The Infiltrator, page 25
I had passed the santero’s test, but that was nothing compared to the challenge Mora soon threw at Emir.
“Marta in the Towers reported to Don Chepe’s people,” Mora said, “that there were strangers watching her people when they made the last deliveries in New York. She says your people are los feos. Here, they” — Don Chepe’s people — “visited me at my office. They are very serious people. What is going on?”
“You have to understand,” Emir said reassuringly, “that when people deal with this kind of money, everyone reading a newspaper or sleeping on the street looks to them like they’re one of those bad people. This claim is bullshit. This is Chino’s people in the Towers. There can’t possibly be anything wrong there. I’ll discuss this with him, but these people are seeing ghosts.”
“Okay, but remember,” Mora said, greed overriding logic, “this is my neck and my family’s neck, too. Our lives are in your hands.”
“You should have no concern,” Emir said. “I have everything under control.”
Emir immediately called and filled me in.
“I need to go back to the well with Armbrecht,” I said. “He and Mora are the only voices in Medellín we have to combat this. You saw this coming before it happened. It’s not Nelson’s or Tommy’s fault. I’m sure they did whatever they could to get their people to do the right thing. Regardless, our New York office did exactly what you feared. I’m not sure how I’m going to approach this with Armbrecht to get him on our side. I’ll think about it, give it my best shot, and let you know what shakes out.”
How would a calculating money launderer approach this? He would identify the most likely leaks, treat them well, give them a vacation so they had plenty of time on their hands, and monitor everything they said and did while they thought he wasn’t watching. Which is exactly what I pitched to Armbrecht.
“The people are very worried about having your people there,” he said tensely about New York. “We may not be able to do anything there. If the root of the tree is failing, that is the most important part of the whole operation.”
“We need to just face facts that something needs to be determined before either side goes further,” I reasoned. “We need to consider doing certain things. A plan needs to be put into motion that gets this thing flushed out.”
I told him we had two people in New York who weren’t longtime members of our group. I planned to treat them well, let them drop their guard, and watch them closely. I’d also suspend using our regulars in New York and bring in workers from Philadelphia. Armbrecht, approving of the plan, agreed to speak with Don Chepe’s people to get back on track. I told him he could tell his people that, if I identified the problem, the problem would be eliminated because I was sending Emir to the Towers. He knew what I meant; it was exactly what he had done to Ospiña in Paris.
In the midst of the confusion in New York, the undercover house in Miami became a crossroads for meetings with the drug world. Tobón showed up and made a pitch to form a partnership. He had important friends who needed money laundered, so I explained the fees and capabilities of our organization and the role filled by Mora. Never cut a crook out of his fair share. After a quick call to Mora, he learned that Tobón might bring us new business, and Tobón learned that Mora was our face in Medellín.
No sooner had Tobón left the house than Alcaíno showed up fresh from Buenos Aires where he was organizing shipments of coke to the U.S.
“So what we’re thinking with him,” he said of his partner in Buenos Aires and the big plan, “is … to do something that we just be able to transport it and stay away from sales. Sell the transport to somebody else, bring the product here ourselves, and sell it outright to somebody at a discount. I’ll make two thousand less or one thousand less” — per kilo — “but I don’t have to sell and collect. I’d bring my own merchandise, and I will wholesale it to one customer or two customers…. That way it’s less headaches.”
Alcaíno ran through the math. He’d paid about $300,000 for a factory in Buenos Aires that acted as a front for shipping goods to the U.S. and Europe. It cost him $2,000 per kilo to buy the coke from the cartel. He planned to bring a thousand or more kilos via his transportation route to New York and sell it in bulk at $14,500 per kilo. At that price, he’d gross $14.5 million on just one deal, and he planned on doing two more loads to Europe the same year: 2,000 kilos selling for $26,000 each in Spain and Italy, grossing $104 million.
Previously, Alcaíno had sold loads of fifty kilos or so at a time to many different customers, which exposed him not only to the feds but also to deadbeats. Various customers owed him a total of a million dollars, and he didn’t like getting his hands dirty, especially with friends like Zabala. As Alcaíno saw it, it wasn’t Zabala’s fault that Zabala sold a shipment to five Cuban brothers in Chicago who owned a string of small grocery stores and they stiffed him. How could he put the squeeze on his longtime friend?
Then Alcaíno’s eyebrows shot up, as a thought ran through his head. “Maybe you can, God, you can help me! Frank” — Serra, the undercover agent in Chicago — “can help us there. Some guys, they have a market there, and they don’t even pay him a hundred thousand dollars. They just don’t want to pay him. You guys have the people that can do that, right?”
I nodded silently.
“Yes,” Alcaíno continued, “pick up one of the guys, and hold it, and the other ones will come with the money…. You have to force them. On their own, they won’t pay. You have to force them. And forcing is hard. They will come with the money.”
There was no way we were going through with this plan, but it gave me an opening to gather valuable information. I told Alcaíno he needed to get me all the details he had on each of his delinquent clients, especially the five brothers. Then I’d quote a collection price after we assessed the situation.
Not long after Alcaíno left, Mora called Emir to say that Don Chepe’s people had decided to resume business in New York. I immediately called Laura Sherman and Steve Cook in Tampa, Tommy Loreto and Nelson Chen in New York — anyone in Customs who would listen. We couldn’t afford to get burned again in New York, and we had to use different people on the street, keeping the lowest profile possible. Marta’s countersurveillance would be watching us closely, and the next drop had to go smoothly.
It did — half a million, no problems. Then word came that the next drop would be $2 million. That number might prompt New York agents to get overly aggressive, so Emir flew to New York to handle the deal personally.
While Emir was in transit, Tobón was knocking on my door in Miami. He wanted to bring us clients and had prospects. I had him translate for me while I called Mora, who had recently met with Santiago Uribe, Pablo Escobar’s lawyer. Uribe was bringing us a new client who wanted the same services we were providing to Don Chepe. Not only did he want us to launder cash picked up in the States, he also wanted us to form offshore corporations and foreign accounts so he could hide the money in Europe. Uribe wanted copies of the documentation so this new client could better understand the system. We were getting closer.
In New York, Emir met our agents and they hatched a plan for him and Chen to meet Don Chepe’s bagmen, who had the $2 million. Everyone knew the countersurveillance would be heavy, so all agreed to limit surveillance to ensuring the safety of the two undercover agents. Nothing more, and no tracking the mopes after they dropped the money.
Emir and Chen drove to a bodega near Canal Street in lower Manhattan. Inside, they met two young Colombian men in their early twenties, clean-cut, in casual clothes. One of them handed Emir a set of keys and said, “Eet’s een da band.”
Emir got it, but Chen didn’t, turning to Emir with amazement and saying, “What the fuck is he talking about? Where’s the band? Who’s playing music?”
“This guy doesn’t speak English very well,” Emir said, laughing. “He meant van!’”
In the back of a van parked outside sat $2 million packed in boxes. One of the boxes contained $99,000 in one-dollar bills. That wasn’t going to go over well — counting the ones would take forever — but with all the suspicions that we were cops, he couldn’t make a scene, letting it slide.
The Colombian gave Emir instructions: drive the van wherever he wanted to make the drop, bring the van back, leave the keys in the ashtray, and take off. Then he added, “After you take that, if you’re willing to wait an hour or so, I can come back with two million more.”
It was a Friday afternoon, and Emir knew the surveillance team would rage if he made them stay out a few more hours. “Listen, man,” he said to the Colombian. “We’ve been authorized to receive two tons. Your people down south will have to work that out with our bosses. We can only do what we’ve been told to do.”
Emir jumped in the van, and Nelson led him to a rough part of the Lower East Side, near a public housing project. They parked amid passed-out bums and junkies playing dominoes and made the transfer. They returned to the bodega, completing the Colombian’s instructions, then drove around for ten minutes, shaking any countersurveillance on their tail. And then the cover team caught up.
Normally, at this stage, an undercover car driven by a cover agent would lead them carefully back to the office by a circuitous route while a second surveillance agent cruised along a few cars behind. It gave undercover agents double protection in case bagmen tried to double-cross them and steal the money.
But now the surveillance supervisor pulled in front of Chen’s Mercedes, put his red light on his roof, and waved for Nelson to follow him to the Customs office at the World Trade Center.
“What the hell is going on?” Emir shouted to Chen. It had only been ten minutes since they left the bodega — not enough time to ensure they weren’t being tailed. But it was too late. They had no choice. They followed the lead car — red light flashing, siren blaring — as all of downtown Manhattan gawked at the speeding caravan.
When they arrived at the garage at the World Trade Center, Emir flew out of the Mercedes to the supervisor’s car, screaming, “What the hell are you doing? Why did you throw your red light on your roof and draw all that attention?”
“Listen, pal,” the supervisor said coldly. “It’s Friday afternoon. I’ve got a summer home on the Jersey shore, and I’ve got a cement truck showing up early tomorrow morning to pour a new patio behind my house. I don’t have time for this shit, and these dumb fucking Colombians were long gone before I led you to this garage. It’s going to take us hours to count this money.”
Emir explained that one of the boxes contained $99,000 in dollar bills, and then the supervisor hit the roof. “How could you accept that much in ones? Do you realize how long it’s going to take us to count that?”
“You tell me what I’m supposed to do when these guys deliver $2 million to me undercover,” Emir said, shaking his head. “Maybe I should say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, we can’t take the ones, my bosses at Customs don’t want me to take that. We’ll only take twenty-dollar bills and above.’”
“I wanted to kick his ass,” Emir told me later. “That bastard was more worried about pouring a cement patio than keeping us alive! He could have gotten us all killed the next time we went to pick up money. I’m pretty sure we got fried when those red lights came out.”
Once again, the enemy within was proving more dangerous than the enemy we were attacking.
I called Armbrecht the next day in Colombia to feel him out. Noncommittal, he said only that he would be in Miami the day after. When the time was right, he’d contact me to discuss where things stood. As before when situations grew tense, someone smashed the window on my Mercedes and tossed the car. Nothing was stolen, but it was clear that someone was looking for something.
On a sweltering August night in Miami, Armbrecht called. “I’m at the Airport La Quinta on Thirty-sixth Street. I’m ready. Come to my room, and we’ll talk.”
“No problem, Rudy,” I said calmly. “Give me an hour or so, and I’ll be there.”
I called my contact agent in Miami, Matt Etre, and filled him in.
“Listen. Armbrecht just called and asked me to meet him at the La Quinta near the airport. His people are getting very concerned because they think they’ve spotted feds surveilling pickups. Their countersurveillance people claim they burned at least one of our surveillance teams in New York, and they may have burned us again a few days ago. They say they don’t think I’m the problem, they just think the feds may be onto our pickup team. I can’t afford for this guy to have any reason to suspect me, so I’m telling you right now: I don’t want one agent anywhere near that hotel. I don’t carry a gun or a badge when I’m working undercover, so I’m clean. If they toss me, I’ve got nothing that will compromise me. I’m going to leave my briefcase recorder in my car until I’m certain he’s alone. When he asks me for some documents he needs, I’ll tell him I forgot them in the car, and I’ll get my briefcase. You’ve got my cell phone and beeper number. I should be at the hotel by no later than 11 P.M. I’ll call you just before I go in. If you don’t hear from me by 3 A.M., call me. If you don’t get me, start looking for me. In the meantime, call anytime you’d like. If everything is okay, I’ll tell you ‘It’s not a problem to meet tomorrow.’ If I have a problem, I’ll say ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to make the meeting.’ But please, don’t let anyone try to cover me tonight. If you guys get close, the only thing you’ll accomplish is that you’ll be able to find my body quickly, ’cause you’re going to get me whacked.”
Etre exhaled slowly. He didn’t like what he was hearing. “Okay, we’ll play it on your terms,” he said. “Let’s stay in touch.”
At 11 P.M., Armbrecht opened the door of the La Quinta room and welcomed me in, warm as ever. After ten minutes of small talk, he changed the subject to Mora, who he thought was doing me a disservice in Medellín. Aside from becoming too pushy with Don Chepe’s group, he’d made unrealistic promises, including a claim that my organization would make good on losses of $100 or $200 million. Armbrecht’s people were losing faith in Mora’s objectivity. He was trying too hard to impress.
When a natural break in the conversation occurred, I asked Armbrecht if he wanted the last of the documents from Switzerland, which he did. After a quick walk to my car, I came back to the room and tossed the Nagra-recorder briefcase on the bed. His eyes fixed on it — he looked like he was going to dive on the bed and tear it apart. As he talked, every few minutes his eyes flashed to it. He was clearly spooked.
When I pulled the case to my lap, the top of the lid facing Armbrecht, the false lid flopped down inside the case, exposing the recorder to me in a nest of wires. Once again, Joe Hinton’s mantra rang in my head — Don’t count on someone else for something that could cost you your life. I pushed the framing back into place, while trying not to let my eyes pop out of my head. Thankfully, the Velcro seals held before Armbrecht stood. He peered over the lid into the case as I handed him the documents. My heart was pounding so hard that, had I not been wearing a suit jacket, he surely would have seen it through my shirt.
When I asked how his people felt about me, he put it plain: “Nobody’s questioning the honesty of nobody. It’s simply a matter of the little things that were adding up … and there was a fault somewhere. That’s what I know that they think. And then, for their good and your good, okay, they thought it was more judicious, more … It would be better for everybody to let things cool off a little.”
He also mentioned that some of his people worried that because I was in the U.S. I could “change direction very easily.”
I didn’t understand.
“Somebody changes direction,” he explained, “and if for some reason the government wants for its advantage to protect that person, they will …”
If I ever changed direction, he warned, “There’s isn’t a hole deep enough” in which I could hide. Message received.
Armbrecht continued, revealing that the problems started when Marta’s people in New York saw a series of little things that caused them to report that the cops were surveilling our pickups in New York. After that, when Mora said I was offended that our group’s integrity had been challenged, Armbrecht’s bosses started to wonder why we were pushing so hard to resume the pickups.
As Armbrecht put it, “I personally don’t think it’s going to be cut off totally. My personal advice would be: Do your business, and have this on standby. You get or assume the same attitude they have. You respect…. We are able, but it’s not so important for you. Just sit and wait. That’s a powerful message … because when somebody pursues something very zealously, it has to be for another reason. He is very ambitious, and needs the money very badly — which I know it’s not the case — or he is after something that nobody really knows about, and that’s the thing we’re not sure about. That’s what makes trouble.”
Damn, they were good. Time to play a little hardball.
I reminded Armbrecht of all the time, energy, and money I had invested quickly to accommodate his concerns about New York. I bore the cost of bringing in an entirely new crew, and my thanks for being so responsive was a reduction of business to a trickle? Very disappointing.
“There were plans to do business to a very big amount,” he said, unfazed. “Put a lot of money in, like maybe $100 million…. The first things that were done … they were very, very eager. People were very eager. They wanted to do it because of you, because of the professionalism, and because of the things that you were showing. They were, okay, they liked it a lot. But, so here he comes, this little shit things. From that they go paranoid.”
We had gone the extra mile to identify what upset his people in New York, I volleyed back. Emir took our main man in New York with him the last time we got money from Marta so they could meet her and her husband. Emir asked what they saw that upset everyone, and she said of the man in New York, “We don’t have any problems with him. Everything is fine with us. We don’t know what the problem is. We’re monkeys.” Marta had changed her tune, yet caused huge problems.
