The Mobster Was a Mole for the F.B.I.; Tangled Life of a Mafia Figure Who Died of AIDS Is Exposed

Inside the Mafia, Gregory Scarpa Sr. could have served as a role model for ambitious gangsters. His underworld persona was that of a steadfastly loyal capo, or captain, in the Colombo crime family who for three decades ran rackets in New York City that enriched himself and his mob partners.

A flashy dresser who often carried $5,000 in cash, he at one point had homes on Sutton Place, in Las Vegas, and in Brooklyn and on Staten Island. Guile and ruthlessness earned him the underworld nicknames of “Hannibal” for his tactics and the “grim reaper” for his violence.

His mobster reputation also rested on his remarkable ability over four decades to evade prison despite numerous indictments on Federal and state charges.

Last year, Mr. Scarpa’s luck with the law ended and he pleaded guilty to three murders and racketeering charges. Before his conviction, he had contracted the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion, and in June of this year, at age 66, he died in a prison hospital.

Now, through disclosures arising from recent court proceedings, another portrait has emerged of Mr. Scarpa: Almost to the end of his life, he was a mole for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, betraying Mafia secrets and his own boss for at least 20 years.

“The man was the master of the unpredictable and knew absolutely no bounds of fear,” said Joseph R. Benfanti, a lawyer for Mr. Scarpa. “He abided by no moral codes; he made his own rules.”

The exposure of Mr. Scarpa’s double life has cast a rare spotlight on the F.B.I.’s shadowy dealings with a major mob informer who committed murders and other violent crimes while presumably providing the bureau with invaluable intelligence about organized-crime activities.

The disclosures have also raised questions about whether the F.B.I. funneled confidential information to Mr. Scarpa and immunized him from a prison sentence for decades.

And his unmasking has provided defense lawyers with an arsenal of legal ammunition in efforts to obtain new trials or acquittals for about 20 men who are accused of being Colombo family leaders and soldiers. The lawyers argue that Mr. Scarpa, acting essentially on behalf of the F.B.I., duped their clients into committing crimes.

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Another mystery that has surfaced since Mr. Scarpa’s death is his purported role in helping the F.B.I. solve the 1964 murders of three civil-rights workers in Mississippi. In the last years of his life, Mr. Scarpa claimed that at the behest of the F.B.I., he terrorized a Ku Klux Klan member to disclose where the bodies had been buried, according to lawyers and law-enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ‘Insurance Policy’ Against a Long Term

F.B.I. spokesmen in New York and in Washington declined to comment on any aspect of Mr. Scarpa’s affiliation with the agency. But other Federal law-enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified, said that he had been supplying information to the F.B.I. at least since the early 1970’s.

Asked about Mr. Scarpa’s motive for becoming an informer, one official said, “It was his insurance policy,” an allusion to Mr. Scarpa’s hope that he could obtain leniency if he were confronted with a long prison sentence.

In the aftermath of Mr. Scarpa’s death, his tangled relationship as a mob kingpin and as an informer has led to these developments:

*An internal investigation by the F.B.I. of R. Lindley DeVecchio, the agent who handled Mr. Scarpa for over 15 years, to determine if he leaked information to Mr. Scarpa about mob rivals and pending arrests. Douglas E. Grover, Mr. DeVecchio’s lawyer, described the allegations as “ridiculous and pure nonsense.”

*Assertions by defense lawyers that the F.B.I. used Mr. Scarpa as an agent provocateur to provoke a war among factions in the Colombo family and thereby provide evidence for indictments. In the war, from 1991 through 1993, 10 people were killed and 17 wounded.

*Defense appeals to overturn the convictions in April of seven men identified as Colombo family leaders, capos and soldiers on grounds that testimony concerning their relationships with Mr. Scarpa should have been excluded because he was a secret Government agent. Defense lawyers say that Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn withheld information about Mr. Scarpa until they were ordered to turn over confidential F.B.I. reports to defense lawyers in three separate cases in the last two months.

Law-enforcement officials said that the legal brouhaha over Mr. Scarpa’s involvement with the F.B.I. could jeopardize a long campaign by the bureau and Federal prosecutors to destroy the Colombo family, one of the five Mafia groups based in the city.

Federal prosecutors, in opposing motions for new trials and the unveiling of more evidence about Mr. Scarpa’s undercover work, said that he had never been authorized to commit crimes and that the prosecution had no legal requirement to disclose his full record as a confidential informer. After 10 Arrests, Only 30 Days in Jail

Mr. Scarpa’s life of crime began in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a blue-collar neighborhood that has long been a recruiting field for Mafia groups. By the early 1970’s, according to New York City Police Department records, Mr. Scarpa was a top capo, heading a mob crew from his Bensonhurst headquarters in a storefront club at 75th Street and 13th Avenue.

From 1950 to 1985 he was arrested 10 times on charges like carrying an unlicensed gun, assault, fencing hijacked liquor, heading bookmaking and loan-sharking rings and trying to bribe police officers. His scrapes with the law included charges in 1974 that he was a major conspirator in the theft of $4 million in stocks and bonds and in 1985 that he was behind a plot to counterfeit credit cards.

Most charges against him were either dismissed or resulted in probation. His only jail time was 30 days in 1976 for trying to bribe two police officers.

Defense lawyers suggest that F.B.I. agents intervened secretly with state and Federal judges and prosecutors to obtain leniency for Mr. Scarpa. “No one with a record like that could be so lucky,” said a lawyer who represented Mr. Scarpa in one of his cases and who insisted on anonymity.

In 1986, at the age of 58, Mr. Scarpa was the father of five children by his wife and a mistress. He was then a robust 5-feet-10, with the compact body of a 200-pound wrestler. That year he underwent emergency surgery for a bleeding ulcer and received a pint of blood from a member of his crew who later died of AIDS.

Four years after the operation, Mr. Scarpa’s AIDS was diagnosed. He lost 50 pounds and became gaunt. Still, despite failing health, he supervised his crew with an iron hand.

By the late 1980’s, the Colombo family, however, was roiled in internal disputes stemming from a life sentence given the gang’s boss, Carmine Persico. Mr. Persico wanted his son, Alphonse, to succeed him, but the move was opposed by a faction loyal to Victor Orena, the acting boss.

At several recent trials, Colombo defectors testified that a war over the succession erupted in 1991 and that Mr. Scarpa sided with the smaller Persico faction. Reports of Murders, Disputes and Deals

So far, in response to orders by Federal judges in Brooklyn, prosecutors have given defense lawyers 72 separate reports by Mr. DeVecchio of his meetings and telephone conversations with Mr. Scarpa from Dec. 2, 1980, to Aug. 27, 1993. Those recently unclassified F.B.I. reports present a tale illuminating murders and other crimes by Colombo mobsters, changes in the family hierarchy, news of inductees and internal disputes. They also gave details of the Colombo partnerships and deals with other Mafia families.

During the Colombo war, Mr. Scarpa was a battle commander for Mr. Persico. But the F.B.I. reports reveal that he nevertheless betrayed Mr. Persico by tipping off the F.B.I. about murders sanctioned by Mr. Persico and about his loan-sharking activities.

Omitted in the reports are Mr. Scarpa’s own criminal deeds, although he would later plead guilty to three murders and attempts to murder nine other supporters of Mr. Orena’s faction.

The reports show that Mr. Scarpa also lied. He identified members of another crew in the murder of an Orena faction capo, Nicholas Grancio, in January 1992. Mr. Scarpa later confessed that he led the hit team that shot Mr. Grancio.

In March 1992, Mr. Scarpa went into hiding after the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office obtained a warrant for his arrest on a gun-possession charge. From April through August of 1992, Mr. Scarpa met or spoke on the telephone seven times with Mr. DeVecchio, but the F.B.I. did not inform the District Attorney’s office about his whereabouts or arrest him.

Mr. Scarpa surfaced in August 1992 to testify in a malpractice suit involving his contracting of AIDS. He obtained a $300,000 settlement. But his boldness in testifying alerted investigators in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office and he was arrested on a state gun charge and also by Federal authorities on racketeering and murder charges.

Even after the indictment, Mr. Scarpa continued to provide information secretly to Mr. DeVecchio, apparently in the flickering hope of obtaining leniency yet one more time.

And, while free on $1.2 million bail and ailing, Mr. Scarpa’s trigger finger remained active. On Dec. 29, 1992, near his home in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, he was shot in the left eye in a gun battle over a narcotics deal and his bail was revoked.

In May 1993, he pleaded guilty to the Federal racketeering charges, and on Dec. 15, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $200,000. On June 8, he died of complications from AIDS at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn. A Crew Member Becomes a Witness

The F.B.I.’s internal investigation of Mr. DeVecchio began in January when Lawrence Mazza, a former member of Mr. Scarpa’s crew, became a prosecution witness in Colombo family cases. Mr. Mazza, according to an F.B.I. report turned over to defense lawyers, said that Mr. Scarpa had boasted to him that during the Colombo war, a law-enforcement agent gave him the hideouts of members of Mr. Orena’s faction.

Furthermore, Mr. Mazza informed the F.B.I. that Mr. Scarpa had told him he had been alerted to the pending arrest in 1987 of his son, Gregory Scarpa Jr., on Federal narcotics and murder charges by the Drug Enforcement Administration and to his own arrest in 1986 by the Secret Service for counterfeiting credit cards.

Mr. Mazza, according to the F.B.I. report, said that Mr. Scarpa frequently referred to the law-enforcement confidant who slipped him information as “the girlfriend.”

Joseph A. Valiquette, a spokesman for the F.B.I.’s New York office, refused to discuss the inquiry into possible leaks. Mr. DeVecchio, 54, has been an agent for 29 years and until this year had been the supervisor of a squad that investigated the Colombo family.

Mr. DeVecchio declined to be interviewed. His lawyer, Mr. Grover, said that Mr. DeVecchio had been reassigned from the Colombo unit to another supervisory job unrelated to organized-crime work.

“He is angry and annoyed,” Mr. Grover said of Mr. DeVecchio, “because he knows he is going to be completely cleared and yet there will remain an undeserved lingering doubt about his reputation because of these absurd allegations.” Defense Lawyer Requests Hearing

A defense lawyer in some Colombo family cases, Alan S. Futerfas, asked Federal Judge Charles P. Sifton in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Nov. 10 for a hearing to determine if additional reports on Mr. Scarpa’s informer activities should be released.

Mr. Futerfas asserted in his appeal that previously released F.B.I. reports show that the government “turned a blind eye to Scarpa’s activities” in a plan “to create and further a divisive conflict which would enable the F.B.I., to make, it hoped, dozens of arrests and convictions.”

Two Federal prosecutors, Valerie Caproni and Ellen M. Corcella, denied in a brief that the F.B.I. incited the Colombo War. The prosecutors said the defense request for additional F.B.I. reports was so broad that it could be construed as a move to compel the F.B.I. to “abandon the informant program entirely, which defendants no doubt would relish.”

In another Federal case in Brooklyn, Judge Eugene H. Nickerson is inspecting Mr. Scarpa’s F.B.I. files before ruling if more reports are relevant evidence in a trial of seven men accused of being Colombo family racketeers.

“It is best the truth comes out,” Judge Nickerson said last month in ordering the review.