Joaquin Garcia spent 24 years as an undercover agent for the FBI. During that time, his weight fluctuated by hundreds of pounds, topping out at about 500 pounds during one of his most dangerous assignments.
Garcia infiltrated everyone from the Italian Mafia and Mexican cartels to Asian and Russian organized crime groups.
“The fatter I got, the better an undercover agent I became,” Garcia told Business Insider.
When he met with criminals, he said he didn’t try to hide his stomach or shrink himself in a chair. He “let it all out.”
He knew that in criminal circles, where paranoia ran high, a heavy-set man did not fit their image of a federal agent. His weight “became like my disguise,” he said, adding that criminals, particularly drug dealers, “felt really comfortable around me.”
His weight also protected him.
“My size gave me a good excuse that I had a bad heart and therefore did not have to partake in drugs or killing or anything like that,” he said. For example, if the mob asked him to kill someone, he planned to fake a heart attack to get out of it. He was never asked, “but it was always in the back of my mind.”
The only issue was that, “unlike a disguise that you can remove, you can’t remove overweightness overnight,” he said.
See Garcia’s interview with Business Insider in the video below, and keep reading to learn about how gaining weight became a key part of his undercover identity while infiltrating the Italian Mafia.
Garcia gained 90 pounds during one of his most dangerous missions
From 2002 to 2005, Garcia infiltrated the Gambino Italian Mafia family in New York. He was the driver for Gambino captain Greg DePalma, which gave him key access to insider information, since DePalma liked to talk, Garcia recalled.
He became DePalma’s close confidant. There was even a time when DePalma pulled a practical joke on him.
Garcia had recently been diagnosed with AFib and had to wear an EKG around his chest. DePalma knew this, and one day at a diner with a bunch of mobsters, he stood up and said to the group that they had a traitor in their midst who was reporting to the feds. DePalma walked over and stood behind Garcia and ripped his shirt off, revealing the EKG. Everyone laughed it off, including Garcia, who recalls feeling very afraid in that moment.
Little did the mobsters in the diner know that some of the markings on Garcia’s skin were also from wires he had been wearing for the FBI.
Garcia said he recorded thousands of hours of conversations, many of which involved food. “Everything’s surrounded around eating,” he said of mob culture. Meetings, disputes, and everyday conversations often unfolded over coffee with biscotti or over long meals at restaurants.
That’s one thing “The Sopranos” gets right about the mafia, he said. “If you watch ‘The Sopranos’ with the ‘gabagool’, you know, and all the food. Every time you see them, they’re eating because that’s the culture.”
The food-centric culture reminded him of his Cuban heritage. “I love to eat, so to me it was perfect,” he said. “I didn’t have to act, and I found that the more I ate, the happier it made everyone because they love to feed you.” Chefs would even give him food to take home.
Garcia weighed about 400 pounds before infiltrating the mafia and said he was up to nearly 500 pounds by the time he left.
“Was it healthy? Absolutely not,” he said. “I don’t blame anyone but myself. I eat because I love to eat, and it makes me feel good. So it was not like, I’m going to blame the mob or the FBI for putting me in a situation with all these great foods that I wasn’t going to say no to.”
Garcia is grateful that his only ‘fault’ was gaining weight
Garcia’s weight struggles began long before he infiltrated the mafia, he said. When he first entered the FBI in the 1980s, he said he weighed about 265 pounds and was told he needed to drop to roughly 240.
Over the years, especially during long undercover assignments centered on restaurants and late-night meetings, the weight crept up. He retired from the FBI in 2006, weighing over 500 pounds.
He’s since lost about 100 pounds, but aims to lose more.
He said he’s tried nearly every diet imaginable, including Atkins and other low-carb plans. It led to short bursts of weight loss but wasn’t sustainable, he said.
He also explored weight-loss medications, including Ozempic, but said his doctor told him he did not qualify because his glucose levels were normal. He said he ultimately decided against trying a different weight loss pill, preferring to lose it another way.
About three years ago, after fainting at home and spending two months in the hospital, Garcia said he began rethinking his approach.
While hospitalized, he said he learned to stick to three meals a day — a structure he has continued since leaving.
He says he typically eats oatmeal and coffee in the morning, a turkey sandwich on whole wheat for lunch, and chicken with vegetables for dinner. He avoids desserts for the most part and walks daily, using a walker to steady himself.
Today, he said his weight fluctuates between about 390 pounds and 410 pounds. His goal is to reach around 285 pounds.
“I’ve come to accept that this is a constant battle. You win some fights or some battles, but you haven’t won the war yet,” he said.
In the grand scheme of things, however, Garcia said he’s grateful that the only downside of his undercover work was gaining weight. He didn’t take up drinking or drugs. The work didn’t lead to divorce.
“My only fault is the fact that I gained weight; I’m grateful for that.”
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