Original subtitles

The mafia guys, they're outlaws.

And I equated gangster life with freedom.

Here's the deal.

The FBI wanted to bring down the whole organization.

This is like James Bond CIA stuff.

I want to use some of your guys to hurt some people.

He is mafia royalty.

It's a secret.

I have the gnawing fear in my belly.

He found out that I'm an informant.

You got a problem with that?

Here's what you're going to do.

We're in a collision course.

There's no stopping it.

This is how they kill you.

Growing up, the only thing I wanted to be was a gangster.

From an early age, I watched all the movies.

I want a map covering the storm drain system. This culture enamored me.

I would see guys who were dressed really nice.

They had rolled the cash, spending money like water.

I just wanted to be that, and that was my whole plan.

So by the time I'm 22 years old, I look like your typical Orange County, Newport

Beach kid.

But I'm getting closer to where I need to be.

I was an organized criminal.

Crime was my life.

In 1990, cocaine was king.

And I was a drug dealer, moving in excess of 10 kilos at a shot.

I'm out there on my own.

making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I had a knack for making money, but it was cash.

I needed a vehicle to launder all of my drug money and make it clean.

So I was able to use the porn industry to move large amounts of cash.

I would pay dirty cash to everybody on the sets, sell the movies, and get that

clean check. Well, clean as you can get in the porno business.

And I was like, wow, this is amazing.

I'm directing porn, selling cocaine, making money hand over fist.

And at that age, it made me feel invincible, like I could do anything.

And then I hit a wall called the mob.

One day I go in the office.

And we've been broken into.

My two latest films, the master tapes have been stolen.

The porn business at the time was infested with mafia guys.

They're the ones who basically controlled the porn film distribution.

And then I got a call from somebody.

And they said, hey.

Big Jerry wants to speak to you.

Big Jerry was very closely connected to the Colombo crime family, and the

Colombo crime family is one of the five mafia families.

I didn't know why he wanted to see me, but I had to have the meeting. I had to

go.

The five are the big leagues, and Colombo's are one of them, and that's

wanted to be.

It was nerve -wracking.

This is like the mafia. This is like the Cosa Nostra. This is the real deal.

I walk in, and I meet Big Jerry.

I know he's in the videotape business, but I don't know anything else, and I

scared of what might happen.

The first thing he said to me is, I know what you're doing.

I know you're taking cash.

I know you're laundering it through the porn business.

Let's take a look.

And I thought, he wants to take over all his competition.

Maybe they might kill me.

Or at least throw me a beating.

Then he said, look, tough guys are a dime a dozen.

We need guys that could earn and think for themselves.

You got brains and you got the ability to earn.

Why don't you come by me?

Come by me means like work with him.

He wanted me to clean money, launder it for the mafia.

I felt like meeting Jerry.

was a huge opportunity for me.

It was my in.

My dream since I was a kid was to be in the mob.

And with the mob, I can make thousands more than I could by myself.

OK. So I agreed.

I'm in.

I want to be in the mob.

He's my opportunity.

Who cares what it costs?

It's a dream come true.

All right, so this is your new family, okay?

Big Jerry Zimmerman opened the door for me.

Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to a new man.

And from that point on, it was like turbo boost.

I'm now laundering the money for the mob, millions of dollars, to know that

capable of handling that kind of money made me feel good.

What all mobsters do.

Loan sharking and gambling.

I make more money, which means I give the rest of the mob guys more money.

The whole mob is set up to make you feel like you are part of the family. How

you doing?

I had a great time.

It was like a drug. I'm addicted to the lifestyle.

The flash and the pizzazz.

Picking up money, moving money.

And it seemed like the fun would never end.

One of the guys who I got to know was a guy named Fat Herbie Blitzteam.

Hey!

Fat Herbie was at Moan Shark.

Beautiful, beautiful.

Everyone I knew respected him.

I really liked him. I liked him. I thought he was a good guy.

Okay, gentlemen, we'll be back later.

But the mafia is run.

By making money and power, you have to keep your power.

And the way you keep everyone in line, the ultimate way is violence.

Fat Herbie, he was murdered in Las Vegas.

His death shocked me.

He wasn't a bad guy. He didn't have enemies.

But he was shot in the back of his head.

I didn't understand, and I still, I really don't understand, it's like, what

did to deserve that.

Not long after, two agents walked in, blast their badge,

and they told me that I was under arrest.

They suspected me to be part of Fat Herbie's murder.

I had nothing to do with it, and I knew I didn't.

And so I was, like, in shock.

It brought me in and put me into a holding cell.

Herbie's murder opened my eyes.

It really made me see the writing on the wall that we're not a family.

We're only as good as the last dollar we made until we're expendable.

Made me see the people for what they really were.

And the mafia lost its luster to me.

I started seeing that money's not worth a life.

For five days, I was in my holding cell.

And then one day, they'd say over the speaker, Gallo.

Roll your stuff up.

And I asked, where am I going? And they said, you're being released.

But then we turn into this room, and there's other FBI

agents there.

And I was like, what's going on?

One of them says, relax, kid, sit down.

We just want to talk to you.

But then he turns at me and he says, we've been watching you.

We know all about you.

We know what you do.

You work for the mob.

And that's when I knew, honestly, that I was in big trouble.

I've been committing crimes steadily for over 10 years, more, longer.

They know that they could dig up something to arrest me for eventually.

And then he dropped the bomb on me.

We want you to work for us.

They wanted to use me as an informant to connect the dots and bring down the

whole organization.

But I thought, I'm with the mob.

I'm a gangster.

I make my money this way.

And my immediate reaction was, no.

And he goes, here's the deal.

We're either going to arrest you and put you in prison for the rest of your

life, or I'm going to get murdered by the mob.

I thought about it.

He was right.

That's the way the mob is. They can kill you at any moment.

So I asked him, well, what do I get out of it?

And he said, you get a fresh start.

I knew that that meant witness protection.

If they would offer me money or get out of jail free card, I don't even care.

But they offered me a new chance at a life.

But when I said okay, I was scared.

I just broke the cardinal sin. I agreed to cooperate with the FBI.

If the mob found out, 100%, they would kill me.

The feds were interested in taking down the whole mafia.

I'm just one more guy putting a piece of the puzzle together for him.

This special agent was going to be my handler.

He gave me the small recorder, and it went into a jockstrap.

And he's like, yeah, just put it on over your underwear.

You have to record everybody.

There's no exceptions.

He started going over rules.

Can't leave the wire.

No violence.

None at all.

Otherwise the deal's off.

He gave me my code name, Break Shot.

Break Shot is the first shot in a pool game when they spread out all the balls.

And that's basically what they wanted me to do. To help smash them off into

pieces.

The deal was six months to a year.

But I knew my life was about to change forever.

The first time I was wearing a wire, I was going to meet a capo named Jimmy

Kachi, a very powerful captain in the Colombo family.

Contrary to popular belief, there's no agents waiting in a van around the

corner.

When I pressed the button, I realized that I was about to go out and I'm going

to record one of the most dangerous men in the world.

I thought in my head, this is it. This is for real.

Wearing a wire, you think that everyone can see that thing in your pocket.

I sit down at the table.

And in walks this big Italian guy.

who I've never seen before.

He identified on tape, he said, I'm a wise guy just like Jimmy.

He starts talking about the inner workings of the mafia.

He wants to propose a guy into the organization from Vegas.

And I'm just sitting there still, hoping that the recorder is picking up every

word. Because I know it's good.

He's a friend. He's a lawyer.

But he's a friend. He talked about the organization and its structure.

And this is what the FBI is after. This is the kind of evidence that they want.

And then I start to feel this warm sensation coming from the recorder.

But I just kind of blow it off because the guy is talking a lot.

I want to let things unfold.

And I'm looking at him, and it's starting to get hotter and hotter and

and hotter.

I'm realizing that this thing is starting to burn in my crotch.

You okay?

All of a sudden, it just gets unbearable.

Finally, I just told him, I gotta go.

I met up with my handler.

He asked me, so what happened?

I told him, it was burning so hot, I thought my nuts were on fire.

He just started laughing.

He's like, oh, I heard that sometimes they malfunction like that.

But I was relieved because he told me that the tape was good.

It was valuable because it would help them find the structure and figure out

who's doing what.

As time went on, I started to get it down.

I learned how to elicit what I wanted out of people.

But the fear never goes.

You always have to worry about being found out.

Almost every single person I knew had been involved in a murder at one point

another.

And I was gathering intel on them for the FBI.

I started seeing that I could actually make a difference.

I'm going to need some fake IDs, some guns, bulletproof vests.

That encouraged me to do more because I felt like I accomplished something.

Raise it to five.

At this point, I'd been undercover for six months. I was supposed to be wearing

a wire, but I decided to continue on because I began to feel a lot of

pride in what I was doing.

The FBI wanted me to aim higher, go bigger, and I knew

that that meant the New York families.

It's the epicenter of the mafia. It's where the power is.

So I made a trip to New York.

That's when I met Eddie Garofalo.

Eddie Garofalo is a Colombo

associate from New York, and he was very well connected.

Jerry believes in you. I guess you're the real deal.

And he wanted me to move to Brooklyn and be in his crew and be invited there.

It was a huge step up. This was my chance to get intel on the real big fish

the mafia.

I'm honored, truly.

But I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Moving to New York was a huge step up.

Now I'd be living amongst the Colombos.

This is me, the kid from California, right in Brooklyn, in the

epicenter of the mafia.

And my handler wanted me to work exclusively on helping take down the

family.

He gave me a watch, and he goes, all you have to do is take this paperclip and

press it until it clicks.

And the recorder's on.

You can't turn it off. It's just going to record for nine hours.

It means it's working.

I've also got these belts.

And again, I press a little tiny indentation with a paper clip, and then

thing rolls for 13 hours.

He said, wear both of them at the same time.

I felt like, wow, this is like James Bond CIA stuff.

This is cool. I'm like a spy.

The FBI were really interested in the Columbo's influence and connections in

construction industry.

And Eddie Garofalo and I went to construction sites.

Let me get this whole place cleaned up properly.

Hey, Tony.

What do you want, buddy?

I was informing, but I was still laundering money for the mob.

All right, so I'm going to tell you how things are going to work from now on.

The construction industry, it's a multi -billion dollar business.

that the mob families of New York have a stranglehold on. It's bigger than

drugs. This is one of their lifebloods. This is huge.

Eddie was

most of the time a nice guy, but he could turn violent in a second.

One time, a driver kept honking his horn at Eddie.

Move it, buddy.

What's your problem?

Move your ass. You got a problem?

Yeah. I'll show you what the problem is. Move your ass.

He hit him so hard that the guy's teeth went into Eddie's hand.

The mafia guys, they're outlaws.

And you live in that violent world, but I can't participate in violence.

No violence.

Otherwise, the deal is off.

Let's get out of here.

I had the fear that Eddie suspected me because I held back.

I'm paranoid this was going to come back on me, that I was going to be found

out.

The next day, I get a call from Eddie Garofalo, the same guy, and he says that

he needs to see me right away.

And I tell him that I'm in the city.

And then he says, well, you've got to get out to Staten Island.

He wants me to come out to his truck yard, out in the middle of nowhere.

He says to me, you need to come now.

The worst thing in the mafia is to get sent for it.

He kept calling back to see where I'm at.

And he's like, got to see you. I got to see you. I got to see you. I'm coming

in.

I have the gnawing fear in my belly.

Maybe he found out that I'm an informant.

Staten Island is not the place where I want to be with Eddie.

That's the place where they put a bullet in your head and they put you in the

landfill.

So I get to this truck yard.

I start thinking about, like, all my choices in life have brought me to

here.

What have I gotten myself into at this point?

I see Eddie,

and he looks at me, and he smiles like he's happy.

Let's go for a little walk.

So we're walking, and I know that this is

how they kill you. They get you to a deserted place, put you at ease with

someone you know.

This is the perfect place for a hit to go down.

And I'm thinking, this is going to be the end of the story.

What I know about the mafia is they don't just come guns blazing.

You get sent for some deserted place.

Then they shoot you in the head.

Bury you or throw you in the trunk or throw you in the water.

I'm trying to listen and see if I hear any footsteps or scuffling in the gravel

behind me.

I'm just trying to keep cool.

But inside, I'm not cool.

At any second, I can be dead.

And he turns to me.

He says to me, how much money you got on you?

And I say, about $4 ,400, give or take.

And he says, I'm buying a truck.

I need the money.

Even as I'm counting it, I'm already starting to feel the adrenaline dump.

I worked myself up for like four hours thinking that, you know, I'm going to

killed. I'm going to get hit with a bat.

I might get shot.

They might kidnap me and torture me.

And he just wanted some money.

Appreciate it.

Wasted the whole day being terrified for nothing.

I thought, I wonder if he's playing me.

But you never know what's really going on.

I just had to push those thoughts out of my head and just keep continuing doing

what I had to do.

As time went by,

Eddie Garofalo started introducing me around to the Colombo crime family.

Hey, Craig.

This is our new boy Kenji. He's in from L .A.

One of the guys was Craig Marino.

Craig was known as a moneymaker and all -around bad guy.

But I got along with Craig. I liked Craig. You know, we hit it off.

The times that I weren't with Eddie, I would spend my time with Craig.

We became friends.

But I wore my wire and I recorded him for the FBI.

This is a dangerous time for me because I'm playing gangster.

to trust me.

Eventually, I was introduced to Danny Persico, the nephew of the boss of the

family.

The Persicos rule the Colombo family.

I feel like I'm getting closer to where I need to be.

It's just like baseball.

Before I was in the Pony League, now I'm in the big leagues. I moved up to the

New York Yankees.

Using money laundering, to move up the ranks of gangsterism.

One day, I get a phone call from Eddie G.

And he says, I gotta see you.

I got something important.

I'm down at this restaurant right around the corner from your house.

And when I walk in, Eddie's sitting with Danny Persico.

Kenji. Danny.

They have real serious looks on their face.

Danny says, my brother Teddy's getting out tomorrow morning.

He's been away for 17 years.

His brother Teddy is a big deal. He's the nephew.

of Carmen, the longtime boss of the Colombo family.

He's eventually going to be boss.

He is mafia royalty.

And they're like, it's a secret.

Can't let anyone know.

Okay.

And I go, what is my part?

And they go, we're getting a limo for him.

And he wanted me to ride back with Teddy and Eddie in the limo.

He said, I need you to get $1 ,000 and a cell phone.

And I go, okay.

I mean, I can do that.

This is huge for me.

Having the chance to meet Teddy is like the most I could ever expect as an

informant working for the FBI.

I never even dreamed that I would get in that position.

But it just fell into my lap.

I knew I had to get a hold of my handler and let him know what was going on.

And he said, we need that cell phone.

Here's what you're going to do.

You're going for a run.

You're bringing the cell phone with you.

Right around the corner, it's going to be parked a blue car with a window down.

I make a big loop.

Fifteen minutes goes by.

I come back.

There's a guy walking down the street.

He bumps me in the shoulder, and as he bumps me, he hands me the phone.

Teddy is not even out of prison yet, and his phone is already bugged.

He's doomed to go back inside, and he hasn't even left yet.

Early the next morning, Teddy's let out of prison.

So I go to meet him.

And Eddie's waiting in the limo.

I was nervous, but weirdly excited.

I'm meeting the boss.

I'm going to meet the future boss of the Colombo family.

Good to see you, Teddy.

You too.

Here's your money.

And your phone's in there too.

And I thought, here I am, kid from Cali, who dreamed of being a gangster.

And right now, I'm showing the future head of the Colombo family into a limo.

Right there, that's like the essence of my double life. It's the two me's coming

together, the criminal and the informant.

And Teddy looks at me and he says, I've got to leave some bodies in the street.

And I just looked at him, and I was like, wow.

Teddy is a loose cannon.

It's like a ticking bomb.

He's ready to go off.

He missed a lot of time, and he's trying to make it all up.

Come on, let's go.

So I got in the car with Teddy and Eddie.

And I noticed this box.

And inside the box, There's pistols and some ammunition.

So I knew that we were treading on dangerous ground at this point.

Teddy grabs one of them, and he puts it in his waistband, and that's when he

said, we're going for a ride.

And I said, what's going on?

And he said, we're going to deal with something right now.

You know Craig?

Craig Marino.

And he goes, he's a friend of yours?

Yeah.

Craig was a Columbo, but he's with a different crew.

And Teddy just didn't like him. I didn't know exactly why, but Columbo family

had their civil wars.

He says, you have a problem with that?

I was caught in the middle.

I couldn't be on Craig's side.

I had to be on Teddy's side because Teddy's the more powerful one.

And I said, no.

Good.

And I thought, I'm going to go with the future boss to commit a murder.

All right, let's go.

From that point on, it was like we're in a freight train and it's not stopping.

This is a no -win situation for me.

And I'm just thinking, what am I going to do now?

At this point, I knew that my situation was very precarious because I thought,

I'm going on actual murder, and I was still trying to scramble in my head,

trying to think, what can I do? How can I get out of this? How can I stop this?

I got to tell the FBI.

I can't get even a second away from anyone to make a call.

I felt helpless.

And Teddy starts calling his brother.

He goes, get that Craig.

Tell him to meet us by 101.

Teddy looks at me and he goes, why are you being so quiet?

Really, I was being quiet because I'm recording the whole thing.

But I go, it's how I deal with things.

Don't worry about me.

I'll do what I have to do.

I was really afraid at this point.

Any second, we're going to be able to see the restaurant.

This is it.

We're on a collision course.

There is no stopping it.

And I know this.

Here we go.

Craig was waiting for us.

And he saw that I was with Teddy.

Teddy says that he's going to take Craig by the water.

And he's like, anyone comes your way, you deal with it, Kenji.

Oh, it's crazy.

I was just trying to figure out how I can get to make the call.

Teddy. How you doing, Craig?

Good, and you, my friend? I haven't seen you in a long time.

And I couldn't.

There's no possible way.

Hey, why don't we take a walk, okay?

I could see it on his face.

He knew why we were there.

He's shooting daggers at me.

We were friends.

And now he feels like I brought Teddy.

And I know that there's no chance for me to stop this.

It's beyond my control.

But then NYPD cars pull up in front of the restaurant.

They're wheeling out somebody who's had a heart attack.

And so Teddy said, it's off.

It was over.

It was just luck, chance.

Couldn't believe it.

But it's still a volatile situation.

Craig is pissed.

Craig and I were friends, but you got to remember, Craig is a serious, capable,

dangerous guy.

And I know that I have a problem at this point.

I'm thinking that he wants to get even with me.

He wants to kill me.

When I left there, I called my handler.

I told him, I got to get you this recording.

This is a big deal.

So we made a meeting place.

I knew that I had scored gold on that tape.

But I'm not a Persico. I'm not related by blood.

I'm expendable.

So if I stayed there, it wasn't going to end good. It was going to end very

badly.

I wanted to quit.

And I said, I've done enough.

He said to me, we need you to take down the Colombo family.

They didn't want me to quit yet.

But I just didn't want to do it anymore.

At that moment, I decided I was closing out my life as a gangster and an

informant.

I needed to do something about it.

To force my handler to pull me out.

So there is no way back.

That's why I needed to not just burn my bridge. I needed to blow my bridge up.

A few days later, Teddy invited me to his house.

And I wanted to make big trouble.

To cause a confrontation.

To force the FBI to pull me out.

KG.

So when he said, do you think that people are ripping me off?

I thought that was my one chance.

And you've got to seize the opportunity.

So I did.

And I said, absolutely.

People are ripping you off, Teddy.

And he said, what do you mean?

What I did is I just started telling the truth about what was going on behind

his back.

I said, dude, everyone's making a lot of money.

And they're laundering it through me.

And you're not getting it.

Everyone else has homes. They own buildings.

And you don't.

Teddy is.

You know, he's not subtle.

He's going to be on a rampage after this.

I knew 100 % that I was going to make enemies by telling him what I just told

him.

So when I left there, I knew that I had started the ball rolling.

My informant career was counting down quickly. I knew it was over.

I just didn't know how fast it was going to be over.

A few days later, I get a call from Eddie Garofalo, and he says that he

to meet me.

I felt kind of sick.

I know that I'm in a hugely dangerous situation.

When I walk in, Eddie is sitting there alone.

You told Eddie I'm wanting money through you.

He immediately starts accusing me. You told him!

And he says, I want you to come with me to Staten Island.

And I thought, if I went back, I'm pretty sure that I'd be murdered.

I go, I'm not going to Staten Island with you.

Things were going south real quick, so I go, you know what? Meeting's over. I'm

out of here. I'm done.

Hey!

He's looking at me like he wants to kill me.

Hey, where you going?

At that moment, I knew that I had signed my own death warrant.

I got in my truck.

Right then I decided to keep going until I got to Manhattan.

On the way there, I called the FBI.

And I told them, the Columbos are going to kill me. I had already planned a trip

to Toronto.

And the FBI just told me, just go to Toronto, and we're going to figure out

what's going on.

I stayed in Toronto,

waiting, waiting, waiting.

My handler came to my hotel room.

He said, I have something that you need to hear.

He played a tape for me where they had a bug somewhere and people were talking

about me. They were in Teddy's crew.

I hear someone say,

Only one guy on the tape didn't want to kill me. It was Teddy.

So there was no choice for the FBI.

But to pull me out, my plan worked out.

There was no going back.

My life as a gangster and an informant, it was over.

With my intel, Combined with the intel of other informants, they were able to

take a significant chunk out of the Colombo family.

As an informant overall, I have zero regrets helping the government beat this

criminal organization.

It's the best thing I've ever done in my life.

So the FBI achieved their goal, and I have a new life.

I spent just under two years under the protection of the feds.

It took some time to readjust, but I changed my life. I turned everything

around.

Now I own my own gym.

I train people. I train professional fighters. I train a mixed martial

I'm a Christian.

I thank God every single day that I was able to get a chance at

a fresh start.

I don't have any contact with the mob.

I've not come back to Brooklyn.

If I went back, I'm pretty sure that I would be killed.

I feel it's important for me to get my story out there so that people can hear

and they understand that the life is not glamorous.

It's never what it's cracked up to be.

It never lives up to expectations.