was, look, I mean, he had almost like permission to do anything too, just like they gave me permission to kill a gangster too. Yeah, which is what nobody would expect. They probably think from TVs and movie, they're like, okay, if you're, the FBI will let you earn. They'll let you run your loan shark in, your gambling, but they won't let you commit murder. You're saying that's not the case.

When I got arrested and pinched on my second bid, and then I told them, we want to help them out and cooperate to, you know, so what they did was they said, okay, Joe, we're going to give you money. We're going to put it out in the street. He says, you know, like that. It's okay. That's not problem. You're going to give me the money?

Yeah, okay. I said, so let me ask you what happens when the guy doesn't want to pay. What do you want me to do? And they don't answer you. So they're saying go get it. Yeah. They're saying go get it with their silence. Yeah.

Well, how else am I supposed to collect? Yeah. You know, I mean, I used to get like collateral because that's the new way to collect now. You don't want to just say, okay, we're friends. If we're friends, you don't need to borrow my money. You know, if your friends, you need a hundred bucks or something to help you out real quick, no problem. I'm going to give you tens and thousands of dollars, you know, unless you're going to put something up for it because something could happen to you. There was a guy in my neighborhood who they called him Carmine Smash.

Now, Carmine Smash, they said, oh, because he used to smash fingers and everything. The real reason why they called him Carmine Smash was because he was drunk all the time. Well, he wound up having cancer. Yeah, no. This is kind of funny, but it's a true story. He used to hang around with a guy Alex Sacconi. And I could tell you about him too in a minute. My father actually wound up killing him.

But Carmine wound up getting cancer. So he went to all the wise guys, and he borrowed like, I think it was maybe up to $300,000 now. Smart. Yeah. He went to a hotel. He gave his wife the money. He died in a hotel. And the wife said, I never knew he borrowed any money.

And then she packed up and moved to Florida. Yeah, there you go. That's the wise guys girls' retirement plan. That's it. He set up his wife. Yeah. You're born in 1962. Where in New York are you from?

Did you grow up? I was born and raised in Nershell, New York, which is a suburb. They call it the Queen City. It's five minutes from the Bronx. You're from Westchester County. Correct. Okay. So your father, wise guy, you were born into the life.

Yes. On both sides of my family. Both sides? Your mother's side, too. Yeah. Who was involved there? So this was, it's followed me for a second. So it's my, my mother's mother, which is my grandmother.

Her sister's husband's brother was with Al Capone. And they killed him. It's all documented. We have all the paperwork. They killed them for whatever reason. I don't know. But they went to go get his brother to say, give us the money. And he was a barber.

He was just a regular guy. And he says, I don't have the money, but they threatened them. They scared him. So they said, we'll be here at the end of the week. So they packed up everything. They got ready to move. And then when they came into the barbershop, he blew them away with a shotgun. Wow.

And so what happened was he moved to from, I think it was Virginia. It was a place in Virginia where there was a big flood out there. I think it was Johnstown, Virginia. But then they moved to Mamarinick, New York, which is still Westchester. And then from Mamarinic, they moved to Naurich, where he opened up a another barbershop and 20 years later they shot him. Wow. And so did he have rackets too?

No. Beyond the barbershop? Nope. He was just a regular guy. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I felt bad from him because he wound up getting else timers and he used to walk the street. And I tapped him on the shoulder and he used to get scared like because he thought they were still coming to get him.

Damn. Yeah. So your father's side was the side that you were groomed from. Because my mother's from Calabria. They're from Calabres. And my father's from Sicily. Right. So this thing is more.

That's the way it goes. Because that's where it originated. Of course. So you're a legacy wise guy. Pretty much. But I was never supposed to be a wise guy. If I tell you, I was a pot head when I was a kid, that's what I was. I had long hair.

All right. I had a few fights maybe here and there. I broke a lot of bones in this right hand. But I was not looking to do that. My father just did his thing and nobody talked to me about it. What was the family he was with? He was with the Genevieve's family. He was close to the Lucchese family.

time too. He used to hang out with a Rudy Pippolo, who was a captain in the Lucchese family. And he's actually, he got arrested in the 70s for what they used to call the tail end of the French connection. It was like a heroin thing. And he only wound up doing three and a half years on a, on a, on the biggest back then, you used to only have to do 65% of your time. Oh, it was great. So he got like five years and I think it did three and a half. This is your father. Yes. Off the, heroin pinch. Yes. So he was a hustler. Yes. He was also a hairdresser. Wow. That's how he started. He was hairdresser, but he used to, it's funny, I went to, I got locked up in 1990 or 91, and I was hanging around the wise guys, of course, in the prison. And then some guy says, listen, he said, this guy,

Gene knows you. He thinks he knows your father. So I went and talked to him. We talked a few minutes. I had some pictures sent in of my father. And then he started telling me stories about my father, which were cool. Yeah. He told me how my father, some guy brought him around. My father would borrow money. And he always came to pay. And if he didn't, couldn't pay, he came still anyways and said, look, I can't get another one-week extension for some hard reason. The other guy that brought him around went bad, and then my father didn't hang around with him no more. They said, your father was a good guy and made me feel good.

Yeah. And so then there was also another guy they had my father, and they had a little deli contestant called Pippie's Deli. I was 11 years old, giving him coffee to all these guys. I didn't know. And then when I went to prison, the same guys as I was giving coffee, we were in the joint. Wow. He were like a spider from Goodfellas.

Yeah, almost, yeah. Just not as dumb. Yeah, exactly. I nearly is done. No. And I wouldn't ever call the wise guy, tell him to go, you know. Go fuck himself. Yeah, I wouldn't tell him go fuck himself.

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The Genevice at the time, you know, they've been called probably the most thorough, best earning, most discreet family in New York. Yes. At the time, the 60s and 70s, When you were growing up, your father was with them. Yes. He was a maid guy?

Not then, no, because he was dealing heroin. And they don't like that kind of stuff. But what happened was there's a guy, he's pretty much in charge now. Little bit he's like high up there on the ranks. Probably an underbors. His name is Barney Balamo. And he took my father for what they would call like a walk and talk. He took him on the BQ at like 2 o'clock in the morning, the BQE.

Because they pulled over and you can see if the feds are following you there. Or he's slick, this guy, Barney, he's smart. He speaks full in Italian. And he said, look, I know what you did, because my father told me. He says, look, I know what you did before, but that's the past. He says, you're over here with us now. And that was it. They got him strained out.

He didn't get strained out until he was like in his 50s. Okay. So, but he eventually became a soldier. He's a May guy. Yep. Left the drugs alone. Yes. And he was into, besides a hairdresser, what was, what were,

his underground rackets. So he actually had a, he was, like all the trucking companies like that were in Queens and all those places like that. He was getting money from all of them. And I know that only because after he went away on the lamb, I actually went there to collect the money. And I used to give it to this guy who used to meet. I forget who he was.

I used to meet him at the Jacob Javitt Center on the corner. Yep, because I worked there as well too. Can we talk about the Javitt Center really quick? Yeah. The Javitt Center is like, it's a New York. It's like what tourists on buses go to sea. They're like, this is the Javit Center. A bunch of Asian people are like, what am I staring at?

Why do I care about this? But for some reason, they've made it a Manhattan like you must see, right? Well, yeah. I mean, all the shows are there. Right, right. But what is the history of the creation, the building of the Javit Center? Well, it was all organized crime in there building it. I mean, and don't forget, too, the Westies had that for a while, the Irish mob.

Right. It was the, you know, the Italians who actually took it from them. And there was a big little bit of a war over that. Unfortunately, the Westies, there was some tough guys in the Westies, but that war went on for a little while, but of course, actually, we won. Dalians won out. Exactly. Now, what are the wars over?

The construction contracts, the who's supplying the cement? I mean, it's such a big building. There's so much, the mob could make money from like 25 different ways from building something. Like, could you just, like, give us a broad stroke about how the mafia would make money through construction like that? It's always just who you know in the construction. You always have somebody that's in the cement business. So you always underbid it because we always get tips on who's bidding the, you know. And then we bid it really low because we're paying really low.

We're really paying nothing. Explain that. What do you mean? So it's like we got such a good deal because of the inside track that we have. And it's not a case where we tell them you're going to do what we say or else. No, that doesn't work anymore. What we do is we can tell them, we're going to get you the job.

So we get you the job. We're earning with you. It's almost like we're partners. But once you get that construction going like that, then you've got the concrete. Now you've got the carpenters. Now you've got the electricians. Everybody's connected somehow, some way,

and every union you can believe, whether it's quiet or whether it's known. The only reason why they do it that way is because everybody wants money and everybody wants more jobs. So the guy's legitimate. Yeah. So now instead of doing it,

on five jobs a year, big contracts for two, three, four hundred thousand or maybe even a million dollars. Now he's getting 10. Right. Who's going to say no to that? So let me see if I got this straight. I may not. You find out they're building the Javit Center.

You have people on the inside that give you a tip like, hey, this is what they're bidding on concrete. And you say, great, we're going to underbid that. And we're going to under our, we're going to under bid on the carpenters and on the electricians. And these are all unions that the mafia takes a peace from every month. But in exchange, you're getting them work. Yeah, because you don't, that old mentality, look, if I told you, John, look, I'm going to start messing in on your podcast business. You can't tell me, no, you ain't.

You know, and we're going to have a fight. Yeah. Why? Why can't I tell you listen? How about I get you five people a week extra that you would really like to interview? Oh, really, Joe? Okay, thanks. Now, you're almost my partner, but, you know.

you're making money and now you don't mind giving me some money. You don't mind saying, hey, thanks, Joe. Here. So it's not really extortion. Not anymore. You're not really extorting. But back then, you know, in the 70s, would you consider that kind of union manipulation? Would you consider that extortion or is that just like bid rigging?

It's been rigging. That's what the government would call. Yeah. Listen, big, it's almost like this. If you were taking out $1,000 a week out of your checking account or savings account, and you just wanted to take it. out because, you know, if you take out more than $9,000, that's actually even a lot less now. I think if you take out 3,000, they keep telling the government about it. You know what they call that? They call that structuring.

It's your money, legitimate money, and they call it structuring, and they put a freeze on your account. That's how hard up the government is to try to get anybody that's doing anything. They want more money than they're bigger than the wise guys. They're the biggest wise guys out there right now. We're going to get into that. Yes. But so once this Javitt Center was completed, I can't what year was that? Like early 80s? 80s, I think. Yeah. Like a little bit earlier, yeah.

So there was a ton of, you know, millions and millions of dollars went into the pockets of the, the Genevice. Or was it a bunch of different families? It was probably a couple of them. But, yeah. But my bosses, they were the Genevice that was running it. Now, you know, from Mafia lore movies TV, a project that big, they would show like heads of different families sitting down and saying, hey, we all got to eat on this one. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Like in the Sopranos, they're building the esplanade. in Jersey and New York's like, hey, look, we need some of our scabs. That's right. Is that accurate? Would they actually divide up a piece of the pie? Well, because there's a collaboration. You know, it's, it's, I'm trying to put it the right way.

Because like, did you ever hear of the Windows case? No. That was a window. Well, it's pretty, well, the Windows case, it's obvious. They had contracts to put windows in all the new apartment buildings. But that wasn't just one family that had. that that was like, I think, two or three to them were involved with that. And so that's how you, you, everybody's earning.

Yeah. Plus, it's a big thing. You're talking about big contracting, big, you know, you know, concrete, somebody got one concrete. Somebody's got the electrician union. And you want to all make money like that. That keeps the peace. That keeps everybody happy.

Oh, and what better way to make illegal, illegal money than through this like, through legal construction project in the, you know, most expensive city. on earth. If you know most wise guys today, most of them really have legal businesses. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Dom, who's been was on here, he only had one, his height in, in the bananas as a captain, he only had one illegal racket in a huge sports book. Everything else, 10 other businesses were all legal completely. Yeah, he was, he was, he actually was always trying to help me get into the legal business. So I always had to thank him for that, you know. He really tried help me. I mean, I was doing very well on my own. Right. And now you, so the Javid Center, a bunch of young

people from the neighborhood, Italian neighborhoods, they all got jobs there because they were all connected with somebody that was a part of the families. So that was, you got a job working there. Most, here, I'll tell you, sometimes you got the job. Most people had to pay 20,000 just to work there. Can you explain what that's about? Because, well, because that's unusual. Most, most wise guys are broke. I was with a guy, Benzzi down there. Beenzy, nice guy was with Petey Fats down there, which is another guy. He's a captain in the Genevese family, too. This is his brother.

But I got it, my father, Bonnie said to my father, what's the kid doing? He says, he ain't doing nothing. He says, send him down there. I go down there and I got to go see the guy who's running the place, which is Ralphie Coppola, may he rest in peace. He's going now. And not by choice, but he's going now. And he says, what are you doing?

You got to have a carpenter belt on. I didn't know. Nobody told me. So I had to run up the street. I spent like $50 for a hammer. I had to get all the tools like I was really working. Okay. So these are scab jobs.

These are. Sort of, but I did work. I did put the boots together for like the car shows, the diamond. I got in to get in there free. So I did work. But not really work. What was the point? What was the paying 20 grand to get a job there?

What was that about? You were making back in the 80s. you were making, I think it was $24 an hour. And then overtime was $47 an hour. So I was getting a job going in there midnight, working until the next day. Right. So that was a great middle class living back then.

Correct. And the mob says, hey, you just got to give us this. You got to basically give us like half a year's salary. Yeah. But then you're going to be set up. You're in the union. You're in the union. You're in the union.

So who cares about paying for that? Listen, I did that. I was going to do that. Before I took my second pinch. Right. I was supposed to get a job at the sanitation department. Now, my cousin who passed away so I could say his name. Now, my cousin, George Paddy, had a connection in there.

I was going to be making $90,000 year as the head of the sanitation department. Now, it sounds like a dirty job, no pun intended, but I didn't have to do anything. I was going to be in the office. They're going to give me a car and I was going to make $90,000 year legally. So between that job, my million dollar home I had and money in the bank, I was set. Right. So you didn't have any ambitions to be. I was never really going to be a wise guy, John, to be honest with you.

You know, I really never was. I was, I was a carefree kid. I joked around a lot. I stopped smoking weed when I was 14. So I started when I was actually 11. So that's how I was. But, you know, I seen things happening and stuff like that. And I actually was supposed to be a postman because two of my uncles and one of my cousins were postmen.

I actually passed a test with like a 90-sum. something. And they called me in that they only wanted to give me a part-time job. And I'm like, I want a full-time job. But I didn't know that that's the way you start to get in. So it didn't happen. And then little by little, you gravitate towards that. Did your father want the life for you? You know, he never said, uh, do you want this? Like, like when I was asked when I was going to get straightened out. My father had asked me, I was a kid. I had a thousand dollars. I was looking to save a buy a car, you know, who don't want a car today, you know. I mean. So anyways, he says, oh, he says, let me see, you got a thousand dollars. He says,

give me that money. You wanted to make money? I said, yeah, dad. So now he started showing me how to loan the money out. And so, like, I only had a thousand dollars, but I was collecting $130 a week for 10 weeks. So I made it a profit of $300. Where was I making that kind of a profit? Of course. Right. So now I said, ooh, I could do this. So now my father started showing me and I started getting more customers. Showed you how to loan shark. Yeah. Did he, he had a Shylock business, does they say? Yep. Did he have, what else?

Sports. He did sports. Yep. Okay. He used to work at the Garman District. There was Lucases, I think, the Gambinos, and I think the Genovese were down there, too. And there was some problem with everybody getting their cut. And so for some reason, they knew my father, and they all vouched for him to make him be in charge of that. Then he had two number stores in Mount Vernon, New York.

So he was doing pretty good. The number stores got robbed. Now, this is what was kind of funny. He says, I went with him to the number stores, and I thought he was bringing me there to watch his back because they got robbed. But then when we lost the number stores, he got mad at me and he said,

I took you over there. You didn't look like you took to it. I was like, why didn't you just tell me to learning? I would have did it then. Because they were making big money. We had to pay this guy. I forget who it was. He ran Mount Vernon.

It's not a wise guy. Cool guy. If I think of it, I'll remember. but he was paying that guy because he ran that town. But he was making big money. Do you, what is a numbers store? You know, you take numbers. Like, you can go to a lotto or a store and play,

well, give me a 365 straight on a number or give me two. And it's, you know, it's like regular numbers, like horse racing. Well, most people don't know, because I don't even think numbers exist anymore. I think you still play it with the lotto, right? You play it with the lotto, but how did the mob, you know, the street numbers back in the day? How did that work? The street numbers is better because you don't get tax taken out of it. Right, right.

But what are they betting on? The horses. Okay. Okay. So it goes the horses. Yes. You bet on the horses. I see.

And so they, wow. So would they let civilians come into these underground numbers stores? All the time. My cousin and his dad used to have a writer. It was a delicate testing. So they'd all come in and they'd walk out with a sandwich or whatever like that. Some people would play a quarter. Some people would pay $10.

Listen, one time they paid out was like 20 grand. The boss actually got mad at them. And it was a problem over that. But yeah, they make big money. And then when they paying the cops, they get a phone call. And then all of a sudden, everybody started selling meatball, pomagions again. You know what I mean?

That's where it is. Exactly. They got a call from the cops that the cops are coming. So this is like Serpico. It's like, you know, they had number stores, numbers collectors in the back of, yeah, meat markets, delicatessen, whatever. They had the runners. Yeah.

They used to go to different stores. and stuff like that. That's what Malcolm X, if you ever read his autobiography, he started off. He was a numbers runner in Harlem when he moved to Harlem. And he kept it all in his head because they would arrest people. They would stop little black kids and they would arrest them and they'd have a bag full of numbers. So he started remembering the numbers without writing them down. And that's hard to do.

But there's, believe it or not, my cousin was pretty good at that. Even though they did write it down, but it was it is hard to do to remember depending on how big the business is. Okay. But you want to make sure everybody gets paid too because that's what it is. They always know you pay them. And that's why it'll always go to you. Now in the Harlem days, they used to only pay Nichols. And they were playing like pennies.

I mean, it wasn't that a lot of money. That's why Dutch Shultz wanted to take it over from the Blackstead and then days. That's why there was a little problem over there. Hey, everyone, just a quick reminder that I am coming on the road this summer doing stand-up comedy. June 20th, I'm going to be in Phoenix, Arizona at the Tempe Improv. I'll be headlining there. One night only. Then on July 19th and 20th, I will be back in Chicago, Illinois, at the comedy bar. I'm doing four shows, two on Friday, two on Saturday. These are some of my favorite cities to do comedy in.

So if you're a fan of the show, get tickets, come out and see me. You can go to linktree.com slash Johnny Mitchell to get tickets. The link will also be in the bio of my Instagram. Again, that's linktree.com slash Johnny Mitchell. All right, I will see you out on the road, America. Let's get back to the episode. Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off Summer Right. When I'm getting ready for the first big weekend of summer, Total Wine and More is my go-to,

especially when I'm firing up the grill with family. I'll grab refreshing beers, easy-drinking wines, and some hard seltzers for the cooler. And with everything that goes into summer, it's nice knowing you're getting the lowest prices. Total Wine and More. Your Memorial Day, easy. Shop total wine and more

in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly must be 21. When your dad got straightened out, did you notice a change? He came to me and he said, listen, they proposed me and I'm, you know, want to straighten me out. I said, well, what do you want to do that? He goes, I said, it's a big, big respecting, you know what I'm saying?

Because, listen, when you, when you're offered that kind of life, it is a it is everybody's if i put it this way better everybody's looking for something whether it's religion they go to or another gang they go to or just even a band you're involved in it gives you that sense of you know belonging and so when you get a people like this who are actually capable of doing more than just singing a song like in a band you're it shows it means that they accept you and it's a big sign of respect at least that's the way used to be. But my father took it.

You really can't kind of turn it down. He had nothing else to go with it. And did he start making more money, though? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because don't forget, you got a crew. Some people were making good money before they got involved. Like even Dominic, he was making good money himself.

Before he got straightened out, right? Yeah. But once you're made, it's like, no, it's mandatory. You're under me. And I'm going to get a piece of everything that my crew was bringing it. Well, don't forget, too, because you're around certain people, it's like anything else. You'll, you'll, my father always used to tell me, hang around with people who are smarter than you. Why?

Well, because now you learn more. So when you learn more, you're able to expand your knowledge about making money or looking for a future or whatever it may be. So when you get hooked up with a crew, well, now everybody looks at you. So more people come to opportunities. You saw Good Fellows. Yeah. You remember when that guy came to me, says, oh, it's play. You come in with Tommy D.

you take the suitcase. Exactly. That's because now they can talk to you like that. That's what they used to do to me. Right. Guys used to come to me. Joe, you know, listen, can you do this? Can you help me?

Yeah. Before you know it, everybody started coming to me. Yeah, it's like being an entrepreneur that finally makes good. You get successful. And then people start bringing new deals. You don't have to look for them anymore. And then can you borrow the money? Can you take care of my girlfriend who cheated on me?

And the girls were coming to me. Can you take care of my husband, my boyfriend, whatever? But then they also come to you. It's almost like you're an entrepreneur, but you have the best of both worlds. You have your brain to be smart to earn the money and to see where there's a little hook where you can help them and help yourself too.

But you also got the muscle to back it up in case something goes wrong. That's almost like a win-win. It's like the United States. Everybody says we're going to get blown up. We're going into wars and all of this stuff. But are you really looking to press the button with all the weapons?

I mean, is it really, where's the win here? See, so you have to, You got the best of both worlds. Was your father a killer? Oh, yeah. He had bodies on him in that period? About four, I think, four bodies that I can remember under his belt, yeah. And do you know what those are over?

Can you talk about him? Yes. One of them, that guy Alex Cicone, he was a tough guy. Matter of fact, he had pieces of skin missing from he was fighting some guy. He was a tough guy, and I don't, don't, I'm not knocking Alex Cicone even though he's gone. But he used to talk like, I back that guy. I'd smack them because he'd be. He was all punchy, and he actually had papers that was legitimate that he was crazy.

He belonged in a mental hospital. He had legal papers. And Carmey's Man, she used to bring him around to collect money. But Alex was messed up, and he had a fight with a guy in 21 North up in Portchester, New York. And the guy was tough, too. So Alex bit him, and the guy bit him back. They were biting each other. He had chunks taken out of his skin.

Yeah, you saw it. But anyway, he came to my house, like, about two-thirty-morn, awoke us up and everything. And my father went outside, and he was yelling. that Alex and I was afraid because my father was not going to be able to beat Alex up. I'm not going to fly to you. I mean, he would have shot him, but he didn't have the gun on him.

He didn't bring it out with him. And then I came out there and Alex said, what are you doing? I said, what are you doing? What do you mean? What am I doing? You put your hands on him, I'm going to jump. You don't care. But anyway, my grandfather was telling him,

bring him inside. We'll chop him up. Yeah. Your grandfather was saying that? Yeah. My grandfather, well, the only reason why we didn't do it because he had somebody in the car with him and the car was still running.

I think Alex was in some kind of trouble or something. He was looking out my father to get up. But my grandfather was the type of dude. When I was seven years old, my father said, listen, if you're ever going to do anything, do it by yourself. And he meant if I had to kill anybody. And I says, you don't know why? I was seven years old.

I said, no. He said, because are you going to tell on yourself? And I went, no. And he goes, and that was it. And then he walked away from me. So he kept saying, bring the guy in, bring him in, Joseph. Can you call my father, Joseph? Bring him in, Joseph.

But he wouldn't come inside. You think your grandfather would have killed him? In a second. Wow. My grandfather, his father killed a guy years ago. They used to go back in the days in the market. Somebody, he took a space where his park. Some big dude said that you took my space.

An argument ensued. And remember the little sledgehammers, the little ones he took the ham. He hit him over the head, killed him. He hid in a cemetery for three days. The cops back in those days, they said, no, it was a self-defense thing to let it go. And that was it. Yeah, killers. Yeah?

Just hot-blooded Italian, Sicilian men. But that was almost like normal in a way. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's almost, listen, any cop will tell you, too. I saw a stupid, I like family a few because I like Steve Harvey. So I saw a show and he says, yeah, I know it's kind of weird, but he says, one of the questions on there was says, if somebody breaks into your house, what's the first thing you do? You know what the number one answer was?

Call 911. Hmm. Are you kidding me? Right. Really? You know, a cop, any cop, even a, you know, a cop, A cop, you don't have to like him or nothing. But if a cop is honest with you, he'll tell you, if you can't protect yourself, you're just going to, until we get there, you're a statistic.

And even Negan. You remember Negan from the Walking Dead? I don't know if you ever saw a show. I never saw, no. There was a thing he said in there, and I refer a lot to movies because it helps me talk to explain because my PTSD hurt me a little bit. But he said, if you can't protect what belongs to you, sooner or a lady, it's going to belong to somebody else. And that's the true statement. One of the true statements you're going to hear because that's what happened.

So did your father ended up killing this guy, Alex? Later on, yeah. They had a suspicion, the FBI that my father did now. But he never went down for a body, your father. He was going to go down for another guy called Vic Maturo. Okay. Wait on that, though. Okay.

If he was so, you know, secretive with his murder game, how were you able to find out about it? the guy who wanted to testify against my father, who was my father's partner when he first got pinched on that heroin thing, he had a picture of him. The guy whose name was Tommy Murray. My grandfather never, like, told him, I told him your father not to hang around with this guy,

but, you know, like, we don't listen to when somebody tells us something, because we know it all. Anyway, he showed me the picture of him, he goes, he's dead.

And he was, he was drowned. He, they found them drowned. I think he drowned because he had two holes right here. And I think it kind of helped sink him. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. So they found him in the river. Yep. Yeah. And my father was happy about that. So I know my father had something to do that. Right. So I'm sure that helped him get straightened out too, is that you have, if you have a body on your hands.

I don't know. I know it's different now. But back in the day, they said you had to have a murder to be able to get made. Because you won't tell. Well, because it shows your loyalty, too. I mean, listen, once you got that body, that's pretty strong. You'd kill somebody. that's a that's pretty big i mean and like i said he had killed alex he actually ran him over again

because alex was tough he he he shot him they didn't care because he told me the story but he didn't have he told me he actually killed him just told me what happened see my father was like what dominic says and this is anybody that's in the life should know you never talk about a body once it's gone it's gone that's it matter of fact my father was driving with this guy gregory they used to call him bullets and they were not the car. Bonnie was in the next car with somebody else in the car, and they had, I guess there was some union guy or something that got whacked.

And Bonnie had said to them, hey, look, look at him. He looks like somebody we used to know. Now, that's almost like unheard of. But that can still pass because he's not saying. Yeah. But that's the kind of guy Bonnie is. But you never say anything about anything you ever do. Yeah.

Because it's so. He ran Alex over. Shot him a few times. He ran him over in the Anka Cemetery. And that was that because I knew he was going to get him because, you know, I know the guy actually, he's still alive. I won't say his name. But I knew the guy who drove him there. At what point in your teenage years as your father is now made and you guys are pretty affluent by by mafia standards?

You're like blue collar rich, right? Yes. When did you start to get involved in street activity? Let's see. So I was a teenager when he first started showing me how to loan the money and maybe I was like 19, 20. So really 20 is really not a teenager, but still that's maybe about that age.

But I also was, I used to hang around with a club in my town there, Michelle, they used to be called Third Street, the Third Street Boys. It was about maybe 25 of us strong. So, you know, they kind of knew that my father was connected and stuff like that. And then they treated me kind of nice, but we had a lot of battles back in those days with the Third Street guys.

And I had some really good friends up there. Like street fights? Yes, bar fights. We wrecked bars. We, you know, if I ever needed it, I had a problem with some guys. It was just me and a friend. There was a few guys there out of the neighborhood, at a party. And I called up my guy at this place called It's Magic.

We used to call previously Samies. But anyway, I said, there's Joe Calangelo there. and he gets on the phone. I said, hey, Joe, how are? He said, Joe, he's Joe Barone. Hey, hey, come on over. I said, listen, I got a problem. He goes, what?

I said, I got a problem. He said, where are you? I told him where I was. He says, by the high school, I said, yeah. It's Parkhart Avenue. Got this girl Kathy's house at a party. They said, we'll be right there. Three or four cars, I forget exactly it came out.

These, they're loaded with guys. One guy got out with a, you know those Viking axes, those ones you like hang on the wall? He came out with that. So these guys, but there's power in that. It's like warriors. It's like the movie Warriors. Yes, exactly.

It was like warriors. Yep. Wow. Yep. So you're involved in this is hooliganism. Yes. Did you get into, did you get into more money-making schemes as you got a little older? Well, because I started loaning the money.

Okay. And who were you loaning money too? Cab drivers, anybody who came to ask me regular work. It's almost almost regular working classes. Right. Only problem you have is the guys who are actually, gamblers, the generic gamblers. That's somebody you don't loan money to.

Right. Now, would you let people know, hey, I'm going to lend you money? My father is a soldier with the Genevice. You know, they just found a guy. Never said that. You never even said, hey, my dad is so-and-so. Never said that. First of all, you don't throw around names unless you're doing something.

Say, I had a problem with you. And I'll say, okay, you go see, you got to go see. I'll go see my guy. You won't even know who my guy is until you get to this place where we got to go meet. And that's how you know. But my father, I didn't have to say that. There was one guy in the pizza parlor who owned my father. He owed my father money.

And so my father says, do I got to call my son here? So he made the mistake and saying, I'm not afraid of your son. And I like this guy, Tony. I know his daughter married a nice friend of mine. His brother's a cop and her show. and I had to go see him. And I felt bad, you know, after, you know, I was finished with him, you know. You beat them up?

I had no choice. Yeah. So you were a kind of muscle for your father. That's correct. That's what you got to get started someplace. They got to see what you were able to do. It's like most dads make their sons do chores. Yes.

You got a different set of chores. I wasn't cutting grass. You were cut in grass. Yeah. You were whooping ass. A landscaper I was working for my friend, Johnny Valenti, got me, job working. He said, come on. And he always helped me. This guy, Johnny Valenti, really a good friend of mine. And this guy hired me, yelled at me every day. I only worked one week with him. They were

behind and I worked with him. I did everything they wanted me to do. That wasn't a landscaper, but I still did what I had to do. So he didn't want to pay me. So he says, okay, I'll pay you the money what it was. And this is early on. He was supposed to give me like $20. He gives me a check for $12.50. He said, that's right after taxes, right? So my father actually heard this guy telling me, my father came running down. He grabbed this guy by the collar. He said, do you know why he asked me? He says, give the kid the money.

And he took the money out of the place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And every time he saw me driving or if he saw me in a diner someplace, this guy, he walked by him. He got so scared. So sometimes if you had to lean on a guy, you might use your father or your father might use his own status to just remind people. Depending on a situation. One thing about me, and I'll tell you this, and most people would notice.

and I think most people that I hung around were very family-oriented. I wouldn't care. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not the toughest guy out there. I'm not going to pretend that I am. I'll fight pretty much anybody, win or lose. As a matter of fact, we used to do that too. My friend used to say years ago, the Irish people,

they were tough. And they were actually beating up some of us Italians until we started stabbing them. But you don't ever mess with my family. When my mother was sick and died with cancer, she had a fur coat on and she was sick but she still wanted to do my laundry. I didn't want her to do it, but I guess it made her kind of forget that she was dying.

Some Mexican guy in the laundry mat opened the door. She was freezing. She said, listen, I'm sick. She talked to him. Can you please shut the door because I'm cold? And she told them nicely. My mother was 53 years old at that time. And he opened the door,

anyway. So my sister told me. And then, so they used to hang out on the corner. So I took my car and I tried to run everybody over there over because I don't really care. When it comes to that, that's it. And then I don't, because when my fault was alive, I don't care about doing time. And I didn't care about doing time on my first bed before I cooperated, which we'll probably get into. It's not like I love going to jail and I'm a man and I'm tough and all that. No. But I was willing to do what I had to do. You loved your family. I love my family. And that's it. And that's the way it goes. So you've got a little loan shark and racket going now. You're helping your father collect, make collections. At the same time.

Can you tell me how the collecting money from like trucking routes worked in the mob? Because I used to see that all the time on the Sopranos. I'm like, hey, no, no, this is my route. Like they're like arguing about who gets to collect money from this trucking route. And a lot of it is like passed down to the generations. Can you go into detail about how that worked? Yeah, there was one guy that I liked. His name was Joe, too.

He was a big heavyset guy. So that was one trucking company that we had. So imagine this way. One trucking company I went to to go get the regular pay. It was around Christmas time. He gives me $700. He always give you a father a little Christmas bonus. And I was like, okay.

And, you know. But what sense about why do they pay the mob? Why do they pay your father? Because they protect them from getting shaking down from somebody else. Oh, got you. So that is pure extortion. That's like old school. Yeah, because you got to remember, but they, but, but the money that they're making,

it's really nothing to pay them. Yeah. They're not asking, say they're making a, I'll just throw a stupid number, say they're making a million dollars a year. They're only asking for not even a quarter of that. They're not asking for $100,000 a year. Yeah. They're not making that much money out of it.

And trucks did get hijacked a lot, especially for the JFK, you know, leave a JFK. That was a mafia racket in itself was hijacking the trucks leaving JFK. So if you're, uh, if you're paying a guy. from the Genevice to stop the Lucases from Jack in your truck worth, you know, untold millions of goods. You actually are providing them a service. And the whole thing is there was one time these guys came. He had tattoos on his arms. He was another wise guy from someplace else.

They came and they called my father and they called me back there. I'm saying they're back in the back with a pistol. You know something? John, I don't want to say something, but this is the first time I'm telling that story. Nobody knows this story about me. I've never just told us. Oh, wow, that's just blew my mind. I just can't believe I'm remembering this because you brought it to my attention.

I'm standing in the back there with a gun. They give me a gun. And my father's there talking to the guy. And I'm trying to listen a little bit because I always want to know how to talk to another wise guy or what was really said too because, you know, and I'm just ready to shoot because, you know, just in case this goes bad to talk. And so the big heavyset guy that owned the trunk and company used to be called Bway. he was over there too

and he was ready to shoot too actually believe it or not and my father told him what he had to tell him who he was with this is his he said I'm over here and that's it and then they left us alone and I didn't have to pull the trigger

because you know like I said that was it yeah so but back in the day the threats of violence from the mob were real oh 100%

so if you're a trucking guy and you just said fuck off I'm not paying you you could end up in the river. You could. Okay. It all depends on how serious you want that trucking company or how much it's really making or most of these guys don't want to hear no. You know, you're not going to tell a guy no like in a way too.

You know, they're scary. You know, yeah. Yeah, they're big and scary. Yeah. I've seen, look, like you get, we talked about Greg Scarper a little bit. Yeah. You get a guy like Greg comes over to see you. You're going to do what he says.

Yeah. So everybody paid. Yeah. Until Giuliani in the 90s and then everybody started ratting or going to the feds. You know, Giuliani too, he's a type of dude where he ruined the whole feast. You know, look, I get it that they were making money here and there and they got the right to put the boots there. But you know how good that food was? The real Italians were making the sauce.

I hate sauces and peppers. I don't like sausages. The sauce of peppers that as a Senjanoa feast was so good. The grease was ripping down. The bread was good. After he took it over, it was not the same. We used to call it the Mayor Giuliani feast. I don't know if you're being literal or you're making a metaphor or both.

You kind of did both right there. That was brilliant. Thank you. He ended the feast, but he did. He ended the mafia feast that was New York City. Exactly. But so why would like a union guy, union guys would go missing back then? How would they get out of line?

Because that was big money that the families were collecting. Well, they just didn't cooperate with the wise guys anymore. That's it. I see. You know, and I think even there was a tape that John, God he was on, unfortunately. Talking about a body. And one of a union guy, yeah.

And, you know, sometimes a union guy. Because it's almost like what happened with the guy that disappeared. They never found him, Jimmy Hoffer. Jimmy Hoffer was a good guy. But then he got too big for his own bridges. It's like anything else. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. You know that.

If you get to be a certain level, it gets to you a little bit. Now you think you don't need anybody. And I think when those by the time, union, heads of unions, get that deep into the pockets of wise guys, the wise guy probably doesn't see him as a civilian anymore. He looks at him as a criminal just like him and he could get touched. Because listen, most people are really down deep. If you can get away without paying your taxes, and that's a stupid little thing. Because first of all, taxes, in my opinion, are illegal. But, you know, that's another story. But, you know, you cheat a little bit on your taxes. Is that the

end of the world? It's not the worst thing you do. But if you could save yourself, a little bit money. So everybody has a little bit of criminality. And if it doesn't mean you've got to be a psychopath or a sociopath or anything like that, you don't have to go to a round. You're not going to kill somebody because you cheat on your taxes. But the mob will, though. But the mob will.

And they kind of were sociopathic, in a way, some of them. Well, there was Tommy Karate from the Bonano family. Tommy Petera, who was still doing time. He was, you know, he used to get in a bathtub and cut you up while he was naked in a bed tub with you. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, his own crew was afraid of him. But your father, how would, what category would you put your father in? You know, he was a murderer, right?

It's a mortal sin according to Catholicism, right? You know, the worst crime. Correct. But how would you lump him in between like criminal, just product of his environment and like psychopath? What scale? My father was a Gemini. June 7th was his birthday. So he was a true Gemini.

I've seen my father laugh and have a ball and then I've seen him snap at one second and it was bad. Was he a true sociopath? Well, there was a mental illness on then some of my family. They said, I don't know if that's true. But I think he was a product of his environment.

So am I, to be honest with you. And sometimes you don't know. Look, some people can break out of it. You got Ben Carson, who had come from a long line of family. Single black mom. Okay, here's a guy who's one of the first people who ever separated twins inside the womb.

Right. I mean, so you can be stereotype. You can be like that. But it takes a lot to get out of where you are. And you have to have, you know, like a good mother like he had. And it takes a couple of generations. It does. You can't just do things overnight.

Yeah. You just can't. So your father's with the Genevice. Correct. you're becoming kind of a knock around guy. Yes, that's what I call myself. Yeah. Man, I'm becoming like a half a wise guy.

The longer I do this podcast, I just talk like you use guys now. Yeah. But now why are you suddenly starting to run with the bananas if your father's with the Genovese? You know, so I think it was after my father was killed. Supposedly they said he was killed. I don't know. That's what the FBI told me. You see, I'm not going to knock anybody who cooperated.

because everybody has their own reasons. Now, I'm not the kind of dude to cooperate just because I get my handcuffs on me. I'm not a punk. But they told me that my father was murdered by the wise guys. My father was in hiding. He was on a lamb. He was actually in Honduras. Hang on.

So the bananas comes after you cooperated? Yes. All right. So let's talk about what led up to your father's death. And then we'll get into you and your cooperation. Okay. So to give us the year where it all went down and the murder that caused him to go on the run. So it was in the early, it was in the 80s, 89, because my mother passed away in 1988, July 7th.

So my father was sort of different after that. But he had to kill a guy called, his name was Vic Matoro. He was a wise guy. He lived in Scarsdale, New York. A lot of money. He was suspected of being a rat. And so my father got the orders to call him down. He went down to Brooklyn.

And they had to sit down and sure enough, that's when they gave my father the green light. So what happened was him and another guy who I think is still alive that went with him. I'm not going to say his name because he is still alive. I'm pretty sure. They found him, my father, and they were the last to be seen going to his house,

and then they found him the next day hanging in the garage. They hung him? Yeah. Wow. They wanted to make it look like a suicide because this guy, Vic Ventura was not a slouch either. I think four guys or three young guys because he was an older man. They tried to rob him.

He fought them off. So he's not like, he wasn't like it was that easy, but the guy my father brought with, yeah. Now, he got that order. The boss of the Genovese was crazy. the chin, right? Yeah. Now, even though your father's made, he's a soldier, if he gets an order to go push a button,

he has to go. No problem, yes. Okay. Has no choice. Okay. And he's, do you know why they picked him to go? I think because Victor, I think he trusted my father. You know, listen, you're always going to trust a guy that you can get close to or you're

able to pick him up and, you know, you pretend you're his buddy, sort of speak. You don't act cold to him. It was a joke that what's his name used to make, Richard Pryor on one of his shows, on the comedian shows. He says he had to go collect. They didn't want to pay him for doing a show. And he went in the back and it was all the wise guys there. And he went out there and he said, I gave my best black look.

You're going to pay me. Where's my money? And they started laughing. And they started laughing. And they started laughing. We're going to pay everybody calm. And he tells him, he's come on, Rich. And he grabs him.

And he says, let me tell you story about this teamster. And they take this teamster. And they take him out to drink. They take him out to eat. Then he's in the back of the limo. he bends over because he spills a shrink, he pops him with the pick. And he goes, what's the matter, Richie, you look nervous. You want to go for a ride?

But you see, you make them feel relaxed. You make them comfortable. You know, you don't give them the mean look. Yeah. But sometimes that's the trick. If you're smart, you know, why is this guy being so nice to me today? It's overly nice. And that's when you know you could have a problem.

Yeah. Wow. So you could be in the mob. Everything's going good. and then this guy that's normally cold is suddenly smiling in your face and now you've got to be suspicious. What a crazy psychological battle you have to play with yourself. You know what I mean?

And with other people. I was playing it every day. Listen, in my life, because I had to be the real thing, whether I was in public or even by myself, I always had to live the life of the man I was claiming to be. I make one mistake. They're not stupid. I make a slip up, whatever. And I was being tested all the time.

Dominic himself will tell you how he tested me, calling me down, Joe, meet me in 15 minutes. I said, could I have 20? Okay, 20 minutes. And he was testing me, you know, and there was times, be honest with you, John. I never thought I was coming back. You thought you were going?

Yeah. And I still went. That's what I don't even understand because you remember, and like I say, go to the movies. I'm not trying to, but you remember Top Gun? Yeah. You don't have to. time to think.

I had an agenda. I wanted to find out because the FBI said that these guys killed my father. My agenda was to find out. And I was willing to go almost to the old lengths to find out who killed them, even at the risk of my own life. And that's the truth. And, you know, and I didn't like what I was doing anyways, really. So I didn't really care, one way about dying because I even said to Dominic, he said,

I would have did it, Joe. I would have took you out if that was the case. and I would have wanted him. I would have respected it coming from him. Somebody else I would have tried to fight back, shoot back, whatever. But him, because I cared about him. You'd make peace with it. Yeah.

In my own mind. Yeah. Wow. The boss of the Genevice at the time who gave your father the order to go hit this guy, take this guy Vic out. Yes. Who was that? Did you know this gentleman?

No. I didn't know who he was. Probably some under boss. I don't know who he was, though. And is that because the Genevice are so secretive? The chin never met with anybody really. The chin was his name. Yeah, well, no, the chin was the boss of the, yeah.

Okay. And they used to just, you know, go like that. That was the orders or, you know, you went to the air. But whoever was his underlink, that's who told my father. Okay. And then they found him. So your father goes with this other guy. They kill this guy, Vic.

He was a rat, I believe. Yep. He was actually a rat. They got that one right. Yeah, yeah. So, you know. Once in a while. Something, yeah.

They're not stupid, as they say in Carlito's way. Man, the Italians, they're going to sniff this one out. You guys are very good at that. I told you they're not stupid. No. No. So they kill this guy. But then your father gets creeped out, right?

He thinks that he's marked to be killed. Okay. Go ahead, please. There is a reason why the FBI actually came to my father's house. They said that they, intercepted a call. They gave him his card. They said, hey, we're from FBI. And we have, by law, we have the right to inform you that there's a hit out on your life. Now, why would that happen? I have no idea. Because when I came home that day, my father said, and he showed me the

card, put it on the, I said, what's this, dad? He said, they came to the house. I said, now I'm thinking, my thing, I'm thinking they're going to arrest them. They're giving them a chance to either come in or whatever. He said, they said that we intercepted a phone call saying that we got to get rid of J.B. That was one of my father's nicknames. So my father, they said, would you, if you want to come in and talk to us, naturally, you know, they're your friend. They've been following you all this time trying to get dirt on you, but now they like you. You know, they want to save your life. Yeah. Exactly. You're welcome. Yeah. So they says, if you want to come in and talk to us, so he looked up. My father looked at the car. I said, no, I'm okay. Thank you. Shut the door. Just not alone. Have an FBI agent. If somebody would have saw it or something, they would have to say, what happened. And my father would have how to explain it. And don't get me wrong. they probably would have believed my father that he was not going to cooperate, but now they have a, what, well, what's going on here now? Of course, because they don't like loose ends, like anything else, you know. It's the whole Jimmy Burke thing after Lufthansa heist.

He started killing everybody because he's like, hey, we just, we like the guy, but we can't risk it. Yeah, you know. So they just started taking everybody out linked to it. But don't forget, too, Jimmy Burke was a little greedy, too. Sure, no, of course. You wanted all the money from so, you know, he was a, He was a killer, too.

So who did they, who was that call that the FBI intercepted? Obviously, they had a wiretap on somebody. Was that the underboss of the Genebese? I'm not sure who it was because we never found out. The FBI never told me when I started working for them. How is that that they couldn't tell you, at least reveal who wanted your father killed? That's so crazy to me. You see, John, this is some of the dilemmas I had when I wanted to find out about who killed my father.

Because there's another floor in there. me three men went under my last name, Barone, and to visit my father in Honduras. I never knew this. So I said, you mean to tell me the video cameras that are not working in the airport? You can't see who they were? Like, just go back for video footage, you know, the plane flight and everything. Who were they? He said, you didn't know who they were?

I didn't. So now they tell me, okay, and he never took them back to his villa. He always used to meet them in the mall. So I said, okay, now he took him back to the villa. So they went to go arrest him. They said, that's when they found him dead on the floor. So I said, okay, well, who are they? They never told me.

And then I said to myself later on, after all these 18 years, I worked with the FBI trying to find out who killed my father, you mean to tell me not one rat, one somebody who got arrested, who wanted to talk? Nobody ever said anything about who? Hey, we know who killed that guy Joe Morone, or we know what happened, or nobody, you never asked. anybody.

Yeah. Does that make sense to you? Suspicious. It's very suspicious now. It makes me think, did the wise guys really did kill my father or not? I don't know. Because don't forget Benny Pissouty, who I think I showed you, I think I sent you a picture of him. He was a, how can I say?

Was that my trial? He's like a psychological profile type of guy, like, or whatever. He knew what would trigger me off or at least hoped it would. And so when he told me that right away, the first thing you do, you get angry. You know what I'm saying? You get mad. Yeah.

Did they ever find out, did they ever get anybody on the murder of Vic, this rat that your father helped kill? So, okay, so that's remained cold. Yes. So somehow they got, so maybe, this hit on him may have had nothing to do with the bosses

talking about killing your father. It could have been from something else. Right. So you really have no idea. beyond just, hey, we heard that they're trying to take J.B. out. My father told me some things. He's not going to tell me everything about his life. You know, he just wasn't going to do it. Okay. So how long after that tip and the murder of this rat, did your father go on the run?

It was, let's see, I'll try to be as accurate as I can be, but it is a long time ago. So figure it was about maybe a couple of months after the murder. Okay. And then he came to me, I had to go to the safety deposit box. I had to get him $70,000, which I did, I gave him the cash. And he says, look, I don't know when. I'm going to be back. He says, I said, but that, why you even got to go?

He said, well, sometimes it's easy to put people's mind that ease if I'm not around. So now, why would he even think like that? Right. Do you think your dad was ratting? No. No. No, because why would he go? You know what I'm saying?

He did time before. And he told me this. Well, this is the reason why I don't think he was ratting. one because I know my father. Two, he said if they come to where I'm going, there's going to be a shoot out of the okay corral. Right. That's exactly what he said, his exact words.

Right. So that's why I knew that he would rather die before going back to jail. And he didn't really have much of a long life because he died. He was 54 years old. And I'm sorry. And he had a bad heart. Matter of fact, he was trying to get back into the United States to get a triple bypass done. Okay.

So that was the whole thing there. I mean, and why Honduras? I mean, you've got Italians can barely pronounce it. You can call it Honduras, my aunt Doris. Yeah, yeah, my aunt Doris, Honduras, yeah, yeah. This is my wife, Honduras. Now, why, do you have any idea why he chose that or did he have connections there? It was another wise guy staying there.

Who was also on the run? I think so, yeah. Wow. I don't know who he was, but that's who he got the connection with. And then my father actually had to pay the officials because one thing, thing the FBI said was they said, look, we tried to arrest him one time before, but the officials alerted to him that we were coming down. And he went from one villa to another. And I know that's true because I went to go call him on the number he gave me. I said the phone boots, a bag of quarters.

And it's kind of funny, but that was true. But I didn't tell them that. Yeah. They didn't know that I knew that what they were saying was right. Right. Was he active down there? Like, was he still giving orders and getting money? No. No. He lost all. control. I wish I would have showed you a picture what he looked like. He was sick. He was sick. He was smoking a lot of cigarettes, supposedly, and he was sick.

And that's what makes me think, like, what really happened? Was it really the wise guys that killed him? Did he really die of natural causes? Because they did an autopsy on him down there. Now, they had a V-shaped in his chest. So I went to my uncle, Pat. He's really my cousin. But I call him Uncle out of respect

because he's obviously older than me. So I went there and he said, I said, what happened, Uncle Pat? Do you know anything? See, that's a man I could have asked the direct question to him. Yeah. And he was supposed to be strained out a long time ago too.

And he said to me, he said, they did that to hide the stab wounds. Okay, hang on. Because I want to make sure people get this. So not long after your father, went on the run in Honduras. Correct. He was killed or he was found dead.

Yes. How long after he left New York did that happen? At least a year. Easily a year. At least a year because I had gotten arrested in 91, I believe it was. So he was going in 90s. It was at least about a year. Before you got pinched.

Yes. Okay. So they found him stabbed. Well, this is the part that we'll never know. this is the mystery. They found him dead. Right. But that was the Honduras officials that found him dead.

Right, which you can't trust. I can't trust. Then they said they did an autopsy. The FBI told me that they wanted to do another autopsy because they didn't trust them either. So when I was in prison and they called me, they actually, I didn't know I was going to see the FBI. Actually, Victor, Vic Maturo, from the boss of the Lucase crime, family told me that they were going to see me. I don't know how he knew.

He knew that they were going to interview me. He actually told me what to say. Vic and I were pretty close then, too. He was a good guy, Vic, but he was a stone cold killer too. He said, I don't know how many bodies he got. He said, listen, you tell them you sit there, you listen, you be quiet. He says, and at the end, you tell him, listen, I love to help you, but I'm not even in a position to help myself.

That's the kind of man he is. And he's still doing his time. Wow. I don't know how many lives. Wow. Yeah, he could die and come back. Yeah, exactly. One of the few.

So they told you you go get summoned by the FBI, and what did they tell you in that meeting? So I go into there, the marshals bring me in the hallway. I go there and they go in there and I see the, I see Vinny there. I see one of the other guys that was arrested me when I got, when I got pinched. I see the Benjamin Rosenberg, who was the AUSA at the time, and my attorney. And I was like, what's going on? So I said, could I have a minute with my attorney? And so I said, Ben, what happened?

You know, I said, I'm not, you know. He said, Joe, they called me last night, told me you got to be here this morning. So I says, okay, what am I supposed to do? I was paying him money back then. I was paying like $60,000. I gave him. And so he said, look, you got nothing to do. This is what they got to say.

So I did. Well, when they came in, he called him back in and he, they started talking to me, Hey, Joe, you know, this life. What do you think? But, you know, all the bullshit, like kind of talk a little bit. And then all of a sudden, they said, we want to show you something. This is okay So they put the handcuffs from my back to the front

That's okay Now there's a stack of photos like this Of my father The cemetery Digging him up And him on a slab Now it was the first time I saw him in

Almost two years or better On a slab So He had to cut like this a V And then going down to here But they didn't do the autopsy little did I know that my uncle was there, my father's oldest brother, and he said, I don't want you to do the autopsy on him.

They did give him permission to dig him up. Yeah. But they wanted to see if it was my father. So I saw them, they had a picture of my father from one of his munch shots. They put it close to his face, but my father had decay already on his face. And he had three stab wounds, right? Just a V-neck, V like this, and then a long thing. So we don't know.

They said that was the autopsy that they did in Honduras. and then that's what my uncle Pat told me that was to cover up the stab wounds. I don't know if that's true or not now. Now what did Honduras say? What did the people down there say the cause of death was? As much as I tried to get in touch with him, I never got an answer.

I do have the death certificate from them. They said it was some sort of a drug overdose. Okay. So it quite possibly could have been or it could have been, he could have developed some kind of leukemia. from being a smoker that developed really fast. Could have died of a heart attack.

Right. Could have had a heart attack because he had a bad ticker. And it sounds like, I mean, because what you're describing is how they would cut you open. For an autopsy. For an autopsy. That's right. So, you know,

did you, what led you to believe beyond that, that that was actually a cover up for a mob hit? Because I didn't, it was hard to trust any of them. It's hard to trust the, wise guys had to try, as hard to trust the FBI.

But just hearing that my father was dead. I remember I was on the phone. I was in Otisville, New York. I was standing by the phone. I cut the phone call, called up my grandmother, and then she told me that he died. I didn't know it. That's how I found out.

There was a guy, a skipper, Danny Ticchio from Staten Island, was there. And he grabbed my shoulder, and he knew. I said he died, but I didn't know how. The priest called me in. They said, you're going to be okay, because usually they want to try you in the box, you're going to flip out. but it was when I went there and I was like,

they seemed so, they knew a few things, the FBI, that they shouldn't have known. And that's how, like with the phone call, what I told you when he moved and they knew they were paying the officials. So I said, they knew something. My father was what they call a fixer too. My father knew, had a lot of political connections,

as well as wise guy connections. Really? Yes. Who were those? Judges. police. And so my father in some degree, not all of it,

I'm not saying he was some, but he had a, he was at some degree of risk of, you know, I guess because his political connections and the things he could fix, he got me out of trouble almost all the time. Right.

I think maybe the wise guys could be worried about that, especially since that note, they said they intercepted a phone call, they got to get rid of J.B. See, So I put all this together on my mind thinking maybe they are right because I didn't cooperate right there and there. I says, I'll talk these later.

You know, I'll talk to my attorney. But it seems kind of far-fetched to think that the mob went down all the way down there, stabbed him. And the feds didn't know anything about it. And nobody on the street, New York knew anything about it. I mean, you know. You're right, John. I asked another wise guy, somebody I could talk to it. I was close to my father.

I won't say his name either. I don't want to get him in trouble. And he said the same thing to me. Why would we go all the way down there to get him? But then, Patty Boy Felsetti, who was actually Petty's brother, the one I was telling you about. He's a big book, Bill Watson,

in the Genevice family now, too. Matter of fact, and my second biddy sent me a message. He said, say a hello to Joe for him because now we knew I was cooperating. That means say hello to Joe means, you know, fuck you. But anyway,

I was going to go on a date with this girl. This girl went to his house because she was good friends with his wife. So she said, do you know this guy, Joe Barone? And he says, well, is he, there's his father, Joe Barone? And so she said, yeah. He says to her, what a shame what happened to his father, what they did to his father. Now, this is a big shot. He was a, you know, I think he's a captain now or whatever he is or maybe even,

Bigger than a captain. Why would he say something like that? Okay, so now you see all these things... Now you got the paranoia and the... You just don't know, but you want to know something, John? Somebody knows who I don't know. But I'm probably never going to know. But that's a big decision to then decide to give your life to the FBI for, you know, the next two decades.

That's correct. Based off of something that you aren't even for sure happened. Is there a regret there now? Do you say, man, I should have had, I should have maybe got more information before I decided to throw it all away. When I was in prison, I was alone, more or less. I was, the wise guys don't come and help you.

They don't really talk to you except for like, you know, Bicamuso and stuff like that. They talk to you, but, you know, you're a low-level guy to these guys, really still. You know what I mean? And I didn't know how to go about look, I don't have really that great resources. I'm not the smartest tack in the book.

Do I have a few skills here and there? Yeah. But I felt like at that time, I had no other choice, but that was the only way I could find that about who really killed my father. Because I figured now I got the FBI actually working with me to find out who killed my dad. Because when I went to go sign the papers that I'm going to cooperate with them, that's what I told them I wanted to do. I says, listen, I want to find out.

You think we're going to find out who killed my father? He says eventually, yes. And were you then going to try to go kill that person if they were still alive? Was that like the plan deep down? Or was that just my closure? It was the back of my mind. I'll say that. Or you help convict them, whatever it is.

It's one of the three. They either get killed, go to prison. Somebody else killed them. When you do certain things in life at certain areas in your life, certain times in your life. What's the first thing you say? Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. So I would have waited to see what would have happened at that time and that was it.

And then I would make that decision then. And what kind of, so you weren't, you didn't decide to cooperate to get out of the bid you were facing, right? Because you were looking at only a couple of years. They said it, they were, I was looking at 10 years. What was the charge, by the way? It was extortion and gun possession. Okay.

And what were the details involving that? The guns had the serial numbers filed off. That's a federal crime. Who were you shaking down? I was robbing drug dealers at one time for a while until my friend got shot robbing him by his. He went by himself. He went and got shot in the back. Wow.

This is serious business. This is what you were doing? Yeah. So what was the extortion part? The extortion part was this guy that he owed me money like 30 grand. And I was trying to shake him down for, where's my money? We put a telephone court around his neck. My friend was choking with him.

My other friend put the gun to his head and that kind of thing. And then I actually seen him at the Thomas C. Bible funeral home in the Bronx under the L on Washington Square. It's a, it's an old neighborhood. It's not even there anymore. And I seen him driving. And he was like six, four, five hundred pounds, big dude. Not in shape.

Big dude. So the girl I was with, I said, pull over. So I put my sap gloves on. I got out. I said, hey, Eddie. I said, where? my money. Bang, boom, bomb. I knocked them to the ground and I had the recording of it, but it got erased because I tried to clear up the rain. That was raining. And the FBI was right

there because he was wearing a wire. He was supposed to be meeting his own brother, one of my co-defendants, Dennis. He was going to wear a wire on his own brother. Wow. Yep. So that's how you got roped in. Yes. I see. I left to answer a machine message because I was stupid. And I said, listen, I tried the quaries. I tried to get in touch you. If I don't get my money by tomorrow, you're both going to get it. That's exactly what I see. said. Okay. So you're facing some time. Yeah. But not life. There's no, there's no murders. There's no, you know, big time drug dealing. The legal aid lady was trying to get me all. Susan Brody, nice, nice. She says, I'm going to see if I get them down to three years for you. I said, okay, I'll take the three

years. No problem. So I wasn't scared of doing that. Three years. I was already in for about almost a year. Stand on your head doing that. So this is really about revenge for your father. That's all it was. Okay. Got it. Now we transition into part. to. Okay. When you signed over, from what we understand, so we know, just based off talking to people have cooperated, that the feds don't give you, like, a firm outdate when you decide to cooperate.

They don't say, hey, you're going to do 10 years for us. And then on November 25th, 1999, you're out. Well, they just use you to what they think they get enough out of you. That's usually what it is. It's like, and I gave, I fed him some information. about what was going on in the prison. I gave them some information about what was going on in the prison

and stuff like that. So, because we also wanted to know about who killed Ralphie Coppoli. He was the captain. So I was giving them information about what was going on in prison, some of the things. Like there was a, I talked about it on,

on Dominic's podcast, on, you know, It was about Eddie Kavanaugh. He committed a double homicide. And there was a lot of law enforcement was involved with that. There was the DEA, FBI, Ramarindex, state troopers, because right where it was done, it was in the midst of everything.

So did they tell you this is what, did they give you a target? Or did they just say, give us everything that you can dig up? Yeah, sometimes they'll ask you, do you know so-and-so? or, you know, they'll say, you know, did you never know what happened? You know, so I say, I know what happened to Ralphie. I think I know who killed them and I told them that.

And all those kind of things. So I didn't really try to offer more information that I could think of, but I pretty much answered a lot of their questions. They had a lot of questions. Okay. So did you continue with that bid then? Did you actually go upstate after you had already been flipped? Yeah.

They gave me. I actually wound up getting four years. Okay. Okay. To be honest with you, with the information I gave them, okay, I should have walked out. They should have said, time served. It was an little extortion guns, not the end of the world, but. But it provides you a really good cover now, too.

You know what I mean? Because now you're going to do a full bid. It looks like you didn't take any kind of deal. You didn't flip. How many people, were you actually turning guys in in prison that you met and they confessed to crime? How did that go? Yeah, well, when I, like I said, on Mafia Roundtable with Dominic, we talked about it with Eddie Kavanaugh.

Eddie Kavanaugh, I told him the FBI would happen with him, and he wound up flipping, and I think he brought a lot of guys down, too, because he was, don't forget, he was facing the death penalty, because any drug-related homicide is automatic death penalty. Did they give, so you ratted on him, you gave up him, and then they arrested him, re-arrested him. Yeah. And then he flipped on a bunch of other people.

Correct. Were you in the feds or were you in the state? I was in, well, actually, I was in the feds and the state. I did a bullet up in Vahalo, New York. It was, for some reason, it was the feds needed more room. So it was the state prison. Right. Yeah.

So it was good because we were able to get packages in from the street. Okay. Or that was good. Nice. I was getting the real macaroni. My friend happened to get a bag that was hymetically sealed, the machine to make it and then we put a sticker on it

like it was money that was bought from a store but it was homemade so it was pretty cool shared my all the guys I see I shared it with they were like

I said my grandmother made it he said how old is she I want to marry it did anybody have any inkling while you were in prison about what you were doing not one person

did you have to or did you give information on anybody else from prison me no not really you know it is everybody in prison

is always confessing. They say never talk, but everybody talks about crimes that they weren't pinched on too, you know? Yeah. One guy he was supposed to escape the prison, he paid the guard $25,000. That didn't work out for him.

Did you give him up? For me. Okay. Another guy that was, he was bringing us a lot of food from the street. He was bringing a lot of steroids in for the guys and stuff like that. But it seems like it goes against your interests.

It does. It's just that I heard it. And, you know, I didn't give him up. Like, oh, the other real people that I knew right away is like just, you know, I was trying to get my, you know, trying to do what they asked me to do. Would the handlers, your FBI handlers come visiting you? Only one handler. Okay.

No. Two detectives came to see me once and my handler flipped out on them. Who was your handler? Vincent Pursutie. Okay. He actually works for the Newburgh police now, the department as well. Okay. So this is a key player in your story, though, Vincent.

18 years I worked with him having. He retired, I think, at 20 years or something like that. and all his time spent with me. Okay. Do you like him? You guys must have become friends. He was Italian like me. We were come from similar backgrounds, obviously Italians.

I mean, me got sort of close to me. We'd meet in different locations. He was kind of told me about his daughters, told me about his wife cheating on him, but he got custody of it. What a surprise because he's an FBI agent. Actually, they're going to always go with those guys, you know. His father also worked in some kind of a, something in a prison too.

I think he was a psychologist or something like that. So you didn't feel bad giving up a guy who was just trying to escape? I didn't really know him that good. I didn't care about him. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I knew him enough to talk to him. He was actually helped me out in a fight that was in the prison because he was locked up.

There was a, in the prison there was in Valhalla, it was a pie. There was 15 cells on this side, 15 cells on the other side. This one guy, Salazar from Columbia riding me out that I had two mattresses on there. And so I told the CEO that I knew from the street and I said to him, listen, I know his name. I don't know if I want to hurt his name, but he said to me, he says, he said, he radded me. He says, Joe, I'll let him out. He's going to take a shower. I'll let you out.

I don't have to make it around for 20 minutes to what you got to do. So naturally he let us out. Salazar came to my cell. Boom, I cracked him. He went flying out of the cell. He picked up the mop bucket that was there trying to hit me with it. I kicked him in the gut, hit him again. He went down, but then he was on his hands and knees,

and I was about to jump up and do one of my kicks that I like to do. And he's, his head was an old prison. This was the older one. And had those old metal radiators. And if I would have kicked him where I was going to kick him, it probably would have cracked his head, maybe it would have killed him. So one of the other Spanish guys said to this guy who was Puerto Rican said, he's going to kill him, he's going to kill him.

So then he said, Joe, that's enough. Let him go. And I did. Yeah. But did part of you feel emboldened now that you are an FBI asset to like, I can break the rules as long as I don't kill anybody. I can, they catch me with drugs or a weapon.

Like, it's going to get tossed when they find out who I'm with. I thought about that I had some sort of cub lunch. Like, I didn't think like, you know, I mean, come on,

I'm doing things. You know, I carried a gun all the time. Matter of fact, I had a secret compartment in my, in my SUVs. It used to cost me a lot of money. You know,

the council, the middle council, and the, okay, so I had to press three buttons simultaneously and then the back would open up and it would be a drawer and that's why I would keep my gun and it was actually good if you want to keep a wallet in there and nobody can find it like

in the glove box because nobody could find it because it looks like it's part of the council where the heated seats or where you can plug your phone and all that bullshit but... They didn't ever find that gun? Do the cops ever find it? Nope. But you were worried though if a you know if a regular B cop found you with a hot pistol.

I figured they would come to help me and get me out. Right. So the feds would just come to bring you out. That's what I thought. Wow. But they weren't like that. They were... What do you mean they weren't like that?

Hold on, Joe. This doesn't make sense, dude. You got permission from them to go kill somebody. So what do you mean they weren't like that? It's kind of weird, man. It's, well, when I got pitched, I'll show you how weird it is. Here was I got picked up on my second bit from another informant who was wanted to inform on me, whose record with the with the police department sucked.

They always caught him lying. They caught them everything. Now, I sent you, everybody reports on me that how I was exemplary. Right. I mean, they praised me. Right. So I thought that, you know, I was talking to this guy like I talked to anybody in the street to keep my street cred up, even though he was a black dude. He was a thug type of guy.

But it didn't matter. You always want to go anywhere you can. Ken, he had links to one-time drugs, credit cards, you know, all this kind of shit. So it was always good to make it look like he was one of my guys I could just call to smack somebody around or something, you know, make it look good. Okay. Still didn't, I still don't get it. I mean, it's okay. No, because I don't understand that either.

Yeah, they're just inconsistent. You know what? That makes sense. The law is inconsistent. They say, don't do this, but you could do this and they don't add up. Well, you saw the paper I sent you? Yeah. Did you see all that stuff that I was able to do?

I want to go through it, though. We can go through it. But do you know what he said on Stan? My handler on my trial, the murder trial, the hot murder fire trial. My attorney asked him, what was he allowed to do? What would you? He says, if I would have had more room on the paper, I would have put more. Wow.

Because. So you were a good informant. You didn't. But how am I supposed to be the real thing if I can't be the real thing? You're asking me to go out there like, okay, fight that line. there, okay, where's my tools? You're not getting any spear. You're not getting any shield.

You're not getting a net. It doesn't make any sense. But I still did good for them. I identified over a thousand members of organized crime members they never even knew about over the years. Did when you got out, you do your bid, you do your four years, you come home. What year is it now? I got home in January 20, 1995. I'll never forget.

Okay. So, and this is when you start to cozy up with the bananas. Yes. You know, everybody knows your father's gone. You are now officially a criminal. You know, you've done your bid. Yep. I started hanging out with a guy called, his last name was Defeo, Bobby Defeo.

And so we used to go down to Brooklyn a few times a week. We used to go to wherever there was a guy Anthony Sparrow. He was a, I think he was a captain at one time, maybe even high. and we used to go to Bensonhurst in Brooklyn. And so I used to go down there, and he was away in prison at the time. And I used to hang around with a guy, one of his guys was Murray. Actually, a Jewish guy was doing everything for him. He used to dress like an Italian-Geney and everything.

He was cool as shit. He passed away now, Murray, too, some years back. But Bobby brought me around there. But then Bobby wound up being a problem with the nose candy. And I was giving them money, and I thought, you know, because I was going to make money, I wound up losing like $6 grand to this kid. and then I couldn't find them anymore because I didn't care. Did the feds give you money to get started when you came home?

No. They only reimbursed me most of the time when I spent money that was hit. I never did it for any kind of money. Okay. But if I told them I spent this much money doing this for them, they would give, okay, they give me that money or maybe even a little bit more. Cash? Yep. Wow.

Did they ever end up putting you on like a payroll or did they just say go out and earn, but you feed us information? They knew I was loan shark. and they didn't say anything about it. They also, I didn't realize that I was on a payroll. I was allowed up to $100,000 a year, but I only found that out after my second pinch. And I think I sent you that paperwork.

Hang on. So $100,000 is what is the salary of a CI? It could be that. It could even be more. They paid one guy from the Hells Angels a million dollars for doing one year work of undercover. He actually regrets it now. But that's more than a real,

non-criminal actual federal agent could make in a career. You see, it's better to be a rat as a criminal. Can I ask you a question, John? Let me just ask you this. Do you think they care about that money? Whose is it? It ain't theirs?

No, it's the good. It's taxpayers. Taxpayer money. It's like if you said to me, Joe, here's a credit card. What's the limit? No limit. You think I'm going to do. I'm just going to go buy a lunch.

I'm going to get a car. I'm going to get this. I'm going to get all the good stuff. Wow. It's ridiculous. They don't care. That's why $100,000, but you see, I was so low because this guy wanted to make himself look good. Plus, I never asked for any money.

They put a guy, I forget the guy's name. John Jr. was hanging around with some guy. I think his name was Pete. He was an accountant. They were giving him $2,500 a week on top of what he was earning as an accountant. The beds? Yeah.

For like one or two, you came out in court. Wow. I don't notice. I don't, you know, came out in court just to get information on John Jr. Yeah. So they could, you would just, and you could basically charge up to 100 a year and they would reimburse you. That's how they made the payments, right? If I knew that that was $100,000 a year, then I would have been able to pay my rent without struggling to do everything I had to do.

Right. Because $100,000, I was making doing my own scams, which some things I won't, I can't say what I was doing. But why not? I just don't want to get in trouble. Who the freak knows what they're going to watch or say what I'm doing? But so on that thing alone, I was making probably $50,000 a year on that alone. And then the other things, probably maybe $75 to $80,000 a year on my own. And then I was on another salary making $1,000 a week, $1,500 or a month.

For who? That was from a girl that was helping out with running the business that she was owned. I was dating this girl. She owned a few dyes. Okay. Yeah. I see. So you were, all right.

So you're doing pretty well. Yeah. And you're just kind of independent out there making money with your. your loan shark in business, a couple of scams. And then, you know, you're starting to work your way into the cruise. But I had to be careful, too, because you see, I knew for sooner or later they were going to want a guy like me around. They're going to want me to do the work.

They're going to want me to do all this stuff. Who are the feds or the mob? Actually, both. Yeah, right? But I didn't really want that life. I still was just wanted to find out. My father, I figured if somebody would like me enough, they'd say, hey, you know, We knew for your father.

What a shame, you know, what happened? I'd say, you know, sometimes one guy might have said really, if anything really happened because they would have figured I was close enough. I was with this guy, Jerry Chilly on my second bit. I don't know. I think I sent you a picture of him. Jerry, Chilly and me got along like this. I never met him in the street.

He's a captain. And then we were around like another guy they call him, Nikki to Mout, Nikki Cigars, Nicky Santore is his real name. He's a, yeah, I think he's an asshole. But he was around with all that Donnie Brasco shit was going around too. And I just didn't like him. So Jerry's the type of dude. Now he's a captain.

He passed away now so I could talk about him. Nikki was having a problem with the telephone. So we were watching TV, Jerry and I, and he were watching it because it's up on high. So Jerry goes, he touches Matt. What's up, Jerry? He says, look. And I look over there. And I see the big black dude giving him a hard time and everything.

I says, what do you want to do? He says, let him get beat up a little bit, then we'll go in. Because that's the way Jerry was. He was a type of guy that he was a great, wise guy, hard, hard criminal, did probably more than half his life in prison, stand-up guy to the max. He actually was with the Gus Farachi. I don't know if you ever heard that.

Gus Farachi was actually, I think, dating his daughter, and he actually killed an undercover agent like DEA or something like that. And then they wound up killing him because they were bringing too much heat. Right. But it was a good kid, that guy, I guess, you know? How did you get into the, but eventually you do start making your way into the crew, into the bananas? Because of Murray and I'm hanging around with Bobby and they actually like me better than Bobby.

Okay. So do you remember who brings you in as an associate, you know, just a guy who's hanging around? is that that's a maid guy bringing you in right that was dominic then and that was dominic who we've had on this show dominic sacali now dom had no idea what you were doing nobody knew anything no did you ever end up giving information on dom some information yes wow yeah what was that information uh like um well before i started giving him information there was a guy willie marshall who uh ratted on some people in the gambino crime family and supposedly peter goddy john goddys brother had a million million dollar contract on his head. They said, you don't even have to bring the body. You just have to

give the head. So you chop off the head and you get a million dollars. So I told Dominic about that too. And so Dominic said, you know, I kind of knew where he was, but I didn't do it because I knew where he was and I knew we were going to kill him then. So I didn't want, I didn't want to do it for a million dollars because I knew we were going to do it. But Dominic said to me, never take less than a hundred thousand if anybody ask you for it to do a hit. So then that's when I knew me and Dominic started getting close. I got, I went to pick them up. I had it in a prison when he got his wife had him arrested on stupid shit that you can't even believe. But. So what information did you end up giving on Dominic?

I basically told him that he was a soldier in the Banana family, that he did get bumped up to a captain. That, you know, things, little things like that. Did you ever implicate him though in anything serious? No, they did ask me about the Frank Santor murder because they had heard from other sources that he was in on it. I said, that's the word in the street, but Dominic never said to me ever that he killed him. He never would.

I never would never ask him anyway. And did you get close enough to him where you realized, oh, I don't want to give, I don't want to put this guy away? Or were you willing to put anybody away? No, Dominic and I got so close that there was some things like, but he had the sports going on. He actually borrowed $20,000 for me. That I did tell the feds because I wanted to get my friggin' $20,000 back in case he did.

But I think that was a test that he was giving me. And I don't even know the FBI agent said It's a good thing You had the 20,000 laying around To give him, he says, Joe, Because it would have took about Two, three weeks

Just to get the thing approved. Right. I said, And this is how you send me out here? But I did give him the money. And, you know, and then, of course, there was some jobs that I went on

with Dominic that I never told them about Because... What kind of jobs? There was one where there was a guy hippie that he, he robbed him a long time ago and then hippie was being an asshole to him in the street.

I think they'd bumped each other in this place in a pizza parlor once. And I think Dominic had all to do to hold back. And then he went and told Vinny, Vinny Gorgeous about it. And then Vinny said, do what you need to do, man. And I was it. And I was it. He got the okay.

And that was it because Dominic. What do you mean? That's it? He went and killed him? No, no. You wouldn't beat him up? Yeah, you could do whatever we want to. Okay.

So because, you know, he told Dominie, just beat him, beat a guy who you are. He beat a man. Right. So you went and touched him up, basically. We went to go get him at this place because he had told him. talk bad about Dominic saying all kinds of stuff that he got baseball bat shoved up his ass and all of this

and that's not even true Dominic took a bad beating three guys jumped him up there and they left him for dead in prison no in the street oh wow and Dominic was fighting all in me he's not afraid to fight

no he's a G oh yeah I don't know he's he don't need somebody to come with him you know what I mean so at what point at what point do you say, okay, I need to get out of this. Like, how many years go on before it just became like, I don't know, tiresome?

When I was hanging around with Dominic, I got tired of it all. Yeah. Because you see, there's a part of me that it's a normal lifestyle for me. It might not be for you, might not be for somebody else, but this was normal for me. And at the same time, I'm giving information. Like, I didn't know if Dominic was going to be as close as me as we got.

I didn't think that. But Dominic had a way about him where you wanted to do something with him. You had a, you knew he was, I like real people. If this makes it simpler. I like somebody like, I like somebody says, if they're going to do something, they're going to do it. It doesn't have to be that night, but I know they're going to do it. I like somebody who doesn't need anybody, you know, there's been plenty of times. I had to go see people by myself and how to handle my own business too.

And I'm not even as tough as Dominic. But I will not let nobody just push me around when I lose. That's the way I have to go. But he's somebody I gravitated too easily because there was a lot of things I liked about him. He was real. Okay. But what I want to know about the informing. You're working for the FBI.

You're doing a great job talking around my questions. So I need you to, I went on the zone in here because people are going to be picking up. picking this up. I didn't tell. Who did you, how many people did you implicate that ended up going to prison? Do you have those stats? That I don't know. Because they never told me who they arrested. And you never testified

in court against anyone. Not one person and I never wore a wire. Wow. Never had to. The only time I wore a wire was when I got arrested on my second bid against my co-defendant, which I was happily to do because I knew my co-defendant and I knew he wasn't going to say anything about anything because he didn't know anything. I was bringing up something that was already dead. So, When I was trying to implicate him on the tape, it was perfect because he was almost like, what are you talking about?

So I didn't care. But I never wore a wire. Wow. So you were like a different level, because there's different levels to informants, right? Yes. Like I know that Anthony, Ruggiana, who we've had on here, he actually took the stand and pointed out a boss and said, yes, he was involved in a murder. You know, there's different, you know, and then this other guy wears a wire. you were like one of these guys

where it was almost like just information gathering. Yes. I was more like a kind of a spy. Yeah. But not really. There was nothing not that I could give enough evidence for somebody to go away.

Like when I had gotten wind of the hit on the judge and the AUSA, I brought that to their attention. Right. Okay? But I didn't know, well, I didn't know who was going to do it too. Okay, so tell us about this

because Dom actually got the call to do this hit. This is a crazy story. Tell us exactly, reiterate this for us, what happened with that hit or that threat of a hit. Right. Well, Dominic didn't tell me that he had got hit. Dominic never told me that. Okay.

Yeah. I had gotten the information from somebody close to Dominic. And so I knew who was going to do it. What happened, the guy, the guy who was actually going to do it, his own cousin ratted him out. Yes. Okay. So give us, who gave the order to actually kill a federal. prosecutor and a federal judge, which is

the craziest thing I've ever heard the mob considering doing. Well, the reason why they don't want to do that, because it brings more heat. Obviously, but who, but the guy who gave that order. They said that Vinny gave the order, and it came from supposedly, the supposedly was Joe and Vinny gave the order to give the hit. I don't really know. And Joe was the boss of the bananas. Yes. Okay. But he was already locked up, right? And he was ratting.

Right. He set up Vinny. So now, I'm not sure if Vinny gave Dominic that order direct. I wasn't there for that. I wasn't privy to that. Think about the, think about that chess game. Yep. That Joe is playing. Yeah. So he's, he let the, he put that hit out. Yep. And then let the feds know, hey, there's a hit out. Yep. So look at me. Get me off. So he put something in motion just to be able to rat to save his skin. Well, Joe was kind of dirty himself. He hated rats. He said, nobody's supposed to rat. And it was also another thing where I thought it could be mistaken, but there was a thing that Joe Messina was going to actually start

having funds for people who went away so that it would help them do the bid better and help them not to... That's what I heard. I can't believe the mob didn't do that earlier. That's what the hell's angels do. And that's why there are guys don't rat, usually. I was in prison on my first bed with a guy named Lewis Mena. Lewis Mena was with Tommy Corrida,

where robbing drug dealers too. Okay, and they were making tons of money. So when Louis gets arrested, I was in a cell with him. We were in Odersville together. Everybody, Frankie Smith, who later on became a rat too, and a lot of other guys, they were all threatening this guy. So I walked with him from the wood shop and I was with him. Now, all these guys were lined up.

They were going to kill him right there. And I was with him. And because I was with him, they didn't do it. Not because they were afraid of him, but because I guess maybe I was another witness. I'm not going to say they were scared. Okay. But you see, they're threatening the guy. And Danny Tickio said to me, a skipper said, Joe, they're threatening this guy.

He's trying to do the right thing. Why don't you bring him close to you? Are you going to be okay? Hey, do this. Look, you sign up for something, you sign up for something. You know, you're not supposed to ride. This is your job. But why do you shun the guy and act like he's nobody anymore? Look what they did to Dominic. Exactly. They had no reason. Dominic would have done his time. There's so many. There's so many guys who they just, if they didn't just push him into a corner, would have done the time and stood tall. But Dominic had legitimate businesses that he still could have been earning money from. If the right guy was in place, Dominic still could have. earned money for his family and he would have sat there still doing his time and you would never send him on the podcast. Totally. I can guarantee you that myself. I would take, I would take the blood oath on that right now. I'm glad they all ratted so we could have this podcast. Well, yeah. I got to be grateful for that. I mean, yeah, I'm sure. But, you know,

because I know Dominic. So hang on. So Joe Messina gives the order to have this prosecutor, this United States, assisted attorney killed, and the judge balls. And then he tells on Vinny, who's the person he gave the order to and Dominic was supposed to be part of that hit. Yes. And Dominic was like, yeah, I'm ready. Oh, yeah. Which is wild, gangster shit.

The other guy that was going to be with him was ready too. Yeah. Because he was going to run right to Italy when he was after it was done. Oh, so there was a hitter from Italy they brought over as well. No, he just was going to run away. Okay, he was just going to run away. He was a tough guy too. Now, how did you find out that was going to go down?

I can tell you now because the guy, I don't even know if I told Dominic this, but it was his cousin who told me. Dominic's cousin who told you. Wow. And then you went right to your handler? Yeah. Okay. Because, you know, I knew it was, I didn't know that actually Dominic was going to do it.

It was the other guy who I thought was going to do it. And so that's who I told. I didn't say that Dominic was going to do it. I said the other guy was going to do it. And what did they do after you gave him that information? They arrested the other guy. Okay. Because they saw his cousin and his cousin was testifying with him.

I never knew. Okay. Did they actually end up prosecuting that conspiracy? I don't know. I really don't. I don't really don't know. Wow. I really don't know.

Wow. That's wild. So you may have prevented a hit. Maybe that was just, I don't know, I kind of doubt it would have gone down because did the mob have that kind of power? They have that kind of Husspa? Yeah. This guy, the guy that was going to do it, used to ride a motorcycle. And I don't know if they were going to do it in a restaurant or if they were going to do it in a restaurant or if they

going to do it just outside the courtroom. But these, listen, Judge Garifis, when he thought the hit was going to happen to him, because I actually wrote him a letter. I said, I'm actually the guy who was directly involved with saving your life. Prick. Yeah, exactly. But he actually gave the letter to my judge because, too, they must have talked. But this guy said, I'm not afraid.

You know, everybody says they're not afraid. Like, you can go in a car. You don't think you're going to get into a major accident. You drive. Yeah. But don't underestimate yourself. me or anybody and even people can go after me Dominic or anybody else too but you're going to have a lot more hard of time going after a guy like Dominic than you would the judge because the judge

ain't got no bodyguards but he ain't willing to do what Dominic would do if you try to go after him yeah right right that's it wow so did that earn you any kind of leverage with the FBI did that give you more points more salary more leeway you're that's an excellent question John I'm so glad you brought that up. You want to know why? Because on my second bid, I told the FBI agent, I said, hey, I saved the judge's life. See, there's other people who said they gave information I saved the judge's life. No, no, no, no. I knew

when it was going down. I knew the guy that was going to do it. I said, I saved the judge's life and the assistant U.S. attorney. That doesn't mean nothing to you guys that you arrested me on this stupid bullshit charge? You know what he went like this to me? Michael Gator was his name. He went like this. Just a face like

that. They didn't even give a shit about their own. The FBI is only concerned with the end justifies the means. They don't care how you get it. They tell your girlfriend or your wife, you got a girlfriend on the side. They'll show them pictures. They write letters. They do everything to screw you to try to, so you have no other resource to but try to maybe go with them.

Because when you, let's face, you go to jail, most of the time you're alone. That's just the way it is. So tell us about your second pinch. So as you're feeding, as the years go on, 18 years this was going on, you're giving them info, but you are a mob guy. Like you're...

I'm an associate. Yeah, but you're in the life. You're a criminal. There's that you're just happen to be feeding information to the feds. Yes. Tell us about your second pinch. How did that go down? That went down because the guy,

this guy Mike that was hanging around with, he tried to, I tell he was trying to get me on record. but I didn't think he was doing anything because I didn't do anything wrong so I figured I could say anything I want because that's what I was allowed to do. Plus, everything that he ever did with me, the only thing he did, he went into a house to go rob the house. There was supposed to be $80,000 in the freezer. I told him it's not there no more. Don't go.

But the other guy that was involved with it told him and still go and he did. It was all over the news. They duct tape the people and everything like that. It was in Eastchester, New York. He actually testified on the stand for me. for them as their witness, but he said, Joe told me not to do it. I said, I can't believe he just told the truth.

I couldn't believe it. He told the truth about a lot of things up there with me. I don't get it. What happened? So they used, yeah, they used, they used to say. What was the crime that they charged you with? They wanted to get me on home evasion. Okay.

So. Were you committing home invasions at this time? No. What was your, what were you doing? I was almost a millionaire at this time. I owned a million dollar home. I had a half a million dollars in a, bank.

Wow. I had about over $100,000 worth of jewelry. I had a brand new escalade paid for, prepaid for two years and still making them, I was making money every week. Right. And so you had from all these different businesses. Yes. So you had the gambling, the loan sharking.

Yeah, the gambling stopped. They just had the loan sharking. But I was really more legit now, too. I didn't even have to do. I wouldn't loan any more money unless you put money up front. Most people can't do that now. What other businesses did you have? That's it.

I was happy with the money I had. I had the money in the bank and I was making about $4,000. month doing nothing. Nothing. Just sitting on a collecting interests or sitting on a, sitting on a, on a company. I was, I was going to invest my money, but also I was supposed to be getting a job like I told you in a sanitation department. So that was, that was, I was going to get out of the life, walk away, and that was it. Because I still was an associate. I wasn't strained out. And you, you were kind of given up on trying to find out who killed your dad? I did that. And also, like I said to you before, like I was tired of it. Dominic had gone away in 2005,

I think it was. And so after he was gone, I hung around with Louis Electric a little bit, who was another captain from Queens. And I hung around with him a little bit, but there was nothing really going on with him. He did a few construction things going on or whatever. Actually, Dominic promoted it to a captain

because Mike knows he would a jerk that dude is. Okay, so the pain from losing your father and like the revenge that you need to seek, you feel like that's subsiding. You're kind of like letting it go. I started thinking that this was his life. And maybe it wasn't meant to be that I've ever found out. There might be a reason for it.

I don't know. There might be a reason for it. Yeah. That's valid. Yeah. So to me, I started walking away. And that's the reason why I started looking at that legitimate job. I was leaving the girl who was supporting me and taking care of me.

I was leaving the girl, Joanne, okay, that owned the diners. We had broken up. but still the house, the half a million dollar, the million dollar house that we owned was still half mine. We're going to sell it and we were going to split the money. I was going to go my way. She was going to go her way. We had a nice relationship as far as to go with that. Plus, she was hanging around with another guy called Buddy Israel Torres, a guy who was around the Patsy from Rigolettos in Manhattan, in the Bronx on Arthur Avenue.

And I said, you could still stick to that kind of life. I don't care. Yeah. So I could have walked away, really, because I didn't know anybody, anything. And yeah, you have no time hanging over your head. No. So the feds don't own you. Right.

This is a very unique, informant situation because usually the people that are informing are stuck. They got huge sentences hanging over their heads for major crimes. And it's like the feds got you by the balls. Well, this is the mistake. You kind of volunteered it almost. So it's like you could just walk away. And this is the mistake I did make. When Vinny retired, he called me up.

He says, Joe, he says, he did everything he had to do that day. He says, you're the last person. I'm going to go see. Let's go grab a couple of slices and a beer. I want you to be the last guy before I retired. Now, he had introduced me to another guy, Mike Trumbetta, was another agent that I helped. I guess I gave information because he won those certain things about whatever.

I forget what it was. And so he says, you don't have no problems working with him, even after Vinny retired. What I should have said was, you know, something Vinnie, you're retiring. How about I retired too? But I didn't know if I could have not really in a certain way. But I says, you know,

because I figured I didn't have to give them any more. information if I didn't, like if I wanted to walk away, like get the job, I would have been like, listen, I'm working now. I could have just told them like that. They would have let me go. It's nothing to do. So it was only the second bid that I got pinched on that they wanted to say you got this murder for hire over your head that it was going to be like, you got to do what we say and that's it.

Right. And they did everything wrong. They told me, I was missing for four days before. Okay, hang on. So walk us through. Yes. Why? So you should have got out then for sure.

Yes. And the mob would have let you go. too. You weren't made. You could have just said, hey, I'm not working anymore. I got a job. Were they supporting me? No, of course not. So what, how did you go down in this home invasion case? So the, that, it was in that one, that particular one, there was another guy, my friend, was my friend Tony who passed away now too. He wanted to, uh, came to approach me like I used to tell you, people come up to me. He wanted his, one of his people killed because he had a million dollar life insurance policy out on him. And the premium was going to go up and all this kind of shit.

So I said, okay, let me look into it. So he gave me the address. I sent the kid Mike up there, gave him $1,000 to go up there and look at the place. And he came back and he told me it can't be done. I said, oh, okay, don't worry about how, like he said, it was too hard. You know, he wasn't going to do it anyway. He just wanted to get a pay day with it, which was okay by me because I had the money. And it just made me look like I had things going on and I was still doing things because I didn't get the job yet.

So I went back to Tony and said, listen, Tony. he can't be done. And that was it, the end of it. But because something happened with him, he got pinched with drugs or something like that. Now he said, I got a gangster that I'm working for. I could do this. And that's how he implicated me. Oh, so he ratted on you. The guy that wanted to have you whack this other person for the insurance money is now saying that, hey, look at this guy. He was going to kill somebody for me. Yes. He was going to, no, not even Tony, the guy, the guy that I hired to go look at the place. Oh, wow. I got this guy. And I think he's going to kill me after I kill this guy. And he was like, he's a real gangster. So,

I thought I was a real gangster. But isn't this something you can easily clear up? Because you went straight to your FBI handler to tell. No, never told him about that. Why didn't you tell him about that? Well, because... That's a pretty big, that's a major cry. I'll tell you why.

Two things. One, I reported another conversation that Tony and I had 10 years before that, maybe eight, more 12 years before that. When I was early started, he wanted to have his partner, Cliff killed. Cliff, I used to go to school. We were friends. But he didn't like Cliff. wanted me to whack him. He said, I'll give you 50 grand. I said, okay. So I went back to the FBI handler and I reported it. And he said, Joe, we're not going to do nothing with it because I don't

want you to be off the street right now because I was valuable to them. And he said, listen, if he gives you the 50 grand, then what we'll do is you'll bring another guy to him and we'll set it up that way this way. You think the guy was good and it'll water it down where I wasn't involved. This was his plan. Well, the guy never gave me the $50. So I never, so that was never, it was never pursuit again. And it was the same thing when he said about this guy. It wasn't real enough. So to come to us when it's real. Exactly. Okay. So the same thing happened here. So after this guy, this kid who you went to sent paid $1,000 to go scope out the place where this hit would maybe go down. Yes. He gets pinched doing a robbery. He gets pinched doing some kind of

other drugs. Nobody ever knew about the robbery. He told him about that after he gets arrested. Wow. Okay. So how long after this happened? Did you get arrested? Matter of weeks. Wow. Yeah, a couple weeks. They didn't even have a search warrant. That's why I'm in the law books now.

My attorney at that time, Jose Amunez and me were under the Fourth Amendment. They did an illegal search and seizure on my house. Do you know how hard that is to win in a state court? Never mind federal. It's almost like I've never heard of. Right. But that's because they were so, there's a thing called informant shopping. FBI agents that are stronger than the ones that you're dealing with can steal you from them

because they want you to work for them because you're that good of an informer. Vinny, when he retired, this guy Mike Trimbedded and had the power Vinny had. Vinny was high up and the ranks in the FBI thanks to probably half the shit

that I gave him. But the bottom line was he couldn't protect me. And so they said, well, you were going to really do this crime. I wasn't going to, listen, John, I'm not going to kill anybody. First of all, two things.

If I really wanted to kill somebody for money or anything, do you think I really need a thug, a stupid dude, or whatever may be to kill for me? No. And plus, I'm not killing anybody to make a million dollars when I'm just regular doing good on my own. So was your plan to have the hit set up and ready to go and then go to the feds? Nope.

So then why even do this in the first place? Just to tell my friend that I had because the guy took a videotape at a house and everything. It showed where he can't be done. It was on the main road. It was with the time, I think. And so I just gave the guy to pay day. So I kept that thug under my belt. And then I went back to show my friend Tony what happened.

I said, look, Tony, you know, it's not, it's not going to be able to happen. It's too difficult. Interesting. Yeah, he was what they call, there's a word for it, pretending to be what he wasn't really. Fugazi. Yeah, he, well, that's a Figgis, but he's, yeah, he, I forget what is, posturing, is the word. He tried to be posturing for me so they could say, hey, look, man, that's Tony, he wants

to be, but they didn't have to come to talk to me like that. You're going to talk to me about the birds and the bees. talking about anything. So then you got arrested by the state for conspiracy to commit murder? No, feds. Wow. Because that's a law in the feds. It's murder for hire.

I think it's 1965 or something like that, 655 something. So you went and fought this case? I went all the way to trial. Wow. Yep. How long did that take? I was in solitary confinement for 15 months and I did a total of 19 months on my second bid. But 15 months is what gave me the PTSD and messed my hell ahead up altogether.

Really? When I hear Keyes jingle, I still jump. That was Rikers? No, I never got there, thank God. That place is like gladiator school. Even the CEOs don't even want to be any working there. Where were you? I was in MDC, Brooklyn.

Okay. That's a bad place too. I mean, just the isolation. I was there locked up 23 hours a day, 24 hours a day locked up on Saturday and Sunday. One phone call every 15 minutes. What the feds did was they leave fight. Every 15, you mean every 15 minutes once a month?

Yeah. The feds put me out in the newspaper that I was cooperating because I didn't want to work with them anymore. While you're in there. Yes. Even before, when I was in the street, I didn't want work. That's why they re-arrested me. They let me out on bail on my own recogniz.

They took half a million and I had in the bank to make sure I was going to do anything. And they got nasty with me. They said, do you ever go over ahead? Because I called up the assistant U.S. attorney. I said, these guys don't leave me alone. They wanted me to go after the Genevieve's family now because that's the squad that they were on. and they knew my connection to it. That's why they wanted me.

So I called up the U.S. attorney Miriam Roker was her name. I think she's like on, she's like on TV or on news or something like that now. She called them up and said, easy. Let him do his thing like he normally does. But these guys, when I got arrested, I was away for four days before I got released back out. I said, how am I going to explain that I'm missing? You know what they told me? Oh, just tell them you met some broad.

ran away to Atlantic City. I said, what TV show are you watching? Because I ain't never done that. What was you? Why were you supposed to go missing? What was the... Well, they arrested me. And now nobody knew where I was.

Oh, I see. All my friends in my town thought I got killed. The light in the basement was still on. Right. And they thought I got murdered. Right. Because of my lifestyle I was leading. Yeah.

So they had actually a couple of cops that they knew in town they were going to go to and that's when the Fed says, no. Right. That was it. So when you got released on your own reconnaissance, it's because the feds wanted you to, keep working. You want to laugh?

Sure. This is what they gave me, a piece of paper saying that they had a, it was like a thing to say that I was under suspicion or whatever and that I still might get indicted. And I could show people this paper that, yeah, they, they didn't arrest me. They just took me down, but they couldn't, they don't have enough to hold me yet. Which is crazy. Like, how stupid do they think these street guys are? This is what I'm trying to say.

How do you act and you put me out in the street like that? Are you crazy? Then they made me call a Pat Lombardo. He was in a Gambino associated with them. He knew I was talking to him. He says, I know they're probably recording me now. And they're all on the transcript you hear. I say, yep.

And I'm giving them the small talk and he knows that I'm, that's what it was. Okay. So then now the secrets out is you're, you're a rat and you're cooperating. Correct. Okay. So then how long were you on the streets for? Two weeks. And then they came and re-arrested you?

They put a GPS device on my thing on my phone and on my phone. and on my car. And so when I went to go, I was dating this other girl Lisa at the time and so I parked my car at house. I left the phone in the car and I went with her. I said, these fucking guys,

they don't leave me alone. Okay, so did you, were you, why did they come re-arrest you? I mean, this whole thing is a shit show. I'll tell you, I went to George Santangelo, a mafia attorney.

This is where the other thing's going to come in and this is where the other thing is going to come in about Patty Boyfell's, Setti. George Santogela, Sanctangelo, I got him through a friend,

his friend, my friend's mother, and I'll tell you about my friend later on. He was the only guy I told out in the street that I was working for the federal government.

So what happened was he gave me this guy. I paid him $45,000 cash, and then I told him I was cooperating. He went and told the gangsters I was cooperating because that's who he is. He's a gangster.

But I wanted to try to keep my profile as a gangster, at least that, you know, in front of him for a while, but it was, it was no way to get around it. So when he went to go visit me after, when I hired George Santangelo, they rearrested me because they said, you hired a gangster lawyer. I said, well, I was trying to keep my credit to street since you ruined it. And so they arrested me. Wow. And that was it. Then George Santangelo came to see me. And he says, oh, by the way, Patty Boy, you know, Patty Boy, right? I said, yeah, he goes, he says to say hello. That means, you're dead men. Yeah, you're a dead man. Yeah, you're fucked. Wow. So you

went basically got a threat from a lawyer from a mob guy through a mob lawyer correct and they actually ended up arresting that guy right are they disbarred him like that guy that was my other friend that was other no I'm talking about the lawyer they ended up like disbarring him or that was not Roy Colesar was the one who actually represented me later on oh okay and I had him

disbarred because he he robbed me from money I gave him I was messed up when I was in the hole I couldn't concentrate I couldn't think he told me I'll hold on to the money because they're going to steal it from me Joe I said but my money is legitimate and it was. But I couldn't think. I couldn't concentrate. So I gave him a few hundred thousand dollars to hold on to. And he started giving back to me some of it. And then he still wound up keeping. It was really over. It's about 90,000, but it was like 86,000. So I went to what they called a lawyer's fund to get it. The lawyer's fund is for people who get robbed by attorneys. Yeah.

But they tried to retry me and saying I was a, you know, a gangside. I did this. I was like, I already won my case in the court. Why are you trying to. write my case again. The lawyer now robbed me. He borrowed money from me while I was in a joint. Wow. 21,000. Some bags. Yeah.

All around. Because they won't because they're all part of the same hypocrisy. System. That's it. They were in the same system. When I went to sue the government for $20 million, there's a thing called summary judgment. The lawyers up there, the judges knocked me out because they said, all he's talking about killing kids.

Now, kids is a slang term. To me, even though you're not a kid, but. You're younger than me. So I said, you know that kid, John, you know, I would say like that. But that's a slang term. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to hurt no five-year-old, 10-year-old kid. It's ridiculous. So they rearrest you, charge you with conspiracy to commit murder.

You go back to MDC, Brooklyn? Yep. And then now you're in there for a year and a half fighting your case, fighting the feds, which is, that's a short time to be fighting the feds. Well, I get in there and now they, since they leaked it out in the paper, They didn't leak it out right away. I went in there. Then they arrested Tony, my co-defendant.

Right. Tony was the guy who approached me with the murder for hire. So what happened was now because the BOP gets wind of this, and that's the, that's the guys they use to put me in the box because they want to punish me for not working with them anymore. And that's it. Right. And now you got it.

What good are you anyways? Like the secrets out that you're ratting. What good could you be from them? No, no more. Of course not. But I wouldn't work with them anyways, even if I was good. because they were like I told you, they said to me, oh yeah, we'll give you money to put out on the street.

I said, okay, so what happens when I don't collect it? What do you want me to do? What about your handler this whole time? I tried to call him once. He didn't answer the phone. And then another time, the guy, Michael Gator, came to me when I had to meet him and he said, don't call Vitti no more.

So Vinny had to protect himself because he actually testified against me and I understand. Okay, so you've got Michael Gator as your attorney. Michael Gator is the. FBI agent. I'm sorry. Who's your attorney now? So that actually took you, went with you to trial.

That was, well, then later on, that was Jose Munez. All right. And the girl who I was engaged to at the time found them for me. Okay. Yep. So you guys go to trial. Yep. How long does trial last?

Trial lasted, well, see, was the suppression hearing first. Then after the suppression hearing and I won that, it kind of took the wind out of their sales. Right. I was on the stand for a day and a half. Right. And did this all come out? Like, hey, I'm a public authority case. He is a FBI asset.

He set this whole thing up. Well, they let me out of the whole. Judge Buckwold, who was the judge. He was the judge on your case? She was. She was. Judge Buckwold. Yeah, Judge Buckwold was actually really good with me on the trial.

When she had found out that I saved the judge's life and everything like that, that really turned her around. Now, she had asked me, she says, well, okay, what did Mr. Barone provide for the FBI in 18 years? He said, well, the AUSA said, they gave a few lysam plates and some few phone numbers. And she says, well, where's his file? So they had my file on the desk. It was as big. Right.

And that was a lot of license plates on the phone number. So she said, I want to see that in camera. That means she'll take it in the back and go over it. Well, the next time I appeared for court, totally different judge. She read what I did in that thing. And she was totally different. She actually talked with me, asked me questions. She was actually a very good judge.

She was the type of judge, like I told you, I don't like no nonsense people. Just come to her courtroom on time and be ready with all the stuff you need to be ready with. So, but why was there a new judge? Well, that's the only judge I had from the whole time. You said when I got back, there was a new judge. There was a totally new judge. You mean a new, like, vibe? No, no, yeah.

What do you mean? What do you mean? Yeah, that's right. Too new vibe. So did it ever actually make it to trial or did you win the motion to suppress? I won the motion to suppress. What were you trying to suppress? What evidence?

The illegal search and seizure because that's when they found the guns in my house. I see. So they found illegal guns. You're still carrying guns after all this time. I had to. Yeah, had to. Well, at one time, there was a time where I owned, I mean, that doesn't matter. I mean, I owned like over 30 guns.

Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. You're a gun guy. Yeah, I'm a good shot too. Wow. So you had a bunch of different, do you have machine guns or are they just pistols? I had pistols. I had rifles.

Holy shit, Joseph. Yeah, I know. I would not have pegged you for a crazy gun nut. I used to go to this one place in Mount Vernon and I had my Uzi and then I had my pistol grip shotgun and I had my pistol. And so I used to practice how fast I could draw. I used to have a leather jacket, a long leather jacket. And even my other short leather jackets, I'd have the pocket cut out. sort of this way.

If I ever had the gun, when I lifted my gun up, the jacket folded over and it was clear to make clear shots. That's, yeah, I had my little, yeah, like I said, we all have our little tricks. But that when you have a sheet on you and they find that many guns, you're looking at a lot of time. Yes, they only found, was it two or two guns in my apartment? Okay. In my house, two or three. So you're trying to, that was illegal search.

So you're trying to suppress that. And I did. And that was successful. The judge even said right on the thing, we have it in an insurance. transcript she knew to have a lion. Wow. Yep. That was, it was beautiful.

John, let me tell you something. That was, I went downstairs. I got on my hands and knees and thank God because I knew that that was, it's almost unheard of it. You could ask anybody else that you talk to and, you know, you've been around a lot of people. It's almost unheard of. Yeah.

People never win when there's a legal search warrants. They never win when they try to appeal and suppress them. And I won. Once that won, that was it. They couldn't use any evidence they found in my house or my car. Wow. Okay. So now it's just the word of this scumbag. Yep. Saying that you directed an order to kill this guy.

That's great, John. Okay. So, but the feds aren't tossing it. They still, they're staying going to give up. We're not giving up. We asked, she got mad with both the attorneys. My other, the co-defendant had Ed McDonald. You know, Ed McDonald's. Ed McDonald's in the movie Goodfellas. Oh, okay.

And he's been done a lot of movies and he's pretty high up there. Who is he in Goodfellas? He was the lawyer. He was the prosecutor. Remember when he? Oh, that's great. Yeah. Remember?

Yeah. That was him. So my friend hired him because he was a multimillionaire. Okay. Yeah. So he's your lawyer or he's the prosecutor? He was my co-defendant's attorney. Okay.

I had who was A. Muniz. Wow. Okay. So how long did trial last? So to trial, I think it lasted about a week. And you guys, is a jury trial? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Okay. One of the ladies that was in the trial. the jury trial, her, I think, a brother or her brother-in-law worked for the FBI. How do they let her on them? You know, some, she was a better witness because, you know, let's face it, I got up there.

Everybody kind of knew that when Vinnie testified against me, my handler for 18 years, they knew he was lying. Why did your handler testify against you? This is crazy. I know. This is what I'm trying to tell you. Are you hapless? Are you lying to me? Like, how was all this shit just happening to you? It's all on

transcripts. It's all court records. I don't have to lie about anything. Do you feel like this is karma for your decision to like do you ever think about like just this slew of bad things happening is like you you know your father from the grave something spiritual saying man you should not have turned on the mob this was a bad decision no i don't think so i think like you like i said you make a decision in the moment sometimes sometimes it's not always the right decision don't get me wrong 18 years of decisions. Yeah.

But like going back before, too, I'm not happy with what I did. I don't like it. And especially, like I said, some of the people I met were real, fucking scum, I mean, assholes. But then I met a guy like Dominic, and Dominic is still my friend to this day. So when you were on trial, did Dominic know about? No. He might have heard about it afterwards. You know what I mean?

I'm sure he wasn't happy. But this wasn't a big headline. Just everybody in the street knew that guy, Joe Barone went bad. No, it was a big headline. It was on the front of the cover of the Daily. news. Wow. Yeah. So was it FBI informant is now on trial for murder? I think it said rat in a trap or something like that. Yes, it did. It did. Okay. So this is all bad. This is your... Very bad. Everybody in the five families knows, like this guy, Joe, is a rat. Right. Now, according to

Dominic, and I have to agree with him on this, the mob is not what it used to be as opposed to getting guys like me or coming after me. Yeah. Because first of all, I don't really know what damage I'd done to the mafia as opposed to, you know, that information I gave them. And they don't know either. I never took the stand against anybody. Right. But there's always that there's the movie to shoot us with John Wayne. There's a part in that way he's talking to Ron Howard and everything.

And he said, I shot the same thing as you and everything. He says, what makes you better than me? He says, well, because I won't blink. I won't do these certain things. He says, but did they ever tell you about that third eye? He said, what do you mean? That third eye, somebody that just comes out of shadows out of nowhere. Somebody nobody knows.

and then shoot you. That's the guy you got to worry about. So I interrupted. How did this trial end? So it ended with a hung jury. The reason why it was a hung jury is only because of a conspiracy law. They don't know how. See, conspiracy law, just so you know, is illegal.

It's really, they do it because nobody really understands it, and it's very hard to do. And I can't get into the logistic mix of it, not here today anyways with you. But if you could look it up, it's really illegal. That's the only thing I was hung on, but they found me not guilty at all. because when I went to take the stand, you know my lawyer told me, he didn't say,

what are you going to do if the assistant use attorney ass shit is or do that? He didn't say one thing. He said, go up there and talk to them like you're talking to them on your living room couch. He said, Joe, nobody knows your story better than you. Just tell it. Right.

And you're telling the truth. 100%. So you don't have to be nervous because it's very rare that a defendant actually goes and testifies on his own behalf. That's right. It's extremely rare. That's right. This in itself kind of shows the credibility of what you're saying.

And my code defendant didn't even take the, the set. He wanted me, he said, Joe, can you say this? Can you say it? I said, Tony, don't worry about it. I'm just going to tell the truth. You're going to be okay. Believe me. I actually, now you're sitting in the courtroom.

You know, the judge is on your side here. The jury's on your left. And, you know, everybody's who's ever in the audience there, I turned and face the jury. Yeah. I wanted them to see my eyes because I know I was telling the truth. I know I was not guilty. Right. I know I didn't kill anybody.

I know I was right. Right. And they knew it too. Wow. Yep, they went right in there and deliberated. I think it took about a couple hours because I think it's whatever it was. Did you feel confident that you feel like you guys had a good shot? Because you can tell how you look in the jury's eyes.

You can tell how they feel about you. Well, when the U.S. attorney went up there and they denied my involvement about saving the judge's life and all of this stuff, the judge got so angry she she called them to the sidebar she was yelling at them and it's all in the transcripts I have the transcripts in front of the jury in front of the jury she says all along you've been saying how he saved the judge's life and the u.s. attorney's life and now you're saying he didn't now either you go and tell the jury that that that's not true or I will wow and so he said Zach was his name he said no I'm going to say it he went over and he goes okay mr. barone did give information to help the saved the judge's life.

That was the icing on a cake. Right. That was the cherry on top. Now, what about Tony, your co-defendant? Because he actually did try to get this guy murdered. He actually was guilty. Yeah. In some way he was because he, did he really, in my opinion, and I've been out there

long enough doing this kind of stuff. In my opinion, he didn't really mean it. He was just posturing for me. Tire kicking? Yeah. He just wanted to pretend like he was, you know, something. I don't, listen, you think he was really going to give me. half a million dollars if he would have got the million dollar life insurance policy if somebody

got killed no no but his culpability but that's not really what's in question it's about did he conspire to have this person killed to some into some some some extent and to some degree yes but that he was scared but you're sure i imagine so he walked up to the girl i at that time i was engaged to uh he said to her he says you know listen you know what she told him tony relax you could be sitting in jail right now because he was actually able to get bail. I was sitting in the box. You know what the feds told me? Cooperate against Tony and you're out.

Just like that. And you know the feds can take you right out of prison. How come I didn't cooperate on Tony? Now, Tony's nobody. You see, you had made up a couple of good points about certain things about cooperating and making up things or putting some people away. Do you know how many people that I could have put away? I never did.

And Tony was perfect. One of them. I could have been a whole free with the whole thing. thing. Yeah. And I didn't do it. Yeah. Because he was my friend.

Yeah. And I didn't do a lot of things to my friends. And I actually, when I came home, one of the guys pulled over and I said, oh, so and so I didn't want to say his name. And I said, Joe, I didn't say nothing bad about you. As a matter of fact, you protected me. Wow. That's why another guy came to me.

And he said to me, we can't figure you out, Joe. Because he was, he's actually really good friends with Chuck Zito. I guess, you know, Chuck Zito. Yeah. dynamite guy. Oh, legend. A legend. He doesn't like me anymore now, obviously, and I don't blame him.

And I agree with him. I met Chuck Zito a long time ago when he was with the Hell's Angels and he had the motorcycle. He had a saying on a motorcycle. And I will not say the same because you're not allowed to unless you're a Hell's Angel guy. But Chuck Zito and I had a long conversation in this guy's basement. And Chuck was a dynamite. He's a dynamite guy. And I asked him if I could say the angel when I, the saying, when I met him.

And he said, yeah, and he was all excited. Give me a big high five. But this guy that's a good mutual friend of us said, we can't figure you out, Joe. You told on some people, and then you didn't say anything that we did. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. You see, I'm not saying I'm not a ride. I'm not saying I didn't do the wrong thing. I'm not saying I don't feel bad about what I did.

But I had went into a different kind of a mentality when I thought that my father was killed. Right or wrong that I did, that's what I did. I, that's what I did. And that's, that's the bottom line. Well, it's honorable of you to not give up Tony. And it sounds like he got, his case was wrapped in with yours. Yes, it was. Jury was for him too.

It was. Both of us found not guilty. So, and, and is, but Hong means it's the decision split. So the, the, the attorney, the U.S. attorney has the right to recharge you. They tried. They came, they, went back down to court. Was it a month later or something like that? I forget.

And then the judge says, listen, you couldn't find them guilty on the murder for higher charge. You want to try to get them for a conspiracy now, too? And sure enough, they said no. They just tossed it. Wow. You beat the feds, man. I beat him.

Yeah. But what did I really win, John? What did I really win? My name is ruined. I'm out in the street. That only knows what could happen for one day to the next. I'm not, I could have sued them for them. If they would have gave me the million eight, that $100,000, you know,

year and 18 years. If they would have to give me my millionator, at least I could walk away into the sunset, kind of stay low key. I wouldn't have to do any podcasts and things of this nature. And so they never paid you, though? Nope. And was there anything in writing that said they needed to pay you? Nope.

That's the problem. That's why I don't sign contracts. That's right. So you're suing them now? I tried to, and then it got kicked out on summary judgment. Matter of fact, I was in on my second bid. Some guy came, well, Joe Waverly was in the same place with me. He's a wise guy, too.

And he said, there's not the kid. He had a couple of guys with him. I said, hey, Joe, how are you doing? They thought they were going to jump me in there, but I'm not afraid of you. You know what I'm saying? But this one guy came to me, he said, listen, you cooperated, right? I was in MCC now because that's where the courthouse was in the center district. And he said, can I ask you a question?

I said, sure. He says, I'm thinking about cooperating. And he says, how do I go about it to do it the right way? And you know what I told him? Get everything in writing. Yeah. Get everything in writing. And don't do it without your attorney.

Yeah. Because that's how dirty they are and I'm living proof. Why would you expose me? There was another guy to expose him. He worked with friends with John Goddy. He called him Willie Boy Johnson was his name. He wasn't a wise guy, but he was friends with John. He gave information on John, but he told him I was never going to testify against him.

Well, guess what? They wanted him to testify against him because, you know, they went back on their word. What a big surprise. Because he didn't testify. Guess what they added him has the snitch. Wow. You know where Willie Boy is now? he's dead.

Okay? You see... The feds do not care if you, if they put your life in danger. Well, look what they did to me. You mean to tell me 18 years of good service. Saving the life of this guy, saving the life of that guy.

No good? I even saved the... Listen, even Mikey knows the guy I was supposed to whack. Okay? And I was, you know, they don't care. Nothing. Wow.

So that was 10 years ago, 12 years ago? I'm home now 14 years. I got home out in 2000. I got arrested in January 9, 2009. I got out in, I think it was July 9th, I think in 2010. Okay. So. 19 months total.

And you've been, and you moved out of New York, I assume. Now you got no protection. What about the witness protection? Was that even an offer? They offered me that, I think, three times. But let me ask you, John, would you take the antidote from the same people who gave you the poison? Right.

Could you trust them? Why would they offer you that, but not the $1.8 million, just to be gone? You know why. They got to make it look like they did the right thing. All this, all this, and for your view, is that probably don't know, all the stuff that they do out here in the world is a facade. All this stuff is all fake. Now, do the FBI protect you and help you in certain ways? Like maybe they might arrest the terrorists.

Hey, that's great. Thank you. Appreciate it. But they're all, unless you go to prison or you have somebody at some prison, you don't know what prisons like. You don't know what it's like for the person who you knew a loved one away. You know, you got drugs. Oh, yeah, no. I know about marijuana.

Oh, where did they get the fentanyl? How did my son die? How did it? They don't know because they're not involved in it. That's the secret of the government. Keep everybody in the dark. Where are they good guys? Why can, why is the media here a bias against certain people and do this?

But yet when they say that the, they say that the other media in other countries like Russia or China, oh, they control the media. Well, we do it here too. Of course. But we do it because we're the good guys. It's different. That's a lie. What is that other saying? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter?

It's all a game. It's a joke. It's who's in power, who's not. Look at O.J. Simpson. He won his case. He had the money. He had the thing. Now, whether he did it or not, that's neither here and there, but he won.

Did, uh, so when did you sue them? You're suing them for $20 million. I lost that case a few. years ago. Okay. Damn. I know because do you know how good that would have been? I even tried to get on Fox News. I wrote to these people. I talked to them and everything like that. Yeah. You, listen, they had Sammy the Bull on there. Yeah. Who's a better witness about the FBI, what they're doing to like what they did to Donald Trump and all these lies they come up with. I'm not, I'm not the disgruntle worker. I was there for with them 18 years. If I don't know,

who knows? Yeah. I mean, well, I think, I think part of it was that you didn't directly help take down any big time bosses. You know, Sammy the Bull rated on literally he had the good fortune of having the biggest target in FBI mob history, you know. And that, what you brought up is a perfect thing. Here's Sammy the Bull doing all the murders. Yeah. He said he did, they said he did 19 murders.

I had heard it was even more like 23. Yeah, probably. But that's neither here to that. That's Sammy, whether he wants to say it or not, that's not my place. Whether it's true or not, I don't know. But they let Sammy go and they put John away because they wanted him. So bad. You know, and like I said, and then where's the loyalty in the mafia?

Look what they did to Michael Francis. Here's a guy making, he said he was making $8 to $10 million a week. Now, if that's true, let's say it's true, because I don't know. I wasn't with him when it. So he's giving his boss what? If he's making $8 million a week, what is he giving him $2 million a week? They never saw that kind of money. But yet they had to like pretend to threaten him because they made it thought he was going to take over the family because the money buys the family.

Yeah. Where's the loyalty? Look like we talked about my friend Dominic. Dominic was going to do the time. But you make it like he's an orphan now. Stupid. It's just stupid. It doesn't make any sense.

That's why I said if I had real friends and if Dominic was my friend and he wasn't in that life and I wasn't in that life and stuff like that, I would never have told on him because I didn't tell him my other friends. Now, people could believe that or not. You don't have to believe it either. But it's the truth because I've already proved it. I can't say and have the people come forward because then they might want to ask those people what I did.

And I don't expect them to not keep their match up because they're legitimate people. Are you worried at all? You're out of New York. You're tucked away somewhere, you know, in the cut. Are you worried at all about reprisals? I always look over my shoulder. Remember I said to you when I first met you how told you was in a second? Yeah.

Yeah. And you said it took sometimes a couple people, a couple of guesses. Yeah. Yeah. I have the gift. Thank God. because I have to have it. I've had it for years,

and that's not going to change. Right. You know, my current girlfriend had asked me a long time ago, she said, you know, Jo, are you one of those guys who think you still got it, or you lost it, and you've got to see if you still got it? I said, no. She says, why?

I said, because I never lost it. I am who I am. Do I want to act like I'll do this or do that? Well, whatever happens, happens. But you're not going to just come and just take me that easy. It's not going to happen. Joe Barone plug away man

What's your podcast called So we got Mafia Roundtable Co-hosts with Dominic Secali And I'm helping another friend of mine out With a good fellow podcast And that's going It's slow but I'm trying to help out

What's it called? Good fellow You know good fellow Okay I gotcha The Good fellow podcast Okay awesome And all the links from me in the bio Thanks so much for coming down here man

Thanks a lot I hope you enjoyed your time Yeah no I had a real good time And I had a real pleasure Me and you And I appreciate all your questions Well, we'll switch over to Patreon for a few more questions. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show.

Once again, Joe Barone. Super good time talking to you, man. Great. Thanks. Thanks, thanks to have it. Take care. You too.