The late Anthony Ciulla, who died, as Anthony Capra, in Revere, Massachusetts, on June 6, 2003, having spent the last 25 years of his life in the United States Federal Witness Protection Program, was arguably the most notorious race-fixer of all time. Standing 6’3″ tall and weighing in at a conservative 350lb, hence his nicknames ‘Big Tony’ and ‘Fat Tony’, employed bribery and, if that failed, physical intimidation to fix, by his own admission, several hundred races, mainly at smaller tracks on the East Coast, between 1972 and 1975. Indeed, he once boasted that he had fixed races in every state except California.
On July 4, 1975, jockey Peter Fantini attracted the attention of the stewards by making a meal of restraining his mount in the ninth and final race at Atlantic City and subsequently revealed that Ciulla, and others, had paid him to do so. Fantini and his agent, Louis Menna, who was under investigation for check fraud, did a deal with police and Fantini wore a wire to a meeting with Ciulla at the Flamingo Motel in Atlantic City two weeks later, which led to Ciulla being indicted.
With Ciulla facing conspiracy charges in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, the FBI made him an offer that he really could not refuse. Reflecting on his time behind bars, Cuilla to ‘Sports Illustrated’, ‘I knew before I got out of jail I’d be as dead as Man o’War [who died in 1947].’ In return for his grand jury testimony against jockeys and trainers who had fixed races on his behalf, in six different states – which resulted in the conviction of 40 people – Ciulla served only minimal jail time, received immunity from further prosecution and, on his release, was granted entry to the Federal Witness Protection Program.