by Jack Davis
Alvaro saw Diamond was completely on his heels. He knew his boss couldn’t admit he knew Philippe had set him up; otherwise he would have been obligated to take some action.
“Are you tellin’ me Maria wasn’t taken care of?” Alvaro could tell Diamond was trying to turn the conversation. “I was told since Philippe had some of your old territory, he was gonna make sure she got your share. He’ll answer to me for that. You’ll get your money if I have to take it right out of his fuckin’ pockets. You’ll see.”
Alvaro chose his words carefully. “I don’t want Philippe’s money. I don’t want revenge. I just want my family, my territory, and to be left alone.”
Alvaro had been told that Philippe had taken most of his old territory and put in his own people to run things. The early release from prison had caught both Philippe and Diamond off guard. Alvaro recognized he was a problem neither of them had thought they would have to face. Both had assumed by the time he was released the name Alvaro Lopez would have no standing in the Latin Kings. Now here he was, seemingly back from the dead, saying he didn’t want revenge, but he did want everything back the way it was before he had gone to prison. Philippe hadn’t gone to the trouble of having him framed just to give up all his gains without a fight.
Diamond was right in the middle of the problem. To do nothing would be to risk a Kings-killing-Kings war, a boss’s worst fear. That type of instability brought the flow of money to a halt and could easily spin into something bigger. In fact, that was how Diamond had gotten his position six years earlier. No, that wasn’t a situation Diamond would allow to happen. To stop it though, Alvaro was forcing him to choose between two difficult decisions…unless he was given an out, but Alvaro wasn’t ready to give him the parachute just yet.
Diamond’s pockmarked face started showing signs of stress. He was sweating and when he started to speak, he no longer showed the confidence he had when Alvaro first entered the room. “Varo, you knew when you went in things had to change.” Diamond hesitated.
Alvaro stayed silent. Having gone over every possible option, he knew his boss was in a tight corner. He knew what he would probably say, which was exactly what Alvaro wanted. He was leading Diamond down a path and enjoyed watching him squirm in the process.
“We thought,” Diamond looked at the couch as if to imply a joint decision had been made, “we wouldn’t have you back for a long time. I had to have someone take over your territory to make sure someone else didn’t move in.”
“I understand,” said Alvaro thoughtfully, “but now I’m out. I can take charge again. It shouldn’t take more than a week for me to get everything back to normal.”
“Varo, you’ll get your territory back, but it may take a little while. Things might not be able to be undone as easily as that. There are things that need to be worked out. You might need to be patient.”
Alvaro caught the word “might.” The Diamond he knew would never have used anything but command words with his subordinates unless he was afraid of something. El Jefe was unsure of himself.
Alvaro kept up the subtle pressure. “I have to be patient? I have been patient for seven long months! If I hadn’t done something for myself, I’d have had to be patient for a hell of a lot longer. Why should I have to be patient for something’ that was taken from me? It’s time for Philippe to be patient.”
“Varo, things have changed! You need to understand. You need to be patient.”
Seeing Diamond backed into a corner and getting upset, Alvaro changed his tone. He switched tactics and gave Diamond some rope.
“Jefe, I have a lot of bills to pay. There’s been no money for months. Maria and the kids are right on the edge. I need to make money, and fast.”
Diamond relaxed and opened the bottom desk drawer. Reaching down, he pulled out a wad of American twenty-dollar bills. “Philippe will make it up to you. You have my word. Until then, take this.”
Alvaro took the money. Looking down sheepishly, he thanked Diamond. His boss was buying his act and going right where he wanted him to go emotionally.
Alvaro piled on, “Things are difficult for me right now. I had to pay a lot of money to get out. I’m in a tight spot but I’ll be a good soldier. Let me know when things can move back to the way they were.”
Diamond came around the desk and put his arm around Alvaro’s shoulder. “Everything will be back to the way it was soon; you’ll see. Until then, you and Philippe stay away from each other. I’ll tell him the same. I’ll get your money from him. Don’t try to collect it yourself.”
Alvaro nodded. “I won’t talk to Philippe, but I have one other small favor to ask…”
18 | Credit Card Fraud
Mexico City, 03-06/2008
Alvaro left the cantina with the knowledge that Diamond had no idea what he had agreed to that evening. His boss was just glad to resolve the problem between Philippe and Alvaro and avoid an all-out war.
Alvaro had maneuvered Diamond into agreeing to let him use any address or post office in any of the seven colonias the Kings controlled. He also agreed to have Philippe provide Alvaro with at least twenty-five credit card numbers a month for the next year and to pay for the months Maria hadn’t gotten money. After the first year Alvaro would pay Philippe for credit card numbers; one US dollar for a complete credit card number and another dollar for the matching ID. Alvaro knew this arrangement would provide a steady stream of numbers for him to build his business, and most importantly it would start the process of getting him away from the street.
But as Alvaro watched his trusted lieutenants file into the empty restaurant, he knew he had a lot of work to do to get to that point. When everyone had a cold drink and a seat, Alvaro stood and pressed a button on the phone that had been set on the table.
“Can the person on the phone hear me,” asked Alvaro as he scanned the quizzical looks of his men. They glanced first at him, then at the phone.
“Yes, Alvaro, I ca…”
Alvaro cut off the call and immediately started dialing. “It’s me. Go slap him in the head a couple times. Tell him NO NAMES on the phone! Take his phone and destroy it. Give him yours and tell him I will call him in a couple minutes. Make sure he gets the message.”
Alvaro hung up and shook his head, then looking up from the phone to the faces of the men in the room, he said, “I’m gonna start. Hola, my friends. I know you have a lot of questions about what has happened, and what is going to happen. I’m back in control of our territory.”
Alvaro saw sideways glances. He nodded. “I know Philippe’s people are still in place, but that will change shortly. You’ll get back what you had, but it may take a little while.”
Alvaro knew the importance of his next sentence. “You have to be patient and trust me. You’ll get back everything, and more, but you will be patient.” Alvaro looked at each face individually for confirmation, receiving it he moved on.
“While we’re waiting, we’re going to start a new way to make money, lots of money.” Alvaro saw smiles from his men. “Credit cards.”
“Credit cards, Jefe?” asked Jesus, his smile replaced by a look of bewilderment.
“I said you had to trust me,” said Alvaro as he dialed the phone. Again, he hit the speaker button and placed the device on the table in the middle of the room. “Are you there?”
“Yes.” The voice was nasal, but clear. There was a sniffle.
Alvaro looked at the others and shook his head in disgust before he started to talk. “There’s more money in credit cards than anything else but drugs. And with credit cards, if we are caught, we hardly ever go to jail.”
“That’s not exactly—”
“Do not speak unless I ask you a question,” Alvaro sternly cut off the voice on the phone.
Confusion was now the prevailing attitude of the room.
“Trust me.” Then, aided by the voice on the phone, Alvaro laid out the plan.
To begin, Alvaro had his crew go to rental car companies at night and search through t
he trash. This was the initial primary source of numbers. It took a couple of weeks to get a good system, but after the Kings learned where the main dumpsters were located and when the garbage pickups took place, the rest went smoothly. The Kings involved in the dumpster diving found a goldmine of numbers and IDs.
Tejada had said that the treasure was the rental car receipts and that every night they were thrown in dumpsters behind the buildings. Those forms, even when torn up, were like cash to the credit card criminal. The important information—the user’s credit card number and name—were there, but in addition there was usually other vital information including addresses, phone numbers, driver’s license numbers, and sometimes more.
Tejada had to explain to the group, none of whom had ever rented a car, “The rental car companies need all that information to make sure they get their cars back. For them it is for security. For us, it is one piece of paper with all the information we need.”
The second potential source of numbers, and the primary source of the plastic cards themselves, was street crime: pickpockets, purse thieves, robberies, etc. Alvaro knew these numbers had a very short shelf life. They were probably reported lost or stolen the same day, so their usefulness was limited. In those cases, the plastic itself, which could be used for re-encoding numbers, was most important.
The first week Alvaro’s men were disappointed by what they considered a meager haul of only twenty complete rental agreements and six partials. It wasn’t until their boss told them that each one of the agreements was worth between four hundred and a thousand dollars that they started to come to grips with the real possibilities behind this type of crime.
While the stolen cards and rental car receipts were being collected, Alvaro also had his men set up mail drops to receive the packages. Initially they did what Tejada explained and used post office boxes and other mail facilities. Later, after one of his men was arrested picking up a package, Alvaro expanded the locations. He found that many merchants didn’t ship to areas of certain cities, presumably after they had lost too much merchandise in bad sections of major cities.
Now Alvaro used the “domestics network” to enhance Tejada’s scheme. The network, consisting of relatives and friends of gang members who worked as domestics, permeated the city. Mexico City’s upscale areas, like those of all others in Latin American, relied on domestic servants to perform most of the daily chores. Most of the upper-middle class in the urban areas, and all the wealthy in Mexico, paid for live-in help, as much for status as for labor. The domestics were plentiful, hardworking, honest, and dirt cheap. They also came from the same pool of humanity as the gang members.
The Kings had an extensive network employed in private residences and government and commercial office buildings. There was an understanding that these individuals would not be asked to do anything criminal or anything that would endanger their jobs, but they could be asked to provide information or other assistance. In Alvaro’s case, all he needed was an address and occasionally for them to receive a package.
Normally when ordering a product, Alvaro would schedule the delivery for the middle of the week. That way, the packages would come during the day when the homeowner was at work. It would be left with a doorman or a maid who would contact Alvaro’s men, and arrange a pickup. The packages were always addressed to the real occupant of the house, just in case they were home when the package arrived. If the package came when the owner was home, they normally opened it. Depending upon the item, they either kept it or sent it back. Either way, no one was the wiser. Using the domestics network, Alvaro was able to overcome the problem of needing plentiful “good addresses.”
As important as stealing the merchandise was, it was only half the equation. The goods had to be resold to make any money. Without good sources to sell the computers, electronics, jewelry, and other items, the system would collapse. While some items—CDs, costume jewelry, and the like—could be sold on the street by underlings, the amount of money made that way was minimal. The next best moneymakers, and the most consistent, were high-end electronics and jewelry. These items could be sold to retailers. These businesses could in turn sell it at a deep discount and still make a good profit. Alvaro knew a few small—and one national—chain stores where managers were more worried about sales than receipts. Items were paid for in cash with no questions. The stores sold the items as “returned” at a price too good to pass up. In so doing, they undercut their more scrupulous competition.
When Alvaro asked why they were selling the items as returned opposed to new, he found out the items didn’t show up on the company’s product inventory system and therefore could be sold without the bar code number, which conveniently had been ripped off by the previous owner. He was also told it affected the warranty and the licensing of the product, neither of which Alvaro understood or cared to learn.
Tejada didn’t have to teach Alvaro how to use friendly, or scared, merchants to run cards through their accounts. What the banking industry knew as collusive merchant fraud, Alvaro called, “free shopping.” It was a quick way to get merchandise, and sometimes cash when he wanted it. As in all other schemes Alvaro was careful not to make large purchases so the card companies didn’t check for verification with the card holder.
After about two months, Alvaro confirmed the real possibilities of this new crime. To realize its true potential, he needed to tweak a few things and expand his coverage area. To do that required authorization from Diamond, which invariably required a face-to-face meeting.
19 | Diamond’s Buy-In
Mexico City, 08/18/08, 1454 hrs
Alvaro steeled his senses as he walked into the back room of the Store shortly before three p.m., or apparently lunch time. Diamond, Carlo, and Lupe were ravenously devouring burritos as he entered the back office.
Alvaro hadn’t thought he could be more disgusted by the smells, sounds, and sights of the office, but he had proved himself wrong. All three men chewed with their mouths open, allowing excess food to spill out when they spoke. The sounds of chewing assaulted Alvaro’s ears from the right and in front, as if in stereo. The smell of overcooked burritos and hot sauce mixed with other odors created a sickeningly sweet smell that could have passed for vomit. Alvaro looked at Diamond’s forehead and tried to breathe through his mouth; he couldn’t do anything to deaden the sound.
“Varo, my friend,” began Diamond between mouthfuls, “come in. Come in. Would you like some food?”
“No, Jefe, I ate before I came.”
“Something to drink then?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Alvaro, hoping the smell of the beer might deaden some of the other aromas.
“Get him a beer,” spat Diamond to the couch.
Carlo stood, spilling part of his plate on the table. He swept it back onto his plate with his greasy palm before moving to the refrigerator.
“Jefe, I would like to expand my credit card business,” said Alvaro as he accepted the beer from Carlo and settled into the chair in front of the desk.
Diamond frowned. “Alvaro, you spend too much time with these credit cards. I hear you have Kings rummaging through garbage cans. That is humiliating.”
“None of my Kings are going to pick garbage,” said Lupe in a sudden outburst that caught everyone by surprise.
“Kings shouldn’t have to pick garbage like street bums,” said Diamond in solidarity with his chief lieutenant.
Alvaro was certain this current sense of outrage was manufactured by Philippe, who worked directly under Lupe. He’d heard that his nemesis had been extremely interested in what Alvaro was doing, and why. He was ready and removed a large roll of money from his pants pocket and set it in front of Diamond.
“Jefe, this is a month’s worth of credit card crime.” He saw the surprise in his boss’s eyes as Diamond wiped his hands on his shirt and picked up the money. “And this is just from my territory.”
“Just those card things? No drugs, prostitution, or protection money?”
; Alvaro pulled out a slightly larger roll of money from his other pocket. “This is the money from everything else…except the hard drugs, Philippe still has control of that in my area.” Alvaro emphasized the words my area.
Diamond flinched, as if he’d been stuck with a pin. “Yeah, yeah. We were just talking about getting you all your stuff back.” Diamond looked at the couch. “Weren’t we?”
Both men stopped chewing and registered surprise, then nodded furiously.
“We’ll get you all your drugs back soon,” said Diamond with much less force than when he’d talked about the indignity of going through garbage.
Alvaro saw his opening. “Jefe, I don’t need those drugs if I can expand the credit card crime.” Now it was Diamond’s face that showed surprise.
“Jefe, if you let me use all the King’s regions, and have them get me cards, Philippe can keep the hard drug money from my area. And I can make three times that amount of money.” Alvaro pointed at the money in Diamond’s left hand and took a long swig of beer.
Diamond moved his hands up and down, as if weighing the wads of money. “What do you need?”
“I need to be able to use any of the stores that we protect. We can—”
Lupe cut him off, spraying rice and beans on the table in front of him. “No. You’ll fuck up the protection money. Don’t let him, boss.”
Apparently, Philippe’s toxic hatred of Alvaro had infected Lupe.
Alvaro looked at Lupe and then back at Diamond. “I promise it won’t hurt protection. I’ve been doing it in my area for over two months. The stores don’t have to pay back the stolen money.”
“Bullshit,” said Lupe, dousing the table with a fresh coat of rice.
“Varo, that doesn’t make sense. Who pays,” asked Diamond.
“Jefe, as long as the store followed the right steps, they have a process they have to follow, the credit card company pays for the stolen stuff.”