FBI New York field office history: Massino as a cooperator

The FBI's history of its New York field office says that since 9/11 the office has convicted the leadership of all five families "twice over," and that "Bonanno family boss Joe Massino became the highest-ranking mobster ever to become an FBI cooperator."

Date: undated
Kind: agency-history
Source: FBI.gov, Field Office Histories, New York
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: A page of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's website, a work of the United States government. Public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105.

The FBI’s undated history of its New York field office. It says that the RICO and electronic-surveillance approaches “were pioneered in New York, leading to a series of major cases in the 1980s—including the Commission and Pizza Connection cases—that allowed the FBI to put the major New York mob leaders out of business.”

On the years after 2001 it says: “In the organized crime realm, since 9/11, the New York Field Office has arrested and convicted the leadership of all five La Cosa Nostra families twice over.” And: “In an unprecedented occurrence, Bonanno family boss Joe Massino became the highest-ranking mobster ever to become an FBI cooperator.”

“Boss” and “highest-ranking” are the FBI’s words. The court record of Massino’s cooperation is the 2011 E.D.N.Y. opinion, which calls him “the then-head of the Bonanno crime family,” and the 2011 trial docket.

itemUnited States v. Basciano, 763 F. Supp. 2d 303 (E.D.N.Y. 2011)Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis rules on Vincent Basciano's pretrial motions in the capital case over the killing of Randolph Pizzolo. The opinion quotes the court's earlier finding that "Joseph Massino, the then-head of the Bonanno crime family, agreed to become a government informant and taped conversations in prison that he had with Basciano."itemUnited States v. Basciano, No. 1:05-cr-00060 (E.D.N.Y.), docket entries for the 2011 trialMinute entries for Vincent Basciano's 2011 capital trial. Joseph Massino was called as a witness on five days in April 2011, and on May 16, 2011 the "Jury renders a guilty verdict on all three counts."