A major plotline on the fictional HBO drama The Sopranos has been the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) ongoing pursuit of the DiMeo (New Jersey) and Lupertazzi (Brooklyn) crime families. The Bureau's investigations have met with varying degrees of success.[1] This article lists both characters who have acted as FBI informants and FBI agent characters and as such is an expansion of the main article List of characters from The Sopranos.
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Being an FBI informant on The Sopranos is a risky proposition, often ending in death. Lupertazzi crime family consigliere, James Petrille and Soprano family capo, Carlo Gervasi are the only known FBI informants to survive until the series end. Raymond Curto deserves notice for being a long time informer before dying of natural causes without ever being suspected. Listed below are characters who are known to have been FBI informants and their respective fates. Note that Albie Cianflone was likely an informant, but he should not be included on the list because his cooperation (if any) is debatable, unconfirmed and unknown.
| Informant | Position | Status | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fabian "Febby" Petrulio aka Fred Peters | Former soldier, turned State's Witness, kicked out of witness protection | Deceased | Executed in the Season 1 episode "College" by Tony Soprano. |
| Jimmy Altieri | Capo, DiMeo family | Deceased | Executed in the Season 1 episode "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano" by Silvio Dante. |
| Sal "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero | Soldier, DiMeo family | Deceased | Executed in the Season 2 episode, "Funhouse" by Tony Soprano, Silvio Dante, and Paulie Gualtieri. |
| Adriana La Cerva | Fiancée of Christopher Moltisanti and Crazy Horse club manager | Deceased | Executed in the Season 5 episode, "Long Term Parking" by Silvio Dante. |
| Raymond Curto | Capo, DiMeo family | Deceased | Died as a result of a stroke in the Season 6 episode, "Members Only". |
| Jack Massarone | Business associate, construction | Deceased | Executed in the Season 5 episode, "Rat Pack" on orders from Tony Soprano. |
| Jimmy Petrille | Consigliere, Lupertazzi family | Unknown, presumably Petrille has since entered the Witness Protection Program (although this has not been mentioned). | N/A |
| Eugene Pontecorvo | Soldier, DiMeo family | Deceased | Committed suicide by hanging in the Season 6 episode, "Members Only". The amount of information that he contributed, if any, is highly questionable. |
| Carlo Gervasi | Capo, DiMeo family | Unknown. Turned informant on the series finale "Made in America". His future and the ramifications of his testimony against Tony are unknown. | Became informant due to son being arrested for drug dealing. |
FBI chief of New Jersey division who is constantly looking for new insight on the ongoing Soprano/DiMeo case. He successfully coordinates a mission to put the Soprano residence under surveillance by the use of an old lamp in their basement. The operation ends when Meadow takes the old lamp to college. He also pressures Adriana La Cerva into wearing a wire which leads to her confession and death. When Agent Sanseverino worries after Adriana disappears, Cubitoso decides it is time to move on. He also was the agent whose idea it was to bug Green Grove Retirement Community when Tony Soprano and several other Dimeo family capos move in their mothers, despite other agents skepticism.
Agent Harris' new partner in Counter Terrorism.
An agent who handled Eugene Pontecervo before his suicide.
An FBI agent who handled mob capo Raymond Curto. During a raid on the Soprano residence, Grasso broke a bowl from the kitchen refrigerator. Immediately after, he and Tony developed a grudge when Tony noted his last name and insulted him in Italian. He is an homage to famous New York City Detective Sonny Grosso who helped reveal the French Connection.
An FBI agent who handled Big Pussy Bonpensiero. When Pussy begins to confide more and more to Skip as a friend, Skip tries to tell him that he is not his friend and he is there to help the federal government. Chief Cubitoso warns Lipari that he could be risking getting too close to Bonpensiero himself. Lipari may have suspected that Bonpensiero was involved in the Matthew Bevilaqua murder, but apparently did not report it. Skip says that his father was a plumber.
Agent Harris' partner from 2000 to 2001 while working on the Soprano/DiMeo crime family investigation.
An FBI agent who handled Adriana La Cerva after she became very resentful against Agent Ciccerone. Agent Sanseverino explains to Adriana that she became an FBI agent because her sister was paralyzed by her boyfriend's reckless use of a gun. In order to take a stand against men like him, she became an agent. She has a daughter who was unknown to Adriana. She also handled capo Raymond Curto just before his death from natural causes.
Agent sometimes present at meetings about the Soprano/DiMeo crime family investigation.
A special agent who went undercover as "Danielle" to befriend Adriana and to find out information about Christopher Moltisanti's relationship with Tony Soprano. She poses as a wealthy hopeful trophy wife girlfriend or mistress. Her usefulness as an undercover agent ended after Christopher made a pass at her causing Adriana to break off their relationship. However, she continued to work on the Soprano task force.
Husband and fellow FBI agent of Deborah Ciccerone Waldrup. Takes care of their baby when Deborah talks to Adriana on a special phone line.
Instrumental in placing a listening device in Tony Soprano's basement hidden inside a lamp. Later involved in monitoring this device until it was unwittingly neutralized by Meadow Soprano as she removed it from the house. Throughout the show he usually dons disguises as a plumber, air conditioning repair man, hydro department employee or gardener.
Corrado "Junior" Soprano has been a major target of the FBI throughout the run of the series. At the end of Season One, the titular head of the DiMeo family was indicted on federal racketeering charges, partly on information derived from snitch Jimmy Altieri. The Bureau attempted to flip Junior and get him to testify that his nephew, Tony Soprano, was the street boss and, in fact, the de facto head of the family. However, being both "old school" and loath to admit that his nephew held the real power, Junior refused. Junior's trial unfolded over the ensuing three seasons of the series.
In season four the FBI inserted an agent into Junior's physicians office as a nurse - Junior used the office to conduct meetings while under house arrest. Junior learned of this from his attorney and ended his practice of meeting there. After unsuccessfully arguing that he lacked capacity to stand trial as a result of a fall he suffered on the courthouse steps, Junior was able to obtain a mistrial in the Season Four finale thanks to a hung jury which was tampered with by Junior's lieutenant, Bobby Baccalieri. The government quickly announced its intention to retry Junior. However, Junior's mental condition has taken a turn for the worse and he was rendered unfit to stand trial.
At the end of Season Five, the FBI conducted a raid on the home of John Sacrimoni, the boss of the Lupertazzi crime family (Brooklyn), while Sacrimoni was having a meeting with Tony Soprano. Soprano was not a target of the raid and was able to escape unscathed. It was revealed that Jimmy Petrille, the Lupertazzi family Consigliere, had been an FBI informant for some time. On the strength of his information, the government undertook major indictments against the Lupertazzi family that would have reached the former boss, Carmine Lupertazzi, himself if he had still been alive. Sacrimoni, the new boss, was held in federal custody awaiting a major RICO trial. His lawyer negotiated a 15 year sentence in exchange for asset seizures and an allocution.
The Organized Crime Division of the FBI's New Jersey office has had Tony Soprano in its crosshairs since the show's inception, yet has been unable to make anything stick against the New Jersey boss.
In Season One, after Tony survives an assassination attempt, the Bureau attempts to flip Tony by revealing to him that it was his uncle and his mother who had orchestrated the foiled hit. Tony, however, refuses to break omerta and seeks his own kind of revenge.
In Season Two, Tony and soldier Sal "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero murder mob associate Matthew Bevilaqua in an abandoned shack in Hacklebarney State Park after Bevilaqua attempted a hit on Christopher Moltisanti. Unbeknownst to Tony, a civic-minded civilian was at the park that night, heard the gunshots, and saw Tony drive away, and reported what he saw to the local police. However, the witness recanted when he learned that Tony was in the mob, and Tony was able to evade any charges.
It is also revealed in Season Two that Big Pussy, perhaps Tony's best friend, had been an FBI informant for several years. A major plot point during the season involves Tony's suppressed awareness that his friend is a rat and his reluctance to face that unsavory fact. For his part, Bonpensiero's feelings oscillate from extreme guilt over betraying his close friend to bitterness towards Tony over being passed over for promotion (which, ironically, was because of Tony's suspicions that Pussy was a rat) to touches of Stockholm Syndrome, resulting in delusions of one day having a career in law enforcement. Ultimately, in the Season Two finalé ("Funhouse"), Tony lures his friend out to sea under the pretense that he needs his opinion on a boat he's considering buying. There, Bonpensiero is confronted and executed by the three men who once considered him a "brother": Tony, Silvio Dante, and Paulie Gaultieri.
Tony, however, ran into trouble when his mother was detained at airport security for using tickets he gave her from the Scatino bust out. The FBI acquired a search warrant for the Soprano home and found the rest of the tickets from the bust out in Tony's Chevy Suburban. On the eve of his daughter's high school graduation, Tony was taken into federal custody. Tony made bail and, ultimately, was able to beat the charges (although this is never explicitly shown).
With their major asset within the DiMeo family, Pussy Bonpenseiro, eliminated, the feds took a new approach in Season Three in their efforts to build a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case against Tony Soprano. After getting a warrant to wire the Soprano home, agents broke in while the family was out and place a bugged lamp in the basement, where Tony would often discuss business. However, the plan was derailed when Meadow Soprano, during an argument with her parents, took the lamp to use in her dorm room at Columbia University.
The Bureau then targeted Adriana La Cerva as a possible conduit through which it could ensnare and flip her fianceé, Christopher Moltisanti, to testify against Tony. Special Agent Debora Ciccerone was sent in undercover to get close to Adriana in hopes of gaining information that could be used to turn Christopher. However, the operation came to an abrupt end when Adriana broke off her friendship with Ciccerone, whom she believed had attempted to seduce Christopher. The feds, however, brought Adriana in and presented her with an ultimatum: either turn informant or be sent to prison on drug charges.
Adriana selected the former option. For the most part, Adriana avoided giving up any serious information to the Bureau, primarily because Christopher didn't share the details of his work with her. Nevertheless, the situation proved to be a tremendous strain for Adriana, who would develop irritable bowel syndrome because of her duplicity. In the next-to-last episode of Season Five, Adriana was caught on tape (the FBI had her club under surveillance) disposing of evidence in a drug-related homicide that occurred at her club. The Bureau brought her in and threatened to give her up to the Long Branch Police Department as an accessory to murder unless she gave the FBI full cooperation in its investigation of Tony Soprano, including a requirement that she wears a wire. Adriana offered a counter proposal: she claimed Christopher was unhappy with his place within the family and that she could get him to flip if they were given immunity and relocated to another part of the country. The government agreed.
Adriana revealed to Christopher that she had been working as a government informant, and Christopher, awash in anger and shock, responded by strangling and nearly killing his fianceé. Christopher then broke down sobbing and apologized to Adriana. After discussing their possible future in the witness protection program all night, Christopher left his apartment to get some fresh air, leaving Adriana under the impression that he would cooperate. Ultimately, Christopher's loyalty to the family won out over his love for Adriana. Christopher informed Tony of Adriana's status as a rat, and Tony then telephoned Adriana and told her that Christopher had attempted suicide. Tony sent Silvio Dante to pick her up under the pretense Silvio would take her to Christopher. Instead, Silvio drove Adriana out to the woods and executed her.
In the first episode of Season Six ("Members Only"), longtime rat Raymond Curto died of a stroke in the front seat of FBI Agent Robyn Sanseverino's car. Curto is known to have been an informant since at least the beginning of Season Three ("Proshai, Livushka"). His final act was to pass on a recording of Tony discussing the Angelo Giacalone murders that may have needed some explanation by Curto himself to be of any use.
In that same Season Six episode it was revealed that DiMeo soldier Eugene Pontecorvo was an FBI informant. However, Pontecorvo committed suicide at the end of the episode after both Tony and the Bureau refused his requests to retire with his family to Florida. It is not known how long Pontecorvo was an informant or what information he gave the FBI.
In the final episode of The Sopranos, "Made in America", it is revealed that Carlo Gervasi (cousin to the late Burt Gervasi) agreed to testify against Tony Soprano. It remains unclear if Carlo Gervasi had been an informant for some time or rather he had been pressured by the FBI using his son's recent legal troubles as a bargaining tool. The ramifications of his testimony and the futures of both him and Tony Soprano were left a mystery.
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