Retired Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins interviewed retired NYPD auto theft detective Vic Ferrari about his experiences with the mob and the horrible auto theft problem in New York City. Vic Ferrari has written extensively about the NYPD culture, the mob, and his time in the Auto Theft Unit. Vic Ferrari's colorful and unique storytelling style entertains and enlightens simultaneously. He grew up on these "mean streets" and knows the Borough neighborhoods like a New York native who spent his career as a cop.

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS nypd, car, stolen, shipping, thieves, chinese, stolen cars, worked, run, case, brooklyn, winds, stolen vehicles, bronx, drive, cops, stories, year, precinct, books SPEAKERS GARY JENKINS,
Vic Ferrari 00:00 He's parked and this is on a midnight so my lieutenant gets on the radio goes Hey Vic, go up there recover that car and try not to be seen like not to be seen. So I I walk up there the cars running it's on a midnight I'm in this car. I'm like in a tomb the whole interior has been stripped. So there's no door handles no nothing. I don't even know how to get back out of the car. The dashboard is stripped and the interior of the car had been sprayed with WD 40. So so it's so you can't recover fingerprints. So now I'm sliding around in this car. I can't get out of it. And a four seven police car drives by and I said oh shit. If they run my plate, it's got to come back stolen. I can't even roll down the windows. 01:35 Well, welcome all you wiretappers out there back here in studio gangland wire. And I have an interesting guy to say the least another retired copper just like me. And like I used to say out of the mouths of the men that did it. Well, this is a guy that did it. And now he writes stories about it while he writes fiction, but he uses his real life experiences, of course to tell these fictional stories. Vic Ferrari Welcome Vic. 02:01 Gary, thank you so much for having me on your show. I'm a big fan. Great. Well, you 02:05 know, when you got hold on me, you said you'd been listen to the podcast for a while and I appreciate that. And we take all the listeners we can and I like to entertain people and I can tell you do too. I looked at some of the clips of you and other shows that are that he likes to entertain people So anyhow vic, I get you were with NYPD and where do you spend most of your career like I spent most of mine with the intelligence unit here in KC would you spend most of your career 02:31 for the most part I worked in the Organized Crime Control Bureau which and compartmentalized in the Organized Crime Control Bureau. I worked in the NYPD peds auto crime division as a detective for the last 10 years of my career. Okay, 02:45 cool. You retired? And did you start writing before you retired? Or when you get interested in writing? You Ever did you have an English Lit degree at some point in your life? 02:53 No, I got a high school diploma. After I retired from the NYPD, I was bored out of my mind and friends and family said you know you got all these wild stories. You know how to tell a story. Why don't you start writing these things down? And I did and I start I've written a series I've written six books for which are behind the scenes look at the New York City Police Department, you know, things that people wouldn't normally think about with with the NYPD. 03:19 If you were to recommend one year titles, which one that you like maybe the most proud of or the that you'd like personally yourself? 03:27 They're all my babies. But I would go with Grand Theft Auto the NYPD is auto crime division. That's everything you wanted to know about the stolen car industry who steals your car caught thieves mindset what happens to your car, the chop shop, how the auto theft industry works insurance fraud, how to protect your vehicle for being stolen, and the scams that caught these used to get your car. 03:50 Interesting. You know, we were talking before and you know, I had this guy on a mob guy Mob Associate named Andrew Didonato, folks, you got to go back and search you'll find that old interviews fun guy and, and he was he was your counterpart. On the other side. He was a mob guy who was stealing cars. And he told a really fun story about a time that that he was back in a car out of his chop shop and the only thing they taken the steering wheel off was Mercedes and it was a real highly desired steering wheel. So it had a pair of channel locks on the nut that that would hold the steering wheel on and mainly like a bunch of the fenders are off of it and he had to put a milk crate or some other seat in there to sit on and he backed out. And then he started driving down the street because he wanted to get it away from there chop shop and NYPD car pulls up behind him and turns red lights on it he ends up in a car chase and he loses them enough that he could bail out and then run through the neighborhoods which got I'd never caught anybody myself. The car chase me one time, but you may need to catch him so you got to experience Just like that, 05:00 oh, plenty. I mean it you gotta remember in the 90s, New York City averaged 150,000 stolen vehicles a year. So it was like shooting fish in the barrel. I remember going to like the Hunts Point section of the Bronx and you'd be driving around. And you'd see to heroin addicts drive past you when a car with no glass, the windshield is gone, the back windows gone. Or like you said, the doors like a clown car in the circus like it's missing major component parts the hood, and they just go by and you're like what, and by the time you start making that U turn, you're off to the races and we're talking about off air. We were doing a case where we had these guys shipping costs to Shanghai and the main, the main facilitator of this case was also chopping cause in his backyard so we were doing a midnight I'm on a rooftop watching this guy's garage Dodge Caravan goes in there for about an hour or so we run the play to stolen the caravan backs out goes up to White Plains Road and gets parked and this is on a midnight so my lieutenant gets on the radio goes Hey, Vic, go up there, recover that car and try not to be seen like not to be seen. So like I walk up there, the cars running it's on a midnight I jump into this Dodge Caravan I shut the door it's running. And then the first thing I realized once I'm in this car, I'm like in a tube the whole interior has been stripped so there's no door handles no nothing. I don't even know how to get back out of the car. The dashboard is stripped and the interior of the car had been sprayed with WD 40. So so as to you can't recover fingerprint. So now I'm sliding around in this car, I can't get out of it. And a four seven police car drives by and I said oh shit, if they run my plate, it's going to come back stolen. I can't even roll down the windows to tell them hey, I'm a cop show my ID they're gonna wind up pulling me out of the window by my head. The four seven cop comes behind me. I slap it into Drive and I take off. Now I'm getting chased by another police car. I'm trying to get our radio on the correct frequency to tell them to back off and I'm yelling into the radio to my counterpoint. We're on point by point which is like walkie talkie and I'm telling them go over the air until the fourth seventh and back left. They're gonna kill me. So finally I lost the police. I can drive I lost them. I drove into way a Metro North commuter parking lot off the Bronx River Parkway and I kicked out the back window of the car. That was the only way I can escape. And I got out and then my friends pull in a couple of minutes late and they're laughing at me. I'm coughing and glass I'm like shimmy I was got killed 07:19 With WD 40. Wow, that's a heck of a story. You probably had lots of adventures like that in New York, like you said, was probably like shooting fish in the barrel. It's and especially if you're a guy that as an eye for a you stolen card. There's some guys that have an eye for that. Terry Finn was my favorite guy I ever worked with that guy found more stolen cars and found more occupied stolen cards that car chases and everybody else put together. It was unbelievable. So you had that I 07:47 think well I grew up in a neighborhood where it was stealing call was a rite of passage. I wasn't a car thief. But at an early age I worked in a gas station. And there was always guys driving through there with stolen cars either trying to sell parts get gas, and you know, I'd see the broken steering column the punch vent window, the punch door lock you know dirty beat up plates on a brand new car. There's telltale signs the balloon tire, you know like the tire you get a flat it's supposed to last 240 miles. Yeah, you know, these guys got caught the four junkies driving around a stolen car, then I gotta go and invest in a tire. They'll drive that thing until the tire falls off. So things to look for. And yeah, I was always getting into car chases. 08:29 Interesting. So in your book, for example. Give us some examples. Some stories out of your book of the NYPD of auto theft Sure. That yeah, I'm sorry, Grand Theft Auto abs. I forgot the name of it, Grand Theft Auto. No, it's fine. 08:45 It's fine. So I worked in the Bronx office, we had a little bit of the mafia, but our Queens and Brooklyn offices, they basically targeted you know, the Gambino nose Lucchese. Every mafia family had their finger in the pie of auto theft, one way or another, whether they actually owned a salvage yard or a junkyard or a body shop.