Forget Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, and the other mixed nuts clattering around inside your radio. Forget the Sopranos. It’s time to get real. It’s time to tune in to WMOB: Wiretap Radio!

You’re about to meet Fritzy and Frankie, two of the cuddliest, criminalest, crotchetiest capos ever crapped out by the big O.C.

Thrill to their breathless confessions on covert FBI wiretaps:

Wife troubles.

Mistress troubles.

Weight troubles.

Bowel troubles.

and, in possibly-related news: Where can you find a good cannoli these days?

Oogatz!

All these episodes (with full transcripts) and more await you at WMOB: Wiretap Radio, the partner site of the well-known and well-loved The Smoking Gun.

In the course of a federal racketeering investigation, FBI agents and prosecutors received court authorization to wiretap the home telephone of Federico “Fritzy” Giovanelli, a Genovese crime family soldier. The feds hoped to hear Fritzy discussing mob business with fellow New York wiseguys, conversations that would then form the basis for a RICO prosecution against Giovanelli and Co. As it turned out, during the six months the FBI was listening, Fritzy was fairly careful — there was little talk of mayhem and only occasionally did he slip and refer to his criminal enterprises (and then it was often just about his gambling operation).

But while the tapes do not contain the sort of reckless chatter that sent John Gotti away for life, they’re remarkable for the funny, profane, and whimsical conversations Fritzy had with his Mafia cohorts, namely Frank “Frankie California” Condo, a fellow Genovese soldier. Like two old hens, Frank and Fritzy would gab daily about life’s rich pageant, their conversations a stream-of-consciousness potpourri. While most men their age were out working, the duo would convene on the telephone in the early afternoon — both speaking from their homes — and launch into wildly veering conversations. A typical 15-minute chat could touch on sex, work, girlfriends, vitamins, movies, enlarged hearts, cholesterol counts, and marital strife. Peppered with malaprops and featuring Frank and Fritzy’s Central Casting voices, the tapes are a raucous, slice-of-life look at two hoodlums.

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