Craig Glazer was an ordinary college student when he planned and successfully executed his first fake sting to get back at some drug dealers who had robbed him. The rush he got from the experience led him and a crew of 11 accomplices to mastermind a two-year, 33-sting spree that stretched coast to coast, posing as everything from local police to IRS agents and hotel managers. Glazer and Donald Woodbeck, his partner in crime, sniffed out some of the most sought-after drug lords in the country for the FBI and DEA like bloodhounds. For a while, the plan worked—until Craig's world came crashing down. In the early 1970s, Glazer, then a college freshman, was looking to score a little grass. Instead, he got ripped off, and to get revenge, he concocted an elaborate sting that would seem too movielike to be true if it hadn’t really happened. Posing as cops, he and a friend, the charismatic and gung-ho Don Woodbeck, set up a major buy and a fake arrest and then made off with the cash. So began their career as scam artists; eventually they became so successful (and profitable) that they were hired by the Kansas City attorney general’s office to go undercover and bring down some really bad dudes. This is a high-flying, adrenaline-filled story with the feel of the movie The Sting, although it should be noted that it doesn’t end quite so happily: Glazer and Woodbeck’s “one last con” backfired tragically. Fans of memoirs set in the world of cons and scams—the books of Frank W. Abagnale, for example—will completely enjoy this one. --David Pitt A great read. It's the life I would have lived if I didn't care about my reputation. -- Hearne Christopher, Columnist, Kansas City Star The truth of this story is stunning. It reads like good fiction. Craig Glazer's life is insane, and this book proves it. -- Lewis Black, author of Nothing's Sacred Craig Glazer now lives a "quiet" life. He has even run for mayor of Kansas City, his hometown, where he is widely known as the owner of Stanford and Sons, the top comedy club in the city. Sal Manna has been a freelance writer for nearly three decades, with publications in Time, Playboy, People, The Los Angeles Times,The Boston Herald, and Newsday, among others. He lives in Valley Springs, California. 25 b/w photographs. The King Of Sting The Amazing True Story of a Modern American Outlaw By Craig Glazer, Sal Manna Skyhorse Publishing Copyright © 2008 Craig Norton Glazer and Salvatore John Manna All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-60239-249-6 Contents Title Page, Copyright Page, Dedication, Authors' Note, 1 - Higher Education, 2 - A Portrait of the Con Artist as a Young Man, 3 - Flash for the Cash, 4 - A Life of Crime, 5 - Bullets and Bikers, 6 - Kill or Be Killed, 7 - Undercover Cop, 8 - Outlaws and Outsiders, 9 - Going Hollywood, 10 - Blood in Redondo Beach, 11 - No Trust in Tinseltown, 12 - Dope and Duplicity, 13 - Getting Stung, 14 - On Trial, 15 - Behind Bars, Epilogue, Acknowledgments, CHAPTER 1 Higher Education "Arizona was a crazy, crazy place," remembers Otis Thrasher, one of Arizona's first narcotics agents. "Every kid who had a nickel could go down to Mexico and be a drug dealer." — The Kansas City Times, February 12, 1983 THE CHICANO WITH the pockmarked face jabbed me hard with the butt of his gun, and I doubled over. The followup, his knee to my chest, put me on the floor gasping for air. Nearby, I could see the blood from Bob's split nose dripping steadily on the carpet of the Tempe apartment. This was supposed to be just a bunch of college kids throwing their money together to buy some weed, but somehow, we wound up in a room with three nasty-looking bad guys with a shotgun and a couple of .38s who were taking our money and kicking our asses. I was in Sin City, Tempe's ghetto of student apartments — every one of them with a beanbag chair, an Easy Rider or Clockwork Orange poster on the wall, and a package of Zig-Zag rolling papers in a drawer. All the kids in this particular room, about ten of them, were older than me and clean-cut — chinos, Bass loafers, button-down Pendleton shirts — hardly the image of the doper in anti-drug commercials. I was a little rougher, more of the leather jacket rocker type, but none of us were tie-dyed hippies. It was 1971 and the streets were full of kids like me, long-haired eighteen-year-olds who could vote for the first time and were protesting the war in Vietnam. We didn't simply question authority, we denied its existence. We wanted to be free to do what we wanted — and what we wanted was sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. I was just an upper-middle-class Jewish boy from Kansas, taking part in a cultural revolution. I had no idea that getting ripped off that night would change my life forever. Just fifteen minutes earlier, I had heard a knock on the front door and Bob, the gangly, awkward kid who lived in the apartment, answered with an easy smile. A big man with a red beard stood in