, it is a stunning tale that crosses over several times into organized crime themes.No one could have predicted that a petty crime against Craig Glazer would be the catalyst for a life on the edge. But then again, nothing about Craig Glazer was predictable.
In 1971, as a skinny Jewish kid from Kansas City, Glazer was attending Arizona State University when he was robbed while buying marijuana for his fraternity brothers. His head filled with lessons in crime and criminals learned from movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which the hero was just on the edge of the law, Craig decided to get even with the dealers who robbed him. He set up his first fake "sting," pretending to be law enforcement. Unbelievably, his plan worked with him walking away with $50,000, and it set him on a path that was as unlikely as it was dangerous.
He masterminded a two-year spree of stings that stretched from Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland to Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Posing as everything from local police to IRS agents to hotel managers, he and his crew set up cons and raked in a fortune.
Craig and his partner, the streetwise Viet Nam veteran Donald Woodbeck, had such success that the Attorney General's office asked them for help ferreting out some of the most sought-after drug lords in the country. It was a dangerous double life. Like many other rags to riches stories, Craig's does not lead to a Hollywood happy ending. There was payback. Woodbeck was murdered which led to Craig posing as the Mafia to extract revenge, but eventually, he landed in prison. The King of Sting is a story of wanting to be famous, even if it meant becoming infamous.