Flipping Capo: How the FBI Dismantled the Real Sopranos

By Seamus McElearney and Barbara Finkelstein

S amus McElearney's early days on an FBI organized crime squad were full of grunt work.

For months he was mired in administrative tasks, including the transcription of secret recordings of the DeCavalcante and Bonanno Mafia. Eighteen months later, McElearney assisted in his squad's arrest of thirty-nine Mafia suspects--notably Anthony Capo, a DeCavalcante soldier linked to extortion rackets and two Mafia murders.

Barely a week after Capo's arrest, McElearney accomplished what no other law enforcement agent had ever done in the hundred years of the DeCavalcante crime family's existence: He flipped one of their made men.

What followed was a spiral effect of cooperation as McElearney and colleagues flipped three more DeCavalcante associates, one captain, and an acting boss. Flipping Capo resulted in the Bureau solving eleven murders, convicting seventy-one defendants, and dismantling the DeCavalcante crime family.

Thanks to the redemptive relationship he built with Capo, McElearney helped unmask a criminal network that led to the RICO convictions of the entire DeCavalcante hierarchy, just as the world was coming to know them as the "Real Sopranos."

Flipping Capo tells the unparalleled story of a rookie FBI agent and a seasoned Mafia killer who find the humanity in each other and in themselves as they strive to choose justice over evil.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0DWHS2YVS
• ISBN13: 9798890680167
• Release Date: October 2025
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Length: 288 Pages