Making Jack Falcone | FBI
56:48 Share

This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and contains references to suicide. Welcome to True Spies. Week by week, mission by mission, you'll hear the true stories behind the world's greatest espionage operations. You'll meet the people who navigate this secret world. What do they know?

What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? This is True Spies. He grabs a candlestick holder, cracks him over the top of the head. You hear a pop like a melon. He was just beating on this guy. And then he goes to really hit him. And I said, let's get out of here. Episode 57, Making Jack Falcone.

Let's begin at Bloomingdale's, big department store, New York City. Nice if you can afford it. Jack Falcone, an associate of the Gambino crime family, looms over the groaning figure of P.T. "Chops" Fincini. P.T. has felt better. Falcone's big hand rests on the shoulder of Robert Ficaro. Ficaro, wild-eyed and panting, holds an ornate metal candlestick.

It's dripping a sickly scarlet puddle onto the floor of the homeware department. A fourth man, older than the others, begins to walk away.

That's Greg De Palma. As we're walking down the escalator, the guy gets up Vicini. He's bleeding through the head profusely. He goes, "What did you do that for?" And Greg goes, "You know exactly why I did that. And you better show your ass in front of that nursing home tomorrow. You understand? Or we're gonna come back." He means it too. Gambino. Bonanno. Colombo. Genovese. Lucchese.

Five names, five families, one mob. Yes, the FBI has had tremendous success on organized crime. But the organized crime, Cosa Nostra, is still here. And every time you hear of one of these takedowns by the FBI, oh, the organized crime is done, Cosa Nostra is done. No, it isn't. Cosa Nostra, our thing in Italian.

is the name that most mobsters prefer. After all, anyone can belong to a mob. Where's the exclusivity? No, to be a member of the Cosa Nostra, you need to be of Italian descent. You need to walk the walk, talk the talk, and know your way around a menu. The Cosa Nostra is built on decades of rituals, hierarchies, and intricate codes of conduct.

Which is to say that for an undercover operative, they're a hard nut to crack. Hard, but not impossible. Hi, my name is Joaquin Jack Garcia. I'm a retired special agent of the FBI.

I was working undercover for the FBI for 24 out of my 26 years of service. During my undercover days at the FBI, it culminated with my infiltration into the Gambino crime family in New York. I was proposed for membership by Captain Greg DePalma.

By his own admission, Jack Garcia does not look like an FBI agent. I look like just a typical tough kid from the New York area, as opposed to some of the FBI agents that are kind of from the Midwest.

Standing at a burly six foot four, he certainly makes an impression. I just had the dark hair, the swarthy complexion, and of course the way of walking and talking. And yes, to the untrained ear, Jack's the quintessential New Yorker. But his story begins a little further south. I was born in 1952 for a prominent family in Cuba. Life was very good for us. And then in 1959, Fidel Castro came to power.

Jack's father was an employee of the Batista regime, the US-backed government that was overthrown by Castro in the Cuban Revolution. In 1960, the senior Mr. Garcia was forced to flee the country after being accused of corruption by the new regime.

He fled in the cover of darkness. We were forced to move to my grandparents' home. And then we got together and he brought us over to America. So I lived under communism for three years. And I tell you, it was one of the most brutal times of my life. And then when we came to America, we came to live to Washington Heights, New York, and then later on moved to the Bronx, New York.

Like many Cuban refugees of his generation, Jack loves his adopted country fiercely. But his decision to serve it as an FBI agent was influenced less by patriotism, more by Al Pacino.

When I was in college, I used to play American football, I guess because of my size and stature. We used to go before the games to movie theaters to watch movies. We went to see a movie called Serpico. Serpico is with Al Pacino and it's a story about this police officer who uncovers corruption in the NYPD while all along going to work undercover.

So when I watched this movie, I really felt I was touched. And I said, this is what I want to be. I want to be a police officer. I want to work undercover. Shortly after graduation, Jack filled in an application for the FBI. And then he waited and waited.

So, of course, I didn't hear from the FBI for like a year. I wasn't even getting correspondence. And then I was home watching Univision and I was watching this Spanish speaking show. And there was an FBI agent who was non-native, butchering the Spanish language, asking for Spanish speakers to come and apply for the FBI.

So I immediately got on the phone the next day, called and said, "Hey, you have my application in the FBI. How come you're looking for others? I'm your man. Don't look any further." Unfortunately, the same circumstances that had given him a native command of Spanish were working against his application. And they said, "Well, reviewing your file, we see that you're not even an American citizen."

So I had to become an American citizen in 1976 in order for them to process my application, which I did. And then finally in 1980, I became a special agent of the FBI. At first, Jack wanted nothing more than to fit in with his new colleagues.

Well, when I got out of the FBI Quantico, Virginia, I no longer wanted to be an undercover. I was happy being a G-man. I mean, I went out and bought three-piece suits. I bought those wingtip shoes that they're called Thousand Eyes. And I just wanted to work bank robberies, fugitives, all of the stuff that at that time with the FBI was known for. He may have set aside his undercover ambitions, but they weren't done with him.

On one of Jack's early operations with the FBI, his team were tasked with hunting down a dangerous fugitive, a murderer. Their sources had revealed that the fugitive frequented "massage parlors" in Manhattan. A number of agents had already attempted to infiltrate these parlors without success. They looked too much like cops. Now, new intelligence revealed that one masseuse in particular had become one of their target's firm favorites.

The FBI couldn't afford to lose this lead too. They needed a fresh approach.

So who else but this Cuban kid from the Bronx would fit the bill to go into a massage parlor as opposed to these other guys that look just like typical FBI agent and she-man. So I went into this massage parlor. I, of course, put on my tennis sneakers. I went on there, you know, T-shirt. Hey, how you doing? I'm looking for so-and-so. It quickly became clear that none of the parlor's employees had any misgivings about Jack.

I was told, "Well, go in that room and get naked." You're a rookie FBI agent on your first undercover operation. You've been hoping against hope that you'll keep your nerve. But never mind that. Are you going to keep your trousers? So here I am in this uncomfortable situation.

A good undercover agent needs to be adaptable. Very few things are worth blowing your cover for. And modesty isn't one of them.

You have to be able to fit in the environment that you are placed in. And you have to be comfortable in that environment. Yes, Jack had committed fully to his role. And it paid off. She said, well, she's working in such and such a place. So I quickly got dressed, walked out. We had the address. Eventually, the FBI caught their fugitive. And Jack had caught something else. The undercover bug.

So after I did that, did I feel good? Yes, because obviously they were pleased with the fact that I was able to garner that information that they were looking for, that missing piece. But what happened was, is when the FBI in the early 80s started working narcotics along with DEA, that's where I really blossomed, I guess, so to speak. Here I am, I'm a fluent Spanish speaker.

I'm a guy from New York City. I'm a street kid, you know? I grew up in Washington Heights. I grew up in the Bronx. So now we're working narcotics. So who else would they utilize? So I started working undercover. In the years that followed, Jack became one of the FBI's go-to agents on the narcotics beat. His Cuban background gave him a level of credibility that few of his colleagues could match in the field.

So, we were doing by bus cases. We were doing cases involving major drug cartels from Columbia cases. And of course, later on, we dealt with Mexican cartel. So, that became my specialty. I became an undercover.

But I worked solely undercover, which is also a very rare thing to have in the FBI, where usually people may work undercover here and then. I had no cases, but solely undercover cases. I was working in Miami. I was working in Atlantic City. I was working in New York and New Jersey, Philadelphia. So I was pretty much all over specializing in undercover. And after a while, I got very good at my trade.

So good, in fact, that he often worked those cases simultaneously, balancing multiple identities all over the country. Sounds confusing, no? The devil is in the details. Surely you'd slip up from time to time.

Now, how was I able to do that? Well, it's kind of easy because each case you work, you're playing a bad guy, somebody, you know, like a bad drug dealer. So people don't ask those kinds of questions. They don't say, hey, tell me your legend. Tell me when were you born? Where were you born?

You know, some of these people don't even have their names they give it out. They use codes, like if I'm dealing with a drug dealer, his name is Lucho. That's all you got is Lucho. I can't go to Lucho and say, Lucho, can you give me your full name and your date of birth? Just like they would never say that to me. That smells. Towards the end of his career, Jack would take on a case that required a more meticulous attention to detail.

Probably a couple of years before I retired, three or four years, I get a phone call from an agent that I respect very much. So he says to me, he goes, Jack, I got a great case for you. An enterprising businessman from the Bronx had come to the FBI with a problem. He ran a strip club and he was being extorted for thousands of dollars by the Albanian mafia.

They were beating up customers, they were robbing from the place, they were breaking things, they were threatening people. And they went up to the owner and said, "Listen, if you don't pay us, we're going to keep coming back until you pay us, okay? Because now we're going to put our flag in here. This is our place." So the owner goes, "What are you, crazy?" The owner was right to question the Albanian's sanity.

The club had once been operated by a captain in the Gambino crime family. This was Cosa Nostra territory. But that was years ago, and that guy was in jail at the time. So the Albanians came back, started beating up some more people. Finally, they said, "Okay, these guys are demanding $5,000." The FBI had begun an investigation, hoping to lock up a few low-level Albanian enforcers.

And the next very next day, a mob guy walks in all dressed up in his Brioni suit, alligator shoes. And he says, hey, I heard you had a problem with the Albanians. Well, I can make that problem go away. Italian suit, expensive loafers, implied violence. You know who this is. The FBI said, well, wait a minute. This is interesting. Who is this guy?

number one, because they didn't even know who he was, but they knew after he came in that he was affiliated with the Gambino crime family. So they're saying, this guy looks like they're doing your textbook extortion. They're creating a situation and they're offering a solution. That solution was going to be pay the mob guy and the Albanians will go away. It's around 2003 and the Albanian mob are an up-and-coming force in New York's criminal underworld.

They're occasionally hired as muscle by more established groups, a useful buffer between law enforcement and their client. Now, the FBI know who the brains behind the strip club shakedown really are, and they see an opportunity to infiltrate their organization. Soon, Jack would get to know the Gambino crime family intimately. But when he first took the call, he had his reservations.

So I said to him, well, what exactly do you want me to do? He says, well, we want a kind of a more mature, older experience agent. And you're going to have to pose as an Italian. And I said, Italian? I'm Cuban. What are you kidding me? He goes, I eat rice and beans and fried bananas. You want me to become? So he goes, yeah, listen, I think you could do it. Jack liked and respected this agent. His name was Nat Parisi.

and he was of Italian-American descent himself. He would be the case agent on the Gambino operation. And if he believed that Jack was the man for the job, well, he probably was, wasn't he? Besides, he always liked a challenge. Jack would be inserted into the situation, posing as the hapless strip club owner's new business partner, a transplant from Miami with a taste for life's less virtuous pursuits, looking to launder some drug money through the club.

He would pay off the Gambino mobster and use that new friendship as leverage to gather intelligence on the rest of the organization. But the FBI had to move fast. Any delays could mean more violence. Jack had to establish his legend, a fake background story, and it had to be convincing. By his own admission, when he gets excited, Jack's accent carries a distinctly Cuban twang.

My role was that I came from Italian parents, but I was in Miami and I hung around with Cubans. So that's how we kept it straight. Okay, so you're covered on that front. But if you want to rub shoulders with the Cosa Nostra, you need to be demonstrably Italian-American. Food and the rituals around it are a big part of that cultural identity. So Jack was going to mob school.

And he was going to eat well doing it. So the agent, who is named Nat Parisi, Natale Parisi, he says, well, look, I'll make you into an Italian. I said, all right. So we went over to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, which is all Italian. And there we go. That's where I found my love in Italian food.

We ate everything. You name it, we were just eating food. This is how you say this. This is how you say that. This is what you look for in this. This is how you pronounce it right. Because you had to get the right pronunciations. You can't claim to be Italian or at least haven't been an Italian over the years if you can't say like mozzarella. If you say mozzarella, no good Italian calls a mozzarella. You can't make these mistakes.

Once Jack was fully acquainted with the niceties of the Italian-American dinner table, as well as relative trivialities like credit cards, a social security number and a driving license, he was almost ready to begin the operation. As tight as that was, I felt I needed more. So what I did is, one of the cases I was working in Miami, I decided to find a Mr. and Mrs. Falcone who had died

And finally, I found them at a cemetery in Miami and they became my parents who died, I believe, was in the 90s. You ask, well, why is that necessary? Let's suppose I'm with the wise guys down in Miami and we're having a good time. Maybe the guy doesn't trust me.

Or maybe the guy is being nice and he says, hey, Jackie boy. I says, I know you're from the Miami area because that was the role I was playing. He says, I know your parents died. Hey, listen, let's go to your parents' grave. Let's put some flowers in there and pay our respects. What are you going to do? And I would only hope that the real Falcone's family wasn't showing up at the same time I was showing up. Now that's commitment. So exit Jack Garcia.

Enter Jack Falcone, big, boisterous, and crooked as hell.

and a larger-than-life character or two. You can find all of those things in abundance in June's Journey. In the game, you'll play as June Parker, a plucky amateur detective trying to get to the bottom of her sister's murder. It's all set during the roaring 1920s.

And I absolutely love all the little period details packed into this world. I don't want to give too much away because the real fun of June's journey is seeing where this adventure will take you. But I've just reached a part of the story that's set in Paris.

And I'm so excited to get back to it. Like I said, if you love a salacious little mystery, then give it a go. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Hello, listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast, What Should I Read Next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read.

They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page-turner to help them escape the stresses of work, or a book that they've been reading for years.

school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for What Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.

So I came in that next day and I paid the Gambino guys the $5,000 and the Albanians never came back. And then what happened is we hitched our wagon to this mobster, his name was Louis Filippelli, and we were trying to get to know him and infiltrate that group as well as the Albanian group. Jack could have done business with Louis Filippelli, but

But soon enough, a different opportunity presented itself. His name was Greg De Palma, a capo, or captain, in the Gambino crime family.

He'd just been released from prison. And before he'd gone away, the strip club had been under his jurisdiction. And right out of jail, he goes right to the club and claims the club back and said, this is my club. So Louis Filippelli comes back a couple of days later and says, you have two options. You can go with Greg De Palma, who is a captain with us, or you could stay with me.

Well, better the devil you know, right? You know, Filipelli. Greg De Palma? Not so much. But De Palma had certain attributes that made him an attractive proposition for the FBI. His big mouth, mainly. We chose to stay with Greg De Palma because Greg De Palma loved to talk and we in the FBI loved to listen. You wanted a guy to tell you what was going on. So we hitched our wagon to Greg

More to the point, Greg De Palma had been a big cheese before his stint behind bars. A lot of people forget, Greg De Palma at one time owned the Westchester Premier Theater in the 70s, the late 70s, even before I met him. And he was a celebrity in New York circles. Why? Because Westchester Premier, besides Las Vegas, were the only two places in America where you could see Dean Martin,

You could see Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Sonny and Cher, Bette Midler, Diana Shore, Dionne Warwick, and every who's who played at the Westchester Premier Theatre, which in reality played for the Gambino crime family. At the time Jack met him, Greg DePalma, one-time man about town, was much diminished. Now in his 70s, he claimed to suffer from severe ill health during his time in prison.

But appearances can be deceiving. Beneath his frail exterior, Greg De Palma hid a core of steel. Need proof? Here's Jack with a touching De Palma family anecdote. Greg De Palma's son, his name was Craig. Craig was a made member of the Gambino crime family who was proposed by John Gotti Sr. and he was in John Gotti Jr.'s crew.

And what happened was when Greg De Palma went to jail, so did his son and John Gotti Jr. for shaking down a strip club in New York called Scores. So what happened was as they were arrested, Craig De Palma, the son, cooperates, testifies with the grand jury.

Now, that word gets all around town that he had cooperated. So, Craig De Palma set up a meeting between his son and him in prison through the help of some, I guess, corrupt guards. And they sat down and said, now, you're a disgrace not only to the Gambino crime family, but to our family, the De Palma family. The next day, Craig De Palma was found hanged in his cell.

He survived, but fell into a coma from which he would never emerge. So what happened is he asked for a compassionate release of his son. His son is going to come out. So he puts him in a nursing home.

with the promise to the nursing director that there will be no mob activity, because Greg De Palma was a celebrity gangster. They knew him from the Westchester premiere. He gave him his word. His son is released. He goes into the nursing home. What do you think happened next? The very first day that I was there,

all the mobsters would start showing up and meeting at the nursing home. So that is where most of our meetings were. So Greg De Palma was the kind of person who'd hold a business meeting over the comatose body of his son, under the assumption that the FBI wouldn't wire the room on ethical grounds. He was right, too. Smart.

The FBI did not wire the room. I mean, this man was, you know, the devil incarnate, and he was all about making money, shaking down people, and just loyal to the Gambino crime family. This was the man that Jack would have to befriend if he was going to make any headway in infiltrating the Gambinos. And before long, he'd have his opportunity.

The newly minted Jack Falcone had already impressed his new contacts in the Gambino crime family and was becoming a familiar face at the dinner table. On March 4, 2003, just six days after De Palma's release from prison, he'd be dining with the devil himself. That night's venue was the Spaghetti Western, a regular hangout for Gambino affiliates. Blinking through the restaurant's smoky interior, Jack zeroed in on Greg De Palma.

It's a seduction. You know, if you come on too strong, you know, you spook him. It's like, you know, what does this guy want? Where the heck, where did he come from? I want him to come after me. I'm the prey. That's what I want. So what happened is we would go out to dinner. He would show up.

I would show deference, "How you doing?" Kept my mouth shut. I mean, who am I to start talking at the beginning? And slowly wind our way into the guy hearing his stories. And then he started getting a little warm with me and fuzzy with me. So you're taking it slow, watching, waiting for your moment. What does De Palma need

And how can you be the one to give it to him? And then what happened was, I saw that this guy smoked a lot of cigarettes. And even though he had like half a lung, he would still smoke cigarettes, but he would rip the filter off and just smoke it raw. As De Palma hacked and coughed his way through yet another unfiltered cigarette,

Jack began to put a plan together. He was complaining about the price of cigarettes, which are really outrageous. And I said, "Well, I can get you." I didn't say it to him. I said it to his driver. "Hey, look, I can get you some cigarettes."

from Jersey, from some guys that I know, and they're a counterfeit, but they look identical to the real thing. And I can get them at such a price that was so low that, hey, you make a little money on that, that's fine too. And nobody like Jack Falcone wouldn't make his approach directly to a big shot like De Palma. The driver offered a respectful buffer between the old man and his undercover suitor.

So that all of a sudden tweaked the driver, who in turn talked to Greg De Palma, and now he was interested. So I took cases of cigarettes. From another case, I was working in Atlantic City with Asian Organized Crime, and we just simply gave them to Greg De Palma for this really cheap price.

Yes, one of the benefits of working several undercover jobs at the same time is that you have access to a lot of seized contraband. Now, it turned out for us that it was a good thing because three days later, the driver said, we couldn't unload these cigarettes. They were bad quality. I said, no problem. Give them back to me. I got a way of unloading them. Don't worry about it. And then I said, why don't we give them a tribute payment?

Let me give him $1,000 as tribute and say, I made the score, I sold them. Here's your little taste for that. So as of now, what does Greg De Palma know about Jack Falcone? One, he's got easy access to money and lots of it. Two, he's respectful, at least by mob standards. Three, he's got contacts, a network with whom he can buy, sell, and acquire valuable goods.

This was someone with whom Greg DePalma could be very good friends indeed. What does he mean? Things have been going well so far.

But you've read the books, you've seen the movies. An impromptu drive with a man like De Palma so rarely ends well. Have you been discovered? So next thing you know, we land at a jewelry store. So he says to me, hey, Jackie boy, you know, I just want to let you know, we checked you out. And, you know, just to say you're a good man. You did the right thing with the cigarettes and all that. I want to give you a gift. He gave me a ring.

which is the gaudiest ring I've ever seen in my life. It was this big pinky ring with diamonds all around, but they looked like cheap diamonds. Well, whatever it was, he gave me that. Then he says to me, you on record with any family? I says, no, I'm not on record. He says, okay, now I put you on record with us. I says, nobody could mess with you. You are now one of us. I says, you need anything, I'm your skipper.

So I said, "Okay, Greg, thank you very much." With this tasteful demonstration of brotherly love, Jack became part of De Palma's inner circle. In time, he even supplanted the old man's driver, a position which gave the FBI unprecedented access to his movements. So we knew in advance where he was going so we could set up the surveillance squad. We knew afterwards what the meeting was about because I was recording him.

I always wore a wire. I really felt that there is no better evidence than the voice from the defendant. You know, I mean, to capture his voice on tape, he can't say my word against his. So all of my meetings, although dangerous as it is, I actually wore a wire. I believe in wearing a wire in all my undercover meetings.

Those recorded meetings yielded information that helped to plug the gaps in the Bureau's knowledge. We identified the hierarchy of the Gambino crime family. We also identified how many crews they had, who was getting straightened out. Straightened out. Another entry for your Cosa Nostra lexicon. You might be more familiar with the term "made man." To be straightened out is to be made. Once you're made, you're officially part of the Mafia.

You've taken the vow of a murder, silence, and now you can rise through the ranks. Soldier, capo, underboss, boss. Of course, that's if you live long enough. And if an FBI agent were to become a made man, well, they'd have the kind of access that most law enforcement agencies could only dream about. But for a mere associate to be made, well, they'd need to prove themselves worthy.

Yeah, the first time I got asked to test my loyalty was to take somebody out by breaking his kneecaps with a baseball bat. It was a guy who was a one-timer radio personality in New York, and he was avoiding Greg DePalma because Greg DePalma wanted to shake him down on something else. So what happened is he said to me, Jackie boy, you see this guy? I want you to baseball bat him.

Now, obviously, FBI agents can't go around shattering kneecaps.

But beyond his moral qualms, there was another reason that Jack could not interact with De Palma's unfortunate target. I knew the guy and he knew that I was an FBI agent because he played football the same place I played football, American football. So the last thing I want to do is go to him and say, "Hey, by the way, Greg wants to break your kneecaps." And then how do I really trust him? Did I trust him enough? Maybe he'd go back or tell somebody. It's a sticky situation.

How do you keep Greg happy while avoiding contact with the mark? It turned out that sometimes, if you put something off long enough, it just sort of goes away. So I just kind of said, hey, Greg, I missed him. Oh, I just saw the guy was running lights and everything to get him. There was a cop and he went. So that kept him busy. And then, of course, you know, that was it. Nicely done. The FBI needs to keep its hands clean.

This is already a dangerous operation. You don't want to give your superiors cause to pull you off the case.

especially considering the kind of priceless intelligence you've been able to acquire. They didn't know at that time what the administration of the Gambino crime families or the other families were. So we were able to say the acting boss was Arnold Scuteri, underboss Tony Magali and Jojo Carrazzo. We were able to determine that. We also listed so many other made men that no one had any knowledge of.

that they were guys who had been indoctrinated into the family. Jack was able to uncover the true extent of the Cosa Nostra's network in New York. Construction, hospitality, even trade unions. The Gambino crime family had grown on the city like a tumor, corrupting the tissue of civic life.

In fact, I was put in a union in order to get benefits, which they all need. I was put in Local 305. I went to this sit down with a bunch of mobsters and Greg DePalma and the president of the union. And I was put in a union where I had life insurance, medical insurance, dental, optics. I had better insurance than the FBI. And I wasn't even part of Local 305. I just paid my due and I got all of these things.

Soon, Jack was added to a list of potential made men, replacements for any soldiers who died in the course of their nefarious duties. And what that is, is a list that's circulated among the family, and it has the name of the person being proposed next to the guy who has died. This would have been an important moment for any aspiring mobster.

For an aspiring mobster who also happened to be a Cuban-American FBI agent, he was almost unthinkably fortunate. As a made man in the Gambino family, Jack would have unprecedented access to New York's underworld.

And then what would that mean is that now I would be an amico nostro. That in Italian means I would be a good fella. I would be a wise guy. And that means that I now have protection of the family. Even though I have it as an associate, I really now have it. This is on a different level altogether. As Greg De Palma's power and influence continued to recover, he began to grow his personal crew.

One new arrival stands out in Jack's memory. His name was Robert Vaccaro. Robert's the kind of guy who really was true Cosa Nostra. He didn't put his business out there. He was very discreet. He also had that killer eyes. I mean, you could look into his eyes, you see his soul. There was something dark in him. Unlike Jack, Vaccaro was a made man. He'd been brought on board to be De Palma's acting capo.

an extension of his power in the city, a proxy. After all, De Palma was still on parole. He couldn't be too visible. Suffice to say, Jack had his misgivings about Robert Vaccaro. I was a little concerned because I said, was Robert put in here in order to whack Greg because of his son's being an informant? Was he marked for death? Ultimately, this was not the case.

But you could never be too careful. And while he was loyal to De Palma, Ficarra was somebody that you absolutely needed to be careful around. In 2004, Petey Chops, a low-level Gambino soldier, would find that out for himself.

His real name is Petey Chops Ficini. So the problem with Petey Chops was that he was not showing up. And part of being in the mob and operating under the umbrella of the mob is that you have to money up. Money always flows up in the mob, never flows down. And if you're making money, then your captain needs to be making money. And the boss and the underboss, the concierge, need to be making money.

P.T. Chops Ficini was not paying his dues to Greg DePalma, and the old man wanted to know why. If he was going to find out, he'd likely need some muscle behind him. He calls me up one day, he says, I need you to come with me here. So I show up at the restaurant, Robert is there. He says, get in the car, we're going for a ride. We go for a ride, he says, well, I say, Greg, where are we going? He goes, we're going to Bloomingdale's. Bloomingdale's is an upscale department store in Manhattan.

As they drove, Greg explained that P.T. Chops was a regular visitor. So I said, "Well, how do you know this?" He's going to be there. He says, "I put the feelers out there. They told me he shows up like clockwork. He brings his gumara there, his girlfriend, and then he goes and hangs out at the little cafeteria while she goes and spends his money." You know? The menacing trio, De Palma, Vaccaro, and Falcone, arrived at the Bloomingdale's cafeteria.

They looked around. No sign of Petey Chops. Jack breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe, as it had with the would-be kneecapping victim, De Palma's ire would fade as he lost interest in the chase. So he said, "Usually he's here." So we finally gave up and said, "Ah, we'll try next week." You didn't think it would be that easy, did you? And just as we're walking out, here comes Petey Chops and two women.

Now, Petey Chop sees us, and I'm telling you, if time could stop, his eyes just lit up like he wouldn't believe. He says to the girls, girls, go shopping, you know? So he goes, Greg, what are you doing here? He goes, what am I doing here? Where have you been? I said, you're supposed to be coming to see me, and you're supposed to be kicking up. Oh, you don't understand. I'm being followed. I says, we're all being followed, he says. If only he knew.

So Greg goes, listen, you better show up here tomorrow. And the guy started getting attitudinal with Greg. So Robert and I walk over and he starts getting snarky with Robert. And right away, the eyes kicked in, you know, I said, oh, this don't look good. He goes, who am I? He grabs a coaster boater. Never forget this. A coaster boater.

candlestick holder that kind of resembles a weight, a 25-pound weight, not only in the way it looks, but also the way it feels. He grabs this, and he goes, "Who am I?" Cracks him over the top of the head. You hear a pop like a melon, and then blood starts gushing out. This guy drops, and then you hear the yelling, "You F'd this." I've never heard the F word used in so many colorful ways.

I mean, he was just beating on this guy. And then he goes to really hit him. And I said, let's get out of here. Come on, Robert, what are you doing? There are cops here. We're on camera. So he drops the Costa Boda down.

As we're walking down the escalator, the guy gets up, Vicini. He's bleeding through the head profusely. He goes, what did you do that for? And Greg goes, you know exactly why I did that. And you better show your ass in front of that nursing home tomorrow. You understand? Or we're going to come back. Time to make a hasty exit. If you get picked up by law enforcement, it could look suspicious if you're released early. Meanwhile, my brand new leather coat totally soaked in blood.

When Jack could be sure that it was safe to do so, he called in a report to the FBI.

They go over to the place, gathered the evidence, the film and all of that, talked to the people and they were saying how this giant guy was there and this other guy kept beating him and it was just horrendous. Jack had been privy to the kind of brutal violence that underwrites the Cosa Nostra's power. We can safely assume that Greg De Palma trusted him implicitly. He could feasibly have gone all the way to the top.

You know, we were making so much great progress in this. We were moving forward to get straightened out. But there was one meeting that I had with Greg DePalma and Robert Vaccaro at the end. He says, Jack, Jackie boy, we're going to have to put you on hold. It was just DePalma, Jack and Vaccaro. On the surface, all was calm. Underneath, Jack was starting to sweat.

Then I go, well, what's going on? He says, we got information that somebody big is cooperating and somebody flipped. So everything is on ice right now. Did they know? Vaccaro's vicious beating of Petey Chops was still fresh in Jack's memory. They wouldn't kill law enforcement if they discovered him, but he'd be unlikely to leave unscathed.

Fortunately, there was more than one mole inside the Cosa Nostra. It turned out to be that that someone was Joe Messino, who was the boss of the Bonanno family, who did indeed cooperate. Jack had dodged that particular bullet, but unfortunately for him, Greg De Palma did not hold a monopoly on caution. Then what happened is, within the next week or two, the FBI management says, well,

We're going to end the case." And I said, "You've got to be kidding me." I said, "We've been in it this far. We are going to get straightened out to give us access to that inner sanctum to really find out what's going on in that world." Jack fought the decision. There was no threat to his life, he argued. And he was getting closer and closer to being a fully paid-up member of the mob.

On the FBI's organized crime team, that's the holy grail of intelligence gathering. Only one agent had ever come this close before: Joe Pistone, the inspiration for the Hollywood blockbuster Donnie Brusco. He was out there for six years. I'm out there less than three years, and I'm being proposed. So why don't you give me as much time as you gave Joe? Now it seemed that Jack would be denied his own movie moment.

The case was shut down. And the decision was made. We took down 32 members and associates. We took down the administration, which was the Boers, the under Boers. So not a complete loss, but it could have been so much bigger.

Some of the excuses I heard is that they felt that this case was so large and which now would require maybe the involvement of more agents or police. And they couldn't handle that. That was such like a hot rock for them, the management. Maybe they felt they were going to lose control. But hey, you know what? They didn't lose any control when they stood there on the podium and tapped each other on the back of the great job they did.

Now Jack began preparing for his day in court. His always-on recording policy was about to pay off. It was decided by the majority, except for one person, to take a plea. Okay, they wanted to do what they call a global plea. That means everybody is, and this is usually ordered by the boss, everybody takes a plea of guilty.

So only one person said no, and that was the person that we had the most tapes on, and that was Greg De Palma. Greg De Palma would live to regret that decision.

Greg DePalma comes out with, you know, somebody driving him in those little wheelchair. He had the oxygen mask. He had a little blanket on looking so feeble. And so meanwhile, just a couple of months ago, he was slapping some guy around. So he's sitting there and we're playing tape after tape after tape. And then.

The very last tape we played was when Greg was sentenced to prison on the score strip case where he went with John Gotti Jr. and his son. He's saying how he fooled the prosecution to let him think that he was dying. They sentenced him to such a low sentence.

because they said this man would not be alive. And he talked about having a wheelchair, unshaving, drooling, and looked so feeble that they felt sorry for him and lowered it. Well, sure enough, this is being played, and there's Greg De Palma duplicating the same thing. No more questions. I walk out. As I walk by Greg De Palma, I hear him whisper from the below of his voice, you bastard.

"Cocksucker." And I walk away. And of course, you know, it was just the way he said it. It was kind of classic because he had been caught. His game was over. - Greg DePalma died in prison a few years later in 2009. Robert Vaccaro was jailed for his violent assault on the shop floor of Bloomingdale's. Today, Jack's happily retired. For a while, there were rumors that the Gambino crime family would seek retribution.

But he never bought that line. They said there was a contract for $250,000. Okay, so somebody else kills me. Are they going to walk into a social club and say, hey, I whacked Jack Falcone, give me my money? It doesn't work that way. But he's no fool either. I don't go back to the restaurants that I used to love going to eat.

I can't go back there. I don't go driving the same way. I'm always looking in my rearview mirror. I take precautions. But hey, before they come after a law enforcement agent, there's a lot of informants out there who are in wide open spaces, operating podcasts, TV shows, you name it. Why are they going to come for poor old Jackie Falcone? And if they come after me, they better be ready because I got the firepower. I'm Vanessa Kirby.

You can read about more of Jack Garcia's undercover exploits in Making Jack Falcone, available in print or as an e-book now. Join us next week for another high-risk operation with True Spies.