In early January 1999, two weeks after wrapping up the Russian case, I met with six-foot, 350-pound Mob informant Big Ron Previte. A self-proclaimed “general practitioner of crime,” he was a character straight out of The Sopranos before there was The Sopranos—Big Pussy only tougher, funnier, and smarter.
A West Philadelphia native, Previte had a long and colorful criminal history. Among other things, he had admitted to selling government-issued gear out of a supply depot while serving in the Air Force, extorting bribe money from criminals as a Philadelphia police officer, stealing from the Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City as a security guard, and making money by swapping horse urine while working for the New Jersey Racing Commission. Since 1997 and while a “made man” in the Philadelphia LCN Mob, he’d worked as a paid informant for the FBI. His current Mob Boss was “Skinny Joey” Merlino—an ambitious young gangster who was trying to expand his crime empire into New England.
Funny thing happened. I liked Previte as soon as I met him. He made no bones about his life of crime, and was fearless, despite the fact that he’d been wearing a wire for years. When asked if he worried about getting whacked by the Mob, he answered, “Why think about dying? You’re alive. Enjoy the day. In fact, a bullet to the head is very quick.”
Previte liked that I wasn’t an Ivy League type, and had been a knock-around kid myself. In terms of working together, neither one of us had a problem with the other. He knew his role, and I understood mine.
The investigative plan was straightforward—the Boston office would focus on Luisi and his Boston crew, and the Philadelphia office would continue to investigate Merlino and his cronies in Philadelphia as they had for the past couple of years. If the Boston investigation provided more evidence for Philadelphia, so much the better.
Unlike in the Russian UCO, I spent hours and hours with Previte beforehand, working out our past history. We sat in hotel rooms, restaurants, and barrooms talking and prepping, with him tutoring me in all things LCN. Soon it was if we had known each other for years.
In a book written after the case by crime reporter George Anastasia entitled The Last Gangster, Previte said, referring to me: “This guy knew what he was doing … he and I worked perfect together … it was like we didn’t have to talk about anything … we just played off one another … he was smooth … he understood.…”
I was going to be “Irish Mike,” a guy in the Irish export-import business with an office near Logan Airport who “colored outside the lines.” In other words, I had no qualms about selling things “that fell off a truck” (stolen property). To add a touch of authenticity to the offices of my company, Irish International, I purchased hundreds of leprechauns and other Irish-themed trinkets and scattered them everywhere. More importantly, the office was wired for audio and sound.
The plan was for me to start by offering Luisi and Merlino stolen property, and then move into dope deals, specifically cocaine, because the FBI knew Luisi had been a supplier in the past. We had learned from Previte that because of the unusual LCN alliance between Philadelphia and Boston, everything Luisi got his hands into had to be approved by Joey Merlino first. Again, here was a golden opportunity to gather critical evidence against top Mob players in both Philadelphia and Boston.
On January 11, 1999, less than a month after wrapping up the Russian case, I welcomed Previte, Bobby Luisi Jr., Robert “The Cook” Gentile, Tommy Caruso, and Paulie Pepicelli into my office. They all looked like Mafia extras from central casting. I saw the outline of an automatic pistol under Paulie’s shiny wool jacket.
Previte made the introductions. He said, “This is Irish Mike. He and I go back forever. He knows my family. I’ve worked with this guy for years in Philadelphia. He’s an earner. Now you can use him here. Here you go, Bobby.” Not a bad start.
Luisi was stocky with a square face and thick dark hair brushed back. He didn’t look like the sharpest pencil in the box, but struck me as dangerous and canny. According to Previte, he was a hustler and sometime drug dealer, who talked a better game than he played. He also had to pay Joey Merlino $10,000 a month in tribute, so he needed to make money. That’s where I came in.
I sat behind a desk piled with papers and stuffed leprechauns facing Previte, Luisi, and the other mobsters, trying to keep my shit together. As Luisi started to talk, the phone rang and I picked it up. It was the Case Agent watching on video from a nearby office. He said, “I want you to start asking them—”
I cut him off. “No, thanks.” And hung up. I had to stay focused. I’d learned that once a UCO went “live,” you were on your own. You, and no one else, had to make split-second decisions to advance the case the best way possible. If you waited for help from the sidelines, the bad guy would grow suspicious and walk.
I described to Luisi how as part of my business I was sometimes presented with “opportunities” and I needed help in taking advantage of them.
Nodding to Luisi on his right, Previte said to me, “Bobby controls everything here in Boston. You can deal with him the same way you deal with me in Philadelphia.”
Luisi said, “You’re with us.” Those are magic words to an FBI Agent.
In Mob-talk that meant he was offering me protection under his name. In other words, I didn’t have to worry about any other Boston criminals bothering me or shaking me down, if I worked with him. It was a very big deal to have a Mob Captain offer something like that on the first meeting. But I had Previte vouching for me, and Previte was one of Merlino’s main guys, and Luisi wanted to make Merlino happy.
I played dumb and said, “Yeah, Bobby, but I don’t want to have any hassles with other guys who are doing the same thing.”
“I just told you,” Luisi responded. “You’re with us. You’re not gonna have any problems.”
The meeting went so well that at the end Luisi said, “Come on down to the North End.” The North End was the Italian section of Boston—a small neighborhood featuring narrow cobblestone streets and brick townhouses that dated back to the seventeenth century. Paul Revere’s home stood there, as did other historical landmarks and many Italian restaurants and cafés.
We reconvened at the Caffé Vittoria on Hanover Street, which I learned later was one of Luisi’s favorite hangouts. Previte remained in Boston for a couple more days to make sure that the handoff went smoothly. Then I was on my own and officially assigned to Luisi’s LCN Boston crew as an “earner,” or someone who was expected to make money for the Mob.
Unlike the Russian UCO, where Amanbayev would return to Russia for weeks at a time to give us a break, this UCO required my daily attendance and focus. I was expected to make quick money for Luisi and had to be available at a moment’s notice to meet with him or one of his associates. Luisi and his crew usually woke up at around noon and drifted into their social club at three or four in the afternoon. And they could go all night, drinking coffee and sambuca, playing cards, watching TV, busting balls, shooting the shit, and above all else, hatch schemes to make some money.
I had to develop a new routine. I started getting up early, having breakfast with my kids, and then taking them to school. They loved it, because they basically hadn’t seen me for two and a half years. From school, I’d drive to the gym and work out for an hour or so to clear my head. I’d drift into my Irish International office at around 1 PM, read the paper, and wait for the phone to ring. Almost every day Luisi or one of his crew would page me, and I’d arrive at their favorite hangout Caffé Vittoria ten minutes later.
Even though we knew Mob guys were watching me, I had no backup team to swoop in and save me should I get in trouble. The North End was isolated and the type of place where everyone knew one another. The ever-vigilant Mob assumed any strange face was associated with law enforcement. That meant I had to “clean” myself before I returned home at night. I did this by taking different routes through downtown Boston. The narrow city streets made it impossible for anyone to follow me without being seen. Once I reached the Tobin Memorial Bridge, I transitioned from “Irish Mike” to husband/father/baseball coach.
I made a conscious effort to separate the two, though in many respects the difference between them was minimal. That’s something I teach UCAs today: When creating your UCA profile, mimic your own personality and interests. My interests included dogs and sports, so Irish Mike’s interests were dogs and sports. Irish Mike didn’t pretend to be a car expert or a wine connoisseur because I wasn’t one either.
The good part about the case was that I was sleeping in my own bed at night. I didn’t get weekends off, but I hadn’t as a Case Agent either. The disturbing part was that some of my FBI bosses were constantly on my ass about my work hours.
FBI office hours are 8:15 AM–5 PM and many Agents arrive and leave on the dot. My hours as Irish Mike were completely different and some bosses had a problem with that. Since they didn’t see me in the office, they automatically assumed I was dicking off.
Early into the case one of them called me and said, “You’re nothing fucking special.”
“I know I’m not special,” I retorted, “but this is what I’ve got to do to work the case.”
I also had to learn another new language, because Italian mobsters don’t talk like regular people. A typical conversation with them might go like this:
MOBSTER: “Hey, Mikey, what’s new? How’re they hangin…? Listen, Mikey, I need to talk to you about those things, you know. Them things that I need.”
IRISH MIKE: “What things you talking about?”
MOBSTER: “You know, those things.… Not the other things. Those things I told you about.”
IRISH MIKE: “Those things, yeah.… What do you need? Because I got those things and not the other things. Those the ones?”
MOBSTER: “Yeah, perfect. That’s exactly what I need. You’re a good guy, Mikey. How’s your dog doin’?”
IRISH MIKE: “The dog’s good. Real good. You wanna get a sandwich?”
These guys might be cold-blooded killers, but they were also fun to be around. Both Merlino and Luisi had recently served stints in prison and both were petrified about going back. So I had to earn their trust. In addition, having been part of a Merlino arrest team when I served in Philadelphia, I couldn’t meet with Merlino for fear of being recognized. So I was continually making excuses to Luisi why I couldn’t go to Philadelphia. The truth is that I’d arrested a lot of bad guys in Philadelphia and couldn’t risk a chance encounter with someone who might recognize me as an FBI Agent and compromise the case.
After my first couple of meetings with Luisi, the Case Agent said, “I want you to start buying dope from them.” Like most Case Agents, he was laser-focused on making a case against Luisi as quickly as possible. And like I said before, we were under a six-month time restraint.
I answered practically: “I can’t do that right away. It won’t work. Find me some stolen property and I’ll sell them that first.”
In February 1999, the FBI supplied me with five furs that they had seized in another case. I told Luisi they had been stolen from a high-end store in Connecticut. They retailed for about $100,000 each. As stolen property, they were worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000. I offered them to Luisi for $5,000 each. He gave one to his wife and another to a relative, but couldn’t sell the other three.
So he didn’t want to pay me. Knowing that I couldn’t let myself be played for a mark if I wanted to appear real, I approached Luisi one day and said, “Hey, Bobby, what the fuck. I just gave you five fur coats worth twenty grand a pop. I gotta get something, too.”
He replied, “Of course, Mikey. You’re right. Here ya go.”
Next, I sold Luisi and his crew cases of Kodak 110 and Polaroid 600 film that I told him had “fallen off a truck.” I provided them with stolen cigarettes, showing them I would do anything to make a buck. Then I gifted him a $5,000 Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date Submariner watch that I said I’d gotten from a contact with more of them that he wanted to move. It was a token of my appreciation, I told him, for letting me “join his crew.” He loved it, and showed it off everywhere we went.
The first week of March ’99, three months into the case, while Luisi was in my office, I made what we call in undercover work “the awkward jab,” as discussed earlier. In other words, I brought up the subject of dope, but went about it in a roundabout way.
I said, “Bobby, I got some diamonds.”
“Great, Mikey,” he responded. “I want to get them. I will bring them to a jeweler friend of mine, if he likes it … boom. We’ll get the deal done.”
“The problem is that the owner wants three bricks for them.”
At the mention of the word “bricks,” which we both understood to mean three kilograms of cocaine, Luisi stood up, pointed to the ceiling, and walked out. I sat behind my desk wondering if he would ever return, when I noticed him signaling me through a glass partition. I met him in the lobby of the remodeled factory building. Without saying a word, he indicated for me to follow him down a back stairway. Two floors down, he stopped, leaned into me, and whispered, “I want to, but I can’t get caught.”
I was wearing a body recorder, but Luisi uttered the words so softly that we couldn’t hear him when we played back the tape.
The deal had to be approved by Merlino in Philadelphia. On April 28, 1999, while a secret recorder was running, I sat in my office with Luisi and Previte and the three of us called Merlino to get the green light for the cocaine deal. Here, word for word, is what Merlino said:
MERLINO: “Bob … is that guy … ya know … do what he’s got to do over there for him…”
LUISI: “Oh, yeah…”
MERLINO: “All right…”
LUISI: “Yeah … that’s … that’s gonna be…”
MERLINO: “All right…”
LUISI: “Ya know…”
MERLINO: “You got it…”
I know it sounds cryptic and ambiguous to the general public. But to LCN members and FBI Agents, Merlino’s message was clear: Do the deal.
Less than forty-eight hours later, on April 30, four months into our six-month deadline, a young man carrying a briefcase knocked on my office door and said, “Hi, I’m Bobby Carrozza Jr. Bobby sent me.”
I’d never met Robert “Bobby Russo” Carrozza Jr. before in my life, but knew the reputation of his father who had been indicted in 1990 for murdering an underboss of the Patriarca crime family. In fact, Carrozza Sr. had been Merlino’s cellmate when they both were in a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Small world.
Minutes after Carrozza Jr. sat down, the phone rang. It was the Case Agent, who had been listening from another location.
He asked, “Do you know who you’re dealing with?”
I started laughing. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.” And hung up.
Bobby Carrozza Jr. had been sent by Luisi to do his dirty work. He spent the next couple hours talking about himself, and asking me questions about my background and my business. In his own way, Bobby was vetting me, because he knew that as far as Luisi was concerned, he was expendable. Among the things he said was that he was a stickler for punctuality, a trait he had learned from his imprisoned father.
“If you were late to a meeting,” he said, “he’d either, number one, break your jaw, or number two, you were left out and he didn’t care.”
Carrozza Jr. liked to talk, which was fine with me. I would pump him for information on his coconspirators and use him to tie the cocaine conspiracy together:
ME: “The Philadelphia side talked to the Boston side … and everything was…”
CARROZZA JR.: “Copacetic.”
ME: “If I can make everyone some money … and if I can make everybody happy … and no one’s pissed off at one another … why not take a shot?”
CARROZZA JR.: “Right … as long as everything’s all right.…”
ME: “I don’t know if you realize … they talked to Joey that day.…”
CARROZZA JR.: “They did … I know that.…”
ME: “The guy … he had needed his okay on it…”
CARROZZA JR.: “Right … the thing … would be a very good grade.…”
ME: “If Joey Merlino and Bobby Luisi are talking on the phone … and say it’s going to happen … I ain’t about to fuck it up … you know what I mean?”
CARROZZA JR.: “Absolutely.…”
Finally, he popped open the briefcase he was carrying and handed me two bricks of cocaine wrapped in plastic. The plastic on most of the bricks of dope I’d seen were stamped with some kind of identifying marker. On one he handed me, I saw 215, which I recognized as the area code for Philadelphia. That indicated that the two bricks had come from mobsters in Philadelphia.
I said to Bobby, “Tell Joey, thank you,” referring to Joey Merlino.
One thing I’d learned about doing dope deals was that you never keep the money and dope in the same place. Keeping them separate reduced the risk of being killed or ripped off.
So I locked the bricks in my desk, and then looked up at Bobby and said, “Okay, I owe you fifty grand. It’s down at the hotel.”
We walked together a few blocks to the Long Wharf Hotel. Waiting there was a huge Rhode Island cop and former Golden Gloves boxer who worked with the FBI. He had a face that looked like it had been pushed through a meat grinder.
I pointed at him and said, “That’s my cousin. He’s got your money.”
“Hey, Irish Mike,” Bobby Carrozza Jr. responded, “you know some serious people, too.”
The entire transaction was recorded on videotape. The Massachusetts State Police lab consequently tested the bricks and found them to weigh 2,093.7 grams (a little more than 2 kilograms) and contain 42 percent cocaine. Like true mobsters, they’d tried to increase their profit margin by giving us mediocre cocaine that had been “stepped on,” or diluted with a cutting agent. They thought they had gotten one over on us, but in reality, as long as we had at least 1 percent purity, they were all legally cooked. And the joke was on them, not us.
In my opinion, we had enough on Joey Merlino, Bobby Carrozza Jr., Bobby Luisi, and another Luisi associate named Shawn Vetere to indict them. But when we presented the case to the Assistant United States Attorney, he started poking holes and wanted more evidence.
In the world of federal law enforcement, FBI Agents investigate crimes on the street. Federal prosecutors review and prosecute cases from inside a safe office. The two worlds and viewpoints knock heads all the time.
“Luisi wasn’t there,” the Assistant U.S. Attorney complained.
“I know that. But we’ve got phone transcripts of him discussing the deal with Merlino. Besides, Carrozza acknowledged that he was sent by Luisi.”
“Also, you never used the word cocaine.”
“You people don’t understand how real life works,” I responded as I felt my head getting ready to explode. “You never use that word when discussing drug deals. It’s always bricks or anything other than cocaine.”
“We need more evidence against Luisi,” the AUSA concluded.
“I already told you that he and I discussed the dope deal in the stairwell.”
“Yeah, but we can’t hear it on the tape,” countered the AUSA.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, I’m just saying that we need better evidence. We need to put the dope in Luisi’s hand.”
“Again, you don’t understand how real life works,” I said. “That’s never going to happen. LCN guys like Merlino and Luisi never touch the dope.”
The AUSA didn’t know how the street worked.
“There’s a way to do it,” I added.
“How?”
“Luisi won’t handle the dope, but he will touch the money.”
“Okay. Let’s get that on tape.”
I contacted Carrozza and said, “Tell Bobby I need another present.”
A week or so later, I was sitting at home on Memorial Day weekend when the phone rang. It was the Case Agent telling me that the SAC wanted to see us immediately. I knew this couldn’t be good.
As I drove to the office, I asked myself, What did I do wrong? Did someone see me using my FBI car to drive the kids to school? It was like going to the principal’s office when you were a kid.
Upon reaching the SAC’s office, the Case Agent and I, asked as matter-of-factly as we could, “What’s up, Boss?”
He answered, “You’re done, Mike.”
“What do you mean, I’m done?” I asked, thinking: Is this the fucking stolen heroin case all over again?
“You’re done with the case. Pull your shit. It’s over,” the Boss said.
I asked for an explanation. The SAC, who was old-school and very well respected in the office, eventually offered one: “We have information that someone has tipped off the Mob that you’re an FBI Agent.”
“What information?” I asked. “What did you hear?”
“I can’t tell you,” he answered, “other than to say that we were told they know that you’re an FBI Agent.”
Quickly, I marshaled my arguments to be allowed to continue. After pointing out that we were close to wrapping up the case, I suggested, “How about I don’t meet the wise guys in the North End anymore where I could get bundled (slang for kidnapped.) Instead I’ll only meet them outside in public.”
The Boss wasn’t buying it, but gave us the long holiday weekend to come up with a plan. Meanwhile, Luisi paged me nonstop. In the past, if I didn’t respond within ten minutes, he’d lose his shit. Now days went by as we tried to convince my FBI Big Boss to let me continue with the case.
Much later and after the UCO was over, I found out that two days before Previte had introduced me to Luisi in January 1999, a law enforcement officer from a different agency had knocked on Luisi’s door, told him he knew Luisi was involved in drug trafficking, and asked him to become an informant for his organization. Luisi turned him down.
As the law enforcement officer left, he said, “Bobby, not for nothing, but be careful who your new friends are.”
For whatever reason, this asshole had decided to burn the FBI, which was completely unprofessional and exceptionally dangerous. We knew that he knew about the FBI undercover operation, because he was present during a coordination meeting held in the USAO. Every local, state, and federal agency wanted a shot at Luisi, and he was pissed that he had been instructed to stand down while the FBI took a shot.
This disclosure came from another member of law enforcement who was so bothered by what had occurred that he eventually came forward and told the FBI. Had we known about the earlier statement to Luisi, I would have never been sent in undercover. For four months, I’d been rubbing shoulders with Luisi and his wise guys without any hint of what had been said.
By Memorial Day 1999, I was determined to finish the case despite the possible danger and confident that there was a safe way to wrap it up. On Tuesday morning, the Case Agent and I convinced the SAC to let me arrange one more public meeting with Luisi. If I picked up on any suspicion from him, I promised to quit.
I approached a young man named Carl who had just joined the Organized Crime Squad, and said, “Carl, I want you to make a call to a mobster.” Again, in the small world department, I had been trained in Philadelphia by Carl’s uncle. If Carl turned out to be half the Agent his uncle was, he’d become a superstar.
His eyes bulging out of his head, Carl asked, “What did you just say?”
“Here’s the story,” I started. “You’re my cousin. I want you to tell this guy that over Memorial Weekend I went to the Cape, got fucked up, and was arrested on a DWI. Tell him I’ve spent the last three days in the can.”
While Carl made the call to Luisi, we contacted a local police department on Cape Cod, and told them what we wanted them to say about the arrest of “Irish Mike,” and asked them to prepare a fictitious DWI report. They were great and helped immediately.
Then I made arrangements to meet Bobby Luisi on Hanover Street. I figured he couldn’t kill me in that busy area in broad daylight, but he sure looked like he wanted to when he saw me. In the LCN world, an underling, especially an associate, never disrespects a Capo. Luisi immediately started cussing me out. When we stopped at a streetlight, he slapped me hard in the face. I fought the impulse to punch him back by biting my lip until it bled, telling myself that if I did, the case was over. Five years earlier, I would have jumped his shit in the middle of the block.
Luisi said, “You dumb fuck.… When are you going to court on the DWI?”
“Next month,” I answered. “Can you believe those motherfucking cops? What’s their fucking problem? A guy can’t even have a couple drinks on the holiday?”
He snarled, “Let me see your papers.”
Thank God for being prepared. I reached into my jacket pocket and handed him the fake DWI report. Turned out, Luisi wasn’t upset that I’d been arrested. He was pissed that I had missed three days of making money for him.
“How are you going to make this up to me?” he asked.
I used this opening to mention the offer I had made to Carrozza to buy another kilogram of coke. A week later, on June 3, another Luisi associate named Tommy Wilson showed up at my office and handed me a third brick of cocaine on video.
The AUSA had told me that he wanted Luisi on tape handling either money or dope. So as Tommy sat waiting to be paid, I said, “Tommy, do me a favor. Go back and tell Bobby that I’m not paying anyone but him.”
“No,” Tommy pleaded. “Bobby told me to bring back the twenty-four grand.”
“No disrespect, Tommy, but I’ve got my reasons. Tell Bobby what I said.”
Twenty minutes later, Bobby Luisi called and sounded pissed. “You motherfucker.…” he started. “What the fuck is going on now?”
I said, “Bobby, I’ll explain to you in person.”
He agreed to meet me in front of the Custom’s House on State Street in an hour. With FBI video cameras rolling, I packed $24,000 cash in a FedEx box and set out for the financial district. I got there early and coordinated with the guys in the surveillance van so I knew exactly where they were going to be stationed across the street. Twenty minutes later, Luisi came bounding down the sidewalk looking annoyed.
As we stood talking, a teenage girl passed in front of us, and Luisi made a lewd comment about her behind.
I hated stuff like that. He was staring at the box under my arm, waiting for me to hand it over, and I was bleeding him dry just like Chris Brady had taught me.
Just as I was about to hand him the money, a delivery truck passed, blocking the line of sight from the surveillance van. Cognizant of the distraction in my peripheral vision, I pulled the box back and waited. Soon as the truck passed, I handed the cash to Luisi and he was cooked.
I was sick of dealing with Luisi and his crew, and mentally exhausted. When I met with the AUSA in mid-June, he said, “We have Luisi for dealing three kilos, but if you can get him to talk about more, it’s a bigger charge.” Federal drug charges and sentencing are dictated by the amount of weight of the drugs involved, and the AUSA wanted us with more than five kilograms, which mandated a minimum sentence of at least ten years. Fine.
A week later, I called Bobby Carrozza and Tommy Wilson to my office and discussed buying two or four more kilograms of cocaine at a cost of $48,000 to $96,000. The tape recorder that was running captured Carrozza implicating Luisi, Shawn Vetere, and Joey Merlino, his coconspirators, over and over again.
Carrozza said, “I can tell the other guy, Shawn. I’ll see him after. He wants the results of this conversation. They like this thing here, and they want it to work. In conversations with the guys down south, everybody’s happy with this … the guy Joey … everybody’s real happy with this, and they’re happy with you. Everybody. Bobby’s happy. That’s the way we want it to be … a system, a pattern. I’m good at that. Shawn put me in this position, because I’m a good talker. I know what I’m doing. Shawn says we’re off to the races.”
A couple days later, Luisi summoned me to the Caffé Vittoria to discuss the purchase of the four additional bricks of coke. As I entered a dark entryway, I heard someone bolt the door. The sound of a door locking behind you has got to be the worst thing an undercover can hear. It’s almost always the prelude to a violent act, or the law enforcement equivalent of a shotgun being racked.
It had to have been done by either Paulie Pepicelli or Shawn Vetere who had entered behind me. I assumed one or both of them were armed. This was not the way I wanted the case to end.
Luisi stared at me with dead eyes from two feet away, his face unreadable. When he turned to scan the traffic outside on Hanover Street, I noticed a birthmark near his left eye for the first time. I heard an espresso machine hissing from an adjoining room and a chair scrape against the floor.
We were four big men squeezed in a dark hallway. Cold sweat started to form on my chest near where the microphone was taped. I had to fight back the urge to piss my pants. I knew that if they searched me, I was done. I had a feeling I was fucked anyway.
In milliseconds my mind raced through several escape options. I could try bull-rushing Luisi, but that would be like trying to knock over a small sequoia tree. I could go for Pepicelli behind me and try to grab his gun, but with Vetere standing next to him, I’d probably get pummeled to the ground first.
Luisi whispered in a gravelly voice, “Something ain’t right, Mike.… I don’t like what I’m seeing.”
“What’s up, Bobby?” I whispered back, trying to keep my knees from knocking together. “What’s the matter? We good?”
“Come inside,” he whispered, motioning me forward with his hand. “Get away from the door. Come in the backroom.”
I didn’t like the way this was going. I said, “Bobby, let’s talk here. Let’s figure out where this is going. Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, we got a problem,” he responded in a flat tone of voice. “Come back inside. We need to go down to the basement.”
The basement was one place I definitely didn’t want to go. I scolded myself for not heeding the SAC’s warning. I figured Luisi had discovered that I was really an FBI Agent, and once we reached the basement he was going to put a bullet in my head.
My legs shook as the four of us shuffled to the backroom and down a flight of steps to a dark room I’d never been in before. Luisi indicated a chair at a round table. I sat. Then he settled his big body in the wooden chair to my left. Vetere and Pepicelli sat across from us. Pepicelli sneered at me as if to say, “What the fuck you lookin’ at?”
I turned away and heard music coming from a jukebox in the corner. It was playing “My Way” by Frank Sinatra.
I couldn’t help myself. I started to chuckle.
Luisi leaned into me and asked, “What is it, Mike? What’s so funny?”
“That was my father’s favorite song. It’s the only one I ever heard him sing.”
Don’t ask me why, but I took it as a sign from my father that everything was going to be okay, and I was going to walk out of there in one piece. It was as if my father was watching my back twenty-five years later.
I relaxed and Luisi started talking about the upcoming dope deal. I quickly realized that he hadn’t summoned me to the basement to whack me, but to discuss terms and future business, and to avoid law enforcement scrutiny, as he believed we were all under surveillance from Hanover Street. We finalized another deal for four more kilograms of cocaine.
Now the AUSA had all the evidence he needed, and I was counting the hours until the case was over. My job now was to make sure Luisi, Carrozza, Vetere, Pepicelli, and Wilson stayed in town so they could be arrested at the same time. The arrest was set for Monday, June 27.
I called Luisi and said, “I got my hands on some more Rolexes. If you’re around on Monday, I’ll give them to you. If you’re not in town, I’m going to have to sell them to someone else, because I need the money.”
“I’ll be here,” Luisi said.
Six AM Monday, FBI Agents spread out into Philadelphia, Boston, and four other locations and arrested Merlino, Luisi, and nine other mobsters.
I was sitting in my Irish International office while the arrests took place. Shortly after six, my phone rang. Instinctively, I reached for my FBI phone. Then I realized it wasn’t the one that was ringing. Instead it was the “bad guy” phone I had reserved for Mob business.
I picked it up and recognized one of the bad guy’s voices. He said frantically, “Mike, get the fuck out of there. The FBI is coming!”
He was warning me, because he still thought I was with them.
The following day, the front pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Boston Globe, and Boston Herald announced the spectacular arrests of eleven mobsters. News channels led with footage of the mobsters being taken into custody. A high-profile FBI press conference was held, but when I saw the photos of the speakers later I didn’t remember any of them accompanying us on a 2 AM meeting with Luisi and his associates. They had their jobs and I had mine. While they were bragging about the arrests, I was at home sleeping.
I took the greatest amount of pride not in the media coverage or newspaper headlines, but in a simple paragraph in the sworn arrest warrant for LCN Boss Joey Merlino, filed with the District Court in Philadelphia on June 17, 1999, which stated:
On June 10, 1999, the CW (Cooperating Witness, or Ron Previte) met Merlino in Philadelphia and paid him $1,000 for Merlino’s role in authorizing the cocaine deal. The CW also told Merlino that he had a $25,000 to $50,000 deal set up in Boston. After being told about the deal, Merlino told the CW that he would tell Robert Luisi Jr. to take care of the UCA like “he was one of us.”
A Mob Boss telling his crew to treat an FBI undercover Agent like one of them. Not bad.
A year later, I testified against Merlino, Luisi, and the other defendants in federal courts in both Boston and Philadelphia. Representing them were the best attorneys money could buy. Boston defendants Carozza, Vetere, and Wilson pled guilty and received double-digit sentences. Luisi elected to go to trial, and had to be convicted twice because of a court procedural error. He was later sentenced to sixteen years in federal prison. There he wrote a book entitled From Capo to Christian. After agreeing to testify against another mobster, he was released in 2012, changed his name to Alonso Esposito, and moved to Tennessee to become a Christian minister. Yes, you read that right. You can’t make this shit up.
In the Philadelphia trial, Merlino was convicted of racketeering, illegal gambling, and extortion in the 2001 trial, but beat the drug charge. His defense attorney Edwin Jacobs argued that the evidence against Merlino in Philadelphia was not as clear as that collected during the Boston UCO, which he called a “textbook example of an undercover operation.” Citing the Boston UCO where every conversation, negotiation, and transaction was recorded on video and/or audio, Jacobs argued that Merlino’s Philadelphia conversations were open to interpretation or not recorded at all. In the end, Merlino was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
After his release in 2011, Joey Merlino relocated to Boca Raton, Florida. In 2015, he was accused of violating his parole and put back in prison. He was arrested again a year later for entering into an illegal business arrangement with New York–area organized crime figures. Apparently, he hadn’t read Luisi’s book, or if he did, chose not to follow his path to redemption.
Ron Previte retired from his dual occupations of mobster and FBI informant, and passed away in August 2017. To this day, I consider him a good friend, and one of the funniest guys to ever roam this earth.