 There was some interesting news that came out in the New York press this past week. Jerry Capace over at Gangland News was able to illuminate some interesting tidbits from the New York FBI office that I want to share. It's related to what's been an almost decade-long feud between the FBI offices in New York and Philadelphia related to Skinny Joy Merlino, the most compelling mafia Don in America, the Instagram Don as I call him, the brand new podcaster of his show, The Skinny on YouTube. We're living in some crazy times in 2023 where you have a godfather that's YouTube. And this would be like if John Gotti in 1988 was a host in a television show. But getting away from the surreal nature of that, we've known for about seven or eight years that there was acrimony between the FBI offices in New York City and Philadelphia related to a 2016 racketeering indictment that they referred to, the federal government referred to as the East Coast LCN case. They took down leaders of five separate families, four of the five New York families, and then Joey Merlino, who's been living down in Florida since 2011 when he got out of prison on his most recent serious case, his racketeering conviction in 2001, and he moved down to Florida and the New York FBI was investigating Joey down in Florida as well as when he was coming up to New York to meet with the Genovese crime family and some of the KZs. So we knew when the case dropped in the summer of 2016 that the Philadelphia FBI felt kind of blindsided by it. They weren't kept in the loop. They were shielded, I guess, from what New York was doing, and they felt that New York owed them at least lip service, at least, you know, if not including them in the investigation, at least for them to receive word of what was going on. But New York didn't want Philadelphia or the Miami FBI office to know that they were investigating Merlino. Miami is kind of the boots on the ground for Joey because he spends most of the year in South Florida, but the Philadelphia office still has Joey prominently on their dartboard. He's public enemy number one. He claims he's no longer a mob down. He's retired. He's been retired since he got out of prison over a decade ago, but the FBI still believes. He's the head honcho of the Bruno Scarfield crime family. What's most interesting about this news, I kind of buried the lead, I apologize, is that the New York FBI office was involved in subterfuge. It's coming out in a new book called War Against the Mafia that's being going to be published around Christmas time, written by a retired FBI agent, Mike Campy, is telling the story that not only did they keep Philadelphia FBI office in the dark related to communications, they took their investigation that was on the FBI mainframe computer. So anybody that has federal law enforcement security clearance around the country can get into the mainframe and see what investigations are going on around the country. The New York office intentionally removed any reference to Joy Merlino investigation from the mainframe, so the Philadelphia and Miami offices wouldn't be able to get out of the computer and see that anything was going on with one of their targets. This I'm guessing that the Philadelphia FBI office already knew this and the public didn't, but it just shows you to the lengths that some of this gamesmanship between different law enforcement agencies, even within it's normally these robberies pop up between federal and state, but you can see within federal law enforcement, you can have this kind of stuff pop up to where one group feels like they're being undermined by another. George Anastasia and Dave Shroutwizer reported right when this happened back in 16, 17 that the Philadelphia office was at odds with the New York office. Joey ended up going to trial on the East Coast LCN case, hung jury, he eventually pled out to one gambling account, did about a year in jail. He's out now podcasting. And then the other piece of information that came out in Jerry Capace's Gangland News Story, which is kind of a side note to what I'm talking about, but I feel like it's relevant, is that another retired FBI agent by the name of Joy Camp, according to this book, was involved in a pretty salacious sexual relationship with a mafia turncoat named Cookie Durso, and Cookie claims that she was forcing him to sleep with her. Her husband was like the head of the OC Bureau in this New York office or head of the office all together, and she was kind of leveraging that to have an affair with him. But she also was investigated by the FBI internal affairs division about erasing or removing the data about Joey Merlino from the New York mainframe, so Philadelphia, Miami couldn't see it. She was cleared of any wrongdoing, but she was investigating, so she was involved in that East Coast LCN case and investigating Joey Merlino. So I just wanted to keep people updated and let people know that that's the heights that some of these law enforcement units will go to to keep things close to the vest. And I'm not exactly sure what the motive was other than, I don't know if they worried that there was a leak or if it was just a territory dispute. This is our case, we're going to make the headlines, we're going to get the promotions, and we don't want you to button your nose into it. Just kidding, an update on the rivalry between the New York FBI office and the Philadelphia FBI office related. Just kidding, Joey Merlino. OG pod, I'm out.