EXCLUSIVE: How An FBI Sting Unleashed One of America's Most 'Depressed and Angry' Comedy Acts on the World — As Roots of His Burning Rage Revealed
Rodney Dangerfield was nabbed by the FBI for his bad deeds.
June 25 2025, Published 7:00 p.m. ET
While the world knew him as Rodney Dangerfield, the quick-witted comic who always claimed he got no respect, was born Jacob Cohen, and his bad behavior led him to create an entirely new persona, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The funnyman is believed to have changed his name after the FBI got word of his other career as a conman.
One Dangerous Man
Dangerfield was born Jacob Cohen, but found himself changing his name after trouble with the law.
Dangerfield was known as Jack Cohen as a child, but then decided to go by Jack Roy when he was 19 years old, as he tried to make it in show business as a comedian.
Despite his knack for writing and telling jokes, one thing that held the performer back was his bad attitude. "He had a reputation for being angry,” actor Bobby Ramsen said in the book The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy, by Kliph Nesteroff.
"They called him Angry Jack. When Jack Roy was working, it was with an edge," Ramsen added.
Meanwhile, comic Pat Cooper described Dangerfield as "very depressed and angry."
FBI Sting Nabs Future Comedy Legend
The legendary comic was arrested in a FBI sting for 'faking $600,000 in home repair loans.'
Not making a name for himself in the comedy world didn't help either, as Dangerfield instead did a 180 in his career and started selling aluminum siding, as well as painting houses on a commission. His final name change to Dangerfield, according to author Michael Seth Starr who penned the biography Nothin’ Comes Easy: The Life of Rodney Dangerfield, came after it was discovered he would pretend to be a World War II veteran selling cheap home repairs, but it was all a scam. And the FBI came calling.
"In a series of midnight and pre-dawn raids, the FBI today collared 15 men accused of faking $600,000 in home repair loans,” the Long Island Star-Journal reported in 1955. One of the men indicted at the time? Dangerfield.
However, Dangerfield never had to pay for his bad deeds.
'I Became Rodney Dangerfield'
Dangerfield beat the charges and proceeded to make a name for himself in the comedy world.
"He was arrested by the FBI in the late ‘50s as part of this crackdown on the scam, ripping off the Federal Home Improvement Association (FHA)," Starr told Joe Sibilia on his radio show, Nostalgia Tonight. "He did not serve any jail time. He ended up paying a fine. I think it was, I don't know, $1,500 or something."
Following his close call, Dangerfield tried giving comedy a shot with his new name; this time, making it big.
"I was going through a very depressed time. I was about 40, and life was just caving in with craziness, so I became Rodney Dangerfield," he said in an interview with Barbara Walters.
Dangerfield would see huge success on the comedy stage, eventually taking his talents to the big screen with roles in classic films including Easy Money, Back to School, and Ladybugs. However, he also took a dramatic turn in 1994's Natural Born Killers, where he played an abusive dad.
No Mama's Boy In Sight
Dangerfield, here with wife Joan Child, died in 2004 at the age of 82.
Dangerfield's own father, Phil Coen, was a vaudevillian known professionally as Phil Roy. Starr claimed he "only saw his father maybe twice a year," which led his mother to take out her marriage frustrations on her son.
"I think she took out her frustrations on her marriage onto her son, and that's probably at the heart of what was really going on in that house," Starr said. "Rodney didn't grow up in abject poverty, but he grew up in a loveless household, and he turned to joke writing as an outlet for his creative uses."
Unfortunately for Dangerfield, he was never able to improve his relationship with his mother
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"Unlike his relationship with his father, which was patched up later in life, Rodney never patched things up with his mother. She died a very bitter woman," Starr said.
"Never apologized to him for anything. He never apologized to her for anything. That was sort of the trumpet note of his life with his mother."
He added: "She died, and the emotional conflict was never resolved."
Dangerfield died on October 5, 2004. He was 82 years old.
