Retired Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins interviews former Gambino associate Andrew DiDonato. As he is known on the street, Drew was a premiere car thief for the Nicky Corazzo crew in Brooklyn. He tells the best stories about car chases with cops, stealing a car belonging to Paul Castellano’s son-in-law, and finding a handgun with a book containing handwritten notations about loan shark collections and a lot of cash. Click here to get Andrew’s Book Surviving the Mob

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Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

car, money, friend, nikki, knew, listen, gambino crime family, genovese, bought, life, receipt, robbing, doors, give, hear, stolen, street, crew, told, put

00:00

Hey guys, welcome to Studio I got a heck of a story for you today. This is a guy Andrew de Donato grew was a member of or associate of the Nicki Carazzo crew and the Gambino family for a long time. And he has some stories and and I’m gonna taste them early on or is the best story ever heard about a car chase that he had, but we keep listening about 15 minutes in about the time that he and a buddy his stole a car belonging to the son in law Paul Castellano and in that car when it was a nice Mercedes that guy was, I won’t tell you the story. You got to listen to this story. When they got home, they found stuff in that car that Paul Castellano wanted back and his kappo Nicky Corrado was on the phone before he could even really get in and get back in and look at the car. He knew there was some stuff in the car, I knew there was a bag in the car, Nikki Corrazo said, you know, he just you gotta return that you gotta return that. And so, you know, the story of of what he found and his returning the car. And what happened after that is, it’s tell you this is one you guys got to share with your friends. You got to share this to everybody, this guy and he’s a heck of a storyteller too. So, so settle back and listen to this interview with Andrew DiDonado.

01:23

Friend of mine, Richie had a Mercedes Benz that, you know, on their cell that he was looking to put together, we found one in color, we took it, he took it out of a shopping center, we brought it to the location we were chopping the car, we couldn’t cut it the way we usually do where we can make a Pepsi came out of it. We had actually drive the shell out at night. And we had to get it out because a friend of mine we will use in his family’s garage at the time at this one location. What happened was, we had to signal setup that we were going to go out about two in the morning, a friend of mine was standing on a corner with a flashlight. I’m inside the garage and I’m crimping the why I’m crimping all the oil lines to the oil lines don’t squirt, and you know leave a trail back to the garage where we chopped the car. And then my friend comes up to me and says bottom line that you didn’t want to hear and your whole wildest dreams because we listened to I need that steering wheel. Like I can’t give it a steering wheel. I said I got to drive this car out. Because listen, it’s a wood wheels and naughty wheel. He goes it’s gonna cost about 500 If I gotta buy in the store. I said all right, right take this the steering wheel off the car and I put a vise grip on now the car’s got no seats in it just a shell engine is no trunk deck. There’s no hook. There’s no doors. There’s no not a friend of mine is standing outside. With a flashlight. He gives me the old gold single that it’s able to come out of the driveway. I come out of the driveway with a car I hit the hit the top of the street. I make a left I’m at the corner. I’m waiting for the other thing to let me know. In a corner my eye. I see. I see undercover cop on the corner. Also and I see excuse my language Gary, see the lights go on. I hit the gas and I’m taking off down the street. I must be going about a buck 10 I’m flying. All I hear is the guy behind me with it with a siren will will pull it over, pull it off. I’m flying. Sit on a milk crate. I got this. I got this car and I’m trying to steal I’m trying to steer this car with a vise grips. I’m flying and I’m going through. And if anybody knows the Canarsie area where I grew up, I’m going through. I’m on 85th Street at forestry 83rd Street I’m blowing red lights and red traffic screeching. Now it’s like 132 o’clock in the morning. But you never know what you’re going to do. Now I’m coming down railfan with you. I’m gonna close Ralph and flatland Ralph and Glenwood. Of course the Ralph in Glenwood. If anybody knows Brooke, and they know Ralph, he was one of the busiest intersections in the in, in Brooklyn. I’m flying. And all I hear is the cop car behind the earth. He hits the brake I go through I get about two blocks and I knew I had at this time the oil lines shoot out on the car. I get about full blocks I turned down the street, I jump out of the car I run down and now there’s a blue and white woman up the block because they see the smoke from the vehicle by staying behind a pole when I’m watching them fly to the vehicle. The vehicles on fire now it’s it’s it’s it’s smoking like crazy. I run to the corner. A friend of mine picks me up on the corner I jump in, I jump in the back seat, I lay down and we drive away. And I kept on saying to myself if they catch me they’re gonna beat the shit Adam. I got lucky because I should have been murdered that night because I’m going through these red lights like like I had a license to do so. And the traffic is screeching I’m going I’m off. I’m about a buck 10 A buck 15 Did on a milk crate the car behind me and then we cross that major intersection. He just didn’t want to do it. I went through it was like Mr. Magoo. I went right through and I was lucky as hell. I can be honest with you. It was just a frame it was just sitting on donut tires we do baloney tires on it. It just the engine shown it was just sitting on a milk crate on top of the engine. We will take out the windshield I there was no trunk deck, no nose, no doors or seats. No nothing. No I said drive them out once in a while but that was my closest time to get pinched. No that was the closest time to get pinched on that. You know but I tell you even this today, anti Crime cop would come by, and they knew it was us. He just did surveillance on the corner we had a social club on 90 Nursery named when you Well, every time I would get into my car they were pulling me over because he knew it was me. And they started harassing me. You know, if they knew it was me they just couldn’t prove it. But I got lucky. Did I lock ran my luck ran out quick. Believe me. That was one of the only times I got lucky. Other than that, I paid for everything I did. I must have drove about maybe if the 60 shells out. And then the rest of the cars we chop. No, we had a guy for every podcast, we had a guy who took the engines. We had a guy who took the scrap metal. We had a guy who took the tires and the wheels. We had a guy who took all the we took all the batteries we had you know we would sell we would sell the nose the the doors, the trunk lead, we would sell it as a package. All the other stuff got scrapped, we would cut it and we made money on every aspect of the automobile. Every aspect you know nothing went to waste and we made it we made a ton of money in the the car industry doing that and then also buying repairable cars. No years ago there were repairable business, goodbye, a stolen recovery from an insurance company, as the car needed some work to a dealer knows a door, whatever. You get the car for like 3500 Back then Well, the book value on the car say was 17,000 Gary, I will go out that night, rob the same exact car in color, often next to each other. I started these two kids in my neighborhood, we used to build the cars for me using my $1,000 to build it. They put the cost together. And then I go and sell that coffee book value. years ago, they didn’t have rebuildable on the license like today, if you did that in a salvage yard, you’d have to declare that it was a salvage title. years ago, you didn’t have to do that. But when the customer bought the car, they unbeknownst to them that the car was put together with stolen pots. Nobody knew I was making a fortune with it. This is funny. One day I I buy this car was 1984 Seville this how far back I’m going it was at 1984. So go buy the car, put the car together, put the car together and I sell it to a friend of mine a crew member of mine. I sell it to him he’s going to give it to his sister is this has got the car a month, and he does an insurance job on the car. When he does the insurance job on the car. When alive. Gary, I had this organization come to my house that I never knew existed. My doorbell rings one day and the guys on the other end adores it. It looks just like a detective writes, I said, What can I do for you? And he tells me that listen, he goes on from the National auto theft bureau. I never heard of the national auto. You’re on my life. I know them.

07:35

I says, I says well, what can I do for you? He goes well, I understand that you’re in the rebuildable business. I said I wouldn’t say I’m in the business. So it says more or less a hobby. I says I buy a car here and there. I says when I can find one that doesn’t need much work. I put it together when I try to make a few bucks. He goes well, I’m looking at this car takes a file out of his jacket. And he puts the file on my on my kitchen table and he opens it up because you don’t know anything about this car. I said yes. And you know it. And I said you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that I bought this car. I bought it. He was well, these are the pictures of your car when you bought it. So he had the pictures and everything. I said all right. And so what do you what are you telling me? He goes well, this car needed a nose needed four doors, it needs a trunk deck, it needs an interior, because you have a receipt for any of these things that you did. So you know what I might have one or two receipts upstairs. And the funny thing is Gary years ago, Adelaide had an addition called the Gold Key package. And the Gold Key package was old emblems, old keys, old doorknobs. And that’s what I had on the vehicle. I think I was missing like an emblem or two. And I had to buy cigarette lighters for the backs of the back seats. It was cigarette lighters and the doors had the receipts to those so I give them the receipt and so this and this is all I got because this is all you got to build the whole car and all you got is receipts for cigarette lighters. So I didn’t think I was gonna need to receipt. He goes well I got news for you. But if you’re going to keep on repairing cars, because I’m going to be watching you you’re going to need every week. From that moment on he put me out of business this guy, but whenever I bought a car or stolen recoveries ever put it in a friend of mines name, this way would never come back to me because this guy was on my case from that moment on. I couldn’t do it no more the way that I used it. Now instead I just started in today’s world, you can fabricate a receipt, but if you get caught fabricating a receipt, or if you get caught, is that what they call 907 A police inspection. That’s an order for you to get you a title for the Kabini it was a stolen recovery. So you had to go to the police inspection. After you put the car together. I had a few friends of mine who left the police inspection in handcuffs because they left the paperwork from the car they stole inside underneath the seat because we’re the manufacturer with the interiors in a put like papers in the headliner, papers in the seat papers behind the door panels. So you have to make sure when you’re putting these pots on the new car, you have to make sure that these papers Don’t stay in those parks because then you’re gonna get caught when you go to the police inspection. You couldn’t fabricate a receipt, unless you knew the guy because you could never change. somebody’s giving you up on a bad receipt when they do the investigation and then you pinch and you’re done. Yeah, I was about high school. I was high school. I might have been about the ninth grade. I was just because ninth grade was pretty much like I lingered in school, Gary, but I never went. I think I might have went one day out there. The whole school year. I was never in school. I was in the street, trying to make money. That’s what I was doing back then. And what happened was I had a lot of friends of mine from the neighborhood who were already a lot of Gambino crime family as far as you know, low level feeling is going doing their thing and turning in and going to the the guy in our neighborhood. His name was Nicolas Carazo. He was a high ranking member of the Gambino crime family back then. Also, where I live was a pivotal situation for me because I lived real four doors away from Nicky’s Brother Jojo was also a Gambino crime family member. And I was very good friends with Joe Joe’s two children. One became a lawyer, his name was Joseph. And the other one was Rocco. They will they were my neighbors. Everybody knew me from the neighborhood and knew I was already committing crimes and doing things at night I would go out at night. My stepfather had a panel van, and I would go out at night and I would go you know, back then, I was steel bumpers off cars. I was stealing batteries out of cars. I was stealing a Mercedes Benz tires and stuff like that. And I had a guy to sell at a guy the junkyard to sell the bumpers to the Cadillacs and another guy who I would sell the other parts to. Back then there was a lot of credit card fraud. There was a lot of credit card stuff going around. I had a guy I could give a credit card to he would give me cash, the full amount of what the credit card could hold. I would give I would split it with him. I’d keep the money he’d keep the other half. So I was I was making moves. And as I was making these moves, a friend of mine comes to me one day, he tells me he said listen, he goes, we’re getting ready to go to East New York and Nikki’s club, he says and as we spoke to me, he wants you to come up there with us. He wants to speak to you about some. So you know at that time, I didn’t know if I did something wrong, or what it was, but had a goal. So I go I go to the club in East New York, and I know he’s my friend Joseph, my friend, Joe, Joe’s uncle. So I go there and I say hello, and I you know how you doing? I said, my name is Andrew. I says, No. He goes, Listen, Katie goes, all your friends are here. All your friends come to see me twice a week. He says I hear good things about your goals. I know what you’re doing out there. He goes, I’m going to tell you, he goes from here on and I want you to know you can come here. But whatever it is that you’re doing yours if anybody bothers you, or what you’re doing, you come them to see me. He goes from here on and he goes, I want you to think of this as school. He goes, this is just like school. He goes in in school, you’re never absent. You say because somebody here needs you. When we have these meetings, and you’re not here, you’re not being a good friend. He says and you can learn a lot of valuable things. Here you go. So you understand. He says You’re welcome. Here you come all the time. And from that day on, I was a member of the Nicholas Carazo crew inside Gambino crime family, I started committing more crimes. And as I started to age, my clients became more intense. And, you know, we were taking more chances and doing more things we went to, we started shaking down a drug dealers and stuff of that nature and collected money from drug rings. And what we would do is we would take one drug dealer, when we would tax him say 1000 a week, we would take another drug dealer that we would tax and 500 a week because his business wasn’t as big. And we will put them together with this drug dealer and make them network. So now we can make this cat, this guy, don’t make it as much as this guy. So this way we could tax him 1000. And then whenever we needed to make a move, we tell this guy to give us 30 pounds of marijuana that we’re gonna go sell privately held this guy to give us two, two kilos of cocaine to go and do this. That’s how we made our money. And Nikki was smart because we were young at the time, he wouldn’t take the money on a daily basis, he would take the money as a gift setting, we bring the money for Christmas wrap of an envelope, or what we did most of the year, so those envelopes would be fat. All the times we would give the money to Nikki, Nikki son in law, or somebody like that close to him where it didn’t go directly to him. But we knew that that money was getting turned into him because he knew every one of our activities. So between the chop shops shaking down at a drug deal is burglaries, that GupS whatever it is that we were doing. piece would always get kicked up and then they told us the proper etiquette about picking up a certain fee or what it’s going to be that goes to your boss at the time. I believe it keeping score? Good

15:03

question. That was a question I’ve always had. I’ve always had this question about that. Kicking up to the boss, I know what happens. And you know, all the major cities where there’s a family goes by rank goes by randomly. So yeah, but now how do you decide how much is there, you indicated there was a protocol, what

15:21

happens is this, I can be honest with you, I can be honest, what you doing the guy I know who was a street guy, we never gave an accurate an accurate count, you wouldn’t be a real Street guy, if you gave an accurate count. If you were a guy who gave the boss, every gut, every dollar that you made, you’re a bumbling idiot, because you’re out there risking your neck every day. So what happens is, we would just, we would together, we would never want the other crew member to think that we’re trying to be greedy. So we would all come to a vote and what we’re going to give, and this way, everybody is culpable. This way, we all know, okay, if we get in trouble for not giving enough, then we’ll just all go to the carpet together. And then we can rectify it, you didn’t want to seem like a greedy guy, you want to be a team player. And of course, you’re looking to impress this guy insurance guy that you know how the system works. But I’ll tell you, I said this 1000 times, in the morning, I opened my eyes to the time that I closed them at night, all we did about all we thought about was stealing how to make a move, how to maneuver, how to swindle, how to do whatever it took to make $1. And the only thing that we had in common was that we are all criminals. We’re all thieves. And we’re all trying to keep ourselves safe from law enforcement people like yourself, Gary. So that’s why we stuck together. Because in numbers, you have, you know, two heads are better than one mentality. And as you think things through, you can be smarter criminals, and do what you need to do, to keep out of harm’s way from the police, and from the FBI in any sort of open investigation. And we sit under the radar for a long time, because Nikki himself was a very low key guy. You know, listen, it is what it is, you know, things played out in my life brings me to where I am now. And I’m believing I’m happy with my life. But if I stood in that life, I wouldn’t want to be with anybody else. That guy was meant for that life. That guy came out of the womb against, I could tell you that straight up at the end of the day in the life and not respect for the guy. But at the end of the day. For me, I was expendable to him because I was one of many moving parts that he controlled. That’s the nature of the game. They were. Yeah, give me for instance, when lions eat the most powerful leads first, right? The most powerful lead first. So you make sure you kick up first. And then whatever, you have to do it in such a way where like I said, we would never doing things on our own like that only till I got much older and deep into the game that I started doing things on my own later on in my criminal color career, whatever you want to call it. I was involved in bank robbery activity, and I’m going to keep it I’m going to keep it straight to you. I wasn’t going to put my balls on the line and give this guy every dollar that I made. Knowing that I was out there putting my life on the line. This guy was home with his family. I’m gonna give him a decent amount of cut but I’m not going to be nobody’s fool or I’m not the stealing. And I’m still hungry because of my so called predicate on on kicking up the ladder. If you get caught you get clipped. There’s no doubt about it. You want to clip you over it. And Nikki was under the guise that I was holding back money. So the guys that I was dealing with we had a pretty eclectic crew of guys that we were doing these robberies with and we had you guys from the Genovese crew, me from the Gambino crew. We had another guy from the banana crew. So we had a real a collective for guys. But the nucleus of it was Genovese guys, when Nikki was pretty much how I knew I was on the hit parade was Nikki was investigating the money I was making. And he was sending His Son in law route to bosses in the Genovese crew try to find out how much it was making us specific scores. But I’ll tell you one thing about the Genovese guys, those guys never gave me up. Those guys stood their ground and told Nikki they didn’t know what he was talking about. They told Nikki Listen, we don’t know what kind of scores you’re talking about. All we know is that the kid all we know is that the kid solid and we wish we could have them over here. If you want to release them release them. We’ll take them. And I think that if you’re already at an even more than I was building these alliances, and now I’m really in the threat because now I’m making money. He doesn’t know what I’m making. I’m doing all these things. And then at the time, I had some other information on him about a double homicide that my crew was involved in. So I knew that I was on a you know, I was on the shortlist. The shortlist did get clipped, I accidentally released me a few times and no one has answered me was and your life you ran so his answer to me was this. He said listen, I’m going to tell you like it is he says if idle Like you, I would entertain it for a second, but I don’t. He said, So understand this will born here will die here was his exact words. So when he told me that I knew that I was going to have a hard way to go, because now he’s mad at the fact that I tried to get rid me. And if you’re trying to get released from him, you know this. So what happened was, you wanted me to implement a few guys from my crew to come and do these bank, you know, the, you know, the bank activity with me. And I told them straight out, right, it’s a really says, You want me to bring somebody around here. I’m here to go and do these things with guys that allowed me to come with them to do these things. I said, first of all, let me give you some ABC News. I says I went to your son in law. About four months ago, I told him that I had a score on a night deposit box on on a bank in Brooklyn. I says and I told him, Don’t with me. I’ll earn money fan. I’ll make them drive or do something. I says a Nobody said to me, he told me that I only Desperados rob banks. I said I thought we were fucking men here. I said he told me I was at Desperado for robbing a bank. I says, I looked at him. And I was like, well, we can all get it easy. We can all get gifts from my father in laws, were going to feed us the rest of our lives. We got to make a we got to make a living on our own. That’s when I never looked at his son in law, never the same again. And his son Elora me were childhood friends. And that’s when I knew that this kid had a different mentality. You know, he’s marrying the boss’s daughter. He’s gonna get it easy the rest of his life, whether he admits it or not, and God bless him. I bless him, he got to do the things that I got to do. But at the end of the day, at least keep it real. I tried to put you on to a score, and call me a Desperado. This guy’s yelling at me for not bringing nobody around. So I want to tell him I tried to take you only me out to dry with kids together in the street. They give money a whole life. Step Up be a man and say, Hey, you offered to take me. He never said a word. You know. So we have a lot of variables. A lot of moving parts, guys. It really is. Let me tell you something. I’ll tell you exactly what it was. We were. We were in a diner and we were in a diner and Canarsie. We were on.

22:12

We said go to this diner right off the highway Canarsie right. And what happened was, we will go and meet Nicky and have the meetings at the diner just meet meet each other old times in the night or whatever. So we’re in the Dinah. We’re waiting for Nikki to show up. And another friend of ours comes in and he tells me another two of my friends. He goes, You guys are still in the car business said yeah. What’s the one car business? He says? Well, there’s a Mercedes outside running. There’s some guy on the telephone. He’s not paying attention. He goes this call. It’s brand new. So we looked at each other. It was an opportunity. We walked outside. My friend Mike walked down the stairs first. My friend Mike walks over to the driver’s side of the car. I walk in front of gentleman on the phone between him and the passenger seat of the car, blocking him. He sees my jumper to the car he makes a move to try to run for the car and give him like soda like a hip check to get him out of the way. He falls down on one knee and grabs the door handle or Mike is already driving away. I run around the corner I get the chase car. I follow Mike to my house. We get to the house. We pull in we don’t think anything we do the normal look through the car. We keep the car on the side of the house. We’re going to wait till later we’re probably going to chop it the next morning. We look in real quick we don’t see anything is a bag in the bag. We’re going to wait till later we go upstairs. No sooner we go upstairs or in my house. My phone rings about five minutes later on rings. Nikki on the phone. Nikki never calls me at anytime we’re going to speak to each other. It’s going to be in person. He calls me so Listen kid, he goes without problem. He also you will just die and I said yeah, he goes you got that thing for the day. And I said yeah, he goes, Listen, I can’t get into it. But it’s got to go back and I’m on the phone and my friends are listening in on it. We’re all looking at each other like dumbfounded because I can’t explain it to you now, but it goes back. So he’s the boss. We’re looking at each other. Now where may we hang up the phone? We’re sitting there. We’re looking at each other like what should we do? Only a car no big deal we can get on a Mercedes anytime. On rings. Two minutes later again. He says is listen. Angel goes inside that car. In the trunk. Is a bag inside that bag. Not look in that bag. Okay? Don’t look in that bag. You can’t tell kids look in a bed. Go downstairs we go to the car open it up I look I take the bag I bring it upstairs. We go when you open up the glove box to we open up the glove box in his wallet inside. We take them both upstairs. We’re sitting and we’re looking through the wallet. Nothing fazes us. The license plate said bought one. The license plates are caught. So we’re looking we open up the bag and inside the bags once we open it there’s a 38 on top hammerless 38 We take the hammerless 38 Put it down. We look in this stuff when envelopes. to open up the first envelope, when he 500, that can envelope 750 or below 5000 Watt envelope. And the list goes on and on and on. After all is said and done is at 7000 in the bag, oh my god on the bottom of the bag. On the bottom of the bag, there’s a legible phone rings again, it’s a woman you, whatever you do, don’t open up that book. It’s a book in dojo. So now we’re reading this book, and we’re looking at each other. We don’t know what to do, right? My friend is going through the wall, and we’re looking at a wallet. And it’s a picture of this young guy. He’s too nice looking women, an old men. And we’re looking, my friend goes, this can be. So when you’re talking about this can be he shows me the picture to be told podcast Donaldson in the picture. I looked at him I says, Can’t Be This is like, this is like winning the lottery. Finding out that the lottery was not the lottery, you just won a first class ticket to the resurrection.

26:01

This is like, this is like robbing the mob movie here.

26:05

It was Paul’s nephew. He was in charge of making the rounds and picking up stuff. And of course, that money was supposed to go directly to Paul, actually, the money was for one of Paul’s businesses make a long story short, he tells us listen, sit tight. We’ll get back in touch with you in a few minutes. We’ll let you know what what to do. But don’t worry about it, we’re going to take care of it. I apologize. I apologize to all you guys says. Because I would never ever tell you to give anything us ever stole back. You said this is the only person in the world that we ever have to give anything back to, I promise you that instead of the President of the United States. It’s robbed by you guys don’t have to give nothing back. He said, But this guy goes back. We all laughed, you know, whatever, you know, it was a joke. And we’re looking at each other. And still, at last Nino hot was sitting in, we’re still trying to figure out how to keep this money, where young kids were in the street all our lives. And you know, we’re trying to keep with thinking about what we could do what we could do. Finally, my mother who always minds up business comes downstairs and she hears us in the kitchen. And my mother says never get involved in your affairs. She goes, but I hear you talk and hear about the stupidest things that you guys could ever think about doing. He says, get this money back. This man is going to peel your skin back. But it’s money. We’re looking at each other. And finally, like, first same voice in the room appeared when my mother showed me arranged a meeting the next day we bring the money back. So now we’re thinking about okay, when we get to this meeting, are they going to kill us now? No, you know what digging about all these things are going through your head. So I go to the meeting and I ain’t gonna lie. I’m loaded for bear and my friends load us up. And we said to each other, if we see anything funny, we’re just going to shoot our way out to go there. And you know, it’s we’re going out swinging, we’re going out, whatever it’s going to be. So we come set up a meet. First car pulls up is this guy bought? He gets out of the car, or whatever it goes to speak to Nikki. It goes speak to him whatever they do. They come in, you give them the bag. And we told him Listen, it’s only $10 Mrs. God, you had no gas. We took $10 out of the money to get gas for your car. Oh, you’re bold. You’re but the car was at a gate. And we took all the bullets. We took all the bullets out of the 38 and kept the bullets and we gave him the gun back and everything. And he looked at us and he said no just nodded his head. Thank you when he got back into call if we didn’t hear anything about it. So about 24 I think 24 hours passes. The next day is something I’m in my house and the doorbell rings and when the doorbell rings, I answer it. There’s some guy on the other end of the door and he says you Andrew I said yeah, I’m Andrew goes I got some point on between the screen do I got a gun in my hand. And he goes I got some point. I’m thinking yeah, I got some for you too. Not knowing, see this van outside, he goes back downstairs opens up the door. And he gave us all a basket of fruit or being honorable. So I didn’t know it. Relax My friend. You get a basket of fruit and we were all mad because we thought we were gonna get like a finder’s fee or something or some sort of pay day. Well at least returned in the money. Oh, we got his phone. I remember telling Nikki we went up the club that weekend. Remember, tell me? How are we supposed to pay off our bills with fruit and pay the bills with fruit? And Nikki said listen, he said I got a message for you. That guy said you guys got a feather in your cap and just got a fever coming? Well, I would. I would assume that the way that I was back then buckwild the way we were running in the street. I must occasion in that favor about 20 times in the first three months within about within that year. Oh, Paul was murdered. And then I remember when Paul was murdered. We were sitting in a room one day we were saying we know this guy was getting married. He really could have stood away for a year. But then my friend turns around he goes he goes yeah, but then John Gotti would have wanted the money to pay one way or another. Yeah. You can’t wait That’s the type of life it is you know one head gets cut off the other one pops up and wants the same kind of money so it doesn’t it does

30:06

well Andrew this has been gold and I right sir want to let you get on about your business and I appreciate it if there’s ever anything I can do for you don’t hesitate to get ahold of me and you

30:16

I will never copy that and I would love to hear it

30:19

I will What I’ll do is when I put it up and then I’ll send you a link and you can download it then you can have your own copy of it. How about that?

30:30

All my best to you and your family guys happy holiday be safe Okay, show you a good new year with all the help in the world. Okay, you

30:36

too. Well hey guys, that was a heck of a story that are three stories. This he’s a fun guy he was he was most fun interview I ever had I met him several years ago at a at the very first mob con in Las Vegas. My good friend Denny Griffin had was the guy that that helped him write his book. So you know I’m we became friends then and then we did the interview and I did this interview a long time ago and I put it down on my old podcast way back when and it’s long gone now they take him down after a period of time you only see keep somebody up so I thought I’d redo this one and I think it’s worth it it was it was a really good story is really good insight into the life of a mafia associated in the Gambino crime family. So thanks a lot guys. And don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So watch out for your motorcycles when you’re out there. And if you have a problem with PTSD and you get into service Why go to the Pete go to the VA website stumbled over my words there didn’t go to the VA website and get that hotline. They got some help there. So thanks a lot guys. Guys

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