Captain Janks

Cipriano has reasoned in an interview that, in addition to making people laugh, he does prank calls of live television shows and news stations to make fun of the lack of fact checking that he felt was a problem in news organizations, especially CNN. He explained, “They are so willing to get the “scoop” before anyone else that they can be very sloppy about getting the story on the air.” The Washington Post journalist Paul Farhi has also marked the crank calls a critique of the lack of accuracy review in news stations: “That Cipriano, a self-described “not-too-bright guy,” can beat professional call screeners so often suggests they don’t do it often enough in the race for color, drama and “breaking news.”

Cipriano served in the army from 1985 to 1988. The name for his alter ego Captain Janks derived from the name of the real-life army captain of the same name. In a 1996 interview, Cipriano claimed to have lost his former shipping clerk position at a medical laboratory not long ago. In 1999, he revealed he was working “for a company that manufactures toilet seats and other plastics.” In 1998 and 2005, it was reported he was working at a gas station. As of 2014, he is a truck driver who resides in North Wales, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On a May 19th, 2014 episode of The Howard Stern Show, Cipriano revealed that he was gay.

On February 8, 2010, Cipriano pled guilty to charges of theft by deception and deceptive business practices; these charges were a result of fifteen cases in thirteen different food and entertainment businesses in the counties of Montgomery, Chester, Berks, Lehigh and Bucks from October 2006 to April 2009, where he deposited from contracts to make appearances at the places but never showed up. He was sentenced by Montgomery County Court judge Steven T. O’Neill to eight years of probation, and he was required to pay $5,926 for the businesses he scammed. He attributed his actions to addiction to his prescription painkillers, and took urinalysis tests during his probation.

In October 1999, John Katsilometes reported that Cipriano had crank phoned “just about every emergency [live] report worthy of national coverage,” such as those regarding the Columbine High School shootings and the car crash death of Princess Diana. Television stations Cipriano has successfully prank-called range from national and local news networks like NBC News, Fox News, C-SPAN, ESPN to home-shopping channels and religious networks. In 2014, Cipriano suggested he has made around 10,000 fake phone calls.

On June 25, 1996, a collection album of recordings of Janks’ phone-call pranks, titled King of the Cranks, was released on compact disc and cassette tape via the labels Atlantic Records and Ozone Music.

The popularity of The Howard Stern Show has also led to numerous imitators of Captain Janks. A 1996 Philadelphia magazine article reported that there was “at least one Janks imitator in every major city.” One of these imitators called The Today Show in the summer of 1992 asking Ross Perot if he had “mind-melded with Howard Stern’s penis.” According to the article, “Reaching them by phone or through the Howard Stern Newsletter — written and disseminated by Kevin Renzulli of West Orange, New Jersey, another of Stern’s true believers — Janks coordinates group operations, such as Larry King being hit by three consecutive callers shouting “Howard Stern” and “Baba Booey” — Stern’s nickname for producer Gary Dell’Abate — while interviewing Donny Osmond.”

In a 1996 interview, Cipriano explained he had a 16-setting voice changer for use in tricking producers into letting him call onto their shows.

Cipriano also telephoned shows that wouldn’t take calls while on air. The first time he did this was in 1991; he lied to producers of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon that he was a representative for King in order to make a call on the show, saying that King wanted to make a “pledge” to Lewis. Cipriano then compiled samples of King’s voice and ordered them in a way that would trick the producers into believing it was really King talking on the phone. When Cipriano called with his real voice asking Lewis about Howard Stern when the show aired, Lewis called him a “schmuck.”

Cipriano was inspired to do prank calls from hearing tapes of the Tube Bar prank calls. Cipriano began his prank calling career in 1989, when he telephoned local Philadelphia television shows and sent tapes of his calls to The Howard Stern Show. Howard Stern is the person referenced in all of Cipriano’s last comments in each of the prank calls, and the Captain Janks alter ego has become a recurring character on Stern’s show.

Cipriano’s national live television airing prank call career began with talk shows; his first call was in 1989, when he telephoned to Larry King’s talk show Larry King Live. He then pranked call other interview television shows such as those of Phil Donahue and CNN’s Sonya Freedman in the early 1990s. In 1992, his prank calling expanded to live news series; he faked as a witness of an earthquake that took place in Landers, California when calling to CNN.

Thomas Michael Cipriano (born March 28, 1966), also known as Captain Janks, is an American practical joker most notable for making prank calls to live television shows and news networks since the late 1980s, such as Larry King Live, CNN and ABC News. He has been labeled by The Washington Post as the “nemesis of news outlets,” “the news media’s greatest crank caller,” and by the Philadelphia City Paper as “public enemy No. 1 for television- and radio-show screeners.” Janks and The Washington Post have described the calls as commentary on the lack of source verification done in news outlets. All of Janks’ calls reference Howard Stern and his radio series, and the Captain Janks alter ego has become a recurring character on the show.