Still Kicking The Tires

 It's been another few years since I visited this thread and, as time goes by, memories do become less organized. However, there's a lot of moments, events and things that are simply unforgettable.

As I said, the lawyer, Gerry, guided me through the legal nightmare when I had no real-life experience. In most cases, the agents investigate and then the prosecutors prosecute. In my case, the opposite was true. They had investigated the crap out of the smuggler and his crew, but they had hardly known about my situation during that two and a half year stretch. The original informant did know about me but knew virtually nothing about how I did my stuff. So he gave them my name along with quite a few others. I was pretty much 'just another guy'.

Which was what I had always intended... I wanted to be just another guy. My entire visible life was built on the premise that I'd show income, pay taxes, live out in the open, and essentially present as a 'normal' citizen. And this worked pretty much as I intended. We accumulated lots of things that were bought with visible funding from sources that had paid the income taxes and whatever else was required under the financial codes. There was our house (bought in 1980 on 2.5 acres) that eventually became the site of the bust. There was another nice house (on 2 acres) in an exclusive community where my mother-in-law was in residence. There was a fantastic house on top of a hill in Park City Utah that we built from scratch. Then there were other things that were funded with cash... like a bunch of buildings the were assembled in the downtown area of Christiansted, St Croix and given the name Market Square Mall... and on and on... I was driving a Saab 9000, the Mrs. had a nice Mustang and I had bought her a vintage red and white 1967 Corvette. Materially, we had plenty of toys and places. We traveled to Europe, went to all the finest restaurants, shopped at all the exclusive places, and didn't think all that much before spending thousands on jewelry or whatever else struck our fancy.

But... and this is the big but... the entire premise of being 'just another guy' went well only until I became a target. At that point, all of the supporting cards that the above-board life was built on became areas of exposure. Most all of my income was generated in an accounting scheme where the employer wrote off my income. I would pay them cash and get back salary/commission checks minus 10%. Meantime, they would keep the cash and reduce their own taxes by showing an expense. I don't know how much the accountant made but I never cared much about that sort of thing. If it worked, who was I to tell someone what they deserved to make.

There were so many ways the money surfaced I hardly recall them all. And then there was the 'under the table' stuff... We'd buy the work cars and rent the work spaces with all cash. Believe me when I say that very few people refuse cash. The assemblage on St. Croix was almost entirely done with a combination of cash and banking. If an owner wanted more than the bank would finance, well, that was no problem when a bag was on the table. Then the owner would 'sell' for a 'bargain' and the bank would be happy to finance the deal based on the 'loan to value' formula.  And the thing was that it wasn't all done that way.  It was a montage of different methods and deals.  I had a partner who was seriously connected there and, over the prior years, had some very successful businesses there.  You couldn't just look and single out any one transaction as unusual.

Mitch RIP... Sadness in a Joyful Aura

Funny how certain things bring memories when you least expect them... like tonight I was watching a flick and it concluded with a song "All I Want is You" which I hadn't focused on before... but is just a spectacular anthem...

So I go and google the lyric and find that it's a U2 anthem... which took me to one of my warmest and saddest memories... Mitch... who, as it turns out, was the person who turned me on to U2 back in the day. He also introduced me to Joe Jackson but U2 was the goods...

Mitch was one of the sweetest, most caring people I've ever met. Always with a smile on his face... a terrific tennis player... someone you were always happy to be around...

We worked together back in the day. Mitch was smart enough to pack it in a couple of years before the shit hit the fan and he moved out to Arizona.

Sadly, before we worked together, he had a needle problem, and kicked his habit before we got our stuff together. He opened a home health business in Tucson, which was ahead of its time and was a spectacular success. He sold it to a much larger outfit but never lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of his labors. He ended up with a heavy case of Hep C before there was a cure and passed out there.

I still miss him and every time I hear U2 I can't help but think of him....

RIP Mitch... I miss you. You should still be here and we should be enjoying ourselves together. It's just so fucking wrong...

Nothing is promised in this life and even the best things in your life can just disappear in a moment.

Take a breath and appreciate all the beautiful people in it. They won't be there forever.

Blurred Memories...

As with most all traumatic events, my recollections are spotty. I can see some things with 100% crystal clarity while others jumble together in a mixed set of events that I can't seem to organize into a coherent timeline. For example, I remember getting into the DEA car and being driven off my driveway while the agent, Nick Aquino, began telling me how every day forward would be the worst of my life unless I cooperated. Do I remember arriving or checking into the Manhattan Correctional Center? Not with any clarity at all... Like I said earlier, that was a blur.

And it wasn't like this was a big surprise. We had been advised for more than a year that this was going to happen. I waited a few months too long before hiring a lawyer. The first one I went to was already in the case representing another defendant/friend of mine. He recommended another, Gerry Labush, who ultimately represented me through the entire nightmare. Gerry was an experienced criminal attorney and came with impeccable credentials. He had been a US Attorney before going into private practice. He had some very interesting clients, from the Mayflower Madame to Asian heroin smugglers to a wide range of people under investigation, under indictment, appealing convictions, etc. etc. This was a whole world that I knew pretty much nothing about.

Gerry, once he realized the scope of what I had done and had been doing, brought in a private investigator, Don Taylor. Taylor, a former treasury agent, was always on top of containment and keeping the other side from collecting more evidence. It turned out that the prosecutors didn't really have all that much evidence beyond the stories being told by convicted criminals. I was arrested as part of a sweep that took in at least two dozen people all up and down the east coast. Some were smugglers, some were couriers, some were distributors, some were simply co-conspirators in how things were stored, moved and sold. And it wasn't as though one of my people ratted me out. I was pulled into the situation by an employee of the smuggler who knew me only tangentially. And I hardly knew the guy... He hardly knew me. So while I'm sitting in jail that first week, the agents and prosecutors are trying to convince my attorney to get me to cooperate. He, on the other hand, is trying to figure out what they know and what they don't, what they believe and how much of that is bullshit.

The Beat Goes On...

It's a funny thing... I've been waiting for the 'right' moment to take this thread beyond the bust and into the crazy world of what happens afterwards. It was too easy to postpone and after a few months turned into a year, there were just numerous excuses that justified stopping where it was. But I've always felt that the story, of course, didn't end when the Feds showed up and I ended up in the 'system'.

So I think I'm going to try to narrate what came after that day... My memory is, understandably, a bit foggy now, 28 years later. So I'll try to keep things chronological but I make no promises. I don't have perfect recall and I suspect I'll discover things are out of order at times... and when I do, I'll just let it be known.

One of the main excuses, as it turns out, is that I felt a sense of betrayal by telling the tale here where my son could stumble on it... or my soulmate might not feel right about seeing it out in the clear.

But hey... if I don't do it, I'll always wonder how it would have felt and honestly, having taken you all for the ride this far, I kind of think it's only fair to let you see what happened once the curtain fell.

So be aware that I'm going to post some more here before my recollections become too foggy and indistinct.

 Looking out the window of my 'cell'... I could clearly see the Brooklyn Bridge. I recall a wistful feeling at being able to see it but not being able to leave the place. BTW, there was a wired glass window and a seriously sturdy steel door. There was no privacy... no escaping (lol)... no bars. This was just a solid little room with no way out. There were lots of guys who were there for sheer stupidity... They had been snitched on and would rather take their chances than cooperate. Mostly though, they had nothing to cooperate with so they were basically screwed until the 'system' decided they were unscrewed.

Was I nervous? Well yeah... I was. The lawyer and his 'investigator' both told me this was going to be a weird place and that I should protect myself at all times. The good news, though, was that this was federal... not state or local. State and local lockups were totally miserable places to be. Rikers or any state prison were all extremely dangerous. Me? I wasn't exactly a world class physical defender so I stayed really really quiet... quietly being friendly but not too friendly.

The Curtain Falls On My Criminal Career

And then... as if it were preordained back in 1970, the curtain fell on my criminal career... 6 o'clock in the morning, May 16, 1990, and the doorbell rings... my partner in life says 'who could that be?' and heads for the door.... I know right away that this can't be good so I grab the cash that is in my bedside night-table and quickly hide it in the bathroom (about two grand)... I hear loud footsteps and lots of voices in the house... the kid wakes up... the housekeeper wakes up... i come out of the bathroom and I'm looking at a drawn gun pointing right at me... 'Get down on your stomach!!' the guy yells... and i'm like 'okay okay... i'm not violent..." and drop to my knees and flop onto my stomach... "Are there any guns in the house?" he asks rigidly... I reply, "just the shotgun in the closet..." and next thing he's got my shotgun and i'm being cuffed...

Meanwhile, even though they had an arrest warrant but no search warrant, there is the 'in plain sight' bullshit and the arrest team that made it into the house is everywhere, rifling through every possible place. They are in my office... looking under beds... opening cupboards, closets, file cabinets, going through bags and anything else that's lying around or within their grasp... Apparently, 'in plain sight' is just a euphemism for 'strip search the whole mother fucking place.' But I know... I really know... that there is absolutely nothing for them to find... no dope... no money... no paperwork... nothing... zippo. Fuck them... I need my lawyer and they aren't going to find shit in my house.

More in my mind is my kid... aged 2 and a half and he has no earthly idea what's going on... It's action city in my house and he's just along for the ride... And I hope they aren't taking in my wife too. Please God leave my family alone...

The bedroom guy realizes I'm no threat and lets me up to call Gerry the lawyer... He has been waiting for this call and tells me to just 'Don't answer any questions! Don't say anything about anything! I'll see you downtown and we'll get you out." ...music to my ears... I can do that. They let me throw on sweatpants and a sweatshirt... I walk down the hallway and see at least two or three teams of guys looking through all the open drawers they can find and I see one guy look at the guy marching me out and shaking his head side to side... Silently saying "Nothing here...'

And so it goes...  as I move into the legal world and court system of our free society.

A lot of what happened that day is a blur... as you might imagine, there was a lot happening both to me and around me. The main guy must have read me my rights although I have no recollection of it. They had a female fed who stayed with my wife while she threw on some clothing. Meantime, I remember the awful feeling of seeing my son and being unable to hug him goodbye with my hands cuffed behind me... true suckage emotionally. I can see and remember odd bits and pieces... disconnected moments... images that are really tough to forget.

There were agents literally everywhere... They were in every room of the house, walking the grounds around the house, checking the pool cabana, rummaging through the garage.. and they didn't have a search warrant. Unfortunately, in my numbness, I didn't have either the legal help or presence of mind to point this out. But it didn't matter because there was nothing to find, evidence-wise... The bastards seized our beautiful white and red convertible Mustang... took my Saab... and everything that was in them. Even today, I open an occasional CD jewel box and find it empty (I know it's old technology but we have a lot of them), and I know immediately that the CD was in the fucking Saab.

Months later, we started getting summonses for unpaid tickets on the Mustang. The fuckers used it on surveillance jobs and paid no attention to any rules of possession or evidence (not to mention parking restrictions). Their attitude was that anything we had was subject to seizure and they acted with total impunity. Basically it was a 'fuck you' from them to me. I didn't know it at the time but they took whatever they thought might possibly be of serious material or evidence value. Like I said, there wasn't any evidence but material? We materialed the shit out of life and they love to drive cars away. Good bye Mustang Sally.

I remember getting led to the back seat of the unmarked and the head guy turning around from the front seat saying "Today is going to be the worst day of your life. You really should start your cooperation now since it's going to happen anyway." And I know he's right about the day being low on the list of days but I'm not saying shit until I see my attorney. They had to move a half dozen cars that were blocking the driveway so we could leave. When I kept quiet, the other guy in the car became chatty... "You might get lucky with the news cycle today... Sammy Davis and Jim Henson both died so you won't be front page." At least something went my way... But that didn't stop Channel 12 local news from covering the moment. We were in all the papers and on all the channels to different degrees. I was a 'local businessman', a 'drug kingpin', etc etc... This was a major sweep as they went after about 20 people at the same time.

At my house, there were DEA, ATF, state police, county cops, town cops... I wouldn't be surprised if the fucking dogcatcher didn't show up. And all the while I'm thinking that I'm way down the ladder from where this started. WTF is it that makes me such a target?

Dear Jon...

Okay... I'm a bit toasted here but I want to pay homage to a dearly departed bud who didn't survive all the shit. JP had an extremely oversized ego and just couldn't deal with the rising tide of disaster. As I mentioned earlier, he had lots of 'straight' connections and made many things possible for me that were just not happening without his help. He was a truly intense individual who would not just light up any room he walked into but who would also sap the energy of anyone he connected with.

JP was smart... in some ways, JP was brilliant. But he didn't have a brake to slow himself down when speed was a disadvantage. He helped us create our fleet of I95 Caprices. He connected me to the incredibly talented accountant that put us in our house and kept us legal for over a decade. He had a successful jewelry and collectibles retail store that was filled with merchandise that reflected his great taste. He had lots of great things happening at all times... And a beautiful wife and truly precocious daughter.

Unfortunately, he was also an unbelievable egomaniac who tied his entire existence and reputation to how he was perceived by everyone he knew. It was the end-all (literally) for him.

Loving, caring father and faithful husband... JP could have had it all... except his ego would not allow it. As the weeks and months wore on, and the case became more and more serious, he shrank into his own world. Until, one day in late August of that year, I got the call... "Jon is in the hospital."

I can't guarantee that JP did himself in... I wasn't there and I didn't have a clue. But he had the jewelry business and he turned up at the local hospital with mercury poisoning. When I heard this, I looked into it and immediately knew that he was in deep shit. Once it enters the body, Mercury does not leave the body. It is a virtual death sentence in lethal quantities. There is no cure and no coming back. It takes a few days but then body shuts down... You swell up and and ultimately death is inevitable. And that's what happened to JP. He was gone by September 1.

And it was ruled an accidental death since he had the jewelry business. You see, mercury was a common jewelry cleaner and it's presence in his body could not be certified as intentional. He certainly denied it at the hospital.

Which meant that his family could collect the life insurance... and he could be gone before any indictments came down... I absolutely fucking hate that he had to die in the midst of this bullshit chronicle. I miss him today and I can promise the world that our lives would be enriched if he was still around.

Another Anniversary Approaches

Every May, it's inevitable that I get flashbacks to the day the authorities lowered the boom on me. It happened on May 16, 1990 so this is like the 28th anniversary coming up. I (we) sort of knew that it was coming eventually... but the federal wheels turn so slowly that it easily recedes into the background of your daily life. it was almost two full years between Stu's bust and what happened to me... We had seen the ridiculously obvious black unmarked monitoring the driveway on our quiet suburban street. And, of course, we were 100% spotless immaculate and sanitized by then.

But when we went to bed that Tuesday night, it was just like any other... Practically two years after the first card fell, and well after we had emptied the various evidence stashes... we knew they were investigating since every once in a while, we'd hear from someone who needed a lawyer or who had been contacted or questioned. The tensions ratcheted up and simmered down at different times and frankly, most of my 'friends' were in denial... as though there was no way I was going to get dragged into this case that was already so far above me... and so far in the past.   "That's not how it works." said some... "You paid your taxes and they have nothing to physically tie you to anything." said others. "It happened years ago and it's your word against theirs." was a common line. All the reasons in the world to believe that we were going to skate on this.

And that's the thing with 'historical' cases. There is rarely any hard physical evidence, and it's virtually all circumstantial or based on informants who are pressured into talking to save their own perceived vulnerabilities. I vividly remember all the associated people saying how unlikely it was that I was going down. I can still hear them. In any case, we had retained a lawyer, Gerry Labush, a few months earlier on a high recommendation from another lawyer who was my first choice but already had a client in the case.

After a few meetings, Gerry realized that I was not just vulnerable but that I had a long history and knew pretty much most of the names and faces in the scene. He was somewhat surprised that most of them didn't know me but hey... back then, there was so much going on that it was impossible to keep track of all the people. And he was, just like most of the other criminal defense lawyers, deep into his own version of a gold rush. He was defending Hong Kong heroin smugglers, hippie pot dealers, distributors, smugglers and money launderers. He had the 'Mayflower Madam' as a client and I ran into her quite a few times at his office. He had a staff that included the son of the NYPD Chief of Detectives, a former T-Man, form G-Man, numbers guys, translators, runners, etc. It was, in many ways, the same type of operation I was working, except his job was to keep me out of trouble while stealing as much money from me as he could. My job was to make it through this swamp of my own making. 

The lawyers were literally swimming in money. There was so much money around... and their clients would pay anything... and did.

 Right... so where was I? Tuesday night... It might have been a few years ago since I wrote about our house so it's worth explaining a bit...

The property was originally 2+ acres and during the Carter administration, when interest rates popped to around 18%, the real estate market was totally dead. Mortgages were simply unaffordable and people were sitting on some nice property that nobody would buy regardless of the cost. Mortgages drive the real estate market and when rates soar to stupid levels, people are not investing. In 1981, though, when Reagan's people took charge, rates fell and we happened upon this perfect property and could get what seemed like a good rate on the financing (12%!! Can you imagine?).

The owner had raised his kids there and it was time to go. I've already described the house in some detail elsewhere in this tale. The seller had gone for a rezone of his 2.3 acres (since the area was 1 acre to build) and we bought it for like $170k (Putting down 70K and borrowing the other hundred). the rezone freed up the lower acre on this gentle rolling hillside and it included an easement for the upper 1.3 acres (where the house sits) for access from the street. In 1986 or so, we sold the lower acre for way more than half the original purchase price... I think it went for $120k. Anyway, it turned our upper acre into a flag lot. A flag lot is where you have a long driveway from the street that allows access into a much larger property. The image from the air looks like a flag on a flagpole, with the pole being the driveway.

So... as it happened, the house was a sprawling ranch with lots of doors... There was a front door... a side door near the garage, a sliding back door from the kitchen, another sliding door from the rear of the living room into the back yard, a full wall of glass sliders at the front of the living room, overlooking the hillside and pool/cabana area... and even a door from the hallway that ran 50 feet from the living room to our master bedroom. Lots and lots of doors (aka escape routes in the minds of the authorities). The house sat in a relatively open, sparsely treed area with a 4 foot chain link fence that completely encircled the 2+ acre property...

This all meant that a take-down required something resembling a platoon of cops to make certain nobody was getting away and all the exits were covered.

It's 6 o'clock in the morning on Wednesday, May 16 when the front doorbell rings....