The King of Con
How a Smooth-Talking Jersey Boy Made and Lost Billions, Baffled the FBI, Eluded the Mob, and Lived to Tell the Crooked Tale
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Narrated by:
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Thomas Giacomaro
About this listen
A Jersey boy with a knack for numbers, a gift for making people trust him, and an all-consuming hunger to be king of the business world, Tom Giacomaro could convince anyone of anything.
As a teenager, Tom Giacomaro began working in the mob-laden New Jersey trucking industry. A charming, brash-talking salesman, he climbed the ranks, and let his lust for money and relationships with New York and Philadelphia crime families send him spiraling into a world of drugs and violence. Forced to go on the lam in South Africa and Europe he returned a year later - with millions of dollars' worth of diamonds stuffed in his underwear. And that's only the beginning.
In his memoir, Tom details how he eventually hashed out a deal with the FBI, agreeing to become a special crime informant to avoid jail time - only he somehow manages not to rat anyone out and, incredibly, continues his high-finance, shady dealings, luring celebrities and other high-profile contacts to invest millions in his new business ventures. When it all inevitably comes crashing down, Tom is thrown in prison for over a decade - yet, even behind bars, he's able to get what he wants from anyone: the warden, the doctors, the guards, and his fellow inmates... and finds a way to get released early.
Cowritten by Natasha Stoynoff, The King of Con is the true story about a smart, streetwise Jersey boy who talked his way to the top and became richer and more successful than his wildest dreams. It offers an unforgettable look into the life of a man who became hooked on living life to thrilling and dangerous excess, rubbing elbows with celebrities and crime bosses, until he was humbled by the FBI, by the US Attorney, and by life itself.
Now, Tom is back in his old New Jersey neighborhood. His mob cronies are calling, his palms are itching to make billions again, and the US Attorney's office is watching. Will he stay on the straight and narrow, or will he return to his old ways and steal back his crown of crime as the King of Con?
©2018 Thomas Giacomaro (P)2018 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The Calabrese family of Chicago is a close-knit, middle-class, multi-generational Italian-Irish-American clan. They operate family businesses. They work day and night striving for the American Dream. All three sons forge a bond with their controlling father, Frank Sr., and their soft-spoken favorite uncle, Nick. As a boy, the oldest son, Frank Jr., realizes that his father and uncle are also "made" members of another close-knit family: the outfit.
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Riveting Listen!
- By ahippieadventure on 02-06-13
By: Frank Calabrese Jr., and others
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The Winter of Frankie Machine
- By: Don Winslow
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. An affable Italian with a love of people and life, he's a stand-up businessman, devoted father, and a beloved fixture in the community. He's also a hit man - specifically, a retired hit man. Back in the day when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine.
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Five stars straight across the board
- By Eric Taylor on 06-28-12
By: Don Winslow
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The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
- By: Chris Gardner
- Narrated by: Andre Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
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At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
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Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
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Detroit
- An American Autopsy
- By: Charlie LeDuff
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age - mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs - Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation that only a native son can possess, journalist Charlie LeDuff sets out to uncover what has brought low this once-vibrant city, his city.
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WOW
- By Avid Reader and Listener on 07-09-13
By: Charlie LeDuff
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The Murder of Sonny Liston
- Las Vegas, Heroin, and Heavyweights
- By: Shaun Assael
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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On January 5, 1971, Sonny Liston was found dead in his home - of an apparent heroin overdose. But no one close to Liston believed that his death was accidental. Digging deep into a life that Liston tried hard to hide, Shaun Assael treats the boxer's death as a cold case. The result is a riveting whodunit that evokes a glorious and grimy era of Las Vegas.
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Great read
- By Diane Dodge on 09-14-19
By: Shaun Assael
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The Upside
- A Memoir
- By: Abdel Sellou
- Narrated by: Ray Chase
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1992, Count Phillippe Pozzo di Borgo, on the heels of his wife's diagnosis with a terminal illness, suffered a paragliding accident that left him a quadriplegic. Forty-two years old, trapped inside his luxurious Paris town house, he was an outcast for the first time in his life. Abdel, an unemployed Algerian immigrant who had been an outcast for his entire existence, would become Phillipe's unlikely caretaker. Quick-thinking, unsentimental, and more than a little wild, Abdel surprises both himself and his employer.
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loved it
- By RockyDog on 01-31-19
By: Abdel Sellou
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The Birthday Party
- A Memoir of Survival
- By: Stanley N. Alpert
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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On January 21, 1998, the night before his 38th birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped by a car full of gun-toting thugs. Hoping to make a large withdrawal with his ATM card, they took him, blindfolded, to a Brooklyn apartment, and improvised. All night, his captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of "gangsta" philosophy, sought his legal advice, and even offered him sexual favors from their prostitute girlfriends as a "birthday present."
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Since there haven't been any SERIOUS...
- By Douglas on 04-30-15
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Gaspipe
- Confessions of a Mafia Boss
- By: Philip Carlo
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the boss of New York's Lucchese crime family, was a Mafia superstar, responsible for more than 50 murders. Currently serving 13 life sentences at a federal prison in Colorado, Casso has given journalist and New York Times best-selling author Philip Carlo the most intimate, personal look into the world of La Cosa Nostra ever seen.
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The author fails the objectivity test
- By William on 11-29-08
By: Philip Carlo
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Gangster Squad
- Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles
- By: Paul Lieberman
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Gangster Squad chronicles the true story of the secretive police unit that waged an anything-goes war to drive Mickey Cohen and other hoodlums from Los Angeles after WWII. In 1946, the LAPD launched the Gangster Squad with eight men who met covertly on street corners and slept with Tommy guns under their beds. But for two cops, all that mattered was nailing the strutting gangster Mickey Cohen. Sgt. Jack O’Mara was a square-jawed church usher, Sgt. Jerry Wooters a cynical maverick....
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Nothing Like the movie
- By KEITH on 02-21-13
By: Paul Lieberman
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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Digging Up Mother
- A Love Story
- By: Johnny Depp - foreword, Doug Stanhope
- Narrated by: Doug Stanhope and Friends
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.
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Not my thing.
- By J. Harral on 01-27-18
By: Johnny Depp - foreword, and others
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Four Feet Tall & Rising
- A Memoir
- By: Shorty Rossi, S. J. Hodges
- Narrated by: Shorty Rossi
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Luigi Francis "Shorty" Rossi, the tough-talking, fedora-wearing star of Animal Planet's hit show Pit Boss, may stand only four feet tall, but that hasn't stopped him from living large, becoming a successful businessman and an outspoken advocate for pit bulls, the most misunderstood dog breed in the world.
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Great book, truly good person
- By Anonymous on 03-03-12
By: Shorty Rossi, and others
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Making Jack Falcone
- An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family
- By: Joaquin "Jack" Garcia, Michael Levin
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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At six-foot-four-inches and 375 pounds, Jack Garcia looked the part of a mobster, and he played his part so perfectly that his Mafia bosses never suspected he was an undercover agent for the FBI. "Big Jack Falcone," as he was known inside La Cosa Nostra, learned all the inside dirt about the Gambino organized crime syndicate and its illegal activities---from extortion and loan-sharking to assault and murder.
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interesting story--offensive narration
- By Mark on 03-17-12
By: Joaquin "Jack" Garcia, and others
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Big City, Bad Blood
- By: Sean Chercover
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Disillusioned newspaper reporter-turned-private detective Ray Dudgeon doesn't want to save the world; he just wants to do an honest job well. But when doing an honest job threatens society's most powerful and corrupt, Ray's odds of survival make for a sucker's bet.
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Quintessentially Chicago
- By Eva Gannon on 09-21-09
By: Sean Chercover