Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. was born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, to Ada (nee Richards) and Alfred Charles Sharpton Sr. The family has some Cherokee roots. He preached his first sermon at the age of four and toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. In 1963, Sharpton's father left his wife to have a relationship with Sharpton's half-sister.

Sharpton said in 1988 that he informed for the government in order to stem the flow of crack cocaine into black neighborhoods. He denied informing on civil rights leaders.  In 2002, HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel aired a 19-year-old FBI videotape of an undercover sting operation showing Sharpton with an undercover FBI agent posing as a Latin American businessman and a reputed Colombo crime family captain. During the discussion, the undercover agent offered Sharpton a 10% commission for arranging drug sales. On the videotape, Sharpton mostly nods and allows the FBI agent to do most of the talking. No drug deal was ever consummated, and no charges were brought against Sharpton as a result of the tape.  In April 2014, The Smoking Gun obtained documents indicating that Sharpton became an FBI informant in 1983 following Sharpton's role in a drug sting involving Colombo crime family captain Michael Franzese. Sharpton allegedly recorded incriminating conversations with Genovese and Gambino family mobsters, contributing to the indictments of several underworld figures. Sharpton is referred to in FBI documents as "CI-7."  Summarizing the evidence supporting that Sharpton was an active FBI informant in the 1980s, William Bastone, the Smoking Gun's founder, stated: "If he (Sharpton) didn't think he was an informant, the 'Genovese squad' of the FBI and NYPD officials sure knew him to be an informant. He was paid to be an informant, he carried a briefcase with a recording device in it, and he made surreptitious tape recordings of a Gambino crime family member 10 separate times as an informant. He did it at the direction of the FBI, he was prepped by the FBI, was handed the briefcase by the FBI and was debriefed after the meetings. That's an informant." Sharpton disputes portions of the allegations.  Sharpton is alleged to have secretly recorded conversations with black activists in the 1980s regarding Joanne Chesimard (Assata Shakur) and other underground black militants. Veteran activist Ahmed Obafemi told the New York Daily News that he had long suspected Sharpton of taping him with the bugged briefcase.

Answer the following question by taking a quote from the article: How did Sharpton become an informant for the FBI
Sharpton said in 1988 that he informed for the government in order to stem the flow of crack cocaine into black neighborhoods.