John Francis Good (June 17, 1936 – September 28, 2016) was an American agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who created the Abscam sting operation in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
[1] Good had been frustrated at the relatively low level of criminal activities he was pursuing in the quiet suburban FBI office, such as fraud and truck hijackings, and sought to find opportunities to identify bigger cases.
Abdul Enterprises, a company supposedly owned by the fictional sheikh, became the basis of the Abscam sting operation, whose original goals were to identify white-collar criminals on Long Island, but which rapidly expanded in scope and area.
The meetings arranged between the FBI agents and politicians were carefully staged in a house in Washington, D.C., that was thoroughly outfitted with recording equipment, with which Good "watched all of the payoffs go down, every single one of them".
Senator Alan K. Simpson at a legislative hearing claiming that the FBI had been too aggressive in pursuing the investigation after several politicians had already been caught, noting that it would have only raised questions if the staff of the sting had rejected the chance to meet with other elected officials who had been introduced to them.