The world of snitches is a murky one in the US justice system.
Law enforcement at both the federal and local levels have wide discretion for dealing with
informants.
For providing information and participating in stings, informants are granted reduced
or lenient sentences, given payouts or sometimes sent to witness protection.
There are many that say using informants perverts the criminal justice process, that criminals
are incentivized to lie.
Results have been wide ranging, tips from informants have cracked notorious crime rings
wide open.
On the other hand, informants have lied helping to wrongly convict or even cause death to
innocent people.
Here are some stories about criminals turned informants that run the gauntlet from crazy
to tragic.
During the first half of the 20th century, the American mafia thrived mainly due to their
code of omerta and their ability to successfully bribe various officials.
Much of the secrecy came to an end when Joseph Valachi, a small time New York gangster spilled
the beans.
Over several years Joe worked as a getaway driver, enforcer and hitman for various criminal
enterprises including the Lucchese and Luciano crime families.
In 1959, Joe went to prison for heroin trafficking.
In 1962, suspecting Joe of being a rat, a fellow prisoner who was a Genovese crime boss
put out a hit on him, promising a $100,000 bounty.
Scared, Joe beat his alleged assassin to death with a length of pipe--but he had the wrong
inmate.
Still incarcerated and a sitting duck, as well now looking at a life sentence for murder,
a desperate Joe turned state’s evidence.
Per an agreement with the government, Joe pled guilty to a charge of second-degree manslaughter
and began working with the US Department of Justice.
Eventually, in 1963 Joe testified before the Senate Government Operations Permanent subcommittee
and explained the structure, history and inner workings of the Mafia.
The hearings were broadcast live on TV.
The mafia was an open secret in Italian American communities, but now for the first time ever
the federal government and the public had irrefutable evidence that American Mafia existed.
Joe’s testimony helped indict hundreds of mobsters and helped to change the culture
of the mafia, cracking the code of silence wide open.
Over time other mobsters also began flipping.
For his pains, Joe was sent to a Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna, a low security prison
near El Paso, Texas.
There he served his sentence in air-conditioned prison suite, until he died of a heart attack
in 1971.
Joe definitely wasn’t the only mobster to become a snitch.
Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano rose to become an underboss in the Gambino crime family
and then blabbed about it.
Among other illegal deeds such as extortion and fraud, Sammy was involved in 19 murders.
On December 11, 1990, during a raid FBI agents and NYPD detectives arrested Sammy, John Gotti
and Frank Locascio, Gotti’s right hand man.
Sammy was charged with racketeering while Gotti and Frank among other things were charged
with 5 murders, bribery and tax evasion.
Ultimately, during Gotti’s trial, Sammy ended up testifying for the prosecution, implicating
Gotti and many other high ranking mafiosos.
His testimony created a domino effect and many other mobsters came forward to corroborate
his words.
Gotti and Locascio were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole
and a $250,000 fine.
In the end, over 35 mobsters were convicted and imprisoned, including high ranking members
of the Gambino, Colombo, DeCalvacante, and Lucchese families.
In light of his confessions and testimony on the witness stand, Sammy received a sweetheart
5 year sentence.
Some claim that Sammy didn’t snitch in hopes of leniency; he just really wanted to take
Gotti down a few pegs.
Apparently during a pretrial hearing wiretaps from the FBI were played including a section
where Gotti badmouthed Sammy and he got offended.
As Sammy had already served 4 years in prison during the trials, he ended up serving less
than a year after being sentenced.
After Sammy got out, he went into the U.S. federal Witness Protection Program.
He assumed the name Jimmy Moran and was sent to Tempe, Arizona where he started a swimming
pool installation company.
Chafing under the restrictions of Witness Protection, less than a year later Sammy left
the program.
Sammy started using his real name and began living openly.
He gave interviews to the media--even consulting on a biography being writing about him.
But soon Sammy fell into his old ways and started an ecstasy trafficking organization.
In 2000, the drug ring was busted-Sammy and 47 other ring members were arrested on federal
and state drug charges.
On September 7, 2002, Sammy was sentenced in New York to 20 years in federal prison,
to run concurrently with a 19-year Arizona sentence.
After 17.5 years behind bars, much of it spent in solitary confinement, Sammy was released
on September 18, 2017.
He remains on federal parole.
The actions of this next informant set off a chain of events which had long term repercussions
for the Atlanta police department.
In November of 2006, a small time drug dealer Fabian Sheats was busted by a narcotics teams
from the Atlanta PD.
Fabian had been arrested twice before in the last 4 months for selling drugs in the same
spot in a crime ridden neighborhood in northwest Atlanta,
Depending on whom you ask, his 3rd arrest was a sham, the drugs were allegedly planted
by the police.
Either way, Fabian was pressured by the police to provide information.
Fabian pointed out a nearby modest house on Neal Street as a place where he had purchased
cocaine.
Fabian wasn’t officially a confidential informant and his tip was sketchy so the police
fabricated details on the affidavit to get a judge to sign off on a “no-knock” warrant.
On the dark evening of November 21, 2006, 8 plainclothes officers from the narcotics
team broke down the front door to raid the house.
The lone resident 92 year old Kathryn Johnston was terrified and fired an old pistol her
family had given her for protection.
The cops fired back 39 shots, fatally wounding her.
No cop was injured by Kathryn, although officers sustained injuries from friendly fire.
The cops handcuffed Kathryn as she lay dying on the floor.
They planted marijuana in the house when they could find no evidence of a drug operation.
The police also got an informant Alex White to lie and say he had purchased cocaine at
Kathryn’s house.
Alex, who had been a confidential informant for several different law enforcement agencies
on and off for years, had federal contacts.
When he realized that Atlanta PD were dirtying Kathryn to justify the raid, he alerted the
ATF and shortly therefore appeared on WAGA Channel 5, Atlanta’s Fox affiliate to tell
his story.
With Alex’s help, the tireless urging of the Johnston family and a public concerned
about unnecessary police violence during raids, investigators slowly unraveled the scheme.
Ultimately, a federal probe of the Atlanta police department revealed a culture of corruption.
Atlanta PD often lied to obtain search warrants, including falsifying affidavits.
In 2009, three former police officers from the narcotics team went to prison for manslaughter
and other charges surrounding falsification for their roles in the raid.
Among other changes, new regulations were instituted at the Atlanta PD, a civilian review
board was created and Georgia state senate voted to tighten warrant requirements.
The family of Kathryn Johnston successfully sued the city of Atlanta with wrongful death
lawsuit and won $4.9 million.
Sadly, this is not the only informant operation where authorities abused their power.
During a traffic stop on February 22, 2007, Florida police busted 23 year old college
student Rachel Hoffman for .9 oz of cannabis (25 g).
Rachel was ordered to a court supervised drug program.
A year later she failed a mandatory drug test and on April 17, 2008 an anonymous tip complaining
about pot smoking neighbors led to police finding 5.328 oz (151.7 grams) of cannabis,
and 4 ecstasy pills in her apartment.
About a week later Rachel graduated from Florida State University with a degree in Criminal
Justice and Psychology.
Facing several years in prison, Rachel agreed to be a confidential informant and buy 1,500
ecstasy pills, 2 ounces of cocaine, and a handgun in a buy–bust operation.
By all accounts, though Rachel struggled with drugs, she was not involved in a criminal
or dangerous lifestyle and was ill prepared for the sting.
The operation went badly, and Rachel was killed by the suspects with the gun she was suppose
to buy.
Eventually the police who oversaw the operation were found to be negligent, leading to Rachel’s
death.
They were suspended with pay.
The 2 suspects in Rachel’s murder received life sentences in prison.
In 2009 the state of Florida passed Rachel’s Law, which provides rules in how law enforcement
in Florida use informants.
Rachel’s family also successfully sued the city of Tallahassee with a wrongful death
lawsuit and won $2.6 million.
On June 7, 2011, in his lower East Side apartment Hector Monsegur was arrested by the FBI for
trafficking stolen credit-card information.
However, the arrest was simply the FBI’s opening gambit, what they really wanted was
to interrogate Hector about his illegal online activities as the notorious hacker Sabu who
co-founded the black hat computer hacking group LulzSec.
Worried about his younger cousins whom he was the legal guardian of, Hector agreed to
cooperate with the FBI as they investigated various hacker groups.
These groups included Lulzsec which was responsible for several audacious attacks, including hacking
Fox.com and compromising user accounts from Sony Pictures.
A few days after his arrest, Hector entered a guilty plea to 12 criminal charges, including
multiple counts of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking.
He faced up to 124 years in prison.
For the next 10 months, Hector aka Sabu was a double agent, continuing to maintain his
online persona while providing the FBI with information to aid in identifying hackers.
Due to Hector’s help, the FBI was able to arrest 5 hackers associated with the group
Anonymous, LulzSec and Antisec.
Tips from Hector also aided UK authorities in arresting hackers.
On March 6, 2012, the FBI announced the arrests and unnamed law enforcement officials outed
Hector as an informant.
Hector was immediately reviled online and in real life harassed by paparazzi.
The FBI relocated him.
However, in May of 2012, the FBI caught wind of a blog Hector was writing about them.
Hector’s bail was revoked, and he was sent to the New York Metropolitan Correctional
Center, where he remained for 7 months.
When Hector was released, he was forbidden to use a computer.
Finally Hector was sentenced on May 27, 2014; he was given "time served" for his cooperation
with the FBI and received one year of probation with his computer usage being monitored.
Once the year was up, Hector tried getting a job in cybersecurity, but initially his
criminal record and notorious reputation made companies reluctant to give him a chance.
Finally he was able to find employment with a company deploying white hat hackers to test
client networks.
Our final tale of a snitch is about a man who unleashed a scandal that’s still reverberating
through the American educational system.
In 2018, police raided Morrie Tobins multi-million dollar home looking for evidence that he was
the ringleader of a pump and dump security fraud scam that had defrauded investors of
millions of dollars.
Facing a maximum 65 year prison sentence and a 7 figure fine, in hopes of leniency, Tobin
gave investigators a tip alerting them to a crazy fraud racket that hadn’t been on
the authorities’ radar at all.
Morrie told the feds that the head women’s soccer coach at Yale had sought a bribe in
return for getting his daughter into the Ivy League school.
To help corroborate his claim, Morrie ended up wearing a wire and meeting with Yale soccer
coach Rudy Meredith in a Boston hotel.
During the meeting Rudy promised he could designate Morrie’s daughter as a recruit
for the team in exchange for $450,000.
Caught on a recording, Rudy agreed to cooperate with the feds and eventually led them to Rick
Singer, a college consultant and ringleader of the admission bribery scheme.
Thus began Operation Varsity Blues.
In the spring of 2019, 51 people were charged in a conspiracy to illegally influence undergraduate
admissions decisions at several top US universities through cheating on admissions exams and faking
athetic profiles.
Among the 33 parents charged were Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughton.
Felicity pled guilty and received a 14 day sentence, a one year supervised release, a
$30,000 fine and 250 hours of community service.
The cases of Lori and several other conspirators are still pending and the investigation continues.
Morrie pled guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud, but received no charges in the college
admission scheme.
Currently he’s subject to a $4 million dollar forfeiture and his sentencing is still pending.
Do you think criminal informants should be paid for their tips?
Tell us in the comments!
Now go watch “What ACTUALLY Happens in Witness Protection!”
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