Retired Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins talks with former Gambino Crime Family associate Anthony Ruggiano about his life as the son of Gambino member Fat Andy Ruggiano. Anthony Ruggiano was born into Mob life and never had a chance. It was a typical day for him as a young man to meet others at his Father’s Social Club and plan scores like sending people out to the suburbs with stolen credit cards. He would meet them on their return and pay them a small amount on the dollar for various electronic goods and other small high-dollar items. Then take these items to the retail fence he used. This was his college and internship. He got hooked on the action, drugs, and alcohol from this dangerous fast-paced life. Ultimately, he couldn’t take it any longer and realized he could not maintain this lifestyle and stay alive. He went into treatment and then long-term recovery. He found he could not return to criminal life, and Anthony now works at an addiction treatment center. For help from Anthony, if you have a problem, call 855-963-2113. To see Anthony’s show click here on his YouTube channel, Reformed Gangsters.
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Transcription
00:00
Hi my name is Anthony Ruggiano Jr. and I am the son of Anthony Fat Andy Ruggiano who became a main member of the American mafia in 1953. When I became a teenager at 16, I followed my father into that life and he started schooling me he was a member of the Gambino crime family at that time, I started to work with him at the age of 16. I started using drugs around that time and committed crimes with him when I was age 23. I went to prison for the first time when I came out. I was friendly with John Gotti through my father’s Association, I stopped running around with that Crow and also continued using drugs. My father was a high ranking member of the Gambino family in 1984. My father was arrested by the FBI at that point in time I was still in the street I started freebasing cocaine and I guess that’s what I crossed over the line into addiction my father was doing for two years in prison, John Gotti was the boss of the Gambino family at the time. I had a very good relationship with them. Welcome all you wiretappers out there. It’s good to have you back here in the studio gangland wire. I have a really special guest today. And if you’re out there on YouTube, and you’re a real mob fan and YouTube Bob fan, you know there’s a lot of guys that were formerly in the life that are out there on YouTube. Sammy the bull, Michael Franchese, but we have another guy who was part of the Gambino family Anthony ruggiano, Jr. and I’ve got him right here in the studio with me if you’re on YouTube, and if you’re not, you’re gonna hear him in a few minutes. Thanks a lot, guys for listening and welcome, Anthony. Oh, well, thanks. Thanks for having me. I’m really glad Glad to have you on here. This is like kind of a new phenomenon you guys that were formerly in the live with YouTube channels Bobby Luisi. And there’s just a quite a few of you. So it’s, you know, what a what a what a difference of 30 years makes
01:53
very true very true.
01:56
I’m waiting for somebody in Kansas City to come in and start a YouTube channel or want to co host with me I don’t see it covered though. There was a big mob family in Kansas City at one time I don’t know what happened to them well, as well you know, there’s still one of our last surviving guys just died yesterday actually, I started getting calls yesterday afternoon to hear what it comes down to Jr died and he got COVID really bad and then guy had a stroke and, and he was kind of the last there’s only one more old school guy from back in the 70s and 80s when they were at their peak left. So you know, it’s all changing and as you know, so let’s talk about your life in the mob. Now. We’ve heard a little bit about it, you guys, you know you did a little lead in with with Anthony and kind of where he came from and how he grew up and and so you know, you your father’s in prison, you’re in your 20s and you’re part of the Gambino family or is it Gotti family by the inner you’re part of the Gotti crew, right? Yes. I grew up in Ozone Park. My father and John Gotti both come out of East New York, Brooklyn. They both end up moving into Ozone Park Howard Beach area. So I grew up in Howard Beach and Ozone Park. I was just to junk it at a young age of 13 through my father, because my father knew him from when he was a teenager. And yes, so I was part of that crew. I wasn’t directly with him. I was with Tony Lee and my father and we had a social club a few blocks away from the Bergin Fish Club. But that was the clue. I ran around with that social club thing. That’s kind of an interesting little phenomenon to me here in Kansas City and people outside of New York City. There’s a little bit of it in Chicago, but but boy in New York, that social club thing and so your father had his own social club, he was part of got his crew. And so you know, what was it like that social club? What was that like? Well, it’s you know, it’s like, people ask me that all the time. It’s like, you know, guys on Wall Street, go to their office on Wall Street and guys in the mob, go to their office in the social club. I mean, every crew when I was younger, had a social club and my neighborhood and Ozone Park. I mean, probably all five families had a club there. And it was just a meeting place. It was like home base. It’s somewhere where we all went through the day we met, we would have lunch there we socialize, people would come there to meet us and we would plan out our day there was just a gathering place
04:23
that we socialized in and fellowship dinner and people would come there like my father, you know, always held quiet and his John Gotti had his social club and every Saturday he ate lunch there so people would know he was there every Saturday. And it was just a place where we met and talked about things that needed to be talked about jumper stone once said that guys sit around and plan out different scores all day long. And so I’m sure you plan down scores. What do you remember particular score that you had? How did that go down planning out a score? Yes.
04:56
We would plan out you know, we had a big policy ring and we would all start
05:00
without the club, and we would plan our day, who was going to go to the street who was going to answer the phones. I mean, you know, some actually had some social clubs, there was homicides were committed into my mean, you know? So I’m I planned out like I would, I would, I had a one point I had a credit card fraud ring, I had a big credit card fraud ring, and we would meet at my father’s Social Club, Cafe Liberty, and like, I would send one crew out in a van to Pennsylvania, I would send another throughout to Long Island. And then at the end of the day, we’d meet all back there, we’d collect all the money we needed to collect, we cut it up. So it was like a business office. How did that credit card thing work? Did you have a bunch of stolen cards or a bunch of fake accounts and sent to so bad, so to speak, and they’d like go to stores and use them and bring this stuff back or right so in the 90s, we had a guy in the post office that was selling us
05:56
credit cards, and we pay a 50,000 envelope for a credit card. And he used to give me stacks in amount of time. And then we would get we would send guys out we’d buy electronics, we would buy air conditioners, we were back. Back then in the day Palm pilots, Nintendo’s, jewelry, and then we had one guy that we would bring it all to itself to him for fix off. If the item was $100 the guy paid us $40 or $50. So and he would buy all the items. We had another guy. We had an Asian fella that we would buy cigarettes all day, we buy 100 200 cartons of cigarettes and in CVS and Walgreens throughout Long Island and then we bring them to this one fella and he would buy each carton for $10. So we had we had a pretty good I made a lot a lot of money with our credit cards. And then we also had a vending business. We had gambling machines, we had slot machines, Joker, poker machines, listen to mob makes money any way they can.
06:52
But I have to say one thing the way I made money back then I couldn’t do that today with all the technology and the cameras everywhere. And all the optics they have all this, you know, I can never earn money like that today, you would have to hire a bunch of young guys that could get online and do this games online.
07:13
Exactly. And I don’t know nothing about that.
07:16
Yeah, I just know enough about it that that’s the way to do it today. You cannot go out in the stores. I don’t know how anybody would do a hit or a murder today, with all the cameras out there and DNA and all that. It’s almost impossible. It’s almost impossible because I mean, there’s cameras and doorbells and even even with everything else, even with gambling, bookmaking. I don’t know how, like the mob today. Everybody has apps. I mean, every state, it’s legalized in every state. I mean, so who’s gonna bet with a bookmaker, a street guy, a guy that struggling for money. I mean, all anybody that has money now is going to just download an app and that is Caesars and MGM. So you know, it’s just a different world, you know, and it’s funny because everything I went to jail for now is legal.
08:04
And there are some people that are still in jail for doing things that were now illegal.
