Sharpton acknowledged he was a one-time informant but said his role as a snitch was exaggerated, the New York Post reported.
“It’s crazy. If I provided all the information they claimed I provided, I should be given a ticker-tape parade,” Sharpton said.
And to claims in The Smoking Gun report, which said Sharpton got onboard as an informer because he was frightened after being recorded during an undercover FBI drug sting — even though he didn’t arrange to buy any drugs — Sharpton said it was he who contacted the feds after a mobster threatened him while he was acting as a concert promoter.
The Smoking Gun story said that wire taps were approved during the course of a racketeering investigation of the Genvese crime family.
The website said that eight separate federal judges, presiding in four jurisdictions, signed interception orders that were based on sworn FBI affidavits that included information gathered by Sharpton.
“The phones bugged as a result of these court orders included two lines in Gigante’s Manhattan townhouse, the home phone of Genovese captain Dominick “Baldy Dom” Canterino, and the office lines of music industry power Morris Levy, a longtime Genovese family associate,” the website said.
“The resulting surreptitious recordings were eventually used to help convict an assortment of Mafia members and associates,” it said.
According to the Smoking Gun, investigators used Sharpton’s information in an application for a wiretap on a phone in the Queens home of Genovese soldier Federico “Fritzy” Giovanelli. He was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 20 years during a trial in which the recordings were played, the website said.
“Poor Sharpton, he cleaned up his life and you want to ruin him,” Giovanelli told the website in a recent interview.
The report is not the first time Sharpton has been accused of working as a snitch.