The Good Rat Read Free

was doing copying codes, Russian codes, cryptography and crypton analysis. Most of the time I was in Japan. The last year that I was in the navy, I worked in Fort Meade and I was offered a job with NSA.
Q: When you got out of the navy, what jobs have you held?
A: 1956, I went back into the appliance business. I was partners in a store with my brother and my mother. We sold appliances and we installed them and repaired them. After that I became incarcerated in Lewisburg Prison, and when I got out it was 1973, and I went to work for a company by the name of Ciro Sales, P. C. Richard, M and B Radio. I did all their installations of washing machines, dryers, air conditioners, dishwashers. In 1975, I went into the clothing business. When I was on Vanderbilt Avenue, with my brother and my mother, I did an air-conditioning job of a social club near my business, for a gentleman by the name of Charlie Parasella, and he introduced me to Jimmy Eppolito, who had a club on Grand Avenue called the Grand Mark. They played cards upstairs, and they asked me to go there and measure it for air-conditioning, and I did it, and he gave me the job, and I installed the air conditioners. There was somebody in Ciro’s warehouse that asked me if I wanted to buy some air conditioners off of him, and I did.
Q: So what? That doesn’t sound illegal.
A: No. It was Ciro’s property, not the guy’s in the warehouse.
Q: So they were stolen?
A: Yes, they definitely were stolen.
    Before he continues with his résumé, we should note that the above-mentioned Jimmy “the Clam” Eppolito, a well-known gangster, is the uncle of one of the Mafia Cops on trial here, and thus provides his murderous nephew with a low-life pedigree. The uncle will come up again before we are through.
Q: Mr. Kaplan, have you ever committed a crime in your life?
A: Yes. Most of my crimes in the early days was selling goods stolen from interstate shipment. The first time I went to—I went to prison for flashcubes. I received probation and then I—I sold some pants from an interstate shipment and was sentenced to four years in Lewisburg Penitentiary. I was arrested for having hair dryers in my possession that were stolen, but the case was dismissed. In 1983, I was arrested for possible participation in a heroin conspiracy. It was dismissed because I wasn’t involved in it.
    In 1993, I was arrested in a conspiracy to sell stolen Peruvian passports. That was also dismissed, because we proved that we believed the passports were legal and that we were selling them in Hong Kong, and the selling of passports in Hong Kong to Chinese people was legal. I flew to China with my lawyer to prove it. The case was dismissed.
    In—in 1981 I was, I went to jail for, I already said that.
    In 1996, I was arrested for selling marijuana, conspiracy to sell and possession of marijuana. I was sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison. And I pleaded guilty to this present RICO conspiracy.
Q: You mentioned marijuana trafficking.
A: I got involved originally in the mid-eighties, and then I got involved in it again at the end of ’91, ’92.
Q: What was the least amount of marijuana that you and people you were working with sold?
A: Probably five hundred to a thousand pounds.
Q: What was the most amount of marijuana you sold?
A: Around twelve, thirteen thousand pounds in a year.
Q: Did the indictment against you and the charges against you charge you with being a major marijuana trafficker?
A: Yes.
Q: Were you a major marijuana trafficker?
A: Yes.
Q: You said you are currently incarcerated?
A: Yes.
Q: How long have you been incarcerated?
A: Nine years.
Q: You mentioned a little bit to the jury before some other previous periods of incarceration you had.
A: I was incarcerated in, I believe, 1972 to ’73 or beginning of ’74, Lewisburg Penitentiary. I was incarcerated in ’81 to ’83, in Allenwood Camp, and I was incarcerated in 1997, and I started in Lewisburg and then I went to Allenwood FCI. Then I went