Bio
Marc Ruskin is a retired FBI Special Agent with 27 years’ experience working primarily undercover in operations for which he was awarded five Commendations from the Bureau Director.
His over twenty years working undercover found him successfully infiltrating a New York Mafia crime family, an ethnic Chinese Malaysian heroin organization, a Wall Street trading exchange, right-wing terrorist groups, and working on espionage cases. Though these cases and many others received significant media coverage, neither Marc’s name nor any of his dozen aliases could ever be mentioned. His work and successful career has been acknowledged and awarded by the Director of the FBI by receiving five Commendations.
A native French and Spanish speaker, Marc has also worked at US Embassies in Paris, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Asunción, where he was given a Letter of Recognition from the Minister of the Interior for the rescue of a kidnapped former Miss Paraguay, Mariangela Martinez. As an FBI certified police instructor, Marc has lectured at universities and law enforcement academies.
Since his retirement from the FBI in 2012, Ruskin authored the book, The Pretender, My Life Undercover for the FBI, released June 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press. A memoir and exposé of the inner workings of the FBI, The Pretender has received extensive domestic and international media attention.
Marc’s path to the FBI included degrees from Vassar College and cum laude from Cardozo Law School, clerking for Federal Judge H. Curtis Meanor, two years in Washington on the staff of U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and four years as an Assistant District Attorney with the Brooklyn D.A.’s Office.
He currently divides his time between a law practice in New York and extended sojourns with his family in Liaoning Province, China, where he writes and studies Mandarin.