Using the immigration statutes. Late in the evening of February 14, 1968, I received a call at home from our Montreal office. The US Customs Attache, Fred Cornetta told me a suspicious traveler, “Gino Minozzi,” who had been searched at the airport by Canadian Customs, based on alerts Cornetta had posted with them. Minozzi was clean, but, never the less, the Canadians were still suspicious of him. Heroin had been pouring into the United States by various routes, and the Europe-Montreal-USA route had been particularly vulnerable to our enforcement efforts.
Minozzi continued his trip by train and was again searched at the request of Cornetta by US Customs when the train entered the USA. These results were also negative. I was advised Minozzi would arrive at Penn Station in NYC shortly after 5 am. I called the NY patrol office and told the supervisor on night duty to meet me at Penn Station, and to put someone else in his position at the office.
The train arrived on time and based on the description of the suspect and the clothes he was wearing, we stopped him on the platform. I advised him I was performing a continuing customs search. We found nothing. He was so clean by this time you could say he was “sterile,” except I noticed in the collar of a starched shirt in his bag, the initials “AF.” We went back to the office where I consulted the INTERNATIONAL LIST– there he was “Antonio Farina.”
Farina was a major narcotics trafficker. He had been sent from the mob in Europe to find out how we had been nailing so many of their couriers.
I arrested him for entering the USA under a fraudulent passport. He got six months. His mission was a failure. Furthermore, he was now known worldwide to be a major narcotic figure and therefore useless to the mob.
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George Brosan 