Mafia Mole

Gregory Scarpa was a different sort of American success story. He was a spy, a mole at the core of organized crime in New York. For protection and for money, Scarpa told federal authorities how organized crime worked and provided information that helped put many of his fellow gangsters in prison. Officially, Scarpa worked for the FBI, but the facts suggest that the mobster was the boss and that his so-called assistance to law enforcement was just part of his scam. Indeed, the relationship between Scarpa and the FBI is likely to prove unique in the annals of American crime and law enforcement. And, even if it remains relatively obscure, it surely ranks as one of the FBI's worst scandals.

Of course, the FBI put people in jail with information provided by Scarpa. But, citing the FBI's own documents, an attorney for one of those convicts maintains that the FBI's relationship with Scarpa amounted to a crime in itself. Indeed, a defense lawyer told me, "I can say without hesitation that in the collective experience of all the lawyers involved in the various Scarpa appeals, none has ever run into anything as stupefying as Greg Scarpa's relationship with the FBI."

Scarpa died in 1994, shortly before the secret relationship was exposed—though hoods and lawmen had long suspected it. But the gangster haunts the FBI. Did his handlers attempt to cover up the often bloody details of the hoodlum's easy success in conning the FBI? That's (continued on page 138)Mafia Mole(continued from page 67) the claim of a New York City Police Department detective who has been blamed for leaking information to the Mob and who maintains the FBI tried to frame him for the leaks. Scarpa also haunts the prosecutors who relied on FBI information in their efforts to break the back of organized crime in New York. Some of the secrets that have been exposed may undo half a dozen convictions of major mafiosi. And the alleged cover-up may continue, with many details about the FBI's conduct remaining secret forever.

Who was Greg Scarpa? He was "a guy with the temper of a chain saw and the conscience of barbed wire," one lawman recalled. One of his former attorneys said that Scarpa "abided by no moral code—he made his own rules." Even without a gun, Scarpa was a master manipulator. "Greg could do 'earnest' like nobody's business," a federal prosecutor claimed.

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Scarpa was born in 1928 and grew up in the tough Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. It was a place where the most powerful role models were often gangsters and where young Greg developed a reputation as a tough street fighter. By his early 20s he was an accomplished criminal, specializing in hijacking. It was in mid-1961, according to FBI documents and a former agent who knew him, "that Greg got jammed up on a hijacking beef and decided to deal his way out."

Scarpa was "turned" by FBI agent Anthony Villano, the quintessential "brick agent" and a bureau legend. A brick agent is a street-smart investigator who prefers the company of gangsters to that of bureaucrats. Villano, according to an FBI man and former colleague, developed more "made" La Cosa Nostra sources than any agent in the history of the FBI. "Six, I think it was. Scarpa, of course, was the most prominent. Anyway, it's the early Sixties, and Scarpa is going away on a hijacking beef. Ironically, it wasn't an LCN agent who originally approached him but an agent from the bureau's hijacking squad. He promised Scarpa a walk if Scarpa could provide a little information."

Law enforcement officials agree that it was Scarpa's fear of "the joint" that made him eager to cooperate. Unlike other Mob wannabes who see jail time as a step in a career path, Scarpa dreaded prison.

"As it happened, the agent from the hijacking squad was transferred from New York while Scarpa was still cooling his heels, waiting for a plea, in the Brooklyn correctional facility," the FBI man continued. "But Villano was friendly with the guys in hijack, knew about the Scarpa deal and decided to follow up." Shortly after that, Scarpa was freed.

The day after Scarpa's release, the source said, Villano talked his way into Scarpa's Staten Island home by impersonating a former cellmate. "Scarpa wasn't home. When his wife answered the door, Villano gave her his story, that Greg said to look him up when he got out. The wife invited him in, served coffee on the faux-marble dinette. Christ, Tony Villano had coglioni big enough to bowl with.

"Anyway, when Scarpa gets home, he explodes.

"'Who the hell are you?' he yells.

"'Greg,' Villano tells him, 'I'm your FBI welcoming committee.'

"Scarpa was like, 'Shit!' He thought the FBI had forgotten about the deal when the hijacking agent got transferred. He was boiling. Yelling and screaming. Villano just sat there calmly and let him get it out. Finally, of course, he came around.

"So they agree to meet the next day at a boat basin in Montauk. They hit it off immediately. Villano was half a wiseguy himself. This was a great catch for him. Scarpa ran the most active crew in the Colombo family. A real earner, keeping old Joe Colombo in caviar and expensive pussy all by himself. So Villano starts working him hard. This is the first true Mob informer. Scarpa's not a caporegime yet. But he is a made soldier, as well as the skipper of his own crew. So the bureau's getting information on the operation and structure of the Mafia as it happens. The mother lode. Brother, this was a first.

"Now, you gotta picture the irony of the whole deal," the former agent continued. "While Hoover was refusing to publicly admit the existence of the Mafia, and while [Joe] Valachi was shocking the shit out of Congress, here we were using one of the Mob's up-and-comers as our own personal spook."

Confidential FBI memos corroborate the agent's memory, making it clear that Scarpa regaled his FBI handlers with the history, stretching back to the Middle Ages, of the Sicilian Black Hand. He told them about the induction ceremonies, the code of omertà, or silence, the national structure and his fellow goodfellows.

One internal FBI memo from September 1962 that recently came to light suggests that the bureau tried to keep at least a formal rein on Scarpa. It mentions a dispute between Scarpa's crew and a rival gangster named Joseph Magliocco and warns "that under no circumstance can Scarpa participate in the murder of Magliocco."

Nonetheless, Villano saw it as part of the bargain that he keep his mole fat and happy. "There are rules, and there's real life," observed James Fox, former New York FBI chief, regarding the complexities of an agent-informer relationship. "Sometimes you have to give something to get something."

The result was that with Villano's assistance, Scarpa "made almost as much from insurance-reward scams during the Sixties as he did on the street," a former law enforcement official revealed.

It worked this way: Scarpa told Villano where his Mafia colleagues had stashed their hijacked swag. Villano then informed insurance companies, which would retrieve the stolen goods and give Villano money as a reward. Villano then gave the reward to Scarpa. Sometimes Scarpa gave up cargoes he had hijacked to avoid suspicion within the Mob.

Over time, however, Scarpa's ability to avoid serious trouble with the law made his underworld companions suspicious.

"Let me tell you about that cocksucker Scarpa," an old gangster we'll call Tommy told me one afternoon. "Two words: rat fuck." We were sitting inside Tommy's New York social club. Thick cut glass shielded the musty room from sunlight. Jimmy Rosselli's Innamorata trilled from the jukebox. A handpainted mural of the docks of Palermo covered the 30-foot-long back wall.

Three decades ago Tommy was a feared button man for the Colombo family celebrity outlaw Joseph "Crazy Joey" Gallo. Tommy recalled that "in the beginning, back in the Sixties when Scarpa was king of the hijacks, we always wondered about him because he took so many chances. Wondered why he never got popped. Then I found out. We had a gold shield detective on the pad, back in 1972 or 1973. First- or second-grade, I forget. But high up, in intel. And this cop warned me, hell, didn't warn me, told me. Said the feds had Greg Scarpa on a leash. Said never to say nothing in front of that rat fuck, 'cause everything got back to the G."

Tommy paused and shot his cuffs. "So we never trusted that Scarpa cocksucker, you understand? But what was I gonna do? Back then, he's already a made guy. He's goin' places with the Colombos. And me, I wasn't even made! Word gets around that I'm rattin' him out, I end up ..." Tommy glanced toward the jukebox—now Rosemary Clooney doing Mambo Italiano—"I end up strapped to a two-ton Wurlitzer somewhere out in Rockaway Bay, capisce?"

Throughout the Seventies, various law enforcement authorities were just as suspicious. "He never did the walk-and-talk like every other wiseguy," said a retired NYPD investigator. "He'd say anything out loud—even though every made guy knew we were hanging wires all over town."

An assistant district attorney recalled that Scarpa routinely beat "airtight" cases. "We'd get the guy red-handed, and the next thing you know the case would be mysteriously thrown out by the judge, the records sealed," the assistant D.A. said. "At the time we didn't know what was going on. Only later did we find out that every time we nailed Scarpa, the feds would merely head to the presiding judge's chambers, notify him that Scarpa was a high-level informant and—bingo—our case was in the wind.

"Scarpa had an action jones," he continued, almost admiringly. "Always wanted to be at the scene. That's where we locked him up once. Got him at the warehouse where they were off-loading the stuff. Liquor truck. Cases of Dewar's. Scarpa and his crew. Tough motherfuckers. Kill you as soon as look at you. Next thing you know the judge is quashing the case, throwing it out, sealing the records. Let me tell you, frustrating is not the word."

On the rare occasion when a Scarpa arrest made it to trial, the assistant D.A. recalled, "all sorts of hinky things went down." In the mid-Seventies, for example, the Brooklyn D.A.'s office felt it had the elusive gangster nailed. "We babysat a Scarpa witness for a whole year in the old Bossert Hotel in Brooklyn Heights," the prosecutor continued. "Guy testified before the grand jury and everything. Then the case goes to trial, with Scarpa sitting right there at the defense table. And when they ask the witness to point to the man who organized the hijack, he said he couldn't. Scarpa was acquitted."

Did the Mob pressure the witness or did the FBI scare him off? The prosecutor shrugged. "All I can tell you for sure is that somebody got to him. Right after that, word started circulating that this guy Scarpa was a stool, that he had federal protection. The fucking feds. Never told us nothing.

"Another time, marrone, we had him on a direct buy. Guns and bribery. And they didn't do nothing. They quashed it. Even back then he was a big-money guy. He was an earner. Anyway, we used to tail Scarpa. One night, he tells his crew he's going out to get laid. And we follow him to this FBI safe house on the Upper East Side."

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After Villano retired in the early Seventies, Scarpa consolidated his criminal empire. His repertoire was varied. At one time or another he was accused of hijacking, assault, gun possession, selling stolen goods, loan-sharking, bookmaking, theft of negotiable stocks and bonds, bribing police officers, car theft, usury, gambling and murder. He "could have served as a role model for ambitious gangsters," as a New York Times reporter described him. A surveillance photo showed that he looked the part. Scarpa was close to six feet tall, with a lean but muscular physique and a poker face.

Scarpa grew richer and more uninhibited over time. As one veteran Mafia investigator recalled, "Capos ain't supposed to be out on the street hijacking trucks, doing drug deals. I mean, that's why you have a crew. But Greg, man, Greg was there. He just loved the action. He always had to walk point." Scarpa, according to law enforcement authorities, reveled in the business of being a gangster. He personally tested the illegal weapons, mostly rifles, that he and his crew sold "to make sure anybody that bought a gun from him wasn't getting a raw deal," one investigator recalled. When his crew hijacked designer dresses and furs "he was like a little kid. He couldn't wait to rush out and shower his girlfriends with that kind of swag."

A peacock dresser forever flaunting a thick wad of cash, Scarpa owned homes on Manhattan's Sutton Place, on Staten Island, in Brooklyn and in Las Vegas. He ruled his fiefdom with guile and an iron fist.

In 1976 he served 30 days in jail for attempting to bribe two police officers. It was his longest stretch in jail. At that point Scarpa's connection with the FBI was remote, or nonexistent. By the late Seventies he was a right-hand man to Colombo family boss Carmine Persico, Joe Colombo's successor.

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In the early Eighties, according to FBI documents, bureau agent R. Lindley "Lynn" De Vecchio began "redeveloping" Scarpa as a snitch. Colleagues said there was no better lawman in New York to work with the Mafia's rising star. Like Villano, De Vecchio spoke the language of the street.

"Lynn had a way of talking to Scarpa, of working with him, that made Scarpa feel comfortable," said a former colleague. An agent since 1966, De Vecchio had a reputation for his drive. "He was like a pit bull when he sank his teeth into a case," said another former colleague. "He didn't let go."

De Vecchio registered Scarpa as a confidential informant, meaning that Scarpa would not be required to testify and his relationship with the FBI would remain a deep secret. The two contacted each other on top-security "hello phones" and often spoke in code. James Fox, who was the head of the bureau's New York office from 1984 through 1994, recalled De Vecchio "delivering goods that no money can buy." Declassified FBI memos reveal that Scarpa provided a steady stream of inside gossip: who was being made, which crews were divvying up which territory, whose star was rising and whose was blinking out. It was also disclosed that Scarpa received from $2000 to $5000 every few months for his information, for a grand total of more than $158,000.

It was an unusual relationship from the beginning. Scarpa demanded a waiver of FBI regulations that required confidential informants to have two agent-handlers. De Vecchio and Scarpa would work alone.

Clearly, Scarpa was a privileged hood. And De Vecchio went out of his way to help him. It has been reported and long rumored that the FBI man, for example, told the gangster who else was cooperating with law enforcement agencies. When Scarpa was having trouble tracking down two deadbeat customers in his loan-sharking business, De Vecchio told him where they were hiding. The lawman also gave Scarpa some advice to pass on to two members of his crew who were fugitives from the law. If they, in the words of one of the once-secret documents, "stayed away from their normal hangouts, they could avoid being arrested." De Vecchio gave Scarpa the courtesy of an early warning when Scarpa's son, Gregory Jr., was about to be arrested for dealing drugs. And perhaps most disturbing, upon being told by Scarpa that a rival's death would resolve the Colombo family war, De Vecchio gave Scarpa the address where the rival was hiding out.

Scarpa sometimes mentioned De Vecchio to his family and associates, always referring to the FBI agent as "the girlfriend."

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In 1986 Scarpa was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer. Distrustful of outsiders, he received blood from a member of his own crew. Soon enough he was back out on the street, running his empire and reporting Mob gossip to De Vecchio.

In the late Eighties Carmine Persico, boss of the Colombo family, went to jail for life. He wanted to continue running the family from his cell until his son Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico, also in jail, was released and could take over. Meanwhile, Colombo capo Victor "Little Vic" Orena, who was still on the street, became acting boss of the family and soon made it clear he wanted to take over.

But Scarpa had another idea: He wanted to be the new boss and felt he could manipulate all the players to get the job. "I was the most powerful entity in the Colombo family and an authoritative figure who bowed to no one," Scarpa said.

By this time De Vecchio had become head of the Colombo squad, thanks in part to the intelligence that he had received from his mole. The advantages of having a mole at the top of a crime family were apparent to the FBI man. With De Vecchio's enthusiastic support, Scarpa set about trying to win the war of succession.

In the early going, the old suspicions about Scarpa resurfaced.

In May 1990 Orena petitioned his ally and Gambino family boss John Gotti for help. Orena asked Gotti to order his ace hit man, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, to eliminate Scarpa. Gravano became a government witness in 1992 and subsequently testified that he searched for Scarpa for a week before Orena had a change of heart and called off the hit.

About that same time Scarpa received another death sentence. He learned he was HIV-positive; he traced his illness to the blood transfusion he had received from his crew member in 1986. With his health failing, Scarpa filed a malpractice suit against the hospital.

The Colombo family war officially began on June 20, 1991 when there was a failed attempt on Orena's life by Persico faction members. The following month, Scarpa attended the wake of an Orena loyalist, giving the impression that he was on that side. Little Vic was holding court, detailing what would happen to Persico adherents if they didn't accept him as Colombo family boss. Then Scarpa told Carmine Persico, and the FBI, what had happened.

In November 1991 Scarpa reported some incredible news to De Vecchio and to his friends in the Persico faction. (By this time, Scarpa had given up any pretense of backing Orena). Someone from the Orena faction, he claimed, had tried to kill him and had almost shot his daughter in the process. Scarpa's report changed everything. The succession dispute turned into a civil war that drew the attention of city and state gangbusters, in addition to the FBI. Among both lawmen and hoods it was eventually believed that Scarpa fabricated the story of the murder attempt in the hope of starting a shooting war.

The battle between Orena and Persico adherents accelerated. Scarpa, an eager soldier in the Persico army, punched "666," the mark of the beast, into friends' beepers after he shot someone. One of his favorite boasts was that he loved the smell of gunpowder.

Through the autumn and winter and into the spring of 1992, Scarpa, armed with a rifle, regularly cruised Brooklyn's Avenue U, the boundary between the warring factions, looking for Orena soldiers to kill.

Just before Christmas he came across Orena loyalist Vinny Fusaro hanging Christmas lights on his Brooklyn home. Scarpa blew him away. In another episode, Scarpa concocted a plan to murder the mother of a gangster when the gangster became a government witness.

As time went on Scarpa became more and more aggressive, doing everything he could to step up the tempo of the shooting war. When one of his gunmen was wounded, Scarpa called a meeting. With a dozen mobsters looking on, he congratulated the bandaged comrade for "taking one for the cause" and exhorted more-timid crews to get out on the streets and to follow his aggressive example.

When Scarpa killed a noncombatant by mistake, he remarked to one of his crew members that the victim "should have known better" than to have been mingling with Orena's people.

In early 1992 Scarpa hatched a plot to call a truce and convene "peace talks" with the leaders of the top Orena crews. He proposed to murder the lot at the gathering. The plan never came off.

By the time the shooting finally stopped in 1993, ten people had been killed and 17 wounded. Scarpa had accounted for at least three of the corpses.

Agent De Vecchio played a curious role, to say the least, during the war. He received regular reports from Scarpa, who blamed the murders on various people. Did De Vecchio believe him? Only he can say, and he has remained silent. Did De Vecchio's supervisors ask any questions? The FBI isn't talking, either.

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In March 1992 both Scarpa and De Vecchio began to encounter problems. The Brooklyn district attorney's office issued a warrant for Scarpa's arrest on a gun possession charge. Scarpa's customary FBI protection began to evaporate. This warrant was not quashed. Scarpa went into hiding to avoid arrest.

By this time several of De Vecchio's colleagues, who had their own informers, had come to believe that Scarpa was the driving force behind the bloody gang war. In their view there was something very troubling about the Scarpa–De Vecchio relationship. Some members of the Colombo squad decided to withhold information from their boss, fearing that De Vecchio would pass it on to Scarpa.

In March 1992 De Vecchio's superiors, alarmed by office rumors, ordered him to "close" Scarpa as a CI. No one protested when De Vecchio reactivated him a month later. Exactly what happened in that bureaucratic passage remains a secret within the FBI.

Lawman De Vecchio spoke with the fugitive Scarpa by telephone, according to FBI documents, at least once a month. "You'd think that old Lynn might have dropped us a line, no?" joked one Brooklyn investigator.

On May 22, 1992 a remarkable meeting convened at FBI headquarters in New York. Special Agent Christopher Favo, De Vecchio's second in command, later testified about what happened.

"I went in to see Mr. De Vecchio," Favo testified. "I walked in, I gave my usual briefing—two shootings occurred, two Orena-side people were shot, they're not really sure who did it and so forth. As I started into that he slapped his hand on the desk and he said, 'We're going to win this thing,' and he seemed excited about it. He seemed like he didn't know who we were—the FBI—or that Scarpa was not on our side. A line, it was like a line had been blurred over who we were and what this was. I thought there was something wrong. He was compromised. He had lost track of who he was."

In August 1992 Scarpa showed up at a civil court in New York to testify in his malpractice suit against the hospital where he believed he had contracted the AIDS virus. He was arrested on the gun possession charge and on federal racketeering and murder charges and released on $1.2 million bail.

Scarpa eventually won a $300,000 judgment against the hospital, but most of his other news was bad. On December 29, 1992 a drug deal turned into a shoot-out near Scarpa's Brooklyn home. Scarpa took a bullet in his left eye. Returning home, Scarpa poured himself a scotch in his living room before going to a hospital 20 miles away.

His bail was revoked, and Scarpa went back to jail in early 1993. In May, with evidence from informers piling up against him, the caporegime pleaded guilty to three murders committed during the civil war, as well as attempts to murder nine other members of Orena's faction. He was sentenced on December 15, 1993 to ten years in prison.

Scarpa was just one of many gangsters who were in or on their way to jail, including a batch of Orena adherents who had been convicted of racketeering and murder with the help of information Scarpa supplied to De Vecchio.

In January 1994, even as those prosecutions continued, several of De Vecchio's colleagues filed an official report of their misgivings about the Scarpa–De Vecchio relationship. In June 1994 the FBI launched an internal investigation of De Vecchio that continues today.

Scarpa was not a part of the investigation. He died on June 8, 1994 in the federal medical center in Rochester, Minnesota. He was 66. His relationship with the FBI remained an official secret.

Unofficially, the FBI agents and other law enforcement officials felt a sense of betrayal. Their own investigations convinced them that the good guys had secretly helped the bad guys, and a blame game started as Scarpa was dying. FBI officials arrested Joseph Simone, a veteran New York police detective and a member of the NYPD's Organized Crime Task Force, on charges that he leaked law enforcement secrets to mobsters. His case went to trial before a federal jury and, in October 1994, he was acquitted. Despite testimony on his behalf by four FBI agents, he was fired in May 1996 after an internal police investigation found him guilty of failing to report an alleged bribe overture and of tipping off mobsters. "I was railroaded by the FBI," Simone said. "I'm taking the fall for crooked FBI agents."

It took until the autumn of 1994 for the Scarpa–De Vecchio relationship to become public. Then, during one of the many Mafia trials that were moving through the courts, a judge ordered prosecutors to turn over to defense attorneys secret FBI files about Scarpa's dealings with the bureau.

Since then, defense attorneys have scored some convincing victories. More than a dozen alleged Colombo soldiers, including two capos, have been acquitted in four separate trials in Brooklyn federal court. Moreover, several imprisoned mobsters are appealing their racketeering convictions based on what the FBI has been compelled to admit. One of them is Victor Orena, who received a life sentence. Orena charges that De Vecchio illegally passed information to Scarpa, some of which nearly caused him to be assassinated.

Federal prosecutors deny that Scarpa was ever authorized by either the bureau or De Vecchio to commit crimes.

De Vecchio's superiors transferred him in 1994 from the Colombo squad to one that dealt with asset forfeiture while his attorney ridiculed the allegations and insisted that De Vecchio "never lost sight of what his job was." In May 1996 he was called to testify at a hearing to determine whether Orena deserved a new trial. De Vecchio repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment. Meanwhile, the Justice Department's Public Integrity section investigated the agent. In September 1996 Lee Radek, chief of the criminal division, informed De Vecchio's lawyer that "the prosecution of De Vecchio in this matter is not warranted." An assistant U.S. attorney pointedly remarked that De Vecchio "was not cleared. The Public Integrity section has merely declined to prosecute." De Vecchio retired from the FBI in October 1996, while an internal administrative inquiry remained officially alive. It is doubtful that the public will ever know the full results of that investigation.

"This cop warned me, hell, didn't warn me, told me. Said the feds had Greg Scarpa on a leash."

Scarpa became more aggressive, doing everything he could to step up the tempo of the shooting war.