Kenny Gallo writes on http://incoldblogger.blogspot.com – My name is Kenji, and I was a violent gangster for over two decades. I committed sins for which no punishment could ever suffice and no penance could ever atone. If an enemy from years ago were to kill me, it would be the just desserts of the life I lived for most of my adult life. I lived every day in mortal danger for decades.
Yet I’ve survived. The story of my survival and ultimate redemption is called BREAKSHOT: A LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY AMERICAN MAFIA co-written by Matthew Randazzo V. It is currently available on Amazon and bookstores nationwide.
On the streets, I was known by many names – Kenneth Gallo, Kenny Gallo, Kenny G., Kenji Kodama, Ramon Gomez, Ramon Gonzalez, Kenji Kodama, Ken Calo, and finally “BREAKSHOT” — but most people knew me simply as “Kenji.” As you may be able to tell from my nickname, I’m Japanese. I was an Asian-American gangster in the American Mafia and Colombian cocaine cartels.
Who knew that ricers could be gangsters? People are shocked when they meet me — a smiling, charming, 155-pound man in a business suit with a terrifying criminal record. I’m always asked: how could a well-educated half-breed from Orange County become a trusted insider in the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra? How did an intelligent, charming preppy like me become one of the most feared cocaine smugglers in California and a porno industry gangster? How did a respectable guy like me end up married to porn industry icon Tabitha Stevens?
Well, there’s no simple answer, but you can read my full story in Breakshot. That explains it all.
BREAKSHOT was my FBI codename as an undercover operative on the street for a decade. If anyone doubts what I have to say about my life, then you can ask the FBI, or the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, or the world-class polygraph examiner whose test I just passed last week. My story is stranger than fiction; no writer would ever have the balls to make up a character like me. No one would believe him!
I grew up in Irvine, California, and at that time there were few Asian Americans. It was one of the whitest places on the planet — culturally if not racially. My family was not at fault for my later life; I was not abused or driven into a life of crime. I was just a bored kid that became a bad kid that became a jaded, cynical criminal. I just had the predatory instinct in me.
Irvine has been called the safest city in the world, but it dared me to become a crook out of sheer boredom. It was a city that did not include bored teenagers in its urban planning. There were no movie theaters, no malls, nothing to do. As a teenager, I was just a smart-ass kid who hated school and needed *something* exciting in his life. I used to drink beer and get into trouble with other dead-end punk rock kids. I was arrested many times for petty stuff in my early years and was sent for a tour of duty at military school, which taught me discipline and a pathological contempt for authority. Through Jeet Kune Do, the first martial art I studied, I learned how to fight and how to love fighting, how to get that life-justifying high from violence and confrontation. I loved the challenge; I loved the danger.
This was the early 1980’s, and it was a crazy, fast-paced time in the Orange County underworld. After Miami got too hot, Orange County became the new hotspot in the Colombian cocaine trade. The first and only legitimate job I ever held until I became an FBI informant was thanks to one of these great Orange County cocaine kingpins: Joey Avila, a Mexican-American who owned a number of restaurants and a club and commanded the Tahitian Connection Cocaine Cartel.
Though the DEA charged Joey in 1977, he beat the charges along with his brothers thanks to the future “O.J. Dream Team” lawyer F. Lee Bailey. Joey also had some help from a well-known criminal paralegal named Michael Patrick Marvich, the Keyser Soze of the California underworld. Mike Marvich, or Big Mike as he was known, is a very important part of my story. I studied under both Joey and Big Mike, and what I saw I liked. I wanted to be part of that life and I wanted to be like them!
There were Mafia guys around, and I did not understand at the time what the big deal was about the Mob. I just saw a few old fat guys who somehow commanded respect. They didn’t inspire fear; they inspired giggles. The local wiseguys were looked at in awe by a lot of the guys around the OC, but not by me. They were not scary, and they were not known to drop bodies. Around all the legit homocidal psychopaths in the Colombian cocaine trade, these goodfellas in their NYC costumes hardly compared.
Joey Avila and Mike Marvich were different: they didn’t rely on name-dropping and fancy Italian titles to receive respect. They relied on brute force, violence, and terror. They were badasses. They were cocaine cowboys. They were real outlaw gangsters in the Wild West sense. And these men, my idols, taught me how to make millions of dollars and make myself feared. They taught me how to be a gangster.
And they never would have guessed how I turned out … a rat … a proud rat who revels in the knowledge that I have a Mafia contract on my head.
Obviously, I can’t cover all that ground in one blog post, so check out BREAKSHOT and my blog at BREAKSHOTBLOG.com for more on my story.
See also www.BreakshotBook.com