The Life and Crimes of Don King: The Shame of Boxing in America by Jack Newfield

Author:Jack Newfield [Newfield, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biographies & Memoirs
Publisher: Harbor Electronic Publishing
Published: 2009-02-28T23:00:00+00:00

Columbo family capo Michael Franzese arranged the meeting in which King agreed to do a co-promotion with an FBI undercover agent posing as a drug dealer seeking to launder cash.

On this tape Ramn said that King kept most of his money “offshore and in Swiss bank accounts.”

During one of the meetings with Quintana taped by the FBI on CCTV, the talk veered away from getting a meeting with King, and to setting up a potential drug deal. Once again Sharpton couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

“Let me see what I can do, I know some people,” said the minister who did anti-drug crusades in the projects.

Quintana, keeping with his script, stressed he was only talked about pot and cocaine, not heroin. Sharpton said he would mention the prospect to Danny Pagano.

“He’s a Genovese guy, you know,” Sharpton said, showing off his knowledge of crime family factions.

But when Quintana met with Pagano, Pagano told him, “I don’t deal in drugs.”

Spinelli watched the video of Sharpton volunteering to further a drug deal at least thirty times, trying to read his character, measure his potential to be flipped, to become his informant against King. Spinelli needed a breakthrough on Crown Royal. His six-month funding cycle was about to expire, and the probe was at an impasse.

In the portly, anxious-to-please image of Sharpton, Spinelli thought he saw a weak man, a bluffer, a blowhard—not a tough or sinister criminal. Spinelli thought he and Quintana could flip Sharpton themselves.

At 5:00 P.M. on June 30, 1983, Sharpton arrived at Crown Royal’s $2,400-per-month luxury apartment, in a doorman building near Lincoln Center. Sharpton was making small talk with Quintana when Spinelli and another agent, Ken Mikionis, burst out of the bedroom, startling the minister.

Without saying a word they inserted a cassette into the VCR and started playing the video of the meeting where Sharpton offered to call Danny Pagano about the fictional drug transaction. Sharpton is as smart and as quick as Don King. After less than a minute he asked, “What do I have to do?”

Spinelli never got to deliver his your-life-is-at-the-crossroads speech he had been rehearsing in his mind all day. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to stay out of jail,” Sharpton repeated.

“Fine,” Spinelli said, “but you better be straight with me. This is no game. This is very serious. You’ll only get a chance to cross me once, and that will be it.”

The next day Sharpton taped his first conversation with Don King for the FBI. King asked Sharpton to orchestrate attacks in the black media on Larry Holmes because Holmes had left him and signed to fight Marvis Frazier. King asked Sharpton to plant stories in the black media, including Jet and Ebony, depicting Holmes as an “Uncle Tom” for leaving him for “a white promoter.”

“Put a fire under Larry’s ass,” was King’s instruction.

Holmes’s fight with Marvis Frazier (Joe’s son) was being co-promoted by Robert Andreoli, who was white, and Murad Muhammad, who was black and a traditional Islamic Muslim.

On July 6 Sharpton recorded another conversation with King, who was in a cautious mood.

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