Original Gangsters Podcast · Original Gangsters, a True Crime Talk Podcast

Operation Gametax: The Case That Crippled The Detroit Crime Family

·1 hr 32 min·4 clips

Both the podcast and the Patreon members only—this is the start of a series where we get people from opposite ends of a legal conflict or mob war and hash out stuff that happened back in the day.

Scott Bernstein hosts a unique true crime episode featuring prosecutor Rick Convertino and defendant Novi Tocco meeting for the first time in 30 years since Operation Gametax, the 1996 federal prosecution of the Detroit Mafia (Tocco family). Convertino explains how he came to lead the case—replacing an attorney who needed surgery—and discusses the investigation's key breakthroughs, particularly the flipping of attorney Angelo Polizzi and the installation of a car bug in Novi's vehicle that remained active for three years. The episode covers surveillance techniques (parking meter bugs, parabolic mics, physical eavesdropping), the RICO conspiracy statute's power to charge decades-old predicate acts, and the broader context of federal mob prosecution. Notably, despite massive success convicting 16 members including top bosses, the episode concludes with discussion of Jack Tocco's shockingly lenient sentence (less than two years despite being convicted as RICO enterprise head), which suggests possible judicial irregularities or unknown factors affecting his case.

As heard by us

A Detroit mob reckoning built on memory, motive, and still-disputed details.

The episode brings Scott Bernstein, former Detroit Mafia member Novi Toco, and prosecutor Rick Convertino to the same table to revisit the 1996 Operation Game Tax case, described here as the biggest prosecution of the Detroit Mafia in the history of the Toco family.

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Why you'd press play

You want the prosecutor and the mob guy in the same room after 30 years.

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