Operation Odessa - From the Heart Productions Inc Facilitating it. "I've been in this business my whole life. On June 19, 2011, Tony and his oldest son, 15-year-old Anthony Jr., had just sat down to eat wings in the Doll House office around 11 p.m. when the gold-painted doors burst open. I told Juan, I said, Hey. Sometimes we get a little excited when we find the amount of cocaine we found, said Castro. He'd already invested in seven apartments in Panama City and rented a storefront on the capital's seediest street, where prostitution was legal. After that, Kristy closed Bongos. 16:56 GMT 13 Mar 2018 Tarzans on board and essentially youre in the movie, one way or another. Then I ended up spending a great deal of what I like to call social engineering, which is kind of like the hanging out with all these guys theyre all very secretive cats with these very sketchy kind of criminal pasts. In an instant, Galeota's meaty hand was around the customer's neck, shoving him outside. In hand-painted white lettering, it reads, "Dear visitors. A judge eventually dropped the human trafficking charge, but Galeota still rotted in his sordid cell alongside insects the size of small dogs. I have to tell you, all my enemies are dead, and Im happy, he says in the documentary. We did outsmart the FBI, we did outsmart the DEA, we even did outsmart the court, Tarzan says in the film. With dark hair and pale, wide-set eyes, teenage Tony resembled a stocky Frank Sinatra. But when the house of cards tumbles, John . Galeota was crammed into a sweltering holding cell with 150 others. Its our mission down there besides search and rescue. Instead, Galeota admits he's done bad things, such as running Miami's most infamous strip club, Porky's, for years before moving to Panama and opening a brothel. But Tarzan a seasoned wheeler-dealer, strip club owner and former mob enforcer took it in his stride and went back to his partners with the response. Galeota was hit with felony drug and prostitution charges. On a crowded balcony overlooking La Joya, Galeota describes the past 16 months as a nightmare. 4:00AM. Photo Gallery. Meanwhile, the task force had gotten wind of the bizarre submarine plan; not only had they wiretapped Tarzan, but they had also inserted an undercover agent into the operation an agent who appears in the documentary after undergoing an extensive makeup disguise because he continues to work undercover cases involving the Russian mob. Everything here has a cost.". "But I've always paid for everything, either with stitches in my head, concussions, or jail time. Watch Locked Up Abroad Season 10 Episode 10 Miami Mobster Take Down Online This is a guy that the FBI went after for years but could never get him. Wrongly imprisoned. Then an old friend showed up. The goods came from sources in the freshly fallen Soviet Union, a place where everything seemed to be up for grabs at ridiculously low prices. Operation Odessa (2018) - IMDb He bought seven properties pretty much sight unseen.". Here, Galeota is just one of 500 prisoners crammed into a filthy cell block designed to hold 200 people. There is no rehabilitation here," he says. Anywhere other than La Joya, this news would be shocking. Galeota says the police had already gotten what they wanted: Porky's demise. As chronicled in the new Showtime documentary Operation Odessa, the trio of cutthroat outlaws collaborated in 1996 to procure the ultimate weapon for Colombias money-minting Cali cocaine cartel: a military submarine. On Friday, May 17, Galeota got word that the judge had also dismissed the drug charge because of lack of evidence. McDonald expects those will be dismissed as well, but not for months. We've been here for two years!' Prostitution in Miami had become too risky, he decided, but overseas sex tourism was soaring. Follow this journalist on Twitter @MikeMillerMiami. Tony Galeta Profiles | Facebook Tony Gogetta. Instead, he's trapped in a labyrinthine legal system, alone and unable to speak Spanish. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. Miami's underworld may still be seedy, but it has outsourced much of its shadiness to nearby Third-World countries such as Panama. So looking back on it and all the hijinks, from being smuggled in to a Panamanian prison to crossing paths with the FSB in Moscow to being met in a Porsche Cayenne by Tony Yester and driving away thinking: Okay, the CIA, DEA, FBI and US Marshals have been looking for this guy for 25 years, and Im in his car by myself with no notion of where were going or when were coming back. In retrospect, its like, Im a moron, but at the time I was full-throttle chase the story., Of the finished product Operation Odessa, he says: Hopefully, its a rocknroll thrill ride into the underworld, where you get a passport to a life and lifestyle and characters that you didnt even imagine existed much less having a ringside seat with them., The comments below have not been moderated, By "I couldn't take all the people who wanted to come.". One scammer stole from another scammer; of course I accept it, he says. We asked them some questions and some of their information didnt quite add up, so we conducted a boarding.. When crews were launched to investigate, the suspected smugglers threw several packages into the water. His Doll House dream began at Porky's. Business was better, but it still wouldn't make him rich. He paid for her to secretly get an abortion. A year later, it was $115,000 per month.". A judge eventually dropped the human trafficking charge, but Galeota still rotted in his sordid cell alongside insects the size of small dogs. And then Russell got a text message out of the blue. "Then they'd tell me: 'They are as good as dead.'". "I lived it up in Miami," he says. "No one can tell us how long he will be in there," she says. This time, I'm innocent.". The person they were going to pay for the submarine was the officer who let them [into the naval base], says Russell. "I brought in music and women," Galeota says. "I was 16 years old and amazed," he says. Its impossible but only because its true. In January 1997, after he dropped his daughter off at school, Tarzan was arrested and hit with a 30-count federal indictment. It was apparent they had what appeared to be narcotics and after we did the test they had bales on board of pure cocaine, said Boatswains Mate Omar Castro with the U.S. Coast Guard. He was talking to Fainberg about a murder he'd witnessed in Porky's parking lot. La Joya is flush with contraband, from cell phones and cigarettes to marijuana and handguns all of it brought in with the complicity of corrupt guards. Next time, I will steal it back from him., Tarzan (left) at the site of the submarine. He was a character.. He hired 'Fat Tony' Galeota as Porky's manager. Awards. But killings are common in Panama's worst prison, where the smell of raw sewage wafts over the yard, metal shackles hang from moldy staircases, and overcrowded cells house nearly 3,500 of the Western Hemisphere's vilest murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers. Somewhere between his native Ukraine, Israel, and Russia, he'd shed his trademark long hair and changed his name to Alon Bar. Within weeks of its April 2011 opening, the club was raking in $6,000 on good nights. Back in South Florida, Kristy Galeota vacillates between outrage and empathy for her husband. Follow Miami New Times on Facebook and Twitter @MiamiNewTimes. His mother, Bonnie Gellilti, was "a bit of a criminal," Tony remembers. Here, Galeota is just one of 500 prisoners crammed into a filthy cell block designed to hold 200 people. So if you wanna do it, the time is now, and essentially, its happening one way or another, so you might be the person to author your story. Its Colombian dancers were in Panama on six-month tourist visas, weren't licensed as prostitutes, and weren't getting required weekly health checkups. Galeota's sheer size and mob connections are the only things keeping him from getting shivved in the dark. Sheila Flynn For Dailymail.com (CBS Miami). Even then, however, he couldn't sleep. The entire situation sounds like something dreamed up for a Miami Vice-inspired action thriller, but it actually happened in the 1990s and the trio came very close to pulling it off before one of them pocketed the cartels millions and went on the run. Like a concert pianist, Tony Galeota has spent his life honing a single skill since he was a teenager. "Thank God I'm out," he tells New Times in his first interview since his release. "It was a very violent atmosphere," he says. Between an undercover agent, a tap on Tarzans cellphone and the wiring of Babushka, federal law enforcement agencies had enough information to shut down the sale. Michael Galeota Obituary (1984 - 2016) - Legacy And so with like five days prep I jumped on a plane, went to Miami, started courting the cops and the feds and the US attorneys and all the good guys, the law enforcement side of it their participation was instrumental in it, because theyre the ones that have all the evidentiary record and all the surveillance video and the photos and the wiretaps and all that stuff, most of which is the sort of visual skeleton to the film. Galeota saw an opportunity. The most audacious plot allegedly hatched in the back of Porky's was to purchase a former Soviet submarine for $5.5 million for a Colombian drug cartel so it could ship cocaine up the coast to California. He and Fainberg were on their way to riches thanks to powerful friends and legalized prostitution. When he left to open a bona fide brothel in Panama, Galeota thought the country's lax prostitution laws would make him rich. His father, Arnold, was a strait-laced sales manager but a distant and disapproving dad. Over the course of three months, undercover detectives made dozens of visits, tallying up a vivid snapshot of the club: "15 purchases of cocaine, four purchases of MDMA, one purchase of Xanax, one purchase of marijuana, 18 solicitations for prostitution, [and] 20 lewd acts.". The nightmare deepened for Galeota. S10 E10 - Miami Mobster Take Down Tony Galeota is framed for drug trafficking in Panama City. We had a $500,000 house, cars, and motorcycles. "They had what seemed like a dynamite case, but it has ended up in pieces.". "They knew some Russian guy named Tarzan who had just opened up a club in Miami called Porky's. When one inmate killed another, the dead man's gang on the outside murdered the inmate's entire family, Galeota says. "Running a club in that neighborhood, win or lose, you've got to fight.". But then the country's corrupt system turned on them. While on routine patrol, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection plane spotted a suspicious speed boat. source of local news and culture, Michael E. Miller "My family didn't care; they took it," Galeota says of the stolen goods. Coast Guard members who seized the cocaine said this is what their jobs are all about. 8:00AM. We both understand that.". "It was so slow I couldn't take it," he says. He met with mobsters in Cali mansions full of women, and he knocked on random doors in search of dancers. He soon finds himself wanting to be a mobster, and starts running errands for them. The Doll House couldn't expand fast enough to meet the influx of sex tourists. Let me check.. While another new prisoner was beaten and robbed, Galeota was untouched. Michael Galeota, who starred on the Disney Channel's "The Jersey" died Sunday, according to Variety. Its a great success overall. Prosecutors say police never filed the necessary paperwork. Of the $10 million, he said, I cannot f- -king believe it how fast I spend it.. Russian mobsters learned about their comrade's successful venture, and adopted the club as a virtual office. Tony Galletta. Has a stint in Panamanian prison reformed Miami's most notorious strip club manager? "Everybody give me your money!" Tony is my friend, and well always love each other. And so it was extraordinary, where sort of person after person was this larger-than-life character, from Fat Tony the bartender to Tony Yester the spy-turned-dope-dealer-turned-fugitive.
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