By Kristina Davis
SAN DIEGO — FBI Special Agent
Leonard Davey is among the few of his kind who spend their entire careers in
the same place. He was lucky enough to spend it in San Diego.
The San Francisco native had
always wanted to be an FBI agent, just like the father of his childhood best
friend. Three days after taking the bar exam, Davey was on a plane to Quantico,
Va., home of the FBI Academy.
He moved to San Diego shortly
after graduating. He clearly remembers the moment he tasted his first good fish
taco. During his 24-year career here, Davey advised the FBI on legal affairs
and investigated mobsters, corrupt politicians, border officers on the take,
hit men and defense contractors.
He is retiring his badge after
supervising the FBI’s public corruption and border corruption units for the
past seven years. Davey, 51, recently sat down with U-T San Diego over coffee
and shared some of his career highlights and why public corruption remains the
FBI’s No. 1 criminal investigative priority.
Questions and answers have been
edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: What was your first case as
a rookie on the organized crime squad?
A: We did have the traditional
mob back in the early ‘90s. When (Anthony) Spilotro was killed — big mob guy in
Chicago — there was a lot of debt outstanding, and they brought a guy in from
San Diego, Chris Petti, to go pick up the debt. So we had wiretaps in Mission
Valley on him. He thought he was cool by going to a bank of (pay) telephones
and he would — there were six phones — he’d mix it all up. Little did he know
we had technology to go from one to the other to the other and we were able to
monitor his conversations from here to Chicago. That’s what led to learning the
mob was looking at the casinos around here.
The mob wanted to get a
foothold in San Diego. (John) “No Nose” DiFronzo, Sam “Wings” Carlisi — they
were all indicted here in San Diego in the early ‘90s. They got a pillow
salesman from Las Vegas to be a front for them, to go in and meet with the
tribal council to front them the money to get a casino going. Little did they
know behind him was the Chicago mob. The head of the mob, actually I saw him,
he flew here, he went to San Diego, stayed in Del Mar. They went out and
checked things out around here.
Q: You were the lead agent in
the so-called “Strippergate” City Hall corruption case, involving San Diego
City Councilmen Michael Zucchet and Ralph Inzunza in the early 2000s. How did
that investigation start?
A: It started in Cheetah’s. The
strip club owner, Mike Galardi, was tied into organized crime. We had an
informant in the strip club who came out one day and told us the manager took
all the strippers, 25 of them, and asked them to go out to their car and get
their checkbooks. He lined them up, had them write checks to a candidate, then
he’d reimburse them. We learned all the sudden this strip club had an interest
in our local politics. We had no idea why, but they were.
