OPERATION DOUBLE SESSIONS—PART TWO
September 11, 2001, I was sitting in the back of a classroom at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, waiting my turn to teach an undercover class to new FBI UCAs when a friend entered and said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. I remember feeling bad for the pilots and wondering how they could have made such a horrible mistake on such a clear, beautiful day.
When the same friend returned a short time later to tell me that a second plane had hit the Trade Center, I realized immediately that our country was under attack, and we were headed for war. I rushed back to Boston, where two of the suicide planes had left from on that fateful day.
Like most Americans, I was shocked and horrified by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As an FBI Agent responsible for protecting our country, I immediately shifted my focus from hanging out with mobsters to chasing down leads and hunting for other possible terrorists. Frightened citizens were calling our FBI office day and night with tips, and we investigated all of them—three suspicious Middle Eastern men living in an apartment outside of Boston, who turned out to be students, a relative of Osama Bin Laden who resided in an exclusive apartment tower and might have information, a strange van parked near a federal building.
Like all other Agents, I was working sixteen-hour shifts investigating the terrorists and trying to prevent future attacks. As a result, all my other responsibilities fell by the wayside. They included coaching football, family time, and hanging with Guglielmetti. I had to be smart. I couldn’t just go radio silent on him without raising suspicion. So I made sure to call him and leave messages when I knew he would not be there to pick up, explaining that I was away from Rhode Island on a business trip.
But I couldn’t keep that up forever. So after six weeks of nonstop 9/11 duty, I convinced my superiors to let me cover the midnight antiterrorism shift, grab a few hours of sleep, and spend some time in my undercover role with Guglielmetti. If that meant working eighteen hours a day, so be it.
They agreed, and I picked up with Guglielmetti where we left off. Within weeks, he agreed to become a silent partner in my company Hemphill Construction and I gave him a set of keys to our Rhode Island office. In order to keep up the impression to Guglielmetti and others that we were legitimate, Hemphill Construction started bidding on contracts. Using FBI approved and vetted subcontractors, we actually won an asbestos abatement removal project. It marked the first time in history that the FBI actually completed a legitimate construction project, and went a long way in establishing the company’s presence in Rhode Island.
Guglielmetti, who seemed to be on friendly terms with every state official in Rhode Island, introduced me to numerous union and public officials, including Arthur Coia Jr.—the former general national president of LIUNA—who later became a subject of our UCO. At first, Guglielmetti had me grease the palms of a couple union guys, either by slipping them some cash or paying for a vacation or rental car.
It gave us a firsthand look into how the Mob maintained control over the Laborers’ Union. We learned that if you were a laborer who wanted employment on a construction site, you didn’t go to an employer. Instead you went to the union hiring hall. There, local officers decided who worked and who didn’t. Those laborers who got employment never saw the complicated kickback schemes, real estate frauds, and other misuse of their dues. Those “investments” were made by union leaders, beholden not to the rank and file, but to bosses who reported to the general president’s office and, from there, to the Mob.
Two years in, Operation Double Sessions was pulling me in multiple directions. To further establish the legitimacy of Hemphill Construction and lend me needed help, I brought in more FBI UCAs.
My first “employee” and right-hand man was brand new to the undercover game and came highly recommended by my old friend Jarhead. Assuming the undercover name Mike Sullivan, this recent graduate from the FBI’s Undercover School had previously served in the military and still maintained a stiff manner and bearing. He transferred from Philadelphia to Boston, bought a house near mine, and the two of us carpooled three hours every day back and forth to the Hemphill Construction offices in Providence.
I doubt Sullivan remembers those drives as heart-warming and fun, because I spent many of them critiquing his performance bluntly as I tried to quickly school him in the nuances of undercover work. For example, the first time he met Guglielmetti as the mobster passed through our office, Sullivan addressed him as “sir.” Guglielmetti reacted with a strange expression. The only people who had previously called him “sir” were federal judges—or in this case a new FBI UCA from a military background.
I took Sullivan to the woodshed, told him this was not “fuck-around time,” and explained that even the slightest mistake could cost us our lives, or at least, compromise the case.
Like the good soldier he was, Mike took my corrections, learned, and eventually proved himself invaluable. We added two more FBI UCAs from outside the Boston area—Ken Jones and Doug George—one was a financial wizard and could cook the books for us, and the other had pre-FBI experience in construction management. They were both quiet professionals who supported me when I was overmatched with business, financial, or union details. They could talk the talk and walk the walk when I had trouble banging a nail in straight, let alone posing as a construction magnate.
At times during the Guglielmetti UCO, I needed a quick break from the LCN and used that time to lend a hand in other cases. One such opportunity came in early February 2002, when one of the Agents in the Boston office approached me about acting as an undercover in a murder-for-hire case.
Trying to avoid being pigeonholed as an Organized Crime undercover, I welcomed the opportunity to branch out into other areas. Apparently, the Case Agent thought I looked like someone who would commit a murder for pay, so I gave it a shot.
An informant had approached our office with information about a man who wanted to hire someone to rob and possibly murder an elderly man who ran gambling games in Hudson, New Hampshire.
Taking a day off from Mike Jameson, I left my suits in the closet, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and drove out to Methuen, Massachusetts, where I met a small-time New Hampshire crook named Donald Blake.
The informant introduced me as—what else?—a mobster from Rhode Island willing to whack someone for pay. I basically impersonated Matty Guglielmetti, adopting the same swagger, language, and attitude I’d been observing daily. Blake bought my ruse hook, line, and sinker, especially after I braced him against my truck and searched him for a wire before introducing myself. Then, I pulled my shirt up to show him I wasn’t wearing a wire, being careful not to reveal the recording device concealed elsewhere on my body.
Blake wanted to hire someone to rob and possibly kill a seventy-one-year-old man named Michael Gosselin, who lived with his seventy-year-old wife in the town of Hudson, New Hampshire. According to Blake, Gosselin had been skimming money from the gambling games he ran every Thursday and Saturday for twenty-five years. The two-to-three thousand he ripped off each week was kept in a safe in his house.
On Thursday nights, a local police officer would escort Gosselin directly to the bank where he would deposit the proceeds that averaged between $20,000 and $25,000 cash. On Sunday evenings, however, the banks were closed, so the police would follow Gosselin home. It was Gosselin’s practice to deposit the money from the Sunday night game on Monday morning.
Blake wanted me to jump the old man early Monday morning before he had a chance to go to the bank. That way I could grab the previous night’s take as well as the money he had skimmed over the years, which he stored in his safe. He instructed me to carry a gun and warned me that Gosselin kept a small pistol in his house and owned a small dog. He suggested that I might have to pistol whip Gosselin before he relinquished the combination to the safe. And he warned that the stress of the robbery might cause Gosselin to have a heart attack.
Should that “worst-case scenario” occur, Blake said he could “live with it.” This admission was important from a legal standpoint.
We agreed that if I recovered less than $100,000 from Gosselin, my share would be 70 percent. If the amount was more than $100,000, I would be paid an entry fee and we would split the remainder of the stolen money fifty-fifty. I needed to haggle, negotiate, and establish that a violent crime was about to occur at Blake’s direction for legal reasons.
Naturally, our conversation was recorded. A day later, Blake was arrested. The whole case took less than twenty-hour hours and thwarted a potentially violent crime—a slam dunk for the FBI.
Most of the time, I had no problem wearing a wire. I took exception when Matty Guglielmetti’s father passed away in late 2003, and, as his business partner, I was expected to attend the wake and funeral service. Since this was a highly personal event that had nothing to do with the case, I asked my FBI bosses if I was still required to wear a wire. They answered with an emphatic “yes.” The rule was that once you wore a recording device in a case you had to continue wearing it unless you could justify taking it off for security reasons.
Matty Guglielmetti had been extremely close to his father, and the wake was extremely emotional. FBI Agents and police officers waited outside the funeral home photographing everyone who entered—many of whom were members of the Mob. My photo was snapped, too, by State Police officers who had no clue about my real identify.
Then, with my body recorder running, I approached Guglielmetti and his family and expressed my condolences. With tears in their eyes, they thanked me for coming. I couldn’t help it, I felt like a heel.
The following day, I attended the church service, and then drove in the funeral procession to the cemetery. It was a very cold winter day, and the burial took place in a family crypt where standing room was very limited. I was about to turn and leave, when Bobby Nardolillo escorted me inside. I stood shoulder to shoulder with Guglielmetti’s family and his close associates as they struggled to contain their grief.
Since it was impossible to turn off the body recorder without attracting attention, I moved away as far as possible to allow the family some privacy. I felt like a complete shit bag. Yeah, Guglielmetti was a bad guy, but on this day, he was simply a grieving son.
By the fall of 2004, as Double Sessions approached the five-year mark, it was time to make the awkward jab. The Christmas holidays were approaching—a time when Mob guys liked to entertain and throw around money. I explained to Matty that our construction business wasn’t doing so well, and we had to consider other ways to make money. As my silent partner, I told him I wouldn’t do anything without getting his approval first.
Matty stood looking at me from a few feet away. I could tell from his face that he knew where this was going. I half-expected him to turn and walk out, but he didn’t. So I told him about my relationship with Manny—the Cuban drug dealer who was really a UCA. Guglielmetti indicated that he’d heard Manny’s name before, and even mentioned the past protection details Bobby Nardolillo had provided.
I said, “Matty, the quickest way I know to make a buck is to clean some of Manny’s money. I’ve done it many times in the past.”
What I was doing was tying money laundering to an SUA (Specific Unlawful Activity)—in this case drug trafficking—so the charge would hold up in court.
Guglielmetti nodded and said, “I know but I don’t want to know.” He later added, “Mike … you’ve been more than direct with me … you’ve told me more than I want to know.…”
His dilemma was simple: He wanted to do things, he just didn’t want to get caught. It was Bobby Luisi five years earlier whispering in the stairwell.
I left the dilemma squarely in Guglielmetti’s lap by telling him I wouldn’t do anything with Manny without his approval. Legally, I was whacking an entrapment defense by giving him the opportunity to say no and walk away.
But Mob guys can’t help themselves—they only see the green. And Matty gave me the green light to clean up Manny’s money. Less than two weeks later he happily accepted $18,000 in cash, which he believed were laundered funds from Manny’s drug-trafficking business. He was now legally cooked.
We pushed a little harder. On December 6, 2004, I told Guglielmetti that Manny had a huge load of cocaine that would soon be transiting through Rhode Island on its way from New York City to Canada. While it stayed overnight in Rhode Island, Manny needed someone to protect it. Guglielmetti wanted to know how much he would get for babysitting the drugs and how many people were required. I told him that Manny was sending sixty-seven kilos of coke and was offering $1,000 a kilo for protection—a $67,000 payday for a night’s work!
I could see Guglielmetti doing the math in his head. Contrary to my regular undercover practice, I used the specific words “coke” and “kilos” so a jury wouldn’t be confused.
Matty didn’t flinch. During a conversation a week later, he gave me instructions on how he wanted the drug protection detail to work: “I don’t want people in and out of there … I don’t want a guy taking three … running out … coming back … taking four.… You might as well just hang a sign out and say we’re doing drugs.” A jury wouldn’t need help interpreting that either.
On December 22, 2004, I informed Guglielmetti that the shipment would arrive in Rhode Island the week of January 17 and would be kept under guard in a hotel room. Then I gave him another chance to walk away. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “I trust you, Mike … who would walk away from $67,000?”
January 18, 2005, I handed Guglielmetti the key to a hotel room in Cranston, Rhode Island, and told him to make sure his boys were there at 6 PM. When his associates Alan Blamires and Anthony Moscarelli entered the hotel room, they were met by four undercover FBI Agents who opened up one of the suitcases to show them the cocaine.
A couple of miles away, Matty and I sat in another hotel room, coordinating our teams from afar while we watched TV, ate a leisurely dinner, and talked about future plans. At one point, Guglielmetti said, “Relax, Mike, everything will work out fine.” He was right.
Two days later, he settled into a chair in my private office looking pleased with himself and expected me to hand $67,000 in cash for babysitting the shipment of coke. I actually had about ten bucks in my pocket.
As he sat facing me, I saw two FBI Agents arriving to arrest him. Hearing them approach, Guglielmetti turned and recognized one of the Agents as someone who had interviewed him before. A look of sheer panic came over his face.
I stood and said, “Matty, do the right thing.”
He looked back at me in complete shock. We had worked together for more than three years and he had no clue that I was an FBI Agent.
Guglielmetti’s arrest and the arrests of a number of his associates including Bobby Nardolillo, and other subordinates and union officials made national news, and destroyed a dangerous faction of the Patriarca crime family. Later that same day, January 20, 2005, I took a deep breath as I exited the office of Hemphill Construction for the last time.
After almost five years, I no longer had to pretend I was someone I wasn’t, or carefully monitor every word I said for fear of being discovered and shot. Double Sessions was over. I went home to my family, played basketball with my sons, then put my feet up and sipped a gin and tonic with my wife.
Guglielmetti was so embarrassed by being duped by the FBI that he pled guilty within days of his arrest. He was sentenced to twelve years in federal prison.
The next time I saw Bobby Nardolillo was a year later when I testified against him in court. As I sat in the witness box reciting the facts of the case, he glared at me like he wanted to choke me to death. He later pled guilty and was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison, three more than Guglielmetti because he had instructed the protection detail to carry guns.
Their half-dozen or so LCN underlings all received double-digit sentences ranging from ten to thirteen years. One of them told us Nardolillo considered shooting the undercovers and stealing the cocaine during the second protection detail. Thank God they didn’t.
Three local Laborers’ Union officials, including Nicholas Manocchio, nephew of LCN boss Luigi Giovanni “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, pled guilty to labor law violations and accepting cash bribe payments from me. In a separate civil action LIUNA’s General President Emeritus Arthur Coia Jr., who I had hired as a consultant at the direction of Guglielmetti, was charged and found guilty of allowing LCN Capo Matthew Guglielmetti to exercise control or influence over the Union and other charges.
As a result, Coia’s membership in the national union and status as General President Emeritus were both revoked. A 2004 news article by a nationally syndicated columnist written at the exact same time the FBI was investigating the relationship between the LCN and Laborers’ Union described Coia Jr. as a close associate of former President Bill Clinton. I wonder if they’re still friends.