By the time federal agents confronted Blazer outside Trump Tower in November 2011, he had raked in his own multi-million-dollar income, helping himself to at least a 10 percent cut of every deal he made, and an additional untold fortune under the table throughout his 11-year reign as CONCACAF general secretary. He paid no taxes for 20 years, Gaeta noted, a fact leveraged by agents to force his cooperation in their investigation. He turned out to be the linchpin in the FBI’s massive crackdown on the sports organization. Gaeta credited Blazer with nailing down needed information that ultimately resulted in the dramatic arrests by Swiss authorities of FIFA officials outside the Baur au Lac Hotel in Zurich in May 2015. Like the mobster wiseguys Gaeta had worked with, he said Blazer was “practical, getting the most benefit as quickly as possible” working with the FBI to stay out of prison. “At some point he started to take to the work,” Gaeta added. It was Blazer, who got his start in the sport coaching the soccer teams of his son and daughter when they were children, who decided to rent the 17th floor of Trump Tower for CONCACAF offices when he became general secretary in 1990. He also lived in the building in a $18,000-a-month three-bedroom apartment on the 49th floor with a view of Central Park, with a second $8,000-a-month one-bedroom apartment rented exclusively for his cats. Trump Tower was a symbol to Blazer that he had arrived. Trump had nothing to do with FIFA or CONCACAF then, but the crafty, ebullient Blazer—who tipped the scales at 450-plus pounds and needed a motorized mobility chair to get around and a breathing apparatus at night—was friendly with his neighbor and building owner, who lived in Trump Tower’s two-story penthouse. Both were Queens men with a chip on their shoulders about snooty Manhattan society. Trump offered Blazer open invitations to his various beauty pageants, and Blazer took him up on them.