A ruthless grab for power tears a city apart. A crime family splits in two as the young and the old fight to the death. The FBI is caught in the middle as they infiltrate the syndicate in a desperate attempt to end the brutal war raging on the streets of Philadelphia.
In the early 1990s, Philadelphia became the scene of a bloody vendetta. The streets erupted in mob warfare. Authorities feared innocent people would be caught in the crossfire.
“I’m Jim Calstrom, former head of the FBI’s New York office,” he explains. Agents launched a complex and risky surveillance operation. Their mission: to bring down a notorious crime family and to stop a brutal turf war before more people were killed.
1990, a quiet morning in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Joe Andrews is being wired by the FBI. He’s a 20-year-old accounting student at La Salle University, and he’s in trouble. He’s been betting on football through a Mafia bookmaker. He was winning at first, but his luck turned sour. He owes the mob $1,000. It’s a debt he cannot pay.
“You understand? I don’t think you do, son. I don’t think you got it at all, but you understand what’s going on here,” he is told.
In way over his head and afraid for his life, Andrews contacted the FBI and asked for help.
“It’s money, kid.”
South Philly is a tough place, not the kind of place where you want to cross the mob. La Cosa Nostra, the Italian syndicate of organized crime families, runs a profitable and bloody business there: gambling, loan sharking, and extortion rackets. For years, South Philly was run by Angelo Bruno, known as the “Gentle Don” because of his dislike of violence. He took over the city in the 1950s. He was brutally murdered in 1980. The man suspected of being behind the hit was Nicodemo Scarfo. Nikki Scarfo took over Bruno’s empire. He was a cold-hearted killer who ruled the city by violence.
But now Nikki Scarfo is in jail. The FBI wants to find out who is running the Philadelphia mob while the boss is behind bars. Andrews’ problem with the loan shark gives the FBI the perfect opportunity to collect new information on the organization. The college student meets with the bookmaker. He plays his part perfectly and is introduced to Salvatore Sparacio, a known member of the Philadelphia Mafia.
“I don’t have the money.”
“You don’t have the money?”
FBI special agent Jim Maher was the case agent on this investigation.
“Salvatore Sparacio didn’t make any overt threats, but the implied threat: ‘I’m the boss of the family, you got to pay. I want $120 a week for 10 weeks.'”
The boss offers a repayment plan. Although the mob is charging little more interest than a credit card company, the penalty for defaulting on the loan has a far higher price.
“Vicky, here, take some cake home to your wife, all right?”
For the next 10 weeks, the FBI gives Andrews the money to make his payments. Each time he takes the money to the bookmaker, the FBI records the conversation, building their case against Salvatore Sparacio. Each payment is evidence of the crime of racketeering. But the FBI is not interested in making low-level gambling arrests. They have a much bigger target. The ultimate goal is to destroy the Philadelphia La Cosa Nostra family as a crime problem.
“Okay, hey, boogie, he knows too much. The tactics we use are to attack the hierarchy. The structure is the target, and we attack the target through the hierarchy.”
They need more information, so on Christmas Day, when they know it will be closed, the FBI breaks into the bakery shop.
“We proved to the judge that gambling activity and loan sharking activity was taking place in an Italian bakery. The judge authorized us to put microphones in.”
For the next several months, the FBI records the conversations inside the bakery.
“We began listening to conversations with Salvatore Sparacio, who was claiming to be the boss of the Philadelphia La Cosa Nostra family.”
Although Sparacio claims to be the head of the family, the FBI wire soon makes it clear that Sparacio is not one of the big Philadelphia Mafia bosses. He is little more than an employee. But the FBI doesn’t know who he’s working for. Thinking he can lead them to his boss, the FBI surveillance tracks Sparacio to a law office in Camden, New Jersey. There, he meets with other members of the Philadelphia Mafia, including one man well known to the FBI: John Stanfa.
John Stanfa is a Sicilian immigrant and a made member of the Sicilian Mafia. He worked as a driver for the late Angelo Bruno, aka the “Gentle Don,” former head of the Philadelphia family. Stanfa was implicated in the murder of the former Mafia boss in 1981 and was apprehended in Maryland. He was convicted of perjury in his testimony before a grand jury that was probing Bruno’s death. He went to jail for eight years. When he was released, the Philadelphia Mafia put out a contract on his life for the killing of Bruno. Special agent Fred Walsh is a member of the FBI’s organized crime squad.
“Only through the intercession of his Gambino associates up in New York, the contract was taken off him and he was allowed to live. After Nikki Scarfo went to jail, Stanfa returned to Philadelphia. He went to work in the construction business and laid low for a while. Since he was relatively quiet, when he started to come to power and we started to notice he was making a name for himself, it came as kind of a surprise to us.”
Thanks to the cooperation of the young college student, the FBI has now identified the man they believe is running organized crime in Philadelphia.
“We had put away the previous boss and most of the hierarchy of the family. We felt if we could put Stanfa away that we would go a long way towards the ultimate goal of eliminating the Philadelphia family as a crime problem.”
On the street, informants confirm the FBI suspicion that John Stanfa is the new boss of the Philadelphia Mafia.
“Once you determine that an individual like Stanfa has taken the family over, you want to see how he intends to run it. You contact your informants; see what they can provide.”
Stanfa maintains a low profile. He runs things like the “Gentle Don” before him. He engages in traditional mob activities such as loan sharking, gambling, and extortion. The FBI wants to find out where he is conducting business. According to FBI informants, high-level secret Mafia meetings are being held in the lawyer’s conference room.
“Informants told us that that’s where they were meeting, that they felt secure there. Since it was a lawyer’s office, they felt secure there from FBI eavesdropping. We decided that it would be a very, very good place to put microphones.”
Agents prepare an affidavit to wire the premises.
“We recognize that intruding into a lawyer’s office was extraordinary. The affidavit had to go down to the FBI headquarters; the director of the FBI personally signed off on it.”
A federal judge gives the FBI the green light. Agents install a hidden video camera outside the law office so they can monitor anyone who enters or leaves the building. A special FBI entry unit will install a hidden microphone inside the law offices.
And the FBI agents went home. John Vici ran into John Stanfa’s underboss and one of his soldiers.
“I know a nice place.”
They tell him, “We’ve been looking for you. We want to get you started in your own bookmaking operation. We’re going to show you how to do it. We’re going to go over to this location in South Philadelphia above this meat store.”
For Vici, it was just another late-night business meeting. He wasn’t wearing the wire anymore, and he thought he had nothing to fear.
“Got to get it clear, and we’re safe,” he says.
He goes up to the room. The main guy is sitting down with him at a table, going over figures, telling him how to take bets, how to write stuff down. The underboss excused himself; he has to go to the bathroom. And the door to the bathroom opening—and then he heard the gunshots. Three .22 caliber slugs impacted John Vici’s skull, but he didn’t go down. Vici turns around, looks at the guy, and says, “What the freak are you doing?”
And of course, the shooter, now he’s in shock, so he throws the gun down, and he pulls out a knife.
“Oh my god.”
Vici takes the knife away from him and cuts him and basically incapacitates him and throws him on the ground. He turns to the other guy, the main guy who’s an older guy, and the guy looks at him and he says, “John, John,” he said. “This has all been a mistake. It’s a misunderstanding. We’re gentlemen here; we can settle this.”
And Vici says, “Get out of the way, or I’m going to take you down, too.”
And against all odds, John Vici walks out of the room alive. And that just goes to show you how tough this kid was. I mean, he was tough, and the bullets went into the back of his head, and we later found out they had hit the head and come around. I guess the slugs weren’t as strong. It was .22 caliber, .22 caliber long rifle slug, and he took three in the head and survived.
Two weeks later, ex-Mafia hitman John Vici makes his first appearance before the federal grand jury and testifies against his former crime family. The information he provides is invaluable to the FBI. Vici names names and gives the FBI what they need to move against the Philadelphia mob. When the FBI increases the pressure, other mobsters make deals with the prosecutors and become informants for the FBI, and the dominoes begin to fall. On St. Patrick’s Day in 1994, 24 suspects are arrested on racketeering charges of murder, murder conspiracy, extortion, arson, kidnapping, gambling, and obstruction of justice. Among those arrested is Frank Martines. He’s found guilty of assault and the attempted murder of John Vici. Vincent Pagano is also arrested and found guilty of assault and the attempted murder of John Vici.
“All right, go ahead, FBI have an arrest.”
On the same day, John Stanfa is arrested on racketeering charges of murder, murder conspiracy, extortion, arson, kidnapping, gambling, and obstruction of justice.
“It was a nice, clean, easy sweep. We brought the people in, and we were very satisfied with it.”
Ultimately, 27 people are charged with conspiracy and racketeering under the RICO Act. 24 defendants are either convicted or plead guilty to the charges.
“I felt pretty good that we did make Philadelphia a little bit safer. It was my job, it was my life’s work. I thought we did a good job, and I thought that we served the citizenry very well with what we did. We took a very, very violent group and sent a lot of them to jail for a long, long time, and we made Philadelphia a little safer.”
On July 9th, 1996, John Stanfa is sentenced to five consecutive life terms. He is serving them at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
