June 8, 1994. Federal Medical Center, Rochester, Minnesota. The air in that place always smells like antiseptic and steam heat. In a prison hospital room, Gregory Scarpa, Senior, is dying the slow kind of death that does not care how feared you used to be. His skin is tight over bone. His breathing is shallow.
And the thing that makes his end different from every other mob killer who ever faded out behind bars is this. For more than a decade, while he was putting bodies in the ground for the Columbbo family, he was also feeding secrets to the FBI. Not as a desperate cooperator, not as a snitch looking for a deal, as a top echelon informant with a handler who kept him in play even when people were getting shot in broad daylight.
This is not just another wise guy story. Scarpa, mid60s, heavy-litted eyes, deep voice, old school clothes, was known on the street as the grim reaper. The reputation was not just talk. One account says he was believed to have murdered at least 12 people while still an FBI informant. Another says the true number was far higher. What is not disputed is that he killed.
And what rocked the bureau is that his FBI handler R. Lindley Devcio Lind Dehveo kept meeting him, kept listening, and kept him useful. This is the story of how a Columbbo captain became the FBI’s prized window into a New York crime family and how that window turned into a trap.
From Benenhurst social clubs to the Columbbo Wars, from Mississippi civil rights era violence to a blood transfusion that left him HIV positive, Scarpa lived two lives at once. And in the end, both lives collapsed on top of each other. So here is the question you have to sit with from the start. How does a federal law enforcement agency convince itself that the intelligence is worth the blood? And how does a killer convince himself he is not a rat? Because he is not giving up his own side.
He is using the government the same way the government is using him. If you want the clean version, you do not come to Scarpa. Scarpa is what happens when everyone in the room starts rationalizing. The mob rationalizes murder as business. The FBI rationalizes murder as collateral damage and Scarpa rationalizes everything as his right. Gregory Scarpa was born in Brooklyn on May 28th, 1928.
He grew up in a city where the neighborhood was your resume. Bensonhurst and the streets around it were not a movie set. They were a system. You learned who had power by who sat in the best chair at the social club. You learned who had fear by who did not have to raise his voice. And Scarpa, even young, had a presence. big shoulders, heavy hands, a stare that did not blink first.
People around him later described him as fearless. That is usually code for something else. It means the man does not process consequences the way other people do. He came up through the profasi family, what would later be called the Columbbo family. His older brother, Salvator, was in the life first. The family structure was the standard pyramid, boss at the top. underboss and conciglier.
Capos or captains running crews, soldiers beneath them, associates orbiting the whole thing like moons doing work hoping to be brought in. Scarpa becomes one of those guys who did not just want to earn. He wanted to dominate. He wanted his own gravity. He married Connie Forest in the early 1950s.
They had four kids, one daughter and three sons. One of those sons, Gregory Scarpa Jr., would follow him into the life, and that matters later. Because Scarpa did not just teach his kid how to make money, he taught him how to make enemies. In his day-to-day routine, Scarpa liked control. He liked his spots. He liked places where he could see the door.
In Brooklyn, one of the key locations tied to his crew was the Wimpy Boy Social Club in Bensonhurst. It was a hangout and an office. The kind of place where a handshake was a contract and a look could be a death sentence. The FBI would later surveil that club. Scarpa would later be warned about that surveillance. According to the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, that is one of the details that tells you how this story actually works.
Not in grand conspiracies, in little leaks. Now let us talk about what Scarpa did for money because the myth is always about violence. The truth is the violence was the enforcement mechanism for the business. Scarpa’s income came from the classic wreckets. Lone sharking, bookmaking, drugs, autotheft, fraud.
And this is where it gets interesting because Scarpa was the kind of earner who understood systems, not just scores. Here is a scheme Scarpa lived on. Loan sharking. Step one is the opportunity. In workingclass Brooklyn, people needed fast cash for rent, gambling, medical bills, whatever. Banks said no. The mob said yes.
Step two is the inside connection. The inside was not a banker. It was the neighborhood. a bartender, a guy at the social club, someone who knew who was desperate. Step three is execution. A borrower takes $2,000 on a Monday. The rate is not called interest. It is called a tax, maybe two points a week. That means $40 every week just to keep breathing.
Miss a payment and it becomes $100. Miss again and the collectors show up. Step four is the money. The real profit is that the principal often never gets paid down. $2,000 can become $10,000 over time. Step five is the problem. Borrowers crack. They go to police or they get forced into crimes to pay it back.
That is where Scarpa’s reputation mattered. The violence kept the system stable. Scarpa was also into fraud. Credit card fraud becomes one of the major documented problems tied to him. The way those operations worked was simple and brutal. Step one, opportunity. In the 1980s, the credit card system was expanding fast and security was weaker than people think.
Step two, inside connection. You needed access to stolen numbers, counterfeit blanks, or compromised merchants. Step three, execution. You run the cards through friendly stores or you buy goods you can flip. Step four, the money. The take is not one big payday. It is constant. Jewelry, electronics, cash advances.
Step five, the problem, federal attention. In Scarpa’s case, he faced credit card fraud charges. And the IG report says there was evidence Dvcio warned him of pending arrest and may have intervened on his behalf. That is not street gossip. That is the government’s own watchdog describing the allegation. Scarpa also lived two romantic lives.
And that is not a metaphor. He had a long relationship with Linda Shiro starting when she was a teenager. Later he also married Lily Dejani in Las Vegas. He did not just juggle women. He used relationships as infrastructure. People around him became extensions of his will and that included younger guys he brought up.
One of them was Larry Maza, an associate who would later be tied to Scarpa’s orbit. And Scarpa’s permissive, controlling approach to personal life gives you a window into how he operated with men, too. Loyalty was not affection. It was ownership. Now, here is the pivot that turned Scarpa from an ordinary mob captain into a national scandal.
his relationship with the FBI. The FBI’s top echelon criminal informant program was created in 1961 under Jay Edgar Hoover. The mission was to develop sources inside the upper leadership of organized crime. The OIG report later notes that Scarpa was treated as a top echelon informant. That label matters.
It means you are not some street dealer giving up a competitor. It means you sit close enough to the decision-making to tell the FBI who is moving, who is rising, who is about to be made, and where the bodies might be buried. On paper, this is how the bureau breaks the mob without relying on unreliable cooperators. But there is a built-in poison pill.
To keep a top echelon source alive and productive, you protect him. You meet his needs. You sometimes look away. And if you do not control the relationship, the informant starts controlling you. According to the New Yorker’s detailed reporting, Scarpa was first officially opened by the FBI on March 20, 1962 after a law enforcement leverage point.
Over the decades, he had periods where he was closed, meaning contact was not authorized. By 1975, he was closed again. Then comes 1980. Devkio decides to reopen him. This is one of those quiet decisions that changes everything. It is not a courtroom scene. It is a guy in a government car driving to a mobster’s house and taking a risk.
CBS News later reported Dvcio drove to Scarpa’s home unannounced and confronted him basically saying he wanted help and wanted to be educated in the life. Dio says Scarpa told him come alone and he did. FBI rules normally require two agents with an informant, but Scarpa was considered top echelon and Dvcio got special permission to meet alone.
According to CBS, that is the first crack in the foundation. In December 1980, the OIG report says Dvcio succeeded in renewing Scarpa’s informant status. From that point, Dvcio became Scarpa’s sole handler, even though FBI protocol required two agents. You do not need to be a mob guy to understand why that is dangerous.
When there is only one handler, there is only one pair of eyes, one set of reports, one person who can shape what headquarters believes. It is the perfect setup for selfdeception. Scarpa fed intelligence, names, movements, plans. At times he even gave up proposed membership names inside the Columbbo family.
According to the New Yorker, for the bureau, that kind of information is gold. It fuels wire taps. It drives surveillance. It helps prosecutors build cases like the commission case, the famous organized crime prosecution in 1985 that sent major bosses to prison. CBS News says Scarpa’s information played a role in that era and that he was paid $66,000 over 12 years.
The New Yorker reports a larger total, at least $150,000 in informant fees plus social security payments of $253 a month. The exact accounting varies, but the shape of it does not. Scarpa was being paid by the government while earning in crime. Now, here is where you start to see the moral math. Dvio says he learned Scarpa was a killer.
CBS reports Dvcio acknowledged he knew what Scarpa was. He described him as fearless and tough and he admitted that at least once Scarpa smiled in a way that told him he had committed a murder. Devio says he did not investigate because the guy was dead and it would not bring him back. That is a shocking line because it is not the mob talking.
It is a federal agent explaining the logic of tolerating homicide in exchange for intelligence. CBS reported federal prosecutor Ellen Corsella pushed the obvious question. When is information valuable enough that you let people keep killing? The OIG report describes allegations that Dcio warned Scarpa of pending arrests, leaked surveillance information about the Wimpy Boy social club in 1987, and tipped Scarpa about a planned DEA arrest of Scarpa’s son, Gregory Jr.
That matters because Gregory Jr. became a fugitive in that period, and prosecutors saw it as proof someone was protecting the family. Let me break down that Gregory Jr. situation like an insider would. This is scheme number two, a narcotics and extortion enterprise built around turf. Step one is opportunity. Drugs were everywhere.
Marijuana, cocaine, and the street level markets were cash machines. Step two is inside connection. Scarpa’s crew and his son’s crew had muscle and local access, including places like the College of Staten Island, where The New Yorker reports dealers were forced to pay as much as $1,000 a day as a street tax. Step three is execution.
Dealers selling on your turf get approached. They get told the rate. If they say no, they get beaten, sometimes with bats. If they pay, they get protection. That is really permission to operate. Step four is the money. $1,000 a day from even a few dealers is tens of thousands a month.
Multiply that across weeks and you are talking real cash, not myth cash. Step five is the problem. Law enforcement builds cases. Informants flip and the moment prosecutors set an arrest plan, the enterprise collapses if someone leaks the target list. The New Yorker reports that Scarpa’s son showed Krumman a piece of paper listing people targeted for arrest, saying it came from his father’s agent friend.
If that is true, the leak did not just protect Scarpa, it sabotaged a case. Now place that against the Columbbo family’s internal war. Because in the early 1990s, Scarpa is not just earning, he is fighting for survival. Carmine Persico caro the Columbbo boss was in prison. Victor Orena, Victor Oraina was acting boss.
By mid 1991, it became clear Orena wanted to become the actual boss. That is not a paperwork dispute. That is a death sentence dispute. The second circuit’s published opinion in United States v. Brady describes the war and notes that after a brief truce, the war began again on November 18, 1991 when someone from the arena faction shot at Greg Scarpa.
Think about that. The shooting war restarts with bullets aimed at the FBI’s top echelon informant. If you are the FBI, you now have a problem you cannot say out loud. Your best source is also the most violent shooter on one side of the war. The New Yorker describes Scarpa in that period as 63, seriously ill, HIV positive from a blood transfusion, and still driving around Avenue U scouting targets.
It describes an incident where he shot a rebel hanging Christmas lights and then paged his consiary with the code 666 to signify a fresh kill. That detail is not just color. It shows you how violence becomes routine. It becomes a signal, a status update. By June 1992, The New Yorker says 10 people were dead in the war and 10 more wounded, including innocent bystanders, including a teenager shot in the head.
It also says Scarpa was by far the most violent participant. Four murders, two wounded attributed to him during that 7-month period. Now, here is the retention hook. But that is not the crazy part. The crazy part is that in the middle of that street war, Dvcio is still meeting Scarpa.
The New Yorker reports they met or spoke on average at least every 10 days during those seven months. The IG report states Scarpa provided detailed reports of perpetrators and strategic planning of opposing factions after the war commenced. In other words, the FBI was trying to stop a war using information from one of the war’s most aggressive commanders.
You have to understand how these meetings worked. The New Yorker reports they used a shared code name, Mr. Delo. They used a phone called the Hello Line in the FBI building that could not be traced. Devio sometimes delivered cash. Meetings happened in rented apartments or hotel rooms. And because Dvcio was alone, those meetings lived mostly in the paperwork Dio wrote after the fact.
Inside the FBI, younger agents started hearing that Scarpa was not just reporting on violence, he was driving it, and they started suspecting Dvcio was leaking information. The New Yorker reports that four agents eventually reported their concerns to the bureau. That is rare. In that culture, you do not accuse your supervisor lightly.
You do it when you think the line is already gone. During the war, there are specific incidents that show how the line blurred. One Arena faction member, Joseph Joe Waverly Cacis, gets shot in the stomach in February 1992. The second circuit opinion mentions Scarpa shot him. The New Yorker describes Scarpa being warned about Joe Waverly and then later shooting him and FBI supervisor Donald North becomes uneasy.
According to the IG summary of the case study, Scarpa was closed as an informant on March 3rd, 1992 after North found credible allegations Scarpa was involved in planning violent criminal activity. That is a direct point in the timeline. The FBI says stop, no more contact. Then the machine reverses itself. The OIG report says Dvcio initiated the process of reopening Scarpa in early April.
Authority is granted. April 8, 1992. Devio notifies headquarters on April 22 that a suitability inquiry was conducted and Scarpa was deemed suitable. This is the kind of bureaucratic language that hides what is really being decided. It is the FBI deciding it still needs Scarpa even though it suspects he is planning violence.
Now, let us talk about murders and what is actually verified. Scarpa pleaded guilty to murders in the early 1990s. The OIG report says he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in December 1993 after pleading guilty to two counts of murder. Other reporting describes guilty pleas to more murders and rakateeering. The point is not the exact count in each document.
The point is that Scarpa was a murderer and the government knew enough to close him then reopened him anyway. This is where it gets ugly because one of the greatest accusations in the Scarpa Devkio saga is not just that the FBI tolerated Scarpa killing his enemies. It is that Dvcio allegedly helped him locate people to kill. CBS News reports prosecutors became suspicious when Scarpa’s crew members said Scarpa had a source in law enforcement who provided addresses of targets.
An assistant prosecutor described a crew member saying Scarpa would get a call, then come back with an address of someone to kill. The OIG report includes allegations Dvcio leaked information and helped Scarpa’s son avoid arrest. The New Yorker includes allegations that Dvcio told Scarpa about a Brooklyn District Attorney custody situation involving Carmine Imbriali and that Scarpa talked about killing him afterward. Dvcio denied it.
So what is the reality? The reality is you have a top echelon informant relationship that runs on a toxic incentive. Scarpa could trade information for freedom. Dvcio could trade results for promotions. The bureau could trade arrests for headlines and nobody wanted to pull the plug because pulling the plug means admitting the whole system can be manipulated by the criminal you thought you were controlling.
Now we rewind to another part of Scarpa’s story that people love to repeat at dinner parties because it sounds like a movie twist. Mississippi civil rights era murders. The claim that the FBI used a mafia killer to solve a case in the deep south. Here is what is documented. The New Yorker reports that on January 10th, 1966, Vernon Dmer, Senior, a black farmer and merchant in Forest County, Mississippi, was attacked after agreeing to help black citizens pay pole tax.
His house was firebombed and he died. The New Yorker reports that on January 21, 1966, the Jackson FBI office requested the use of informant NY 3461, Gregory Scarpa, for a special assignment. It described Scarpa and an FBI agent buying a television from Lawrence Bird, a clan official, then abducting and pistol whipping him, and later Bird signed a 22-page confession implicating himself and others.
That is not legend. that is investigative reporting based on internal memos and case accounts. Now, here is the disputed part. In 2007, during the DevCio trial, Linda Shiro testified that Scarpa helped the FBI find the bodies of James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. The three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in June 1964.
The Guardian and NBC News reported that claim from the trial testimony, but Mississippi journalist Jerry Mitchell at the Clarion Ledger later argued that the Scarpa story is attached to the wrong case and matches the DMER investigation, not the 1964 disappearance. The FBI’s own Mississippi burning case history explains that the bodies were found on August 4th, 1964 after an informant tip, and it does not mention Scarpa.
The safest conclusion is this. Scarpa was used in Mississippi in the 1960s in a way that shows the FBI was willing to deal with the devil. Whether he was involved in the 1964 bodies is disputed and serious researchers push back on it. But even if you set aside the disputed case, the Mississippi episode matters for a deeper reason.
It shows Scarpa learned early that the government would tolerate his methods if they got results. If you beat the right man, if you scare the right witness, if you produce the right confession, you become useful and usefulness becomes protection. Now we hit the medical twist that turns Scarpa’s body into a ticking clock.
In August 1986, The New Yorker reports Scarpa suffered bleeding ulcers and was admitted to Victory Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn. He needed transfusions. He did not want the hospital’s blood. So, Linda Shiro gathered donors. Nearly 30 people came. Blood from some donors was administered without being screened for HIV.
According to the New Yorker, one donor, Paul Melee, later died, and Scarpa becomes HIV positive. Scarpa later has his stomach removed. He digests with enzyme pills. He shrinks from 225 lbs to 150. According to the New Yorker, he sues in August 1992. He settles for $300,000 and he wants the cash fast. That is one of those details that exposes the psychology.
Even when his body is failing, Scarpa wants control. He wants speed. He wants cash. Not a check. Not later. Now. Now. Bring that man into a street war. HIV positive, sick, still armed, still hunting, still meeting his FBI handler. If you are wondering how Scarpa’s own crew tolerated him, here is the thing. Fear is a binding agent.
A guy like Scarpa becomes a weather system. You do not argue with the storm. You just try not to be under it when it breaks. By late 1992, Scarpa is under house arrest, awaiting trial, monitored electronically. On December 29th, 1992, the New York Times reported Scarpa was ambushed near his home shortly after midnight, shot in the face and left eye.
The car riddled with bullets. Investigators recovered at least 25 shell casings. And Scarpa, in classic Scarpa fashion, does not call police. He goes 20 miles to Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. The Times reported he had AIDS and was being treated there. That scene tells you everything about the end stage.
Scarpa is still trying to manage the story, still trying to choose the battlefield, even when the battlefield is the emergency room. From there, the clock runs down quickly. Scarpa ends up convicted and imprisoned. The OIG report notes he pleaded guilty and was sentenced in December 1993. By the next summer, he is dead in a federal medical facility in Minnesota.
Some records cite June 4, others June 8. The exact day does not change the ending. Scarpa dies in custody. And only after he dies does the scale of his relationship with the FBI start spilling into public view. Because after his death, defense lawyers start digging. Reporters start pulling threads and agents who had complained internally find themselves vindicated in the court of public opinion.
even if no criminal case sticks. In the mid 1990s, Scarpa’s informant status and Dvcio’s conduct becomes issues in federal prosecutions tied to the Columbbo family. The OIG case study discusses how Dvcio testified as an expert witness in trials of Victor Arena and Pasqual Amato and how later postconviction motions raised Dvcio’s questionable ethics and judgments.
The OIG describes allegations that Dvcio passed unauthorized information to Scarpa, warned him of arrest, leaked surveillance information, and tipped him about the planned arrest of his son. This is the next retention hook. Here is where it gets interesting. The scandal is not just that Dvcio kept a killer as an informant.
The scandal is that the FBI’s internal controls failed. The OIG report says the controls failed because Dcio was not properly supervised locally and he failed to inform supervisors in Washington of the probability Scarpa was engaged in violence. That is the bureau’s nightmare. The system is built on paperwork and oversight and one charismatic handler with a powerful source can bend it.
Devio’s defenders say this is what it takes to fight organized crime. That you cannot run informants from an ivory tower. Devio himself told CBS that people should try making a case and talking to wise guys. Critics say there is a line and that line is supposed to be human life. In 2006, the Brooklyn District Attorney indicted Dvcio on murder charges, alleging he conspired in killings by feeding information to Scarpa.
The New York Times reported he was accused of helping Scarpa kill people, including Mary Bar in 1984, a woman who had dated a mobster and become a government informant. The case goes to trial. Then it collapses. The Los Angeles Times reported in November 2007 that a judge dismissed the charges mid-trial after the key witness, Linda Skyro, was discredited by taped prior statements.
CBS reported the judge, Gustin Reichbach, still issued a scathing rebuke, saying the FBI made a deal with the devil and engaged in selfdeception. That is the phrase that sticks, deal with the devil. So, what do we do with Scarpa’s legacy? First, Scarpa was not the only informant who committed crimes. The OIG report itself is a catalog of what can go wrong when agencies rely on criminals for intelligence.
But Scarpa is special because he sits at the intersection of three American obsessions. Mafia violence, government secrecy, civil rights era ghosts. Second, Scarpa exposes the weakness in the way people tell mob stories. The public loves the idea of a criminal with a code. Scarpa had no code that lasted longer than his needs.
He was loyal to the Columbbo family until loyalty cost him. He was loyal to the FBI until it stopped protecting him. He was loyal to his crew until fear kept them in line. And when the war came, he was loyal to survival. Third, the Scarpa story shows how corruption is not always envelopes of cash. Sometimes corruption is emotional. It is identification.
It is a handler who sees his informant as his source and starts confusing access with control. CBS reported Devio described Scarpa as his friend and said the relationship was a friendship. That is the moment you should hear alarms. Friendship is not in the guidelines. And finally, Scarpa matters today because the informant system still runs.
Modern cases still depend on confidential human sources. The same questions remain. How much crime do you tolerate to stop bigger crime? How much blood do you ignore to get better intelligence? At what point does the government stop fighting monsters and start managing them? Greg Scarpa spent decades building power in the dark. He earned millions.
He terrified neighborhoods. He walked into rooms and men straightened their backs. He also walked into FBI meetings and gave the government what it wanted. In the end, he did not die in a hail of bullets. He died shrinking in a prison hospital bed watched by people who did not fear him because fear cannot bargain with biology.
That is the real story. Not the glamour, not the mythology, the grinding cost of a life built on control. Scarpa controlled men. He controlled information. He even tried to control the FBI. But the one thing he could not control was the moment when all his secrets became more valuable than his loyalty.
