All language subtitles for Narco Wars 2x04 - How E Busted The Bull (English)

Shake this square world
and blast off for Kicksville.

America's public enemy
number one is drug abuse.

Just say "No".

The mafia is a major
player in the international

drug underworld.

At the end of the day,
it's all about the dollar.

It's all about the dollar.

American people want
the mob and its associates

brought to justice
and their power broken.

There's now an
understanding that the war on

drugs was an abject failure.

You have to stop
and ask yourself,

"How did we get here?"

~subtitles ripped and corrected by~
Rapunzel@addic7ed.com

The first time I took
ecstasy was in Manchester,

thinking, what is this?

This is pretty boring.

Then, all of a sudden, my
knees just completely buckled,

and time just started to stand still.

Woo!

The whole room is just throbbing,

and everybody is
dancing and the music's

just pulsing into my head.

All these beeps and weird noises,

like signals from outer space
that I didn't understand are

now completely making sense.

I never wanted the party
to end after that night.

Raving became my religion.

I'm Shawn Attwood,

known as one of the
biggest ecstasy traffickers

in the US rave scene.

My local nickname was English Shaun.

I was up against one of the Cosa
Nostra's most notorious killers.

As a young person, I set a
goal to be a millionaire by age 30.

"Greed is good" was my mantra.

I flew out to Arizona because
it had dazzled me as a teenager.

The plane comes in, and
you're looking out the window,

and you're seeing all these
swimming pools in people's backyards.

The sun's always shining.

It's almost 50 degrees
in the summer and,

as soon as they hear the english accent,

they roll out the red carpet.

But the rave scene was barely starting.

They didn't even know
what ecstasy was,

so there was this huge
gap in the market.

When I threw my first rave,

looking down at all the
ravers just going off,

with the strobe lights pulsing,

I knew that this was my calling in life.

It's quarter to six in the morning.

As an experiment,

I decided to order
1,000 pills out of LA.

All this stuff goes in one weekend.

I've made thousands of
dollars, just like that.

Partying my ass off.

And that was when I decided
to go full time trafficking.

One thing about my
father, he is a businessman,

outside of being a gangster.

Some people call it a
racketeer, whatever,

I say he was a businessman
because he knew business.

He's gonna make money.

My name's Karen Gravano.

I'm the daughter of Salvatore
"Sammy the Bull" Gravano.

He was the under boss of the
Gambino organized crime family,

which was the most powerful
organized crime family

in New York City.

Gravano was a mean,
vicious, horrible person.

Better known as "Sammy the Bull",

a man who pleaded
guilty to 19 murders.

My father was
released from prison in 1995.

The FBI wanted him to go
into witness protection,

so he agreed.

He went into the program.

Being a cooperator, and then,

the witness protection program,

and walking away from the mafia life,

very few of them can succeed at it.

It is an enormously difficult task.

There's so many restrictions.

He wasn't able to talk to us
because we didn't go in the program,

so he signed himself out,

and he joined my mother
and my brother in Arizona.

My fathers main thing was construction.

He loved construction.

He started a company
called Marathon Development,

which, in New York,

he actually had Marathon Concrete.

He was in the office every day trying to
build this company from the ground up,

legitimately creating a business.

He wasn't "Sammy the Bull" anymore.

He wasn't Salvatore Gravano,
he was Jimmy Moran.

That was the identity
the government gave him.

Ecstasy was going for $25 to $30 a pill.

I started to source them from
Holland for $2 or $3 a pill.

My smugglers would
bring them over and they went

from Holland to France to
Mexico City to Hermosillo,

and over the border into Arizona.

The most anyone ever brought
on one of those missions

was 40,000 pills.

By 1999 we were a multi-million-dollar

international ecstasy smuggling ring.

Use of the designer drug, ecstasy,

is rising at an alarming rate.

By 1999 seizures
increased 300% to three million.

Ecstasy never carried
that dirty social stigma that

methamphetamine did, or
heroin did, or cocaine did.

So, the younger generation
thought it was ok

to be taking it.

And why not just
go a club and, you know,

be messed up?

How old are you?

16.

Next thing you know,
little Johnny's not coming

home 'til the sun's coming up.

There were times when they'd
start on a Friday night,

and they'd go through Sunday.

Do you know where your teenagers are?

This could be the night
your child ventures into a

secretive and, potentially,
dangerous world.

The world of the rave.

All of a sudden,
we start fielding calls of

complaints from middle class families.

There is reason to be concerned.

Even one pill of ecstasy
can cause dehydration,

anxiety and exhaustion.

When my lieutenant asked for volunteers,

there wasn't one supervisor
that wanted to volunteer for

that mission because
it wasn't one of them

sexy things to do.

We're doing cocaine,
heroin, meth, marijuana.

I'm sergeant Jim Cope,

from the Phoenix police department.

I was the junior drug
enforcement sergeant at the time,

so I got assigned the job.

I drafted Rich Lebel.

He was our lead undercover
in the whole operation.

At the time, the spiked-up hair
with the bleached tips were in,

so we had him spike his hair.

We developed the strategy
to go in the raves and

actually make undercover
purchases at the raves.

You have to dress the part,

and it's certainly not stuff
I would wear on a daily basis.

You walk inside and, right away,

the music makes your insides
vibrate because it's so loud,

and it's thumping over
and over and over,

with strobe lights and lights flashing.

It's all, sort of, hypnotic.

The vibe was peace,
love, unity and respect.

There was no violence.

There was no Scarface level activity.

Once you were inside,
they were super trusting.

Somebody would walk by you,
and they'd ask you,

"Hey, do you need any E?"

And we would just be making buys.

All of a sudden,
I received mass reports of

these guys that
stood out selling ecstasy.

These were big, steroid head
characters in shiny polyester shirts.

I'm wondering,
who the hell are these guys?

They wanted to have a meeting with me.

So, I sit down between these two guys.

The friendlier one, he says,

"English Shaun, why don't you
start moving some of our pills?"

and I say, "Look, I've
got a good reputation.

Why would we wanna be
getting your stuff?"

Then the big guy just jumps
up off the sofa and says,

"Who the **** are you
disrespecting our pills."

He throws out this name, Jimmy Moran,

and I'm not familiar
with that name, and then,

he follows it up with,

"One call to 'Sammy the Bull' and we can

have you taken out to the desert."

Now, that stopped me in my tracks,

because I've seen John Gotti

and "Sammy the Bull" Gravano
on the news.

These guys are the
Gambino crime family.

I went to dinner with my father.

I wanted to sit down
and know all the things

that I never asked before
when I was kid.

I didn't want him to be my
father and try to protect me.

I wanted him to tell me the truth and,

for the first time in my life, like,

my father started telling me
about the mob, and, you know,

about the things that he did.

You know, my father was
accused of 19 murders.

I wanted to know, like,
did you kill someone?

What was is like?

He looked me in the face and was, like,

"It was, honestly, a rush.

It was like an adrenalin rush,
to be able to take another life."

Um, I didn't expect him to say that.

I was probably a little bit
shocked that he got the five.

19 murders, five years.

How can anybody confess to
that many murders and then do

five years in prison?

I think it's clear that "Sammy
the Bull" is a marked man.

There are mob members
that would love to kill him.

There are wannabees that
would love to kill him just

to add to their reputation.

He's basically thrown
all the rules out the window.

But the biggest one is
being omert�, right?

He's destroyed the oath of secrecy.

"Sammy the Bull" is now "Sammy the Rat".

He's still working with us
on cases and information.

It was in my best interest,
as the government,

to make sure that this guy
survived and played by the rules.

With this new breed of ecstasy
dealers infiltrating my raves,

there was this change in
the atmosphere at the party.

Pills were cut with all
kinds of toxic substances.

People were tripping.

People felt like they
were on crystal meth.

All kinds of bad reports were coming in,

and violent episodes occurred.

When my top ecstasy salesperson
got his teeth smashed out,

in the back of my mind then,
I'm thinking

these guys wanna
take me out to the desert.

Sammy the Bull.

You can't mess around
with people who've got

that lethal reputation.

I got so scared I moved over
100 miles to Tucson, Arizona,

to live in a gated, guarded community.

When Rich Lebel was
up to 250 to 500 pill buys,

the suspects we were dealing with said,

"Hey, if you guys are gonna
be players in this market,

you'd better be careful because the
New York guys are running everything,

and you're gonna have to
pay tax on your pills to them."

Rich is from the east coast,

and I'm from the east coast,
and we were both, like,

New York guys.

You know, we're in Arizona, whatever.

We didn't take it serious at all.

You gotta realize, at the time,
The Sopranos was in.

They were all striving to be
some young gangster, you know?

Some mobster.

These are just kids talking.

I got a tip that
"Sammy the Bull" Gravano was

hanging out in Arizona under
the assumed name of Jimmy Moran.

Um, I wasn't sure exactly
how to go about this.

It's not like you got out
and interview Mafia hit men

all the time.

I found that he had a
construction company.

I drove around
Marathon Development, like,

two or three times thinking,
what am I gonna do here?

It was in a big warehouse
district of Phoenix.

Kind of, a junkie area,
and it had a little foyer,

and there was a little bell there,

and there was nobody upfront

at the front desk so I rang the bell.

And, out of the office
walks "Sammy the Bull" Gravano,

and he walked straight up to me,

and he had these
shark-like eyes and he said,

"What the **** do you want?"

And, I said, "Mr. Gravano,

I wanna interview you",
and he kept saying,

"You don't know anything
about me", and I said,

"Well, I know that you're responsible
for something like 18 homicides",

and he says,
"Get your **** facts straight.

It's 19."

And that just blew me away.

He said, "If you do this story,

people are gonna get killed.
It's not a good idea."

My father just came home from prison.

My mother and brother
bought a restaurant.

Everyone always thinks that
we picked the name "Uncle Sal"

as the best kept secret in Scottsdale.

When they bought the restaurant,

it was already called "Uncle Sal's".

I mean, yes, we laughed
about it, and it was, like,

Salvatore Gravano, "Uncle Sal's".

It's ours. We're taking it.

We joke at home, but I think my
mother's the real gangster here.

My mother's name's Debbie.

She came to Arizona with all the money.

So she financed things,
whether it was the restaurant,

or whatever it was.

My brother, Gerard, he was a
chef working in the restaurant.

I'd just had my daughter,
and my brother had a son,

and we were doing good.

We were working hard, we
were staying out of trouble,

and we were just really,

honestly building our family back up.

Word came back to me
that a reporter by the name of

Dennis Wagner was
gonna write a story and we

wanted to stop it.

My publisher was
on a cruise in the Caribbean

and a shore to ship call was
made by the FBI trying to convince my

publisher not to run the story.

You print this story
and expose this guy,

all you're gonna do is get him killed.

The story's not as
important as you think it is.

This guy's life is.

It was picked up by
media all over the world.

It was, kind of, an
explosion in that sense.

We knew the Gambino
family were actively trying to

figure out where he was and
how to set up on him, and now,

all of a sudden,

they were able to
start tracking him down.

Once that newspaper article came out,

it made everyone start looking at us.

That was actually the start
of everything going bad for my

family in Arizona.

All the kids that were,
you knew, mob groupies,

or whatever you wanna call them,

infatuated with that lifestyle.

"Oh, Sammy the Bull's here."

"Oh, his family owns this restaurant."

And that's what drew the
attention of the wrong people.

My brother was
working in the restaurant.

This guy came in, and he
threw $1,000 on the table,

and he told Gerard, "Here,
put this in your pocket.

Come out with us tonight.

We're gonna go to the clubs.

Everything is on me, and, by the way,

I love your father."

So, that's how Mike Papa
comes into the whole picture.

That's how this whole
ecstasy thing started.

Mike Papa was a sharp kid.

He dressed nice.

He was a good-looking kid.
He knew how to talk.

He had the New York hustle,

because he was originally from New York.

So, Gerard, building his
friendship with Mike Papa,

started going to clubs with him.

Gerard started seeing
that this guy's, you know,

he's selling pills,
he's selling ecstasy.

Mike Papa was a big, big
person in that rave scene.

As our investigation was progressing,

we kept hearing the rumors
about the New York guys.

I was at the gym working out,
an acquaintance of mine said,

"Hey, do you know anything about
some kind of crazy club drug or...",

he called it a "sex drug".

He goes, "All these
young kids are, at the gym,

bragging about how much money
they're making off these pills",

And he named
Mike Papa, and he goes,

"You're not gonna believe it,
they say they're being backed

by 'Sammy the Bull' Gravano."

When I first started hearing about the

Gravano name being involved
in the ecstasy scene,

you know, I said to myself,

Sammy would be crazy to get
involved in any of this stuff.

I think we have something here.

But I've already had to
convince everybody, hey,

there's something to
this with this drug ecstasy,

you know, and now,

I'm gonna say, "I think
'Sammy the Bull' Gravano,

a legendary mafia
hit man is also involved."

People would think I was crazy.

Mike Papa started to
come into the restaurant and

my father finally met him.

My father was,
you know, "Who is this guy?"

He wasn't introduced to my father as,

"Oh, this is our drug
dealing friend, Mike Papa,

who sells ecstasy at raves."

It's, like,
"This is our friend Mike.

He goes to ASU.
He's a college student.

He's from New York."

My father was anti-drug,

and so adamant about Gerard and I
having the straight and narrow path,

building a life that is unbreakable.

But, unfortunately, we **** up.

We see ecstasy coming from Canada.

Unfortunately, the ecstasy and molly,

it's actually caused
death, here in Detroit.

Any time where there's drugs involved,

you know, you're dealing
with a lot of money.

People tend to use guns.

The DJs are selling
the dope and it's coming

out of the bathroom too.

The door, the door.

Search warrant, gotta go, gotta go.

Move by the door, the door.

Face down. Face down.

Straighten your legs out.
Straighten your legs out.

Face down. Look at the floor.

Don't be looking around.
This ain't entertainment.

Keep your hands
where I can see them.

Wanna get cuffed up?

Look at the floor.

You have any guns on you?

No.

Got a gun right here.

It was loaded. I just cleared it.

Put your hands on the floor.

Crawl out now.

Crawl backwards.
Crawl backwards.

Now, move.

What do you have?

Coke in there.

Tried dumping the coke.

Toilet doesn't flush. It didn't work.

Looks like a pretty good
size piece of crystal meth.

Ecstasy. Heroin. Crack cocaine.

Good job, guys.

As we were progressing
and learning that, you know,

there's a possibility
that "Sammy the Bull" Gravano

was involved,

I knew we were gonna have
to take it to another level,

and I said, "You know,
I'm gonna sit down with Ron."

My name's Ron Sterrett,

and I was the lead detective
for the Phoenix police department

in the Gravano ecstasy
trafficking investigation.

I didn't believe that Sammy
would be associating with

college kids selling
drugs, quite honestly.

I thought that was beneath his level.

But, when we obtained
Mike Papa's phone number,

it was subscribed to
Marathon Development.

It, right away,
hit me a business that Sammy

ran back in New York was Marathon.

So, the link was created.

Mike Papa, who was involved in
ecstasy trafficking worked for

Sammy at Marathon Development.

When it comes to the wire tap,

we were going to go up,
initially, on Mike Papa.

He was horribly
undisciplined on the phone and

would talk at length about
their drug trafficking activities.

If the rumors were true that
Sammy Gravano's involved,

Mike Papa and Mike Papa's
phone would walk us directly

into that evidence.

But, actually, the link was created

to Gerard Gravano.

When Gerard got involved
in the ecstasy business,

all of a sudden,
it went from the Mike Papa

investigation to the
Gravano investigation,

because they realized that
this is "Sammy the Bull's" son.

During our wiretap I
kept seeing this light-colored

Mercury Marquis out on surveillance.

I would always come into
the wire room and I'd say,

"Hey, I think there's some other
dudes out there following this guy",

and, because of the
shape of the car, I'm, like,

"Maybe it's another cop?"

My father started
feeling like people were

following him, and he said,

"Listen, I don't know if it's the cops,

if it's people from New York,

but I feel like something is going on."

Everybody told me I was crazy.

There's nobody else, and I'm,
like, "I keep seeing this car.

Something's up with this car."

The whole time Sammy was out in Arizona

we knew Gotti had given
the contract on Sammy.

"He screwed us. You gotta go get him."

During the wiretap
the kids made constant

reference to "The Big Guy".

Every now and again somebody
would slip and call him Sammy.

They openly referred
to Gravano, you know,

when they were trying to feel
important or show off to their friends.

Mike Papa is talking about
"'The big man' takes 50 cents,"

so he can't drop the price.

That's Mike saying,

"I'm not gonna drop my price",

and using my father as leverage.

"If you got a problem,
go talk to 'Sammy the Bull'."

We really believed Sammy's
name was being thrown out by

these younger kids as a
point of intimidation.

So, the speculation was always,

are we gonna get to
"Sammy the Bull" Gravano?

In January of 2000,

Ron Sterrett and the investigative team

start intercepting
calls between a supplier in

California and Mike Papa.

As those calls progressed,

we realized a large
shipment of 25,000 pills were

gonna be coming in from LA.

We knew exactly
where the exchange of money

and pills was gonna take place.

They met at a
hamburger place real close to

Arizona State University.

We saw the bag of ecstasy
coming into possession

of Mike Papa.

We followed Mike Papa directly
back to Marathon Development,

and saw Mike Papa carry the bag in.

It was just amazing how
fast those pills were gone.

They were distributed in
the Phoenix metropolitan area,

and I don't think they lasted a week.

It got frustrating because
we weren't getting the

confirmation that Sammy
was involved with this

ecstasy thing that the kids were doing.

All of the ecstasy purchases
were being done by Mike Papa.

Gerard was right there.

He was a distributor that was
giving it to the other parties

that were going out
and selling the pills.

The whole time
I'm dealing with Sammy,

there were no indications he
was doing anything other than

running his business,

helping the family with
the Italian restaurant,

and trying to be legitimate.

I had no doubt that that's
what was going on with him.

That call came in
somewhere between 11:00

in the evening to 1:00 in the morning.

A normal business doesn't
pay somebody at 11:00 in the

evening for a gas receipt.

$70 for gas receipts,

we knew that that
was code for $70,000

for the ecstasy.

Gerard and Mike Papa
needed to ask Sammy

to front the $70,000
for the next shipment.

That brought him right into
the middle of the financing of

the ecstasy organization.

I can't believe
Gravano was so stupid to be

caught doing these types
of things with these kids.

The prosecutor came
down to the wire room and

listened to the phone call.

Can she do it right away?

And said, "We've got
the evidence that I'm looking

for to charge Sammy."

Yeah, we got him.

We got enough.
We got enough for everybody.

This whole group is done.

We come to find out
Gotti had sent a hit team down

to Arizona.

There was a plan to kill Sammy
where Sammy parked his car.

The individual was set up in
a position across the street

with a high-powered rifle.

My father would have
never laid down lightly.

It's no secret that,
at that particular time,

he had guns.

If some gun battle was going off,

he's coming out shooting.

Everybody was ready for
whatever was gonna happen.

There was probably
200 tactical officers at

that meeting from different agencies.

So, I have a lot of guys there.

They're not real happy
about being up so early.

But the attention level on
the room definitely heightened

when we told them who was involved,

and what the case was about.

We wanted to use the
cover of darkness to minimize

any potential risk to the
officers or Sammy getting

involved in a shooting.

When they made entry,

Sammy was crawling on the
floor toward getting a gun.

I think he thought it was
the mob coming after him.

He surrendered, was handcuffed,

and brought to the facility
where I was waiting for him.

He was a really sharp guy.

I could tell he was scanning
every document he could to try

to figure out how bad
it is and what's going on.

I told him "You're
being arrested for conspiracy

to distribute dangerous drugs."

And he just kinda leaned his head
back and closed his eyes and sighed,

like, "Jeez, I can't
believe I got caught for this."

But, quite honestly, we feel
we saved Sammy's life by

arresting him a few days before he was

gonna get killed.

He insisted he was a
hard-working businessman,

who had settled into his
new law-abiding life.

But a tiger doesn't change his stripes.

And authorities
say it was a family affair.

I made mistakes.

Did I know that there
was ecstasy being sold?

Yes.

Was I involved in,
maybe, some of the talks?

Yes.

Me and my brother, we **** up.

The crime ring, allegedly,

distributed up to 30,000 pills
a week of the drug ecstasy.

He beyond stabbed us in the back,

it was betrayal.

I mean, it was the
stupidest thing he could do.

It was the worst thing he could do.

Nobody was gonna save him this time.

The turncoat who
sent so many mobsters to jail

could soon be joining them.

I was over at Mike Papa's residence

when we arrested Mike.

I thought Mike would be one
of the ones who cooperated.

He might just be the
most famous snitch of all time,

but now Salvatore
"Sammy the Bull" Gravano

has had the tables turned.

That's the nature of drug dealing.

People are always gonna
be ratting people out and

pointing fingers at one another.

Once Mike Papa started
cooperating with the government,

they threw everything at us.

They threw charges at my mother.
They threw charges at me.

They threw charges at my brother.

My father's now boxed in.

You know, I don't think
people understand.

My father didn't get involved
in the drug business because

he wanted to sell drugs.

My father stepped in because
he wanted to save my brother.

His biggest fear was Gerard
was gonna get killed on a

drug deal gone bad, and
someone was gonna make a

name for themselves for
killing "Sammy the Bull's" son.

Family's everything to my father.

He would never let us jump in
quicksand without jumping in with us.

And that's why "Sammy the Bull"
got involved in drug dealing.

There was a belief,
when Sammy ultimately took

responsibility for what he did,

that he was doing it on behalf
of his family and, certainly,

that plea agreement did
mitigate Gerard's exposure.

It certainly helped Karen out.

I believe you and this court have
been very fair with me and my family,

and I appreciate it very much.

In my view, a lot of the Mafia members,

despite this godfather
script of "We don't get

involved in drugs,"
they get involved in drugs.

They get involved in
anything that makes money,

and drugs is an extremely
fast way to make a lot of money.

I mean, the fact is,

he was a murderer, but we still talk,

and I look forward to
conversations with the guy.

You know, if he
was sitting here today,

he would tell you, straight faced,

"I wasn't a drug dealer."

You got convicted of it.

~subtitles ripped and corrected by~
Rapunzel@addic7ed.com