Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Inside the Mind of a Mafia Informant: Corruption, Betrayal & Regret
Fri, 11 Apr 2025
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Chapter 1: What led Joseph Barone Jr to become an informant?
I worked for the federal government for 18 years undercover. The FBI, they pretend they're the good guys, and then they stab you in the back. My life was in danger all the time. But the FBI, do me to the, not the wolves, to the whole jungle. And they did it purposely. I was born in New Rochelle, New York. You're kind of centrally located there.
But in that town, there was a lot of things going on. It was kind of an upscale type of thing. So if you moved from the Bronx and you went to New Rochelle, it was like, ooh, now we're in New Rochelle, like, you know, Westchester, you know? So it was kind of like a little bit on an upscale. But there was a lot of things going on around that town. Gambling, loan sharking, gambling.
uh taking numbers murders you know organized crime is organized crime you know uh but uh you moved up to those kind of places when you kind of stepped up from like uh if you're a wise guy for a long time and you moved up that means you were making money and you were doing good for yourself and you you tried to get away out of that neighborhood the bad neighborhoods i guess you would say
right well if you're but but you're you're a little kid like i mean how do you do you see this around you or you didn't know nothing about it when i went to clubs with my father i was probably like maybe seven years old so my father would take me with him you know and we go to like the clubs and there'd be the pool table in there a bunch of guys playing cards you know i'd shoot a little pool the guys would show me how to shoot pool i'd walk in my like my some of the guys would go to my father what do you got there who's that your bodyguard like you know and he'd be holding my hand and
you know, you hear things, but you don't really know. They show you how to shoot pool. They ask you if you want something to eat, you know, you want a sandwich and stuff. And, and I look at my father, my father said, yeah, give him a sandwich. You want something to eat? And he would call me Joseph.
And so I'd eat and talk to the guys, but I, they, you know, uh, it was, it felt like you had like a bunch of guys with you, like your father's friends. So you've made you feel kind of like special in a way.
Right. When did you kind of, did you, it's funny because, um, You know, I want to ask, when did you start to notice that this was abnormal? But the truth is, I mean, I know it's like, you know, being a, it's like a fish that's in a pond. Like it doesn't really realize it's in a pond. It's all it's ever known.
It doesn't realize it's surrounded by water, you know, so you don't really notice it until you get out of that. And then you're like, oh, wow, that wasn't normal.
It's that's almost that's that's like right there. That's pretty much how it was. It only real only other times I've ever realized it was when if my father came out of the house and if I was having problems with somebody in the neighborhood and their father came out, sometimes they would be a little bit. Oh, I'm sorry, Joe. My father's name was Joe, too, as well.
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Chapter 2: How did Joseph's upbringing influence his criminal life?
I used to detail cars at a couple of dealerships at one time. So I was trying to make my way in life, but I finally got a good job at a junior high school as a custodian. My cousin married this guy. His father was the custodian at the school, the head custodian. So I went there.
I didn't know what I was doing, but they taught me how to clean and mop up and do all that stuff like certain custodians would do. But actually, while I was doing that, I took the postman test and I actually passed with a 98 because my memory used to be so sharp. I used to watch it on TV, this match game or whatever it was.
So they would show you on the board what was on there and then they close it. And then you'd have to remember where those pieces go. And I remembered it. And that's how I was so good. That's kind of the test it was. So I was actually passed the test with like a 98. So they called me.
they wanted to give me part-time work now i'm like a kind of a creature habit i don't like to change i was all right in there making some money i figured part-time work i'd have to change jobs i'd have to learn something so i guess i was a little more apprehensive about going into it and i should have because i would have that's how they start you off you become full-time after that now i had two uncles and a cousin who was postman it would have been like i went into the family business you know and i would have been retired at maybe 47 48 years old
with a nice little pension, but I'm assuming that's not what happened.
Well, once again, nobody said to me, you know, I told everybody that I passed it and everything, but nobody said, go forward. It's a federal job. It's a, you know, you have, uh, benefits and all this other stuff. Yeah. Nobody talked to me, so I didn't do it like a fool. And I regret it to this day. I regret it.
So what happened? So what happened? What'd you end up doing?
Well, I wound up getting fired at the job. No surprise there. The boss was, I guess, well, it's a little bit my fault. Let me explain. I was young. I was about 24 years old, 23 years old. And so I used to like to go out to the club. So Friday came. What happened was, you know how you punch the ticket into the time clock back in those days?
Well, I thought I was smarter than most people, and I got the key to the time clock, and I used to mess with it a little bit to try to show that I put in my time, but I left a couple hours early. But lo and behold, I didn't know really how to work the time clock that good, and so everybody I was punching in was getting all the wrong times, all the teachers, everybody.
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