Throughout this country’s organized crime history, there have always been informants. Without such informants, law enforcement’s efforts to curtail underworld rackets would be almost fruitless in their attempt to investigate, arrest, and convict mobsters before the bar of justice. For many decades, the so-called Sicilian iron-clad code of Omertà was the protective vest that successfully insulated mafiosi in Italy and America from prosecution and imprisonment.
In 1963, Genovese soldier Joseph Valachi would publicly break that code and his vow of silence, and for the first time in this country, Cosa Nostra would be exposed for the American public and the world to see. His sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate Hearings and the Family charts listing the membership of the notorious Five Families and other Families throughout the United States were groundbreaking. This event would start a groundswell and become the spark that ignited a sustained law enforcement crackdown on the Mafia and the underworld in general that continues to this very day, more than fifty-five years later.
Although Valachi was the first “made” member to publicly expose Cosa Nostra, others had previously provided varying amounts of inside information on the brotherhood. The FBI held this information “close to the breast,” never revealing its knowledge or the reality of this underworld “government within a government.”
By the late 1970s, law enforcement first started to learn how to utilize a powerful new weapon in their arsenal against the mob that had been enacted by Congress in 1970: a multi-pronged draconian law named RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Oganizations Act), named after Rico Bandello, the character played by Edward G. Robinson in the iconic 1930s film Little Caesar.
RICO, along with other vastly enhanced conspiracy, usury, extortion, tax evasion, criminal contempt, preventive detention, and a newly formed WITSEC program (witness protection program)… would collectively be the knockout punch to penetrate and finally dismantle the crime Families as never before. These “tools” would shatter the once sacred ranks of “The Honored Society” and create unprecedented legions of informants.
The list presented below are many of those “informants, cooperators, stool pigeons, rats, backstabbers and Benedict Arnolds”, who, by any other name, when the shoe laces got tightened, conveniently chose to join good old Uncle Sam rather than stay the course they’d chosen and man up, adhering to the vow they’d taken.
This list is by no means complete, but does name many of the informants from all the Families in the New York metropolitan area over the decades and other areas throughout the country (and Italy). (We’ve even included a growing photo gallery for your enjoyment.)
