Flipping Capo: How the FBI Dismantled the Real Sopranos
Seamus McElearney · Barbara Finkelstein
Oct 2025 · Chicago Review Press
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Séamus 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 crime families. Eighteen months later, McElearney assisted in his squad's arrest of thirty-nine Mafia suspects; he led the team arresting Anthony Capo, a DeCavalcante soldier linked to stock fraud and conspiracy to commit murder.
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. Anthony Capo confessed to dozens of illegal activities, including two murders and eleven murder conspiracies, and agreed to work with the government to bring down his former family.
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."
For months he was mired in administrative tasks, including the transcription of secret recordings of the DeCavalcante and Bonanno crime families. Eighteen months later, McElearney assisted in his squad's arrest of thirty-nine Mafia suspects; he led the team arresting Anthony Capo, a DeCavalcante soldier linked to stock fraud and conspiracy to commit murder.
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. Anthony Capo confessed to dozens of illegal activities, including two murders and eleven murder conspiracies, and agreed to work with the government to bring down his former family.
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."
Séamus 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 crime families. Eighteen months later, McElearney assisted in his squad's arre...
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1 review
Robert Mcnamara
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February 4, 2026
short on action. trial review chapters much too long
About the author
Séamus McElearney joined the FBI in 1998 as a special agent initially assigned to investigate organized crime at the local, federal, and international levels. For the next fifteen years, his tactical and strategic decisions led to the takedown of the DeCavalcante, Bonanno, and Colombo crime families. In 2011, McElearney—then a supervisor—spearheaded the largest Mafia arrest in FBI history, comprising 127 defendants across the United States and Italy. The record holds to this day. McElearney is a subject matter expert for New York City reporters who write about La Cosa Nostra criminal activities in the northeast United States. In 2013, McElearney was invited to the White House as a Service to America Medal finalist for leading "lengthy undercover investigations that have severely disrupted two of New York's notorious and violent organized crime families." McElearney retired from the FBI in April 2019. He is now global head of corporate security at a major financial institution. Barbara Finkelstein is the author of Summer Long-a-Coming, a Harold U. Ribalow Book Prize nominee, and a feature writer and book reviewer for the New York Times, AARP: The Magazine, Newsday, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other media outlets. She has also worked as a corporate staff writer and as a longtime ghostwriter for the Michael Levin Writing Company.
Séamus McElearney joined the FBI in 1998 as a special agent initially assigned to investigate organized crime at the local, federal, and international levels. For the next fifteen years, his tactical and strategic decisions led to the takedown of the DeCavalcante, Bonanno, and Colombo crime famil...
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