Welcome back to Mafia, and in this Audioboom original podcast series,

we explore America's criminal underworld to reveal the lives and careers of its greatest gangsters.

Our sponsor is Zip Recruiter.

This series has been extensively researched and produced in consultation with experts, authors,

and those who are actually there.

Joe Piston, a fantastic FBI agent, a real hero, and should be seen as a hero by the American public.

Someone who actually put his life on hold to really get to the root of a segment of organized crime in the United States,

and put his life on the line, really.

Special agent Joe Piston spent six years deep undercover in the mom.

To them, he was known as Donnie Brasco.

Every day going to work like that knowing he could easily be made or betrayed, and his life would have been worthless, and yet he did it for years.

It was the most successful undercover operation in the FBI's history.

Thanks to him, more than 200 mobsters would be convicted, and one of the biggest Mafia families brought down.

But I want to see him be killed, no.

But I'd rather have been gone to jail.

Yeah.

Joe Piston, aka Donnie Brasco, in his own words.

This is Mafia.

I'm a Joseph Piston.

I was an FBI agent, 27 years, and I worked a lot of those years undercover, and I attempted to infiltrate the Mafia New York City.

And using the name Donnie Brasco, I was able to infiltrate the Banano Crime Family New York City.

Before that, I had infiltrated the portion of the Colombo Mafia family, and then I spent almost six years undercover operation.

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