July 6, 2023 • 32 mins
AJ, Jimmy and the Trashers have their worlds thrown into chaos as arrests are made. As everyone wonders what next, a defiant Jimmy Galante takes the stage to tell his side of the story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's four am on Friday, June ninth, two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
The sun is yet to rise over Danbury.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I was in bed, and you know, you kind of
heard all these cars kind of pulling up, and you
kind of subconsciously wake up and you look out you
see them. You're like, all right, well, here's the day.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
The day Aj has feared since the FBI raided the
Galante garbage yard last summer, The day the.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Feds come for his dad.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
AJ rubs the sleep from his eyes and rushes to
Jimmy's bedroom to be with.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Him by his side if needed. And my Mom's like, yeah,
you already left.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Jimmy's gone to work at the yard early as usual.
So when the Feds ring the bell, it's Aj who
opens the door.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
He not here, and they were polite, They're like, okay,
do you mind if you just take a look around,
just don't come in. Look, they look around, they confirm
he's not there.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Aj watches on as the agents give his home the
once over. Then they get back into their cars and
drive off over to the garbage yard, leaving Aj and
his mum in the dust.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
The head spinning.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
A lot of uncertainty you don't know what's going to happen,
and unfortunate. The only thing you could do is let
it all play out, see.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Where it goes, and where does it all go? Well?
Straight to the local newsrooms.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Since the FBI rated Jimmy's yard almost a year ago,
Danbury crime reporter Karen Ally has been watching closely. She's
been pestering her contact at the courthouse for information.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
What do they have on Jimmy?
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Can you give us anything? Can you let me talk
to the prosecutor. He was like always shielding the prosecutors,
you know what I mean, which is annoying for us
as a reporter.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Today, though her sous sends her the email she's been
waiting for.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
He gave me the indictment. It was long, and I
don't think any of us in the newsroom had covered
any think quite this big. We had no idea how
big it would be. We had no idea there was
going to be a connection to the Geneese crime family.
The charges were pretty pretty massive in the counts, like, wow,
(02:26):
that's a lot of counts.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Jimmy's in deeper trouble than she imagined.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I don't remember even in federal court ever, covering a
case that had ninety three criminal counts. You know, I
didn't realize it, but it was going to kind of
overwhelm our newsroom for the next several years.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
One of the largest FBI takedowns in Connecticut history is
now underway. Jimmy and his business associates are driven in
handcuffs from the garbage yard in Donbury to in New
Haven just hours after Jimmy's arrested. He's seated before the
magistrate who reads the charges against him, Count one racketeering,
(03:11):
Count two racketeering with conspiracy, Count three, conspiracy to extore,
Count four, witness tampering, wire fraud, aiding, and a betting
conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. On and on
it goes until Jimmy's heard all ninety three charges. The
(03:32):
magistrate refuses him bail. Jimmy's taken straight to a federal
prison cell on Rhode Island. Meanwhile, his declared assets are
seized by the FEDS, including his garbage company. Jimmy's got
no idea what the future holds for him or for aj,
but he does know one thing.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
This is the end of the Trashes.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I'm Claire Croften from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio.
This is the fighty Pucks Game nine no Angel. It
(04:26):
doesn't take long for the story of Jimmy's arrest to
hit the national news.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
I found out about it just like everybody else did.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Over in Missouri, the commissioner of the United Hockey League,
Richard Broussel, is hard at work preparing for the next season.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
And my VP of Communications came into my office and said, uh,
you got to turn on the TV. And I'm like why.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
James Blade was arrested along with dozens of workers from
the trash company.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
The waste industry in Connecticut has been infiltrated by.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
Organized Crime Commission. We have a major problem. Jimmy Galante's
house was just raided by the FBI and they raided
his office and they've confiscated everything, and they're taking the team.
Everything's frozen.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
Mob used muscle for stifle competition at the head Maddie
the Horse, Ianello running the scam of Connecticut.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
James Bilante, Oh my good god, you got to be
kidding me. Oh my god, I'm exhausted.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
The trashers have bought the commissioner headache after headache.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
But this this really takes the biscuit.
Speaker 5 (05:33):
Now I have all the other owners calling me like
it's my fault. How could this happen?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
They have a point. The trashers have trashed the league's reputation.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
The commissioner knows he needs to kick Danbury's bad boys
out once and for all. Trouble is over the past
two years, he's grown fond of Jimmy Galante.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Man. I love that guy. Love that guy. Don't agree
with them what he does, but you know he loves
his family.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Luckily, for Brissel, the decision is taken out of his hands.
The FBI are now in control of Jimmy's assets and
they're not in the business of running hockey teams. On Monday,
the twelfth of June two thousand and six, the UHL
releases a statement the trashes are done. Commentator Phil Giubileo
(06:27):
is down at the Danbury Ice Arena when the news breaks.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
There's not going to be a season three. We're going
to spend the next month kind of closing operations down. Oh,
it's just like all the wind was taken out, Like
everyone was just like sad and depressed.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
The players sit around, despondent Mike Omtoli, Diamond, Dave mcaaac
and Brad Wingna Wingfield.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
They're all broken men. Picture an inflated balloon getting deflated.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
That's exactly how we felt.
Speaker 7 (06:58):
This was just it's over, You're done.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
What am I going to do now?
Speaker 7 (07:04):
Try and settle my life. Then you went from up
so high to down so low shitty for.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Tabone Pomposeello the Trash as equipment manager and head of pranks.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
The news cuts deep. I've buried my mother, my best friend,
and lost the love of my life.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
That feeling was the same feeling I got the day
that the Trashes were disbanded.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Outside the arena, word reverberates around town, reaching the Trash
as die hard fans. And then we found out the
FBI disbanded the team. That made my wife crying her
eyeballs out a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
It was hysterical.
Speaker 8 (07:50):
My stomach dropped out. My heart was so broken.
Speaker 7 (07:54):
I couldn't take it.
Speaker 8 (07:55):
I just fell apart.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
When Greg and Brenda Sinclair that fast ever hockey game
in the Downtown Arena back in two thousand and four,
it changed their lives. They committed themselves to watching every
Trashes game they could home and.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Away, We followed them to Elmira, New York, and then
from there down to Roanoke, Virginia.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Recognizing Greg and Brenda's dedication to the team, Jimmy gave
them lifetime passes.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
But that life was now over.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
I felt like a lost a lot of friends. I'd
say more like a family. I guess there's a lot
more quieter. It was like there was there was nothing
here anymore. It was just like it was like the
world stopped.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
The world. Jimmy created the business, the team.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
It all comes to a standstill as Jimmy sits in
his Rhode Island jail cell, powerless for now. But Jimmy,
being Jimmy, is not sitting on his hands. He assembles
a top legal team led by defense attorney Hugh Keith.
They start to mount Jimmy's defense and join the media circus.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
They detain him without bail, put him in jail, and
carcrate him froze in every asset that he has.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
Welcome to America, you're Italian, You're in the trash business.
Speaker 7 (09:23):
In the eyes of the government, you're a mobster.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Then on the thirtieth of June, after twenty one lowly
Nights in Islama. Jimmy's lawyers succeed in getting him released
from his cell on the condition he posts a two
million dollar bail. Jimmy leaves jail, protesting his innocence, preparing
for the fight ahead. But he'll have to fight this
(09:46):
one from home. With a monitoring tag around his wrist.
Jimmy is under house arrest despite his confinement. He's determined show.
Speaker 7 (09:57):
Me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.
I'm not here lose. I'm here to win, and I'll
win at any costs. There were a lot of things
in my case that I was in fact guilty of,
but there were an awful lot of things that I
was accused of that was wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
That's coming up. After the break.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
From the moment I started working on this story, I
wanted to hear Jimmy Galante's side. Jimmy underpins the whole thing.
He lit the fuse that launched the Trash's rocket ship.
At first, it all looked like an explosive success, but
by the summer of two thousand and six, the Glantes
found themselves among the twisted wreckage of disaster. I wanted
(10:55):
to ask Jimmy how it felt to have risen so
high and then to fallen so far. I finally managed
to get Jimmy to agree to an interview. Obviously, I'm
as tough as they come, but I asked my colleague
Austin to come along, you know, just in case I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Are you nervous? I'm a little bit nervous.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Why do you feel nervous?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So nervous feel like a bit bit like intimidating dude.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I wasn't sure which Jimmy was going to meet, The
Jimmy who donated millions to good causes, the jovial, generous Jimmy,
or the one I'd had screaming at people on the
FBI wiret apps, the Jimmy Galante you do not fuck.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
With Hello, nice to young Claire.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Why Jimmy is sitting across from us in a big
office picking out from under a cap. He's in his
late sixties, tall and lean in a pale, pink polo shirt.
His jeans look like they've been n ironed, and his
town of work boots are immaculate. After we introduce ourselves,
we're shown into a QUI this. I mean, you can
(12:02):
push it to.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Come out, but I'm gonna I'm gonna close it.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
It's not gonna be locked over here, but optically it's
gonna look like it's locked.
Speaker 7 (12:08):
It won't be the first time I've been locked up.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And that's exactly what I wanted to talk to Jimmy
about that summer of two thousand and six when he.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Was locked up. How did it all go so wrong?
Speaker 7 (12:21):
There's the FBI side, there's my side, and somewhere in
the middle of the truth, there's a very very fine
line between the good gays and the bear case.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
The line.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
I'm switchling, I'm in I'm neutral, I'm.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
In the middle.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
In the side of the line, well, maybe a toe.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I'd been told time and time again that Jimmy had
a slow, deliberate way.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Of talking, that when he looks at you with those.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Dark blue eyes, you feel like he's looking into your soul.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And it's true.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Sitting here with Jimmy is intense, and it's clear that
Jimmy doesn't agree with all the allegations that have been
leveled against him. But before we get into that, let's
start with the facts. Everyone can agree on the fallout
from his arrest in two thousand and six.
Speaker 7 (13:20):
When it all went down and I got indicted. I
was put on house arrest, and the government had a
no visit list people that could not come to see me.
When the government took my company over for alleged racketeering,
and they run it until they can sell it. And
(13:41):
it's their job to preserve the company and cut costs,
and you know, the treasures will not expense the government
felt that they needed and that was the end of it.
Nothing more than that. Probably the saddest part other than
having to faced my son and you know, feel like
I was a disappointment. I just wanted all my other
(14:02):
kids here, you know, they had to pack up and leave,
and without even being able to say goodbye, without even
being able to, you know, give them an explanation.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
When Jimmy says, all my other kids, he's talking about
the Trashes.
Speaker 7 (14:17):
All my players were like an extension of the Galante family.
They were they weren't more boys.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And as the summer of two thousand and six passes,
everyone around Jimmy starts to move on with their lives.
Aj graduates college, the former Trashes leave Danbury and join
other teams, and Jimmy's still stuck at home under house arrest,
fantasizing about his day in court when he might finally
(14:45):
get to share his side of the story.
Speaker 7 (14:48):
I wanted to go to trial. It was a multifaceted case.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Jimmy and his lawyers start to prepare their arguments. The
first they have to sit through a bunch pre troll
hearings where the prosecution lay out their case.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
It soon becomes clear what Jimmy's.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Up against, like say, the fifty thousand wire tap intercepts.
Some of the more dumbing ones were played to Jimmy
in the courtroom.
Speaker 7 (15:16):
There is absolutely nothing, nothing that'll make your hair stand
up on your arms than to be sitting in that
courtroom and you hear your voice, and you hear what
you said, maybe in a fit of rage, that they
can use against Chew, and you say yourself, oh my god,
what did I do here?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
You've heard some of the calls. They do sound a
little incriminating.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
Tell the cocksuckers, and I said, quote unquote, then unless
you want the fucking nightmare, get that fucking thing out
of there now.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Absolutely okay.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Of course, when I ask Jimmy about his telephone manner,
his answer is pretty simple.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It is what it is.
Speaker 7 (15:59):
I don't make excuses for it. You know, I had
a temper ice at what I had to say.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
With a battle of epic proportions on his hands, Jimmy
dedicates a room in his house to fighting the many
charges against him.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
It's a kind of war room with.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
A large table where he can spread out the piles
of documents and files. Every day he and his defense
team assemble working out how to beat the charges. But
there's some worrying news. Other defendants have started to fold.
The courts are offering plea deals. In September two thousand
(16:36):
and six, even Matty the hawse iron Ello pleads guilty
to a racketeering charge and is sent down for almost
two years. And when Jimmy's own business associates in Danbury
begins striking deals with the courts, yes, even more nervous.
Speaker 7 (16:53):
They'll basically, if guide it properly, will say exactly what
yours attorney wants them to say.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Jimmy's offered a plea deal himself. He still wants his
day in court, but being a savvy negotiator, he's open
to hearing what the state's attorney is offering.
Speaker 7 (17:08):
Their first lawfer came back at twenty five years, and
I kinda smiled because I can get that if I
went to trial and lost. And we went back and
forth and back and forth, and back and forth and
back and forth, and it started to get dragged out.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
By the summer of two thousand and eight, Jimmy's been
confined to his house for two years, and he's getting
tired of negotiating.
Speaker 7 (17:31):
You get to a point to where if you go
to trial, you're looking at twenty five years, and if
you make a deal, you're looking at eight years. So
as AG would say, do the.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Math, and then the state's attorney ups the ante and
slaps him with the ultimate ultimatum.
Speaker 7 (17:52):
I remember getting a telephone call four or five o'clock
on a Wednesday. I was politely told by attorney that
I had till four o'clock Friday afternoon to take the
deal that was on the table, which was eighty seven months.
If I didn't, they were going to indict AJ.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Why because Jimmy has bought AJ a garbage company, as
you do.
Speaker 7 (18:22):
And they said that my money was proceeds from racketeering.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Tangling AJ up in the whole dodgy business. The FBI
have Jimmy by the bulls. If he continues to fight
for his moment on the stand, he risks AJ's freedom.
So he takes a deep breath and makes a big decision.
That's after the break. As Jimmy Galante weighs up his auctions,
(19:03):
journalist Karen Alley is still glued to the case.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Everyone's wondering what's he gonna do. Is he gonna plead guilty?
Is he going to go to trial? Is he going
to keep fighting? You don't know. Everything's cloaked in secrecy.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
The day of the plea hearing arrives the third of
June two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Karen travels to the courthouse in New Haven.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
There was a wait beforehand in the hallway. He was
waiting with his lawyer and others. Then finally when we
got inside the courtroom, it's a beautiful, big courtroom, very imposing,
very beautiful, and it was almost like a church. There
was Jimmy next to his lawyer. There was FBI guys,
people on the prosecutor side, plus a lot of reporters.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
But Jimmy won't be talking to reporters today. He's here
to answer to one person only, the judge.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Ellen Burns, this legendary judge way up on this. It's
almost like a pedestal. She doesn't look like she's that
imposing because she's this elderly woman with white hair, But
believe me, she's very imposing judge and had a legendary
career and obviously had a lot of power. She asked him,
are you challenging any of the prosecution statements about what
(20:16):
you did? You very quietly said no, your honor.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And now for the moment Karen and the assembled crowd
have all been waiting for. The judge asks Jimmy how
he pleads. He leans into the microphone and quietly utters
the word guilty to three of the ninety three charges
leveled against.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Him, racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to froud the irs, and conspiracy
to commit wirefraud.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
The first charge, racketeering conspiracy is basically a catsual phrase
for dishonest business dealings like fraud, extortion, coercion, that kind
of thing. In Jimmy's case, it includes the no bid
Shelton note fixing contracts and the regular mob tax payments
to our old friend Matty the horse that's over one
(21:10):
hundred thousand dollars a year by the way and wrapped
into their racketeering conspiracy charge is that old allegation FBI
agent Jeff Waterman told me about that Jimmy had been
involved in torturing a rivals truck in the nineties. The
second charge Jimmy pleads to is conspiracy to defraud the irs.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Mostly tax offenses, and.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
The third charge is wire fraud conspiracy linked to everyone's
favorite band of hockey bad boys. You remember how hockey
leagues have rules about how much players can get paid,
and you remember the daffel bags of cash, the lakeside cottages,
and the extra contracts that Jimmy offered the trashers.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, the FBI did the maths.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
They accused Jimmy of breaking the uhl's salary cap. Usually
this offense would be dealt with by the hockey league,
not the FBI. It would result in a fine, not
a prison sentence. But Jimmy provided inaccurate payroll figures, and
so the FBI charged him with fording the UHL out
of fines he owed for breaching the cap.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Jimmy pleads guilty.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
All's fair in love and war.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Jimmy doesn't exactly seem remorseful about breaking the law in
the same way, he doesn't seem to regret breaking the
rules of hockey. It's all just part of his philosophy
win at all costs. And it's when I talked to
Jimmy about the trashes that I realized just how far
he was willing to throw the rule book.
Speaker 7 (22:48):
We did all kinds of crazy stuff. I mean, probably
the funniest thing we did was we had to win
a game or two to get into the playoffs, and
it was a home game. In a home game, you're
responsible to put the water in the bottles for everybody,
So we decided to put vising in the goalies water. Well,
(23:14):
what it does is it makes your stomach go absolutely crazy.
You start to vomit, you start to get severe diarrhea,
and I'll never forget it. We were standing up there
and AG's looking at me, and I'm looking at aj
and I'm smiling. Goes, what's the matter, I said, just watch,
And all of a sudden, the goalie is moving. He's
sliding left to right to left to right. Pull if
(23:37):
he makes a mad dash to the bench, and that
was it. He was out of the game. They put
the second string goalie in. We won the game.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Did people ever say that you played dirty?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
You know that it wasn't.
Speaker 7 (23:48):
Fat that you well, you know, people are entitled to
say what they want to say, and I would always
tell them, you know, show me a good loser, and
I'll show you a loser. I'm not here to lose.
I'm here to win. I don't win at any cost.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Any cost.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Is there anything that you wouldn't have done?
Speaker 7 (24:11):
Well, I'll be honest with you, I really can't answer
that because we only had two seasons.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
This mentality to win at any cost, to keep on winning,
it's a motto that runs through all aspects of Jimmy's life,
hockey and business. He says it's what drove him to
build his trash empire from the ground up.
Speaker 7 (24:36):
You got to be a game with me. I had
two trucks. I needed to have four trucks, and then
I had to have ten trucks. I just wanted to win.
I just wanted to win.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
How tight is money to winning? Are they one of
the same or is it an element of winning?
Speaker 7 (24:54):
Money was always a side issue. Jimmy was beating a
com copetitor to get a garbage account, and you know,
come to work every day and you know, maybe there's
fifteen commercial accounts on the road and AWD picked up
thirteen of them. That was a big deal to me.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And what about his competitors, people who say that his
rule breaking touched them out of business, or people who
claimed Jimmy forced them to sell up.
Speaker 7 (25:24):
I think it's sour grapes. If competitors that couldn't make
it would take millions of dollars for me to purchase
their company and then turn around and say they were
pushed out, that's a fallacy. I don't know why my
growth was any different than a home depot. Home depots
(25:46):
would put a little hardware stores out of business. I mean,
you know, come on, why is it any different? Because
why is it because I'm Italian and it's the garbage
industry and it has a reputation. I don't get it
just to.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Play like there was advocate. People would argue that with
the court cases and the indictments and things coming out
about like your relationship with Matty the Horse, that it
is a bit different to like Starbucks putting like small
coffee shops out of business just.
Speaker 7 (26:14):
Because of Well, let me ask you a question. If
you grew up in a neighborhood, and you know, you
were around a lot of people, and some of them
you were friends, and put yourself in my shoes.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Jimmy was born in the Bronx, New York.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
His dad worked two jobs and was struggling to make
ends meet. Jimmy was the eldest of six and had
to earn money for his family from a young age.
So he's right there. Our realities are very different. It's
hard for me to put myself in his shoes to
understand why he did the things he did, why he
(26:57):
believed the things he does.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
Listen, Claire, you've never heard me say I was an angel.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
No, that's true.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
You've been very upfront with me. You know. It's just
tricky when you hear like different perspectives and different stories,
and people would share their experiences and it's just trying
to map it all together.
Speaker 7 (27:16):
The people that have formed their opinions of me. You're
not going to change that. I really don't care.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
When he pled guilty to those charges in court, Jimmy
confound some of the worst suspicions about how he made
money and got ahead of the competition. Jimmy may say
he doesn't care about other people's opinions, but I'm not
sure that's always been the case. Remember when the owner
of the Trash's rival team, the Addie Ron Dack Frostbite Trash,
(27:47):
talked Jimmy in a postgame interview.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
He compared Jimmy to Tony Soprano, meaning.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
He's nothing but a gangster.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Why didn't touch a nerve that comment.
Speaker 7 (28:02):
Because I don't really see myself as a gangster. People
put labels on people when they really don't know the facts.
And I don't have to explain myself to anybody. If
you don't know me, keep it to yourself. Now, if
you're brazen enough and you want to say it to
(28:23):
my face, we can have a conversation. And it doesn't
mean that I won't deal with you. But I know
where you're coming from and I know you're real.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Why do you think you.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Had that well, yeah, being referred to as a gangster.
It was stuff that was going on in the papers
at the time.
Speaker 7 (28:39):
And listen, you hate to stereotype people, but at the
end of the day, you're of Italian descent, you were
born in the Bronx, you're in the garbage business, and
there's a stigma and that stigma is attached to you,
(29:01):
and whether it's true or it's not true, it is
what it is. And you know what, if I had
a dime for every time I got blamed for doing
something that I sincerely didn't do, I'd be a happy camper.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
But it is what it is.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
How much of it do you think was like fair
and what was unfair?
Speaker 7 (29:24):
Bottom line is I'm not going to get into a
lot of stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I will tell you this.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
I'm far from being an angel, but I'm also not
the devil.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Did you ever wonder what it would have been like
if you had taken the more sort of like straight
laced path and I don't know, being a mayor or
like just being a straight up businessman.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
I like being Jimmy.
Speaker 7 (29:56):
I chose a path, and you know what, right wrong, different.
For the most part, I was very successful at it.
You never once ever heard me say that my problems
in life were because of Maddie the horse or this,
or that I'm.
Speaker 8 (30:12):
A big boy.
Speaker 7 (30:12):
I did what I did truthfully. At the end of
the day, I have nobody blame about myself.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
On the third of September two thousand and eight, three
months after his plea hearing, and after two years of
house arrest, Jimmy was sentenced to just over seven years
in prison. He reports to the Allenwood Federal Correctional Institute
in Pennsylvania at the beginning of October. He's ready to
pay the price for his actions. But the trouble is
(30:43):
he isn't the only one shouldering the cost. Without a
dad or a hockey team, AJ has to start picking
up the pieces of his life.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
The house of cards comes crumbling down.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
So it was the worst feeling in the world.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
It's time for Aj to rebuild.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
That's coming up in the final episode of The Fighty Pucks.
The Fighting Pucks is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For
(31:28):
more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is
hosted by me Claire Crofton and produced by me Joe
Wheeler and Amalia Sortland.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
The executive producer is David Waters.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Story editing from Max O'Brien, Mitherley Raul and Austin Mitchell.
Our field producer is Bebette Thomas. Our fat checker is
Dannia Suleiman. Our hockey sensitivity reader is Nikhil Desais. Production
management from Schwy Rihe Houston and Charlotte Wolfe. Sound design,
(32:03):
mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson, Music supervision by Nicholas
Alexander and David Waters. Original music composed by Eric Phillips.
Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to
Sean Glynn, Katrina Novelle, David Vassiman, Sean ty Tone and
(32:24):
beth Anne Macaluso
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Novel
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's four am on Friday, June ninth, two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
The sun is yet to rise over Danbury.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I was in bed, and you know, you kind of
heard all these cars kind of pulling up, and you
kind of subconsciously wake up and you look out you
see them. You're like, all right, well, here's the day.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
The day Aj has feared since the FBI raided the
Galante garbage yard last summer, The day the.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Feds come for his dad.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
AJ rubs the sleep from his eyes and rushes to
Jimmy's bedroom to be with.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Him by his side if needed. And my Mom's like, yeah,
you already left.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Jimmy's gone to work at the yard early as usual.
So when the Feds ring the bell, it's Aj who
opens the door.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
He not here, and they were polite, They're like, okay,
do you mind if you just take a look around,
just don't come in. Look, they look around, they confirm
he's not there.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Aj watches on as the agents give his home the
once over. Then they get back into their cars and
drive off over to the garbage yard, leaving Aj and
his mum in the dust.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
The head spinning.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
A lot of uncertainty you don't know what's going to happen,
and unfortunate. The only thing you could do is let
it all play out, see.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Where it goes, and where does it all go? Well?
Straight to the local newsrooms.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Since the FBI rated Jimmy's yard almost a year ago,
Danbury crime reporter Karen Ally has been watching closely. She's
been pestering her contact at the courthouse for information.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
What do they have on Jimmy?
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Can you give us anything? Can you let me talk
to the prosecutor. He was like always shielding the prosecutors,
you know what I mean, which is annoying for us
as a reporter.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Today, though her sous sends her the email she's been
waiting for.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
He gave me the indictment. It was long, and I
don't think any of us in the newsroom had covered
any think quite this big. We had no idea how
big it would be. We had no idea there was
going to be a connection to the Geneese crime family.
The charges were pretty pretty massive in the counts, like, wow,
(02:26):
that's a lot of counts.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Jimmy's in deeper trouble than she imagined.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I don't remember even in federal court ever, covering a
case that had ninety three criminal counts. You know, I
didn't realize it, but it was going to kind of
overwhelm our newsroom for the next several years.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
One of the largest FBI takedowns in Connecticut history is
now underway. Jimmy and his business associates are driven in
handcuffs from the garbage yard in Donbury to in New
Haven just hours after Jimmy's arrested. He's seated before the
magistrate who reads the charges against him, Count one racketeering,
(03:11):
Count two racketeering with conspiracy, Count three, conspiracy to extore,
Count four, witness tampering, wire fraud, aiding, and a betting
conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. On and on
it goes until Jimmy's heard all ninety three charges. The
(03:32):
magistrate refuses him bail. Jimmy's taken straight to a federal
prison cell on Rhode Island. Meanwhile, his declared assets are
seized by the FEDS, including his garbage company. Jimmy's got
no idea what the future holds for him or for aj,
but he does know one thing.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
This is the end of the Trashes.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I'm Claire Croften from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio.
This is the fighty Pucks Game nine no Angel. It
(04:26):
doesn't take long for the story of Jimmy's arrest to
hit the national news.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
I found out about it just like everybody else did.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Over in Missouri, the commissioner of the United Hockey League,
Richard Broussel, is hard at work preparing for the next season.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
And my VP of Communications came into my office and said, uh,
you got to turn on the TV. And I'm like why.
Speaker 6 (04:49):
James Blade was arrested along with dozens of workers from
the trash company.
Speaker 7 (04:54):
The waste industry in Connecticut has been infiltrated by.
Speaker 5 (04:56):
Organized Crime Commission. We have a major problem. Jimmy Galante's
house was just raided by the FBI and they raided
his office and they've confiscated everything, and they're taking the team.
Everything's frozen.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
Mob used muscle for stifle competition at the head Maddie
the Horse, Ianello running the scam of Connecticut.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
James Bilante, Oh my good god, you got to be
kidding me. Oh my god, I'm exhausted.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
The trashers have bought the commissioner headache after headache.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
But this this really takes the biscuit.
Speaker 5 (05:33):
Now I have all the other owners calling me like
it's my fault. How could this happen?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
They have a point. The trashers have trashed the league's reputation.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
The commissioner knows he needs to kick Danbury's bad boys
out once and for all. Trouble is over the past
two years, he's grown fond of Jimmy Galante.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Man. I love that guy. Love that guy. Don't agree
with them what he does, but you know he loves
his family.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Luckily, for Brissel, the decision is taken out of his hands.
The FBI are now in control of Jimmy's assets and
they're not in the business of running hockey teams. On Monday,
the twelfth of June two thousand and six, the UHL
releases a statement the trashes are done. Commentator Phil Giubileo
(06:27):
is down at the Danbury Ice Arena when the news breaks.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
There's not going to be a season three. We're going
to spend the next month kind of closing operations down. Oh,
it's just like all the wind was taken out, Like
everyone was just like sad and depressed.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
The players sit around, despondent Mike Omtoli, Diamond, Dave mcaaac
and Brad Wingna Wingfield.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
They're all broken men. Picture an inflated balloon getting deflated.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
That's exactly how we felt.
Speaker 7 (06:58):
This was just it's over, You're done.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
What am I going to do now?
Speaker 7 (07:04):
Try and settle my life. Then you went from up
so high to down so low shitty for.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Tabone Pomposeello the Trash as equipment manager and head of pranks.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
The news cuts deep. I've buried my mother, my best friend,
and lost the love of my life.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
That feeling was the same feeling I got the day
that the Trashes were disbanded.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Outside the arena, word reverberates around town, reaching the Trash
as die hard fans. And then we found out the
FBI disbanded the team. That made my wife crying her
eyeballs out a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
It was hysterical.
Speaker 8 (07:50):
My stomach dropped out. My heart was so broken.
Speaker 7 (07:54):
I couldn't take it.
Speaker 8 (07:55):
I just fell apart.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
When Greg and Brenda Sinclair that fast ever hockey game
in the Downtown Arena back in two thousand and four,
it changed their lives. They committed themselves to watching every
Trashes game they could home and.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Away, We followed them to Elmira, New York, and then
from there down to Roanoke, Virginia.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Recognizing Greg and Brenda's dedication to the team, Jimmy gave
them lifetime passes.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
But that life was now over.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
I felt like a lost a lot of friends. I'd
say more like a family. I guess there's a lot
more quieter. It was like there was there was nothing
here anymore. It was just like it was like the
world stopped.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
The world. Jimmy created the business, the team.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
It all comes to a standstill as Jimmy sits in
his Rhode Island jail cell, powerless for now. But Jimmy,
being Jimmy, is not sitting on his hands. He assembles
a top legal team led by defense attorney Hugh Keith.
They start to mount Jimmy's defense and join the media circus.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
They detain him without bail, put him in jail, and
carcrate him froze in every asset that he has.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
Welcome to America, you're Italian, You're in the trash business.
Speaker 7 (09:23):
In the eyes of the government, you're a mobster.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Then on the thirtieth of June, after twenty one lowly
Nights in Islama. Jimmy's lawyers succeed in getting him released
from his cell on the condition he posts a two
million dollar bail. Jimmy leaves jail, protesting his innocence, preparing
for the fight ahead. But he'll have to fight this
(09:46):
one from home. With a monitoring tag around his wrist.
Jimmy is under house arrest despite his confinement. He's determined show.
Speaker 7 (09:57):
Me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.
I'm not here lose. I'm here to win, and I'll
win at any costs. There were a lot of things
in my case that I was in fact guilty of,
but there were an awful lot of things that I
was accused of that was wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
That's coming up. After the break.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
From the moment I started working on this story, I
wanted to hear Jimmy Galante's side. Jimmy underpins the whole thing.
He lit the fuse that launched the Trash's rocket ship.
At first, it all looked like an explosive success, but
by the summer of two thousand and six, the Glantes
found themselves among the twisted wreckage of disaster. I wanted
(10:55):
to ask Jimmy how it felt to have risen so
high and then to fallen so far. I finally managed
to get Jimmy to agree to an interview. Obviously, I'm
as tough as they come, but I asked my colleague
Austin to come along, you know, just in case I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Are you nervous? I'm a little bit nervous.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Why do you feel nervous?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So nervous feel like a bit bit like intimidating dude.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
I wasn't sure which Jimmy was going to meet, The
Jimmy who donated millions to good causes, the jovial, generous Jimmy,
or the one I'd had screaming at people on the
FBI wiret apps, the Jimmy Galante you do not fuck.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
With Hello, nice to young Claire.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Why Jimmy is sitting across from us in a big
office picking out from under a cap. He's in his
late sixties, tall and lean in a pale, pink polo shirt.
His jeans look like they've been n ironed, and his
town of work boots are immaculate. After we introduce ourselves,
we're shown into a QUI this. I mean, you can
(12:02):
push it to.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Come out, but I'm gonna I'm gonna close it.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
It's not gonna be locked over here, but optically it's
gonna look like it's locked.
Speaker 7 (12:08):
It won't be the first time I've been locked up.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And that's exactly what I wanted to talk to Jimmy
about that summer of two thousand and six when he.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Was locked up. How did it all go so wrong?
Speaker 7 (12:21):
There's the FBI side, there's my side, and somewhere in
the middle of the truth, there's a very very fine
line between the good gays and the bear case.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
The line.
Speaker 7 (12:36):
I'm switchling, I'm in I'm neutral, I'm.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
In the middle.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
In the side of the line, well, maybe a toe.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I'd been told time and time again that Jimmy had
a slow, deliberate way.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Of talking, that when he looks at you with those.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Dark blue eyes, you feel like he's looking into your soul.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And it's true.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Sitting here with Jimmy is intense, and it's clear that
Jimmy doesn't agree with all the allegations that have been
leveled against him. But before we get into that, let's
start with the facts. Everyone can agree on the fallout
from his arrest in two thousand and six.
Speaker 7 (13:20):
When it all went down and I got indicted. I
was put on house arrest, and the government had a
no visit list people that could not come to see me.
When the government took my company over for alleged racketeering,
and they run it until they can sell it. And
(13:41):
it's their job to preserve the company and cut costs,
and you know, the treasures will not expense the government
felt that they needed and that was the end of it.
Nothing more than that. Probably the saddest part other than
having to faced my son and you know, feel like
I was a disappointment. I just wanted all my other
(14:02):
kids here, you know, they had to pack up and leave,
and without even being able to say goodbye, without even
being able to, you know, give them an explanation.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
When Jimmy says, all my other kids, he's talking about
the Trashes.
Speaker 7 (14:17):
All my players were like an extension of the Galante family.
They were they weren't more boys.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And as the summer of two thousand and six passes,
everyone around Jimmy starts to move on with their lives.
Aj graduates college, the former Trashes leave Danbury and join
other teams, and Jimmy's still stuck at home under house arrest,
fantasizing about his day in court when he might finally
(14:45):
get to share his side of the story.
Speaker 7 (14:48):
I wanted to go to trial. It was a multifaceted case.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Jimmy and his lawyers start to prepare their arguments. The
first they have to sit through a bunch pre troll
hearings where the prosecution lay out their case.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
It soon becomes clear what Jimmy's.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Up against, like say, the fifty thousand wire tap intercepts.
Some of the more dumbing ones were played to Jimmy
in the courtroom.
Speaker 7 (15:16):
There is absolutely nothing, nothing that'll make your hair stand
up on your arms than to be sitting in that
courtroom and you hear your voice, and you hear what
you said, maybe in a fit of rage, that they
can use against Chew, and you say yourself, oh my god,
what did I do here?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
You've heard some of the calls. They do sound a
little incriminating.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
Tell the cocksuckers, and I said, quote unquote, then unless
you want the fucking nightmare, get that fucking thing out
of there now.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Absolutely okay.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Of course, when I ask Jimmy about his telephone manner,
his answer is pretty simple.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It is what it is.
Speaker 7 (15:59):
I don't make excuses for it. You know, I had
a temper ice at what I had to say.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
With a battle of epic proportions on his hands, Jimmy
dedicates a room in his house to fighting the many
charges against him.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
It's a kind of war room with.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
A large table where he can spread out the piles
of documents and files. Every day he and his defense
team assemble working out how to beat the charges. But
there's some worrying news. Other defendants have started to fold.
The courts are offering plea deals. In September two thousand
(16:36):
and six, even Matty the hawse iron Ello pleads guilty
to a racketeering charge and is sent down for almost
two years. And when Jimmy's own business associates in Danbury
begins striking deals with the courts, yes, even more nervous.
Speaker 7 (16:53):
They'll basically, if guide it properly, will say exactly what
yours attorney wants them to say.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Jimmy's offered a plea deal himself. He still wants his
day in court, but being a savvy negotiator, he's open
to hearing what the state's attorney is offering.
Speaker 7 (17:08):
Their first lawfer came back at twenty five years, and
I kinda smiled because I can get that if I
went to trial and lost. And we went back and
forth and back and forth, and back and forth and
back and forth, and it started to get dragged out.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
By the summer of two thousand and eight, Jimmy's been
confined to his house for two years, and he's getting
tired of negotiating.
Speaker 7 (17:31):
You get to a point to where if you go
to trial, you're looking at twenty five years, and if
you make a deal, you're looking at eight years. So
as AG would say, do the.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Math, and then the state's attorney ups the ante and
slaps him with the ultimate ultimatum.
Speaker 7 (17:52):
I remember getting a telephone call four or five o'clock
on a Wednesday. I was politely told by attorney that
I had till four o'clock Friday afternoon to take the
deal that was on the table, which was eighty seven months.
If I didn't, they were going to indict AJ.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Why because Jimmy has bought AJ a garbage company, as
you do.
Speaker 7 (18:22):
And they said that my money was proceeds from racketeering.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Tangling AJ up in the whole dodgy business. The FBI
have Jimmy by the bulls. If he continues to fight
for his moment on the stand, he risks AJ's freedom.
So he takes a deep breath and makes a big decision.
That's after the break. As Jimmy Galante weighs up his auctions,
(19:03):
journalist Karen Alley is still glued to the case.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Everyone's wondering what's he gonna do. Is he gonna plead guilty?
Is he going to go to trial? Is he going
to keep fighting? You don't know. Everything's cloaked in secrecy.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
The day of the plea hearing arrives the third of
June two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Karen travels to the courthouse in New Haven.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
There was a wait beforehand in the hallway. He was
waiting with his lawyer and others. Then finally when we
got inside the courtroom, it's a beautiful, big courtroom, very imposing,
very beautiful, and it was almost like a church. There
was Jimmy next to his lawyer. There was FBI guys,
people on the prosecutor side, plus a lot of reporters.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
But Jimmy won't be talking to reporters today. He's here
to answer to one person only, the judge.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Ellen Burns, this legendary judge way up on this. It's
almost like a pedestal. She doesn't look like she's that
imposing because she's this elderly woman with white hair, But
believe me, she's very imposing judge and had a legendary
career and obviously had a lot of power. She asked him,
are you challenging any of the prosecution statements about what
(20:16):
you did? You very quietly said no, your honor.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And now for the moment Karen and the assembled crowd
have all been waiting for. The judge asks Jimmy how
he pleads. He leans into the microphone and quietly utters
the word guilty to three of the ninety three charges
leveled against.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Him, racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to froud the irs, and conspiracy
to commit wirefraud.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
The first charge, racketeering conspiracy is basically a catsual phrase
for dishonest business dealings like fraud, extortion, coercion, that kind
of thing. In Jimmy's case, it includes the no bid
Shelton note fixing contracts and the regular mob tax payments
to our old friend Matty the horse that's over one
(21:10):
hundred thousand dollars a year by the way and wrapped
into their racketeering conspiracy charge is that old allegation FBI
agent Jeff Waterman told me about that Jimmy had been
involved in torturing a rivals truck in the nineties. The
second charge Jimmy pleads to is conspiracy to defraud the irs.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Mostly tax offenses, and.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
The third charge is wire fraud conspiracy linked to everyone's
favorite band of hockey bad boys. You remember how hockey
leagues have rules about how much players can get paid,
and you remember the daffel bags of cash, the lakeside cottages,
and the extra contracts that Jimmy offered the trashers.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, the FBI did the maths.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
They accused Jimmy of breaking the uhl's salary cap. Usually
this offense would be dealt with by the hockey league,
not the FBI. It would result in a fine, not
a prison sentence. But Jimmy provided inaccurate payroll figures, and
so the FBI charged him with fording the UHL out
of fines he owed for breaching the cap.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Jimmy pleads guilty.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
All's fair in love and war.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Jimmy doesn't exactly seem remorseful about breaking the law in
the same way, he doesn't seem to regret breaking the
rules of hockey. It's all just part of his philosophy
win at all costs. And it's when I talked to
Jimmy about the trashes that I realized just how far
he was willing to throw the rule book.
Speaker 7 (22:48):
We did all kinds of crazy stuff. I mean, probably
the funniest thing we did was we had to win
a game or two to get into the playoffs, and
it was a home game. In a home game, you're
responsible to put the water in the bottles for everybody,
So we decided to put vising in the goalies water. Well,
(23:14):
what it does is it makes your stomach go absolutely crazy.
You start to vomit, you start to get severe diarrhea,
and I'll never forget it. We were standing up there
and AG's looking at me, and I'm looking at aj
and I'm smiling. Goes, what's the matter, I said, just watch,
And all of a sudden, the goalie is moving. He's
sliding left to right to left to right. Pull if
(23:37):
he makes a mad dash to the bench, and that
was it. He was out of the game. They put
the second string goalie in. We won the game.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Did people ever say that you played dirty?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
You know that it wasn't.
Speaker 7 (23:48):
Fat that you well, you know, people are entitled to
say what they want to say, and I would always
tell them, you know, show me a good loser, and
I'll show you a loser. I'm not here to lose.
I'm here to win. I don't win at any cost.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Any cost.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Is there anything that you wouldn't have done?
Speaker 7 (24:11):
Well, I'll be honest with you, I really can't answer
that because we only had two seasons.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
This mentality to win at any cost, to keep on winning,
it's a motto that runs through all aspects of Jimmy's life,
hockey and business. He says it's what drove him to
build his trash empire from the ground up.
Speaker 7 (24:36):
You got to be a game with me. I had
two trucks. I needed to have four trucks, and then
I had to have ten trucks. I just wanted to win.
I just wanted to win.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
How tight is money to winning? Are they one of
the same or is it an element of winning?
Speaker 7 (24:54):
Money was always a side issue. Jimmy was beating a
com copetitor to get a garbage account, and you know,
come to work every day and you know, maybe there's
fifteen commercial accounts on the road and AWD picked up
thirteen of them. That was a big deal to me.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And what about his competitors, people who say that his
rule breaking touched them out of business, or people who
claimed Jimmy forced them to sell up.
Speaker 7 (25:24):
I think it's sour grapes. If competitors that couldn't make
it would take millions of dollars for me to purchase
their company and then turn around and say they were
pushed out, that's a fallacy. I don't know why my
growth was any different than a home depot. Home depots
(25:46):
would put a little hardware stores out of business. I mean,
you know, come on, why is it any different? Because
why is it because I'm Italian and it's the garbage
industry and it has a reputation. I don't get it
just to.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Play like there was advocate. People would argue that with
the court cases and the indictments and things coming out
about like your relationship with Matty the Horse, that it
is a bit different to like Starbucks putting like small
coffee shops out of business just.
Speaker 7 (26:14):
Because of Well, let me ask you a question. If
you grew up in a neighborhood, and you know, you
were around a lot of people, and some of them
you were friends, and put yourself in my shoes.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Jimmy was born in the Bronx, New York.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
His dad worked two jobs and was struggling to make
ends meet. Jimmy was the eldest of six and had
to earn money for his family from a young age.
So he's right there. Our realities are very different. It's
hard for me to put myself in his shoes to
understand why he did the things he did, why he
(26:57):
believed the things he does.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
Listen, Claire, you've never heard me say I was an angel.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
No, that's true.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
You've been very upfront with me. You know. It's just
tricky when you hear like different perspectives and different stories,
and people would share their experiences and it's just trying
to map it all together.
Speaker 7 (27:16):
The people that have formed their opinions of me. You're
not going to change that. I really don't care.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
When he pled guilty to those charges in court, Jimmy
confound some of the worst suspicions about how he made
money and got ahead of the competition. Jimmy may say
he doesn't care about other people's opinions, but I'm not
sure that's always been the case. Remember when the owner
of the Trash's rival team, the Addie Ron Dack Frostbite Trash,
(27:47):
talked Jimmy in a postgame interview.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
He compared Jimmy to Tony Soprano, meaning.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
He's nothing but a gangster.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Why didn't touch a nerve that comment.
Speaker 7 (28:02):
Because I don't really see myself as a gangster. People
put labels on people when they really don't know the facts.
And I don't have to explain myself to anybody. If
you don't know me, keep it to yourself. Now, if
you're brazen enough and you want to say it to
(28:23):
my face, we can have a conversation. And it doesn't
mean that I won't deal with you. But I know
where you're coming from and I know you're real.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Why do you think you.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Had that well, yeah, being referred to as a gangster.
It was stuff that was going on in the papers
at the time.
Speaker 7 (28:39):
And listen, you hate to stereotype people, but at the
end of the day, you're of Italian descent, you were
born in the Bronx, you're in the garbage business, and
there's a stigma and that stigma is attached to you,
(29:01):
and whether it's true or it's not true, it is
what it is. And you know what, if I had
a dime for every time I got blamed for doing
something that I sincerely didn't do, I'd be a happy camper.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
But it is what it is.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
How much of it do you think was like fair
and what was unfair?
Speaker 7 (29:24):
Bottom line is I'm not going to get into a
lot of stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I will tell you this.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
I'm far from being an angel, but I'm also not
the devil.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Did you ever wonder what it would have been like
if you had taken the more sort of like straight
laced path and I don't know, being a mayor or
like just being a straight up businessman.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
I like being Jimmy.
Speaker 7 (29:56):
I chose a path, and you know what, right wrong, different.
For the most part, I was very successful at it.
You never once ever heard me say that my problems
in life were because of Maddie the horse or this,
or that I'm.
Speaker 8 (30:12):
A big boy.
Speaker 7 (30:12):
I did what I did truthfully. At the end of
the day, I have nobody blame about myself.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
On the third of September two thousand and eight, three
months after his plea hearing, and after two years of
house arrest, Jimmy was sentenced to just over seven years
in prison. He reports to the Allenwood Federal Correctional Institute
in Pennsylvania at the beginning of October. He's ready to
pay the price for his actions. But the trouble is
(30:43):
he isn't the only one shouldering the cost. Without a
dad or a hockey team, AJ has to start picking
up the pieces of his life.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
The house of cards comes crumbling down.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
So it was the worst feeling in the world.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
It's time for Aj to rebuild.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
That's coming up in the final episode of The Fighty Pucks.
The Fighting Pucks is produced by Novel for iHeartRadio. For
(31:28):
more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is
hosted by me Claire Crofton and produced by me Joe
Wheeler and Amalia Sortland.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
The executive producer is David Waters.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Story editing from Max O'Brien, Mitherley Raul and Austin Mitchell.
Our field producer is Bebette Thomas. Our fat checker is
Dannia Suleiman. Our hockey sensitivity reader is Nikhil Desais. Production
management from Schwy Rihe Houston and Charlotte Wolfe. Sound design,
(32:03):
mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson, Music supervision by Nicholas
Alexander and David Waters. Original music composed by Eric Phillips.
Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to
Sean Glynn, Katrina Novelle, David Vassiman, Sean ty Tone and
(32:24):
beth Anne Macaluso
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Novel
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