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Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family Paperback – September 29, 2009
But long before Joaquin "Jack" Garcia found himself wearing a wire with some of the Mafia's top capos, he was one of the FBI's unlikeliest recruits. A Cuban-born American, Jack graduated from Quantico standing six-foot-four and weighing 300 pounds -- not your typical G-man. Jack's stature soon proved an asset as the FBI looked to place agents undercover with drug smugglers, counterfeiters, and even killers. Jack became one of the few FBI agents dedicated solely to undercover work.
Using a series of carefully created aliases, Jack insinuated himself in the criminal world, from the Badlands of Philadelphia, where he was a gregarious money launderer, to the streets of Miami, where an undercover Garcia moved stolen and illicit goods and brought down dirty cops. Jack jumped at the opportunity to infiltrate the shadowy world of La Cosa Nostra, but how would the Cuban-American convince wiseguys that he was one of their own, a Sicilian capable of "earning his button" -- getting made in the Mafia? For the first time, the FBI created a special "mob school" for Jack, teaching him how to eat, talk, and think like a wiseguy. And it wasn't long before the freshly minted Jack Falcone found himself under the wing of one of the Gambinos' old school capos, Greg DePalma. DePalma, who cared for an ailing John Gotti in prison, introduced Falcone to his world of shakedowns, beatings, and envelopes of cash, never suspecting that one of his trusted crew members was a federal agent.
A page-turning account of the struggle between law enforcement and organized crime that will rank with such classic stories as Donnie Brasco, Serpico, and Wiseguy, Making Jack Falcone is an unforgettable trip into America's underworld through the eyes of a highly decorated FBI veteran.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPocket Star Books
- Publication dateSeptember 29, 2009
- Dimensions4.19 x 1 x 6.75 inches
- ISBN-109781439149911
- ISBN-13978-1439149911
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Michael Levin writes and ghostwrites in Orange County, California.
Product details
- ASIN : 1439149917
- Publisher : Pocket Star Books; Illustrated edition (September 29, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781439149911
- ISBN-13 : 978-1439149911
- Item Weight : 7.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.19 x 1 x 6.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,335,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,283 in Law Enforcement Biographies
- #1,943 in Organized Crime True Accounts
- #3,872 in Crime & Criminal Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Joaquin "Jack" Garcia is considered by his peers and leading FBI experts to be the most successful Undercover Agent in the history of the FBI.
In his 26 years of service with the FBI and as an undercover FBI Agent in over 100 Undercover operations, Jack Garcia is best known for his undercover role as "Jack Falcone," a self-described Sicilian jewel thief and drug dealer from Miami, Florida, who penetrated the Gambino crime family of La Cosa Nostra in New York for nearly three years. The case resulted in the arrest and conviction of 35 mobsters, including the top members of the Post John Gotti Gambino crime family. Agent Garcia, played his undercover role so convincingly that he was even proposed for membership into La Cosa Nostra.
Jack Garcia's history as an undercover Agent is far more extensive than that. He is also renowned for his roles in successful cases against corrupt politicians in Atlantic City, New Jersey; corrupt police officers in the Hollywood Police Department, the Broward County Sheriff's Office; Boston Police Department and in the San Juan, Puerto Rico Police Department. He has also worked undercover against hundreds of drug dealers and leaders of both Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, while posing as either a money launderer, transporter or trafficker. He has done undercover work on National and International terrorism cases as well as National Security investigations. Garcia has also worked undercover against Russian and Asian organized crime groups and several Murder For Hire Investigations. Most remarkably, Garcia worked on many of these cases simultaneously, as he juggled his various undercover identities and roles. Garcia successfully managed to work as an undercover FBI Agent for 24 out of his 26 years of service without detection.
In addition, Jack Garcia is a fluent Spanish speaker and member of the FBI Agents Association, the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the NYPD Honor Legion, and the Society of FBI Alumni. Jack Garcia is a guest speaker and lecturer at the FBI Academy, the FBI National Academy, and the FBI Citizens Academy on Sensitive Operations and Undercover Agent Training. He has been featured on 60 Minutes, the Investigative Discovery Channel, CBS Evening News, CBS Early Show, The "Don Francisco Presenta" Show, CBS-4 Miami, 60 Minutes-Australia, Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld and on Fox's Good Day New York. He has also been featured in numerous radio shows, magazines and newspaper articles and is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "Making Jack Falcone". His story was recently optioned by Paramount Studios for a feature film with Academy award Director, Steven Soderbergh and Actor, Benicio Deltoro.
Michael Graubart Levin (born August 8, 1958) is an American, New York Times best-selling author; he has written, co-written, or ghostwritten 550 books, 18 of which became national best sellers. Levin, founder of BusinessGhost, Inc., America's leading provider of ghostwritten business books, has helped create more successful books, as a writer, cowriter, ghost, or coach, than anyone in the U.S. publishing industry. His client list includes a member of the Forbes 400, five individuals with net worths of over half a billion dollars, and business leaders on four continents (North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia). He also edited Zig Ziglar's final book, Born To Win. On January 20, 2012, Michael appeared as a guest entrepreneur on the ABC Television show Shark Tank.
Education and Early Career
He graduated Amherst College with a B.A. in English and Ancient Greek in 1980, and received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1985, where he published an article in the Columbia Law School Journal of Law and Social Problems. At Amherst, he put on events including a complete reading of James Joyce's Ulysses (approximately 28 hours). After graduation from Amherst, he studied for one year at Yeshivat HaMivtar in Jerusalem, Israel.
Levin began to offer writing classes in a small yoga studio in Boston's Back Bay, offering two six-week classes at $150 per student. His classes quickly grew from two sessions to four, six and finally eight. In addition to his private classes, Levin also journeyed to Southern California three times a year to teach writing classes at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught for 11 years. He taught writing classes at New York University (NYU) for three years and offered seminars on fiction writing for attorneys around the country through Continuing Legal Education, Inc.
He has presented seminars on creativity for the NBC and WB Television Networks and to the largest law firm in Los Angeles, Loeb & Loeb. He taught writing for two years as a volunteer on the locked unit at the Thalians Mental Health Center in West Hollywood, California. Levin taught or coached thousands of writers; at least six of his students or coaching clients became national best selling authors themselves.
Levin created and led daylong conferences and other events for the Authors Guild in cities across the country including Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, and Austin, Texas. Among the authors who spoke at those events are Scott Turow, Judy Blume, and Erica Jong. Levin became one of the youngest members of the Authors Guild Council in that group's history and also served as Treasurer of the Authors Guild Foundation.
A New York Times opinion piece Levin published in 1980 led to a job at CBS News' Research Department in New York City, where Levin worked until he traveled to Israel to pursue religious studies. Levin's legal career, at the now-defunct Boston firms of Testa, Hurwitz and Thibeau and Goldstein & Manello, was brief, due to his admitted lack of interest in the law and his repeated failure to pass the Massachusetts bar examination. By the time he left the law, two and a half years after graduating from Columbia, he had already sold three books, including a book about his religious experiences and two novels with Simon & Schuster.
BusinessGhost
BusinessGhost, the nation's leading provider of ghostwritten business books, business fables, and memoirs, began as the Michael Levin Writing Company in 1994, became Writer2Author, Inc. in 1998, and reincorporated with its current name 2004 when ghostwriting became the primary function of the company.
BusinessGhost offers a variety of services, from ghostwriting business books, business fables, and memoirs, to coaching and editing other writers. BusinessGhost primarily creates, designs, and publishes books that its clients use as marketing tools for their businesses or their consulting, healthcare or financial services practices. The company offers a free weekly newsletter reprinted on its website. The newsletter offers insight on the rapidly changing world of book publishing. Michael has worked with many celebrities and top athletes including Pat Summerall, Chad Hennings, Howard Bragman, Dave Winfield, and Doug Christie. Many of Levin's books have been optioned and/or made by some of the top names in Hollywood. Disney optioned and made the ABC Disney Sunday Movie of the Week "Model Behavior" based on Levin's novel Janine and Alex, Alex and Janine. Additionally, director Frank Perry adopted Levin's first novel, The Socratic Method, and Steven Soderberg and Paramount adopted the book Levin coauthored with Joaquin Garcia, Making Jack Falcone.
Speaking and Publications
Levin has spoken for T. Harv Eker in Sydney, Australia; and for Jay Abraham in Los Angeles, California, where he shared the platform with Fran Tarkenton, Steven Covey, and Mark Victor Hansen
Levin's work has appeared in The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Forbes.com, the Jerusalem Post, Legal Affairs Writers Digest, CBS News, Time Newsweek The Economist and many other top outlets. One of Levin's New York Times pieces was anthologized in a textbook on writing, Elements of Argument.
Levin's books have received outstanding reviews in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, People Magazine, the Washington Post, the The San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal,[29] the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Esquire, Booklist and other leading publications.
Michael's recent books include the following:
2012
ROCK YOUR BUSINESS! Turning Your Idea Into Reality...Satisfaction...And A Whole Lot
Of Cold, Hard Cash, with David Fishof, founder of the Rock 'N Roll Fantasy Camp, to be
published in October, 2012 by BenBella Books.
THE REAL RULES OF LIFE with Ken Druck. (developmental editor) Ken is a nationally
recognized authority on recovering from grief and loss and has worked with the 9/11
firefighters' widows, the Flight 800 families, and countless families who underwent tragic
and sudden loss. Published by Hay House, Spring, 2012.
NASCAR NATION How Racing's Value's Mirror The Nation's, with Fox Sports Reporter
Chris Myers, to be published by Random House in October, 2012.
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, SELL!, with David Oliphant, a "business fable" about a Marine
who leaves the service and makes a career for himself in sales...without compromising his
integrity. Published in Spring, 2012 by Readers Digest Books.
2010
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, with Chad Hennings, 3-time Super Bowl winner with the Dallas Cowboys and a fighter pilot in the first Gulf War, who flew 45 humanitarian missions to the Kurds, published in January, 2010 by FaithWorks. This book reached best seller status on amazon.com within days of its publication.
GIANTS, with Pat Summerall, to be published in September, 2010 by Wiley, detailing Summerall's experiences when he was coached by Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi in the same 1958 season with the New York Giants.
2009
WHERE'S MY FIFTEEN MINUTES? HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE IN THE MEDIA AGE, with famed Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman, published in 2009 by Penguin/Portfolio Books. Howard Bragman has represented everyone in Hollywood from Sinatra to Madonna and is a frequent guest on Larry King Live, CNN, and throughout the media. The book reached #10 on the national Barnes&Nobel.com best sellers list.
GHOSTWRITTEN NOVEL FOR PRIVATE CLIENT. This book, written by Michael, reached number two on the Barnes and Nobel.com best seller list (number one was a book by President Obama!) and was optioned as a series by HBO.
THE STICKING POINT, with Jay Abraham, America's leading marketing guru, published in 2009 by Vanguard Books; the book reached number 2 on amazon.com business best seller lists.
2008
MAKING JACK FALCONE with Joaquin Garcia, the true story of the FBI agent who infiltrated the Mafia and took down the top 32 members of the Gambino crime family, published by Simon and Schuster/Touchstone in 2008. This book was optioned in 2007 by Paramount for Steven Soderbergh, director of Traffic, Erin Brockovich and Ocean's 11. It was featured on 60 Minutes in October, 2008 and is a New York Times bestseller.
2007
DROPPING THE BALL with Hall-of-Fame baseball player Dave Winfield, published with Scribner in March, 2007, currently in its second printing, and reached number 2 on the Los Angeles Times nonfiction best seller list. The New York Times called it "unusually thoughtful;" the Boston Globe called it "eloquent," and it was noted as "recommended reading" in Esquire Magazine.
NO ORDINARY LOVE, with NBA star Doug Christie and his wife Jackie Christie.
Michael's books have received outstanding reviews in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Esquire, Newsweek, People Magazine, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Examiner, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist, and other publications from coast to coast. He also consults to a broad variety of authors, ranging from international bestsellers to individuals seeking to become published authors.
Personal Information
Michael lives in Orange County with his wife, Suzanne, and their four children. Michael is a distance athlete and has competed in more than two dozen triathlons, marathons, and half-marathons since his 44th birthday. He has also completed three of the last seven Boston Marathons. In the 2010 New York City Marathon, Michael ran as a guide runner for a disabled runner. He has performed with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra[31] holds a second degree junior black belt in tae kwan do, which he earned in August 2011. He is also an "12-gallon man," having donated over 88 units of blood to the American Red Cross Association over the past 20 years.
Become a fan of Michael's business on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BusinessGhost
Connect with Michael on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=17700141&trk=tab_pro
Want to know Michael's thoughts? Follow his blog here: http://deathofpublishing.blogspot.com/
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Top reviews from the United States
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As you read the book, which some criticze as being written in a poor writing style, but which I see as being written in a "street agent's" language you come to the realization that for someone born and initially raised in a different culture to have the foresight, stamina, intelligence and guts to learn and act out the American Mob personality in such a successful way to fool an experienced, "stand-up" mafia capo or captain and his entire crew of experienced mob guys for several years deserves nothing but the highest praise for his work, especially when he was switching identities and personalities while working several other cases throughout his time spent as a wiseguy with the Greg DePalma crew.
I too am an experienced FBI undercover agent, albeit retired now, and I'll be the first to admit that I can count on one hand the number of FBI undercover agents, the world's best, who have the capability and the guts to work multiple cases with multiple identities like Jack did, especially when one slip in an undercover situation where a mob family in New York or a drug gang in Philadelphia makes you as a traitor can mean certain death, even though you're a cop.
And give Jack credit where credit is due, i.e., to work other groups such as Asian organized crime as he describes in the Royal Charm case involving counterfeit cigarette smuggling and the importation of millions of dollars in counterfeit bills from North Korea and the heavy weapons ordered up from the Peoples Republic of China.
And as you read and digest this information presented in this book and realize the scope of criminal problems facing this country, as revealed just by the undercover activities of a Cuban-born nine-year-old who came to this country years ago determined to make a difference ask yourself how many people would take the risks this man took and if he is truly an American hero entitrled to brag about the work he did and criticize the famed FBI when it held him back.
If you're a fan of mafia books and/or undercover agent books, this is a book you have to read, and this statement is coming from an experienced FBI undercover agent.
It is hard to believe that a Cuban born FBI agent could infiltrate the Gambinos so thoroughly. Joaquin not only did this but he also took part in numerous other undercover operations before and during his undercover infiltration of the Gambino Crime Family. This in itself is unbelievable because of the sheer number of people he was able to gain incriminating evidence on that ultimately put many people behind bars. Making Jack Falcone focuses, for the most part on his role in the Gambinos, but it is also a bio of his life outside of the Gambinos. His undercover work against terrorists, drug dealers and bad cops are just a few examples.
Although at times the writing lacked a certain flare, and at times I wished that there could have been more meat to what we were reading (for example, he would oftentimes tell us how something happened in a general sense, but we weren't given a clear picture on the details that could have painted a better, more clear picture), I am very pleased with the insight into the life of an undercover agent and what they have to go through on a daily basis in order to maintain their cover.
Not a lot of meat in regards to the history of the Gambino Crime Family and La Cosa Nostra in general, but a definite recommend for those looking for a memoir about an undercover FBI agent so instrumental in the dismantling of the Gambinos in the early to mid 2000s. A definite recommend.
5 stars.
Jack has a charm and wit that are incredible and when he enters a room, he immediately becomes the center of attention. His strong, fun personality comes through in his book. I have always said that Jack is a one man entertainment machine. He is like a stand-up comedian who never takes a break. It is impossible to have a bad day if you have been with Jack for any part of the day. I have always admired Jack for his ability to make people feel happy around him and that is what made him an incredibly great undercover agent and allowed him to write such a fantastic book.
I would like to emphasize how much I loved this book and I would not say it if it weren't true. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Jack has walked the walk and always did so with honor and conviction. I only hope that they make a movie out of Jack's book and if they do, I will be the first one in line to buy a ticket.
Top reviews from other countries
Would recommend to everyone, great author and what a story.