Scott Curtis
Scott Curtis
 
 
 
 
“Eliot Ness-like. . . extraordinary and devoted leadership, relentless pursuit of justice, and unwavering dedication to protecting our community.”
— U.S. Attorney's Office Award citation, Eastern District of New York
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“Your tremendous work has resulted in the dismantling of an organized crime family responsible for numerous murders and other crimes.”
— U.S. Attorney's Office Award citation, EDNY

Most recently, Curtis has worked on the national Opioid Task Force in concert with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, the FBI, the DEA, the IRS, Homeland Security, and associated agencies investigating multi-ethnic criminal groups conspiring to perpetrate wide-ranging schemes from insurance fraud to selling prescription drugs on the black market. He has possessed a “Secret” security clearance from the U.S. government since 1986, and in December, 2022, his Secret clearance was renewed in conjunction with contract work with the Department of Justice. 

WEST POINT GRADUATE

Scott Curtis is a graduate of the United States Military Academy (West Point).

A former infantry captain (variously a platoon leader and Company Commander), he is a 100-percent service-disabled military veteran. 

“Federal agents in New York pulled off the biggest one-day Mafia roundup in United States history yesterday, simultaneously bringing the hammer down on more than 120 reputed wiseguys — a takedown so enormous it required a Brooklyn Army fort to book them all.”
— New York Post

A NOTABLE CAREER IN LAW ENFORCEMENT

“Worked diligently and selflessly to protect the rights of Americans. Exemplifies the best in federal service.”
— Dept. of Justice/EOUSA Director’s Award citation
“Pay-to-play was the order of the day in Allentown and in Reading. [Curtis’s] years-long investigation illuminated troubling conduct for which all of those indicted must now answer.”
— Michael Harpster, Special Agent in Charge, FBI/Philadelphia
“The lead agent in the Colombo purge.”
— Investigative journalist Jerry Capeci/Huffington Post (2011)
“Hardest hit by the raid was the Colombo family, considered to be one of the mob’s bloodiest outfits. . . West Point grad Scott Curtis had presented [the informant] with his options: Go back to prison for the rest of your life or come work for Team America.”
— Men's Journal

  • FBI New Agents Training

  • Money Laundering Training

  • Insider Threat Training

  • Complex Financial Crimes Training

  • Information Security (“Infosec”) Training

  • Whistleblower Protection Training

  • Insider Threat & Media Contact Awareness Training

  • Digital Evidence Handling Training

  • Reporting of Suspected Child Abuse Neglect & Sexual Exploitation

  • Federal Campaign Finance Offenses Training

  • Social Media Training

  • Continuity of Operations Under Threat Training

  • Victim & Witness Assistance

  • Weapons of Mass Destruction/Active Shooter Workplace Safety Training

  • Confidential Human Sources Training 

“Relentless.”
— Benton Campbell, U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of New York
“Scott Curtis was a scourge of the Colombos, participating in the arrests of more than 100 gangsters, convincing at least a dozen wiseguys to reject their Mafia oath and become government informants.”
— New York Daily News

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS

“This largest single-day operation against La Cosa Nostra sends the message that our fight against traditional organized crime is strong, and our commitment is unwavering.”
— Press conference, United States Attorney General Eric Holder

Scott Curtis’s remarkable efforts led to the conviction of hundreds of sophisticated criminals—with emphasis on the storied Colombo crime family—when in 2011, he spearheaded the largest single-day takedown in U.S. history of 127 organized-crime members, effectively dismantling the Colombos’ ruling administration. [See: “Testimonials” page linked HERE.]

Identified by Gang Land News journalist/columnist Jerry Capeci in the Huffington Post as “the lead FBI agent in the Colombo purge,” Curtis planned (and usually personally) executed hundreds of arrests, searches, and surveillance operations of violent, highly sophisticated criminals with such memorable monikers as “Junior Lollipops,” “The Claw,” “Fish” Marra, “Tommy Shots,” “Andy Mush,” “Fat Larry,” “Richie Nerves,” et al. The record takedown made headlines internationally. Curtis also busted brokerage-boiler rooms hijacked by the mob that defrauded thousands of regular folks of more than $40 million. Flipping violent criminals into cooperating witnesses, Curtis has an ultra-rare, intimate familiarity with the witness-protection program. 

In the course of his career with the FBI, Scott Curtis solved more than ten cold-case homicides. With a shovel in his hand, Curtis personally found the body of Colombo underboss William “Wild Bill” Cutolo, missing for more than nine years and whose death marked the formal end of the Colombo war. Curtis’s discovery of the body was deemed “for pure drama…the top New York mob story of the year” by Gang Land columnist Jerry Capeci. Based on confessions Curtis himself obtained from the henchmen ordered to commit this murder, the acting boss of the Colombo family, Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico (son of incarcerated family boss Carmine “The Snake” Persico), was sentenced to life without parole in 2009.

Curtis is an expert on the history and rituals of the mafia: inductions, moral code, murder protocols, and such rackets as loansharking, car theft, bank burglaries, labor unions, and construction. Also: confidential informants manipulating agents. He has served as something of a mentor to flipped mafia wiseguys connected to scores of baseball-batterings and murders—men who are out of jail and struggling to stay legit. 

“The newer generation of mobsters who were raised in the suburbs is accused by its elders of being too soft, stupid, and obsessed with phones, according to a Wall Street Journal interview with Scott Curtis.”

IN THE MEDIA

Curtis is a sought-after expert on criminal matters, frequently solicited by television-news programs to speak about ongoing homicide investigations.

He has been interviewed on such subjects as the future of organized crime in America given the carelessness of a younger generation making threats via text message, and also corruption in the United States Senate in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the Intercept, and other major news venues.

Scott Curtis also frequently appears as a legal analyst on WFMZ-TV’s evening broadcast.

After Brazilian killer Danelo Cavalcante shimmied up a crack between two walls in his widely televised escape from a county jail, Curtis commented on his chances surviving on the outside.

Curtis has also weighed in multiply on Bryan Kohberger, the 28-year-old former criminology PhD student alleged to have committed a quadruple murder at the University of Idaho and whose DNA is said to be linked to the crime scene. “Some interaction between Kohberger and one or more of the students likely set him off,” said Curtis noting, that whatever happened in that interaction, this was someone who “was going to retaliate or take revenge.”

AFFILIATIONS

Scott Curtis is a member in good standing of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, the FBI National Academy Associates, the International Homicide Investigators Association, NYPD Honor Legion, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the American Legion, West Point Field Force, and the Disabled America Veterans Association. 

“A square shooter.”

— Defense Attorney Eric Dowdle describing Curtis in the Allentown Morning Call / Read Full Article 

“This Scott Curtis is all over the place!”

— Covert recording, Colombo crime-family captain

 
“One way the New York and Allentown cases diverge is Curtis’s semi-celebrity status in New York. In the city’s courtrooms and in the pages of its local tabloid newspapers, he was mentioned almost as often as the men and women he was investigating. ”
— Allentown Morning Call