The Pretender Read online

  There actually was a real Owens-Corning engineer waiting in a room on another floor, poised to determine if these were legitimate trade secrets. While the documents were being inspected, I had some time on my hands with the Belgians, which I decided to use to enhance the legal groundwork for industrial espionage charges. In general, as we know, asking crooks a lot of questions is suspicious behavior for a UC, if the crooks are at all sharp. In this case, I had nothing to lose. The case was already made. They had proffered the stolen secret documents, and the documents were no longer in their control. There was little chance that they would say anything that could damage the case against them (it could only be enhanced), and if they became suspicious, so what. I primed them by saying how much I admired their initiative, how impressed I was that they had been able to pull this off. Then I proceeded straight to the questions and asked flat out how they’d stolen the documents. Not did they steal them. That’s important. You never ask “did you…?” questions, which just freak out real criminals who go on red alert. Stephane and Eduard weren’t real criminals, in the sense that I was used to dealing with, but I followed my training and experience anyway. Proper craft assumes that the answer to the “did you…?” question is “yes” and moves straight to the “how?” Not “Did you steal them?” but “How did you steal them?” Never “Did you have a gun?” (Self-serving answer: “No.”) Instead, “Where’d you get the gun?” (Answer: “Jose gave it to me.”)

  My judgment was correct. These Belgians were clueless and said, in almost so many words, Oui, on les a volés.

  They stole the documents. The executive, bitter because he’d been passed over for a promotion by the French-owned company, went into great detail about the caper. He had entered the office building on the previous weekend, purportedly to catch up on work. Using his knowledge of the placement of security video cameras, he had been able to access and remove the documents without a trace. The theft would be discovered, he explained, as the documents were too voluminous to copy. The thief would not be … until he was, a continent away.

  Stephane enlisted Eduard in the scheme because he trusted the PI and believed that his experience would be invaluable in smuggling the documents out of Belgium, finding an American buyer, and negotiating the deal, all without getting caught. In response to my congratulations on how ingenious Eduard had been in carefully orchestrating the consummation of the theft, he explained that they were planning to divide the proceeds 50/50, which for him meant real money.

  The audio and video were rolling. In that hotel room in Tampa Bay, the hapless pair unwittingly laid out a great case against themselves. After twenty minutes, the Owens-Corning “executive” returned with the briefcase and reported that the documents were genuine. We had a deal, so I kept the documents and handed Stephane and Eduard the case with the show money, which they eagerly accepted. They had it in their possession for all of five seconds before the dividing door opened and my new colleagues walked in and calmly handcuffed the duo, who turned white as ghosts. The agents handcuffed me, too, just for show—and they handcuffed me last, as per my stipulation in the pre-meeting. This is always my stipulation, as previously explained. The ruse turned out to be a waste of energy. In some cases, the arrested suspects may never learn that the other guy was actually an undercover agent. In quite a few cases they do find out, it can’t be helped: the UC may be the primary, may be the only witness to the criminal acts. In this case, the Belgians found out that afternoon, when the case took a queer turn, at least from my point of view. We were in the ultra-modern SAC conference room in the Bureau’s division office in Tampa Bay. Stephane and Eduard were smoking—strictly verboten, but there was no management around on the weekend to enforce the rules. (In San Juan, in the mid-eighties when I was there, management didn’t interfere: in the office’s Squad Area, with its clusters of desks, the blue haze of burning cigarette, cigar, and pipe tobacco permanently suspended in the air.)

  It was a Saturday afternoon. Who in this FBI office on a Saturday afternoon spoke French? Who could translate for the suspects during the post-arrest interrogation? Well, I spoke French, so after working these Belgians undercover in the morning, I was translating for them in the afternoon. I explained to them that I was sorry things had worked out this way, but what could I do? I had little choice. (Sorry to be involved in the processing, not sorry that they had been arrested.) They just shrugged their shoulders. That was a unique situation, in my experience, and I’ve never heard of one like it elsewhere. Typically, after a UC case went down, I was out of the picture. In fact, this situation could conceivably have been deemed a problem in a court of law, but the defendants ultimately pled guilty, so the issue never surfaced in court.

  In short order, Stephane and Eduard officially confessed and provided full statements. I think they realized they’d been operating above their heads. Another strange Marc Ruskin regret on their behalf: they wouldn’t be able to smoke their Marlboros in our politically correct jails, which would be an additional agony for them. A few months later, after their conviction before the federal judge in Tampa Bay, they were deported to Belgium, where I imagine they were prosecuted for theft and may well have done time (but with smoking privileges). I never tried to find out. I wasn’t that sympathetic to their plight, and anyway it was rare that I would learn the outcome of a case. After the UC phase of an operation, case agents rarely bring the UC back into the loop. (I did learn that Santiago Kuris went up the river, and then there was the SUNBLOCK aftermath, but more on that later.) With these two Europeans, it was over, as far as I was concerned.

  Au revoir, mes amis, force doit rester à la loi. Such is the long arm of the lie.

  7

  BLUE SCORE

  Blue as in “police.” This was a corruption case targeting the Mount Vernon PD, up in Westchester County, also in the mid-nineties. This wasn’t exactly Serpico in its reach and fame, but it was a good case that received widespread press coverage (official corruption always does, when and if uncovered). As it happened—and as reported by all the newspapers—BLUE SCORE was the third major law enforcement corruption scandal in the NYC metro area in a short period of time. A few months before this Mount Vernon case, fourteen cops working out of the 30th Precinct in Manhattan had been arrested on charges of taking bribes and shaking down drug dealers. Then, at the Westchester County jail, ten guards were charged with selling various goodies, including what they thought was cocaine, to the prisoners.

  For the previous five-plus years, day in, day out, I had been rolling from one undercover op to the next, originally alias H. Marc Renard, usually alias Alex Perez, sometimes alias Sal Morelli, occasionally alias Eduardo Dean. Craig Dotlo, my longtime friend and supervisor, thought that a spell away from the day-to-day encounters behind enemy lines would be a healthy change. RUN-DMV and INFRACEL had been taken down. And perhaps he was inspired in this decision by a few words from my friends at the Undercover Safeguard Unit down by Quantico. It was their job to look out for the welfare of the UCs nationwide.

  The Mount Vernon jurisdiction—its public administration as well as the MVPD, with 176 cops and detectives—was so notoriously corrupt we referred to the town as Mount Vermin. In fact, the case had been opened based on complaints from drug dealers, pimps, numbers runners, and the like who had gone to local prosecutors and state authorities. Who would believe such unlikely complainants? Actually, their claims have a reasonable chance of being valid, because such victims don’t generally want to bring attention to themselves. But it’s true that their credibility is hard to defend on legal, that is, “probable cause” grounds. So they were blown off at the local and state levels. As a last resort, they had come to the FBI and presented their cases to my boss Craig. A veteran investigator with street smarts, Craig would have seen through an attempt to smear honest cops. The detail and specificity of the allegations, along with what was already known about MVPD practices, were enough to persuade him that there might indeed be something there, enough to justify at le
ast initial steps to corroborate or discount the claims.

  Craig had names but no ironclad probable cause. He assigned Ed Cugell, who had been co-case agent in COMMCORR, to conduct a preliminary investigation (the initial phase of most Bureau cases). Ed’s task was to unearth some hard evidence, if there was any to be found. Tall and portly, salt-and-pepper hair, wearing quality suits (though usually somewhat rumpled), Ed projected the image of a Chase Bank branch vice president. A thorough and bright mid-career agent, he was easily capable of managing complex long-term investigations.

  The first break was provided two months later by an unlikely source: a young MVPD street cop who has to remain unnamed (even twenty years after the fact, a police-on-police informant is going to guard his identity closely). I’ll call him Rookie. After issuing a double-parking ticket in front of a mob-owned restaurant to an associate of a mob boss we’ll call Charlie Sacchi (aka CS, head of a dreaded Westchester crew), Rookie had been ordered by his lieutenant, Philip Valandro, to hand over his summons book. Valandro had then altered an “H” in the plate number to an “A.” The young cop soon learned that both Valandro and MVPD Chief of Detectives Robert Astorino were on Sacchi’s mob payroll. CS routinely paid off Astorino’s gambling debts in exchange for nonintervention in the crew’s Mount Vernon operations. Shocked and disappointed by the routine nature of the illegal activities of his colleagues, the disillusioned young cop had approached his uncle, a retired detective, for advice. His uncle happened to be Craig Dotlo’s friend.

  After persuading Rookie not to simply resign and get a job elsewhere, we had to find a safe way for him to gather credible intelligence. Handwritten notes would not be sufficient, or so said U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White’s assistants. We would need audio recordings before we could initiate a full-scale investigation. Of course, a recording device discovered by fellow cops would be Rookie’s death sentence. And a police locker room affords little privacy. As was so often the case, Craig came up with the innovative solution. After all, he had dreamed-up the high-tops with hollowed-out soles used in COMMCORR. Now he had a new inspiration, one that Rookie could live with, both figuratively and in the most real sense: a custom bulletproof vest, identical to the body armor used in Mount Vernon, except for a hollowed-out space to conceal a mini-Nagra, the wiring woven into the Kevlar chest plate itself, two mics situated at shoulder level. As Rookie would be wearing the vest through his entire eight-hour shift, a remote on-off switch was accessible by reaching under the vest just over the belt line, as if he was scratching his belly. As had been the case with my mini-Nagra’s on-off capability, the prosecutors had to be persuaded. They again complained that defense lawyers would argue that Rookie turned off the recorder whenever the (future) defendants made exculpatory statements. Craig argued that with two hours of tape for an eight-hour shift, most of the inculpatory statements would be lost. Craig won.

  Great idea, now to get the vest fabricated. I drove out the offices and factory of Point Blank Body Armor in Westbury, Long Island. (Unbeknownst to me, one of the top executives at Point Blank was Richard Bistrong. Not that the name had any significance at the time, but over a decade later Richard would be the confidential informant in another high-profile long-term operation, ALTERNATE BREACH, aka The Africa/Gabon Sting, one of the more notorious cases of my UC life. Later for that one.) On Long Island, I met with one of the company’s sales reps, a retired NYPD detective who was amenable to this intriguing idea, but he would have to work out the technical issues and get a green light from the owners. And come up with a price. I did not mention where this vest would be employed. In the end, Point Blank did build that vest, but only after receiving an indemnification letter: If Rookie got shot in the chest, the company could not be sued because the altered vest didn’t prevent penetration of the bullet. The invention cost nearly $2,000, compared with the standard $500. Rookie could put on and take off the vest in full view of the other cops in the locker room. There would be nothing visible, no risk. Nevertheless, he was very jumpy wearing it and, for the first couple of weeks, reluctant to draw his colleagues into incriminating conversations. I provided some tips, good questions vs. bad while working a subject, and his confidence increased. Within a couple of months his recordings and information from additional local informants satisfied the lawyers. We had probable cause to go forward.

  Three names had surfaced as the likely baddest actors in the MVPD: Robert Astorino, fifty-three, chief of detectives for more than ten years, clean record; James Garcia, forty-six, a twenty-one-year veteran of the department, clean record, at one time assigned to the elite Westchester County DA’s detective squad, and ruggedly movie-star handsome; and Frank Lauria, thirty-four, hired in Mount Vernon while facing departmental charges from the NYPD after an acquittal in a criminal trial (the charge: stealing money from a drug dealer’s home during a raid). Also implicated was Lieutenant Valandro, a uniformed officer working independently from the detectives. His purported presence on an organized crime payroll would require its own investigation.

  To get these guys, Craig, working with the cooperation of Mount Vernon’s own police commissioner, Clyde Isley, dreamed up the specific sting. Seemingly simple, yet surprisingly complex and ultimately brilliant in execution, it had a great number of moving parts, all of which would need to be synchronized at the very last minute for the trap to spring and catch the mice. And the final act played out like a finely choreographed and well-rehearsed football scrimmage—although there were a few surprises and unexpected developments, calling for rapid and innovative responses.

  The UC action would begin with a bogus tip to the MVPD detectives’ office from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department in Florida, which has jurisdiction for the Greater Tampa area. Craig, who is so resourceful it’s scary, had somehow persuaded that sheriff to work with us (their cooperation would be closely held, with only one trusted lieutenant-deputy aware of the sting). The tip would state that according to a reliable local source, a fugitive from justice in Florida was headed up to his girlfriend’s apartment in Mount Vernon. An arrest warrant had just been obtained for kidnapping, the charge a result of a botched “home invasion” (in which residents are physically restrained while cash and furnishings are stolen from their homes). This fugitive was also reported to be holding a great deal of cash, the proceeds of a previous armed and violent home invasion. The sheriff would provide MVPD with a copy of the warrant, photographs, the make and model of the car the fugitive was believed to be driving, and additional details as they became available.

  In Mount Vernon, the fugitive and his girlfriend would be our UC agents. When the detectives “located” this couple, their search of the apartment would indeed turn up a large quantity of cash. The success of the operation depended on the bet that the crooked detectives would steal some of this money (but not all of it, they were too sharp for that). Generally speaking, when drug dealers, numbers shop operators, and other criminals doing cash business are busted, they expect that a large chunk of their cash will never make it to the evidence room. Sadly enough, they are, on occasion, right. The felons shrug. It’s part of their cost of doing business. If all their cash, or what they think of as their cash, evaporates between time of arrest and arraignment, then the likelihood that they will make a stink increases geometrically, and even jaded prosecutors will start to take notice. The arrestees have had enough experience with the criminal justice system to understand that they might get the money back if the case is dropped or they’re exonerated. Depending on the competency of the police agency or prosecutors involved, many cases do fall apart. The FBI botches cases. Everyone does. Also, corrupt detectives in any jurisdiction understand that if raid after raid on lucrative drug operations turned up no cash … judges, prosecutors, and their own bosses would be asking questions.

  Now, why wasn’t this sting also entrapment? After all, if the money wasn’t planted in the apartment, the detectives couldn’t take it. The key point is that a trap on its own does not necessarily equ
al the legal definition “entrapment.” There was credible evidence that the detectives had committed equivalent thefts before. There were claims that they took payoffs from drug dealers and numbers runners—the tax, or licensing fee, for doing business in their community. So there was plenty of good cause to support the sting. Rest assured that the New York office’s Chief Division Counsel and the U.S. Attorney’s office had vetted the legality of the whole operation.

  As simple as the basic set-up might seem, it took more than six months to set up down to the last detail—six months of prep for two days of actual execution. And that ratio is not unusual for major Group I ops. BLUE SCORE was a Group I not because it would be a long-term case, but because it involved “special circumstances”—corrupt police officers. Ed Cugell, who had done a great job in COMMCORR, would be the administrative co-case agent for this op, and I would be the operational co-case agent. This would be a new role for me. I was not the UC. I’d have the widescreen perspective. Nor were these detectives our typical street targets. This op would have to be constructed in such a manner as to deceive three highly experienced police detectives, crooked detectives who were well aware that they had to be painstakingly careful. Professionals. Who would smell a trap from the least little telltale sign that something was amiss. There would be no room for mistakes, no margin of error.

  First order of business: create the fugitive. This wasn’t going to be a UC op in the classical sense, as there would be no interaction, no contacts or communications between this fake fugitive and the targeted detectives. It might be more accurate to say that the UC felon from Florida and his girlfriend would be acting in a covert capacity, helping to lure in the targets and set the stage for the sting itself. The scenario for the op (in its three-ring binder, the formal proposal that had been approved by FBIHQ was two inches thick) called for renting two apartments in a mostly black neighborhood—one for the UC “fugitives” and a second to serve as a “perch” to house the surveillance operation, with line of sight to the target. Two agents from Manhattan, male and female, came up to handle the covert duties. Black agents had been selected as the complainants had all been black, and perhaps, in order to play to the subject detectives’ stereotypes. Albert, midthirties, athletic, with shaved head and beard, would have no trouble looking the part. Behaving like a man on the run was going to be another story. Tina, about the same age, wiry and not particularly communicative, would need to dress down, but seemed otherwise plausible as the felon’s Mount Vernon moll. Normally, the UC would have worked with Janus to develop the legend, but Albert turned out to be less than enthusiastic about the paperwork, phone calls, and meetings required. After Craig judged that backstopping progress was proving to be a wee bit slow, those duties fell to me. I didn’t mind. I had plenty of experience with backstopping and knew all the people.