He was a Special Agent Supervisor with Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), a Lieutenant with the Broward County Sheriffs Office, and finally, a Deputy with the Larimer County Sheriffs Office in Ft. Collins CO. Lt. Dave Green, when a member of the Broward County Sheriff's Office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, engaged in a two-year (1985–1987) undercover investigation that led to the arrest and conviction of members of the Bonanno, Bufalino, Gambino, and Genovese Mafia families.
[2] As part of Operation Cherokee Green assumed the identity of Danny Ledford, a stolen liquor salesman.
Using this identity he was able to infiltrate organised crime families in South Florida and record over 2,000 conversations linking suspects to narcotics sales, extortion, firearms violations and solicitation for homicide.
Green disguised himself as an outlaw motorcycle biker and traded allegedly stolen jewelry for a loan shark debt.
[4] This was the only time in America that a Mafia boss was arrested in a hand-to-hand transaction with a member of local law enforcement.
Green is one of the few law enforcement officials to have investigated and spoke in length with Meyer Lansky, considered by many to have been the most significant mobster of all time.