Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. Gary and retired FBI agent Jerry Hester discuss his book “Mafia Miami: FBI Politics and How an Investigation Was Nearly Sabotaged.” The investigation involved tracking a high-priority Italian mafioso in South Florida. Hester details his career beginnings in the FBI, and his work in Miami focuses on organized crime and public corruption. He tells how politics almost derailed a case against a Sicilian mafioso named Robert Settineri. This investigation came from intelligence shared by the Italian National Police. The investigation linked Settineri to the Sicilian mafia and his ties with the Gambino family in the US, showcasing a unique interconnection between different crime families. Hester explains the challenges of starting the investigation without a reliable informant and the meticulous process of gathering evidence through phone searches, surveillance, and developing informants like Leo. He delves into the complexities of navigating undercover operations to gather incriminating evidence, especially in the face of a savvy criminal like Settineri. The investigation’s international scope also involved coordination with Italian authorities, adding complexity to the case. As the investigation progresses, Hester shares the setbacks, including a failed attempt to gather evidence through a money laundering operation due to Centinari’s suspicions. Despite these challenges, the case escalates to involve high-level CIA operatives, parallel investigations in New York and Italy, and the intricate dynamics within the Sicilian mafia. Hester also touches on the cultural shifts and policy changes within the FBI post-9/11 that impacted investigations and highlights the book’s broader examination of law enforcement practices and challenges. The conversation with the host meanders through various aspects of the investigation, including the role of FBI undercover agents, the connection with prominent Gambino figures like Joseph “Jo Jo” Corozzo, Sr. and Jackie D’Amico, and the pursuit of criminal charges against critical players like Antonio Tricamo. Hester’s book not only delves into the gritty details of mafia investigations but also provides insights into law enforcement agencies’ internal workings and challenges.
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[0:00]
Introduction to Mafia Miami FBI Investigation
[0:00]Hey, welcome, all you wiretappers out there and back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have an interesting guest today, a former retired FBI agent named Jerry Hester. Jerry, welcome.
[0:12]Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jerry. He’s got a book, Mafia Miami FBI Politics and How an Investigation Was Nearly Sabotaged. Best that one up. But you guys know what I mean. I’m going to read just a little bit. Our friend Larry Henry, I know a lot of you guys that are on the Gangland Wire podcast group on Facebook know Larry Henry. And by the way, Larry Henry and I and Tommy Canale are all going to be in Las Vegas June the 1st for the Mob Summit. So if you’re interested in going out there, I would suggest that you try to check and see if you can still get a ticket. it. Larry says retired FBI agent Jerry Hester’s riveting account of the investigation into a high priority Italian mafioso living in South Florida takes readers inside the international operation. This book is a fascinating look at organized crime and how authorities work to shut it down. Jerry, that’s so interesting to me, not only the mafia politics, but this international aspect that what you ran into, you know, I understand working locally on the local family and you know, who’s who, and when they’re meeting with somebody who they are, but they’re always there, but all of a sudden your guy is in Florida and then
[1:31]
Jerry Hester’s Career and Case Involvement
[1:27]he disappears and goes to Italy or he comes from Italy and you don’t know what his background is. So, you know, how did you first, I guess, really tell us a little bit about your career and then how you got into this case.
[1:39]Thanks. Thanks, Gary. You mentioned Larry Henry there. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention an old friend of both of ours, I think, is Jack Garcia, the well-known FBI undercover agent. Jack and I worked together closely during my career. I learned a lot from him. So I always like to give Jack a shout out. He helped me launch my FBI undercover career as a case agent. So I began my career in San Francisco, FBI, and served a couple of years there, was transferred to Miami. So I did a bulk of my career last 19 years in Miami. I always took an interest in organized crime and lucky for me, that’s where I landed. So a lot of my career spent was working organized crime as well as public corruption. But to the point with this investigation, Miami FBI became aware of Roberto Centinari through the Italian National Police, who we had a close working relationship with. The INP had intelligence on Centinari. In fact, he was a well-known mafioso operating from Sicily and now operating in Miami. So, that’s how we initially found out about Centenary, but one of the interesting things that developed in that investigation, which is where you were going with it, was once we identified Centenary here and located him where he was living in the United States in.
[2:55]It was really amazing to me, his connections with the Cosa Nostra, with the families here in the U.S. That was something that, you know, at least in my experience, we hadn’t seen a lot of. The close relationship, these guys just seemed to, in the past, kind of avoid each other and had their little battles a lot of times. But Centenary, you know, melded in very well with some of the Gambino figures. So that was an interesting start for this investigation.
[3:21]
Collaboration with Italian National Police
[3:22]So working with the Italian National Police, now, how did that work? Did you, they contacted you through the Ligat in Rome, or did they call you directly? I’m just, I’m curious how that would work. You’ve got a little bit of a language barrier and a communications barrier, so they, and they don’t know, they can’t just call Miami and ask for the FBI. And so how did that work? No, good question. Yeah, we had established communication with INP through our Ligat in Rome. So that’s how we received the intelligence initially. And it really was very just a paragraph, basically, that Roberto Setaneri, member of the Sicilian mafia, connected to high levels within Palermo and Italy.
[4:05]Was operating and living in Miami, and gave us a name, date of birth. And initially, that was how we found out about Setaneri. Now, eventually, the Italians provided, Well, let me step back. When they provided that bit of information, as an agent, you’re looking at that and you’re saying, well, there’s a million bad guys around. I mean, is this all I have to go on? This is nothing. They immediately provided troves of intelligence outlining his connections to the Sicilian mafia, particular specific individuals that he was connected with, his background. So that just set things off for us here in the United States once we initiated the investigation. Now, that being said, just because you have an Italian mobster in your backyard, that’s not against the law. That’s an established probable cause, and he’s committing criminal activity in the United States. So that’s how the investigation began, with lots of help from the Italians initially getting it started. So that was a big shout out to them for their help early on in the investigation.
[5:09]Really, and to develop what you developed out of that really minuscule amount of information. Now, guys, somebody tells you, OK, here’s a mafia guy who you don’t know. You have no background on and he’s in your city and you go out initially and you take a look at his house. Well, he has a nice house. He has kind of a nice car. He doesn’t seem to do anything. You could sit there all day long and nothing would happen. You know, what is he doing? And, you know, you have no idea what he’s doing and he’s a low profile kind of a guy. Anyhow, he’s not real flamboyant. He’s not out there meeting with other mobsters in the city.
[5:48]
Challenges in Investigating Roberto Centinari
[5:45]They’re your other intelligence guys are picking up. So how do you go from there? Cause I know that’s tough. Well, that’s what the FBI here, they’d come to us and then we put manpower on the guy cause he’s doing something wrong. We know he’s doing something wrong. We just got to figure out what it is. Get his trash, do something. How did you get into him from there? Cause I know it’s difficult. go? It was very difficult because it was funny because I was kind of going against the grain in developing an investigation when I started working the Centenary case because of the point you’re going to is that I didn’t have an informant into Centenary. All I had was this information on him that he was a mafioso operating and living in our old backyard.
[6:25]So I kind of broke my own rule and that is starting an investigation without an informant. But because we knew that Centenary was a high-level connected Sicilian mafia member, it was worth the effort. But it was very difficult and early in the investigation, because I did have a good cadre of informants already developed.
[6:48]I was able to reach out to a few of them and eventually make a connection and establish a probable cause on Centenary. In other words, we found out what he was doing early on to establish that PC. We found he was initially operating, being a part of boiler rooms in South Florida, which as you know, those are businesses that use the high pressure sales tactics, unethical sales tactics. And Centenary was getting a kickback on that. Eventually we discovered that he was also extorting some businesses. Specifically, he was going to restaurants. We know one in particular that he was going to, and he would We’d sit down and have his meal. And then the next thing you know, the owner’s casually walking up to him, handing an envelope with some cash in it. I mean, who does that? We knew what that was. So that was how we initially established the fact that, okay, this guy is a real mobster. He’s doing mobster type things, which gave us the basis to start the investigation.
[7:47]Now, you had this informer, I believe, was it Leo? Was that what you call him in the book? Right. Would you just run him in on him? Just say, you know, here’s this guy and here’s where you might find him. Now, how did that work? I did that once. I just said, just go down there and start hanging out. And he found out a little bit of stuff. So how did he do that?
[8:06]And, you know, you’re narrowing in on the specific parts of the case that were difficult because that was very difficult. At that time, I thought our chance of success was really low. Yeah. So basically, basically what we were doing was doing a cold bump that gets set in there with someone. The reason why we chose this particular individual, I call him Leo in the book, was because he hadn’t met him before. So he, Leo knew set in there, he had met him, but set in there, he didn’t remember him, but he was able to start a conversation and remind him, Hey, we met here and there. But I coached the informant early on on how to be as casual as possible. Don’t be too direct. Again, at the time, I thought, this is not going to work. Just know he’s too smart for that. But eventually, we were able to get an informant into him and find out who’s sitting there. His inner circle was some of the activity he was involved with, such as the boiler room and going to these Italian restaurants and receiving kickbacks. Another thing that early on that helped us with the probable cause was we ran a telephone search, telephonic search of Centenary’s phones.
[9:18]That’s when the flowchart around Centenary blew up to the point that we knew, hey, we’re on to something here. He was talking to every other high-level mafia guy in New York and Miami and Italy. He was talking with celebrities in Miami and New York, professional athletes. leads. He was running in some pretty high circles. And of course, with tons of low-level gangsters throughout Miami and New York that he was conversing with literally on a daily basis. So it was a flow chart like none other that I had ever seen before with an individual target.
[9:55]
Escalation of Investigation and Next Steps
[9:55]So once that was established, we had all our intel, we knew like, wow, we’re onto something here. So that’s when, as I like to describe, the investigation went to the next level, Really? Really.
[10:07]
Uncovering Centinari’s Criminal Activities
[10:07]You would be amping it up there. Now, was there, you’ve got a little bit of extortion, you’ve got this boiler room, was there other kinds of crimes that you thought, you know, what did Leo use as an entree to get in to get some criminal talk, some dirty talk, if you will, to kind of lead this on to another level?
[10:28]Yeah. And that was the thing too with Leo, even though he was in good informant, he wasn’t the type of informant that had the ability to get that close to centenary where we could draw out some of the other criminal activity. He was able to report on some of the boiler rooms and identify his inner circle. Once we established that i knew that at this point we need we need something else here we need to insert an undercover agent we need to get somebody that has the ability to draw out this type of activity to get close to set there to find out what he’s really doing because we knew he was involved with a lot more than boiler rooms and you know the low level extortion he was he was involved with some pretty heavy stuff because of the people he was hanging with and talking to his phones he had uh connections contact with bobby era who’s an old-time mobster i don’t know if you ever heard that name too but his father was also a well-known mobster patsy era these are high level guys he’s been around for many many years jackie the nose domico out of new york i think he spoke with carrazzo relatively frequently so once we established that we were going. We knew that Leo couldn’t hang at that level, basically. So that’s when we decided to insert the undercover agent to kind of find out what is he really doing that’s making this justifying this FBI investigation.
[11:55]Yeah, that’s when you got to find a guy like Jack Garcia that can come in and front himself off as a real deal mobster himself. And that’s a rare talent there. I’ll tell you that right now. It’s a rare talent. That is so true. It’s funny you mentioned Jack because-
[12:12]When I started this investigation, Jack had retired, I think, probably a couple of years, two years before I started the investigation. So I had a great relationship with him. And obviously, he would have been the number one, my number one choice for an undercover agent. But I wasn’t able to use him. But the FBI, we had several very good undercover agents who were able to step in and fill the role. Yeah. What did you get Leo to introduce somebody in?
[12:38]Yeah. What I did was I got him to do an introduction, get our undercover agent. That’s what it’s all about, establishing the credibility. So he was able to do that, to give the bona fetus to our undercover agent, where eventually the relationship was to the point where Centenary was talking about his past life in Italy, Sicily, his involvement with drug activity, drug deals. He’s involved with money laundering. So now when I describe this, this is over a period of months because as you know, when you bring in an undercover agent, it takes months to establish that bona fides. So up to this point where we have the undercover agent and you’re talking, geez, nine months or so in an investigation at this point, because at that time, the FBI’s criminal program was not of the highest priority because it wasn’t that long after 9-11. So our resources were low. We just didn’t have a lot of resources to direct to this case. It took a while before…
[13:42]Even though the investigation was deemed a priority before the resources matched the status of the case. So, hence, that’s why it took so long to get to that point, because at that point, I was really working the case by myself up until a certain point. Yeah. And that’s when you start bringing other agency in. And that’s when we get to the second part of your title, FBI politics and how the investigation was nearly sabotaged. I was reading this. It was really interesting. I mean, I’ve, I’ve lived this life kind of on a lower level than what you’re talking about, but I’ve lived this life where you got something going and you’re bringing other people in and some of them, they’re, they, they’re bitching and pissing and moaning and they don’t want to do this. Then you get somebody out there that wants to, wants to take it over and wants to somehow make it into his or see what he can get out of it because he’s really ambitious. And so it’s a tough place for the case agent, the lead agent to be at for you. And so talk about that a little bit, how the politics and the procedures of the FBI, how that case developed as it got bigger and bigger and you had to bring in other agents to help. Yeah. Early on, as I said, our resources were low. We didn’t have many people available to work these types of investigations.
[14:58]At this time, I was new to the squad in Miami. I had just transferred over to the organized crime squad in Miami. Even though I’d been in the division for, at that time, probably about eight or nine years, I didn’t know a lot of people on the squad. So I get to the squad and I start this case. And then I realized after a few months that, geez, I need some help here. My supervisor, outstanding guy, Joe Sassini, but his hands were tied as well. But when I got to the point where I knew that I had to get somebody, there was only one person available, which should have been a red flag because everybody’s, right, how is this guy busy? Everybody else is busy. Why is he not? So he was an eager beaver to jump in. And he was just, like you said, everybody has worked with an individual like this in all walks of life, in all professions.
[15:46]Someone who just is out for themselves. And it’s not about the mission, it’s about their career and what they can do and their self-esteem and things like that. So that was how I started the investigation. I had this individual who was a lot of times working against me, causing me more trouble than he was worth. Eventually, luckily for me, he eventually jumped off the case because I had his number at that point. Yeah, right. If I remember right, Right. He developed a source out of this case that had something else going that he could then spin off and have his own case going. Well, almost that. It was worse than that. It was pretty bad. Actually, what he did was I brought him to the investigation, introduced him to my informant, Leo, as we were working the Centenary case.
[16:35]
Involvement of High-Level Mafia Figures
[16:36]And as I told you, with the flowchart with Centenary, his connections in the mafia world were astounding. I think we had, in the very beginning, 32 subjects initially in this case, 32 identified subjects, Italian subjects in this case. What Donnie did was he identified one of the subjects in the case, started questioning my source without me knowing it, Leo, trying to establish his own case. Because at that point, he realized, I’m not going to take this case. I’m not going to direct. I’m not going to be the main guy in this case. This is Jerry’s case, and he’s not going to let me take it over. But at that point, I had his number. So he was kind of working on the side, which is, I know it sounds unbelievable, but it actually happened. And in the book, you’ll see where I found out later, most everyone on the squad said, yeah, that sounds about right. That’s kind of his MO. That’s what he did. They’re like, why didn’t you guys tell me that? So I don’t have to go through with it. But hey, that happens. It happens to all of us. So you mentioned, let’s go back to the Gambinos. Let’s go back to the organized crime aspect of this. Now, you had Joseph Carrazzo and Jackie D’Amico, the Gambino family. Were they his main connections up in New York, the Gambino family?
[17:52]Yeah, the Gambino seemed to be his main connections up in New York. There was one, before I get to New York, before I forget it, there was one individual, Frankie the Hat DiStefano, who was a former Gambino capo out of New York. He was a guy up in probably his 70s by this point, but he had been shelved. He was in Miami when we started investigating Centenary, and we found out what was going on, the activity in the boiler rooms. DeStefano was involved with that, which that was remarkable because this was early on. We identified Frankie and realized, wow, Centenary’s hanging out with some pretty heavy hitters. Right.
[18:32]The word on the street was Frankie had been shell, went from being a capo. Now he’s in Miami trying to be an earner some way to reestablish himself. But when we did that telephonic search early on, we had those phone calls to, like you said, to D’Amico, to Carrazzo, to Gaetano Napoli. These are all mid-level. Well, D’Amico was a higher level individual. The New York FBI was also of assistance. They gave us some information. They never told us where it came from, which we know it came from a source that they didn’t identify, which is how we do things, that D’Amico was not happy with Centenary. So D’Amico had this relationship with Centenary, but he was kind of pissed at Centenary because Centenary was dealing drugs and D’Amico wasn’t a big believer in that. So once we established that intelligence, again, I keep going back to what at this point, early in the investigation, we knew Centenary, he’s a player. Even though he’s low profile, this guy’s running in some pretty heavy circles. So that was our New York connection.
[19:41]There was a New York agent that I worked closely with while I was working at Centenary. He was working a parallel case targeting Gaetano Napoli throughout. So we kind of helped each other, But he would give me intel on what Setonary was doing when he went to New York, who he was meeting with, places he was going in New York. And I would do the same when his bad guys would come to Miami, which Napoli, Gaetano Napoli, the Gambino capital, came to South Florida, met with Setonary in a big meeting at one point in the investigation. You know, so you’re gathering a ton of intelligence. I mean, lots of intelligence to help a lot of people. But, you know, from gathering intelligence to making a case is sometimes can be kind of a leap. So now how do you start narrowing down on a specific crime and making a case, finding finding somebody you can turn and and gather some kind of evidence? Yeah, this was a crucial point in the investigation once we decided to insert
[20:45]
Infiltrating Centinari’s Inner Circle
[20:43]an FBI undercover agent. And now, Setonary’s right-hand man was a guy by the name of Antonio Tricamo. He was also a Sicilian mafia member. He was kind of like Setonary’s right-hand man. He was his enforcer. He was Setonary’s enforcer. And this guy was very flamboyant. He was the complete opposite of Setonary. Very outgoing, very gregarious, liked to party. Remember, this is Miami Beach. This is where set Mary’s.
[21:08]Running his operations out of flash and cash, as I call it. So he has this right-hand man, Turcomo, who is very close to him. And so at this point we decide, okay, how are we going to do this? Who are we going to target? Are we going to have the undercover agent go after Setonary, or are we going to have him go after Turcomo? So initially we decided to go with, at first we decided to get the undercover agent into Centenary and we was able to obtain conversation with Centenary. The undercover agent was able to get conversation with Centenary about his background in Italy, his crimes that he was doing there, things, criminal activity he was doing here. So they’re establishing this relationship and it’s kind of, once you get into the book, I have exact quotes from the conversations and they’re playing this cat And for those of you who are involved with law enforcement or undercover investigations or Italian organized crime investigations, you’ll really appreciate the back and forth, the testing one another.
[22:16]Okay. And because in Centenary’s mind, I know every time he meets with an undercover agent, he’s thinking, is this guy somebody who’s flipped? Is this guy a cop? Is this guy a rat? Whatever. So you’re trying to, as an undercover agent, establish your persona, but yet you have to be careful in how you engage someone of set and aries level. So that was very time consuming. And that’s a very interesting part of the book, the undercover meetings that we had at one point. And this is,
[22:50]
Establishing Credibility with Centinari
[22:47]again, it’s all to build bona fides with Centenary. We had an undercover agent had a party in Miami Beach where he has girls and boats and cars and the high life in South Florida. Because you want Centenary to think your undercover agent is a high-level, wealthy individual because that’s the type of guy that the mobsters go after, right? They want to be in business with these guys, but you have to be careful in how you do that. because you can’t tip your hand. And Centenary was, I describe him as really, I know it sounds corny, but a real life Tony Soprano. Just the brooding, serious character, very, very intelligent, very perceptive individual who was always watching those he was meeting with and things around him.
[23:38]He would, if he’s meeting with our undercover agent who’s supposed to be a multimillionaire They’re living in a $5 million house in Miami Beach. You can’t have your undercover agent wearing a tie mix, right? You’ve got to wear the fancy watch. A centenary would look at those things. He’d look at your shoes too. So I talk about a lot of that in the book, how difficult it was to get the undercover agent into a centenary early on. Interesting. So what kind of a case did you actually make in the end?
[24:09]And did the Italians make a case too on the drug end of it? Was he importing like heroin? Was he part of like the old pizza connection case where he was bringing heroin over from originally from Turkey maybe and connections back down to South America and back up to the United States? Or did you really get that far into his drug dealing? Yeah, we did initially, after a few months of relationship with our undercover agent, he actually spoke about some specific drug deals that he was involved with. He spoke of his ability to launder money and his experience in doing that. And at one point, this really threw us for a loop. Once we were trying to establish a deal, because the idea was to get Centenary comfortable enough to the point where they could engage in some kind of deal with Centenary to obtain evidence, right? Evidence of a crime, criminal activity, whether it be a drug deal or money laundering. We started with money laundering because he showed an interest in that. We told him we had a need for someone to launder. I keep saying our, talking about our undercover agent. Yeah. Our undercover agent expressed the need to have someone launder his money for him. Centenary established the fact that he could do that for us. So we were to the point now where we were ready to do a deal.
[25:28]And then the meeting was set up in the undercover agent. And at that point, Centenary stopped receiving phone calls from our undercover agent. So what we found was at this point, we had a Title III going on Centenary. We were listening to his phone calls. What we discovered was engaging in a conversation with one of his Sicilian mafia associates, and I’ll never forget it. He basically says to this associate, you know that guy that I’ve been dealing with that I was going to do business with? I think he’s a cop. And his associate says, well, Roberto, if you think he’s a cop…, Your gut has been good to you all these years. Walk away. And that’s exactly what he did. So he completely walked away from our undercover agent, never called him again, never took any calls from us. So at this point, this is midway through the investigation. And this investigation has blown up to the highest levels of the FBI headquarters.
[26:23]I don’t want to seem like I’m sidetracking here, but just so people get an idea of the type of investigation this had become at this point. I mean, this midway through the investigation, we had a high level CIA operative pop up in the investigation meeting with in Palermo, Sicily. Once we identified who this individual was and I put this in the book,
[26:48]
High-Level Involvement and CIA Operative
[26:45]I have a whole couple of pages on it. I don’t want to spill the beans on here, but it just shows you the the level of this investigation had gotten to this case was being briefed at the director’s level. So now we get to the point where we’re ready to do a deal, set an area, and get evidence of his involvement with criminal activity, and he walks away. So at that point, it was back to the drawing board. But in the book, I get into how difficult a time this was because, Gary, as you know, when your case is being blown up, and I wasn’t the one blowing it up. It was the people around me saying, oh, this is the biggest thing going. This is the number one organized crime case. And then when this happens, you feel like you’re personally responsible.
[27:31]So anyway, we quickly, we didn’t have time to try it out, so to speak. We had to establish a new direction. And I mentioned Antonio Trucamo earlier. What I did was I was able to direct another undercover agent at Trucamo, get into Trucamo, get into the right hand man. And I know it seemed like a step back, but that’s all we had at that point. Yeah. And we were very successful with Trucamo.
[27:56]We were able to get him involved and he laundered over a million dollars worth of money for our FBI undercover agent. He was involved with trafficking counterfeit cigarettes. So we were building up these charges with the idea of flipping Tricamo against Centenary, right? But then in the book, you’ll see I get into the detail about that. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
[28:22]
Challenges in Flipping Trucamo
[28:18]If this were a normal criminal on the street, piece of cake. Yeah. If you’re the bad guy and I’m the FBI agent, I walk in and say, listen, I have evidence that I could put you in jail for 10 years or you can cooperate and help me get this guy. Most people, they’re going to cooperate, right? They don’t want to do the 10 or 20 years. But this is the Sicilian mafia. A lot of times they don’t work that way. So that was a very stressful point in the investigation where it’s like, okay, what do we do? Do we keep building up the charges on Turcamo? Do we, I even talked about developing a scenario where it would require Tacamo bringing in Centenary, but there’s no guarantees on any of that. So at that point, it was a difficult point in the investigation, but I’ll let you ask your question because you know how it ends, but hopefully that answered your question. Yeah, I did. You know, I just think about that money laundering thing from a federal standpoint, that, that That may be the cleanest, easiest way.
[29:19]To make a case on somebody from a reverse sting viewpoint. That way you don’t have to touch drugs. You don’t have to get your hands dirty in any way. It’s just a money transaction and you got plenty of money. You know, government’s got plenty of money. Those are like, like a drug thing. You’ve got this drugs flowing around, you know, you’re getting drugs out of the property room and you’ve got custody of them. Then you try, you know, you gotta make it look like you’re going to sell to the guy and that’s dirty business. I always hated doing that. We got involved in some of that. I hated doing that because it just, everybody looks at you funny once you start getting involved in those kind of drug transactions with criminals. So that money laundering thing, that’s the ideal way to take somebody like this down.
[30:08]
International Cases and Connections
[30:09]I’m kind of curious. It really is. And then back to Italy, what was going on back in Italy? Were they making some cases over there? They were actually. Yeah, they were. I’d mentioned earlier, there was a parallel case in New York. There was also a parallel case in Italy. And they were looking at approximately 20 subjects over there involved with various phases of criminal activity. Over in Italy, just being an associate of an organized crime, that’s a crime in and of itself. So those folks over there were involved with extortion, connection to organized crime, and all types of criminal activity. So they were working their their own case there as well. And periodically throughout the investigation, I think twice, I traveled to Italy to brief the Italian national police and the Italian government on the status of the Setner case, because this was something that they took a deep interest in, even though once the investigation started, they weren’t able to really help us a whole lot over in the United States. But we still, out of courtesy, briefed them up on status and progress in the case throughout. So I’ve traveled to Rome.
[31:20]For for a few days traveled at some point to palermo sicily to keep them abreast of what was going on wow this is like a movie almost you’re living with all these international and national connections and and you got this larger than life character who’s you know like mr big it was no you’re right and that’s what the one thing you know this story is that’s why i decided I decided to write a book because throughout the entire time I was working the case, my fellow agents, friends were telling me, man, you should write a, this is like a movie. You should write a book. I never took it seriously. But if you think about it, this case has Italian mafia. It has Gambino’s. It has, you know, a Miami Beach setting, you know, the flash and cash. Yeah. And I haven’t gotten to this yet, but it has a Ponzi scheming celebrity attorney from Fort Lauderdale that became an integral part of the case. And of course you have the high level CIA operative who pops up in the case too. And there’s a lot more involved with that part of it. The CIA operative, I wish I could discuss. That would be very interesting, but I obviously sworn to secrecy on that. It’s all class. And anyway, while we’re on that topic about the book itself, I also threw out a couple of things we haven’t discussed.
[32:40]
Tutorial on FBI Investigation Techniques
[32:41]I provide and I didn’t do this by design. It was actually reflected back to me on people who assess the book. I provide a tutorial on how to develop and operate an FBI investigation because I go through the intimate details of that and how to effectively operate informants. So you get all of that into one package with this book. The one thing, too, you kind of touched on it with the politics is I also talk about some of the culture change that was occurring within the FBI at the time, some policies, specific policies that had been established at that time that really changed how the FBI operated at that time. And in my opinion, and many other agents will say not for the better, those policies didn’t make us a better agency. And I state those in a more of a matter of fact way in the book. I’m not bashing the viewers. More matter of fact, from the point of view of a street agent of what was happening. And I give you examples of my case when things were occurring, roadblocks.
[33:49]
Impact of FBI Policy Changes
[33:45]Looking back, I know what it was. So I talk about that in the book. And the reason I did this is because it’s kind of, it will give, I think, the reader an idea of when you look and see the news this day and you see some of the mishaps the FBI has been involved with, people are probably saying, how can that happen? This, if you read this book and you look into this culture change and policy change, you might get a better understanding of how those things were able to happen. So anyway i know i got off track there a little bit from the investigation but that is all all wrapped up into one in the book that’s all part of the book and it’s part of what’s interesting about your book and about your life and about law enforcement in general i know read something recently about after 9-11 you know you had this huge that’s part of what you’re talking about after 9-11 this huge cultural shift in the way they approach things and they went into doing stings a lot. And you had agents out here doing, trying to do stings. And then they would, you know, pretty soon is it entrapment or is it a, you know, is this guy a real criminal or you got egos at play and people wanting to make big cases.
[34:55]
Overview of Jerry Hester’s Book and Discussion
[34:52]So, uh, I, I, I understand.
[34:55]So this is a folks, this is a great book on all those different subjects. Plus a good dose of organized crime, clearing up the Gambino’s in New York City, the Mafia Miami FBI politics and how an investigation was nearly sabotaged. But Jerry Hester and Jerry, I really appreciate you coming on and telling us about this show, this book.
[35:16]Thank you so much, Gary. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the time. Well, guys, you know, I like to ride motorcycles. So if you’re out there on the street, watch out for motorcycles. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure and go to the VA website and get that hotline number. And hand in hand with that PSD comes drug and alcohol addiction. Well, we just talked about a Gambino and a Gambino connection to Florida. Well, there’s Anthony Ruggiano, a former Gambino soldier. That’s a drug and alcohol counselor down there in Florida. Jerry, can you believe that? He’s got a hotline on his website and his Facebook page, his YouTube page. So if you’ve got a problem with drugs or alcohol, get a hold of Anthony Ruggiano. I think that would be a great story. let me know if you ever do that and so anyhow well thanks a lot jerry i really appreciate you coming on thanks for having me i appreciate it gary all right don’t forget guys like and subscribe.
