by Jack Davis
As if on cue, Maria announced lunch was ready.
“Coming!” Alvaro moved as he talked. “When do you go back?”
“I have someone picking me up tomorrow morning to take me to the border south of Brownsville. I should be across in two days, and back in New York in three more.”
“Cancel the coyote. I’ll get you back across. Meet me at La Taqueria tomorrow morning around nine and be ready to learn. You leave here right after lunch.”
“Sure, Varo, I will,” said a happy and confident Miguel.
Alvaro grabbed Miguel by the arm and spun him so the two faced each other. “No one who works for me calls me Varo.”
Miguel, completely taken aback, replied meekly, “Okay.”
By the time he met Miguel the next day, Alvaro had come up with a plan to use his brother-in-law, while exposing him to as little danger as possible. Miguel would have work, but be insulated and protected. The answer was a type of credit card fraud known as a call-sell operation.
Tejada had explained that phone cards were a huge moneymaker in the United States because there were so many immigrants—legal and illegal. These people wanted to talk to people back home. Since many couldn’t get legitimate phone service because of their immigration status or couldn’t afford the normal long-distance phone cards, criminals stepped in to fill the void. In call-sell operations, they served a lucrative niche market.
In a variation of the other credit card fraud schemes, the call-sell operations revolved around using stolen credit cards to purchase long distance phone cards. Or in some cases, just using stolen phone cards to place long distance calls. The phone cards—or sometimes just the numbers—were sold at a discount to face value by criminals to individuals wanting to place long-distance calls.
Tejada had explained to Alvaro that due to the lack of immigrants spending significant amounts of time in Mexico City, it would not really be worth their time to start an operation there. Without a market in his territory, and the Kings’ emphasis on drugs everywhere else, Alvaro had never paid any attention to this type of fraud. Now he felt he had the perfect opportunity to help Maria’s brother and also find out more about another aspect of his new field.
Alvaro explained the type of operation to Miguel in detail. Not knowing Miguel’s technical ability, and not wanting to give away any of the secrets he’d learned, Alvaro made the process simple. He would provide fifty numbers to start, and when Miguel was near the end, he would call a telephone number and say, “Miguel is out.” Within two days, he would receive another group of numbers, along with a PO Box where he should send one-third of the proceeds.
Alvaro gave Miguel numerous pointers, most revolving around not getting into routines, and changing things often, but in Alvaro’s mind, the two most important pieces of information came next. First, he told him to avoid dealing with anyone who used drugs. He stressed, “They can’t be trusted, and they’ll eventually betray you.”
The second was the one caveat to the whole deal. Alvaro made Miguel look him directly in the eyes and promise he would not deal or use any drugs. Miguel easily promised earnestly.
This turned out to be just one more time that Miguel made a firm commitment to himself and others that he was not able to live up to. The difference was this time the consequences would be felt by his sister and her husband.
While he didn’t show it when he talked to Alvaro the first day, Miguel was upset at what he perceived as a menial assignment meant for underlings. Miguel felt he was ready to be trusted with a significant responsibility and had been given a job fit for teenager. It was only his healthy fear of Alvaro that kept him from saying something. The fact Alvaro paid for him to fly back to the United States and provided him with an excellent set of false identification eased the blow somewhat. Miguel resolved to show his brother-in-law he was wrong about him through hard work. He envisioned himself working this entry-level position for three or four months, then graduating to something with a lot more responsibility and profit potential.
When he returned to Staten Island, he followed Alvaro’s instructions and selected a good location with access to a few pay phones. With a credit card Alvaro had given him to “seed” the operation, Miguel purchased two cell phones, one for the business and one for himself. Next, he bought prepaid calling cards that allowed additional minutes to be added. Going back to the car wash where he had worked, he let a few of his old coworkers know he had a way for people to make calls to their home countries for a good price. Before the end of the day he had three people ask about his offer. Pleasantly surprised, Miguel sold five calls the first evening. He charged five dollars for twenty minutes. The next day three more people approached to ask for time. That night he sold five calls to the three new people and one call to his first repeat customer. By the end of the second week, he had exhausted his supply of cards and developed a healthy respect for the potential of the call-sell operation.
Using the second cell phone, he called Alvaro to tell him the good news. His enthusiasm was dampened, and the call ended when he forgot and used Alvaro’s name. His second call lasted thirty seconds before Alvaro hung up. At the beginning of the third call, Alvaro told Miguel to “shut up and listen.” He made Miguel give him the number and told him he would call him back within fifteen minutes. And when he did, he was only to listen and answer with a yes or a no. In this manner Miguel learned how to communicate in his new environment.
Within a week he received more numbers and was back in business. It only took him two weeks to go through his second set and realize what a market there was for this product. Within three more months he had given up all thoughts of ever wanting to do anything with drugs, except use them.
In every one of Miguel’s phone calls back to Mexico, Alvaro made a point of asking him if he was following all the rules and being careful. His brother-in-law continued to stress how it was his lack of involvement with drugs that was allowing Miguel to have such success.
Miguel’s business could have grown to monumental proportions based on product demand and lack of competition. The problem was he was more interested in spending the money than earning it. Strangely, Miguel’s lack of ambition worked to his advantage; it kept him below the radar of police and other gangs.
Miguel had selected a location that was in a heavily Hispanic area, and the majority of his clients were from South or Central America. From his perspective, dealing with Hispanics was easy. He could generally tell the accents and felt he would be able to spot anyone who wasn’t genuine.
Starting out Miguel vetted his clients; he asked them where they were from, and if he knew anything about the area, he asked follow-up questions. Then, he asked where they got his name. He had to know the reference and he called them to confirm. Later, as he got sloppier, he just walked away and pretended to call the reference. By the end, no matter what name the client used, Miguel would let them buy a number.
Another differentiating aspect of the people Miguel dealt with, as opposed to other gang-related crimes was, they were not desperate or dangerous—the two normally went hand in glove. Unlike addicts, they were not willing to degrade or debase themselves for the product Miguel had to offer. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t try to make deals or trades for the calls. There were the occasional hookers who provided a service for forty-dollars’ worth of calling, but by and large the offers were more along the line of the crime. People offered programmable cell phones, PDAs, online discounts, or iTunes. Miguel assumed these items couldn’t be sold anywhere else, so people would try to pawn them off on him. He had no use for most of the items, so unless he wanted something for himself, he accepted nothing but cash. It wasn’t until he thought to mention it to Alvaro one day when asking for additional numbers that he found out these items could be useful. Alvaro said he could use all the “blank stock,” or burnt cards, Miguel could get his hands on.
Alvaro had recently learned how to re-emboss cards. This ability eliminated the reliance for online purchases. He had be
come the recipient of a card embosser from a local hospital and used it as much as possible. The process involved taking old stolen cards, heating them up in a microwave to make them malleable, then taking a known ‘good number’ and embossing it on the card. With a little coloring over the old set of numbers and permanent marker over the new ones, the cards were passable in many stores. He would use a magnet to destroy the data on the magnetic stripe, so the merchant couldn’t use the swipe feature on the cash register. After one or two unsuccessful attempts at swiping the card the cashier would simply manually type in the number. Since the number was good it would be approved for purchase by the credit card company. This had become a profitable part of Alvaro’s business. The stolen cards Alvaro received as a byproduct of purse snatching and other crimes in Mexico were never enough to keep up with the demand. Alvaro told Miguel each card would be worth three dollars and that he wanted no less than one hundred at a time. Through an unusual twist, Miguel came to the rescue.
Miguel saw Roger-the-Tweaker stumbling toward him. The young man’s clothes hung off him like he was a walking scarecrow, except scarecrows had nicer hair.
“Hola, Roger, what do you have for me today?”
Roger scratched his neck. “I need money, man. I need a fix, bad.”
Roger’s sunken face screamed he needed food, but that wasn’t Miguel’s problem. “What do you have I want?”
“Do you want credit cards?”
“I can’t use stolen credit cards. They get canceled hours after you steal ’em.”
“They ain’t stolen.” The addict produced a dirty sock that he was using to carry around the cards. “These ain’t stolen.” He dumped a bunch of cards into Miguel’s hands.
“Where’d you get ’em if you didn’t steal ’em?”
“A friend.”
Miguel looked over the cards, they looked legitimate. “They’re all still good?”
“Nah they’re canceled.”
“Then what the fuck good are they to me,” snapped Miguel. “Take your worthless cards and stinkin’ sock and get the fuck away from me.” He tossed the cards on the sidewalk.
Roger scrambled to pick up the cards and put them back in the grimy sock when Alvaro’s conversation came back into Miguel’s head. “Roger, wait.” The hollow-eyed scarecrow looked up. “How long would it take your friend to get more cards? A hundred?”
“He could get ’em today. I just couldn’t get ’em to you till tomorrow.”
“One hundred canceled credit cards? By tomorrow,” asked Miguel incredulously.
Roger sniffed and rubbed his burnt-out nose. “Yeah, more if ya want ’em. Boxes a like 250, I think. I can ask.”
“You get me one hundred or more cards and I’ll pay a dollar a card, or three dollars in credit for calls.”
“Don’t need to call anyone. But how about two dollars a card.”
“You just get me the cards, then we’ll talk about the price,” said Miguel.
“I need a fix,” said Roger. He held up the sock. “Aren’t these worth anything?”
Miguel was in a generous mood and gave Roger ten dollars for the nineteen cards that had been in the sock. He planned on adding to the number from other purse snatchers and pickpockets until he got a hundred and then send them on to Alvaro.
What he didn’t expect was the young tweaker to show up the next afternoon with a pillowcase over his shoulder containing 250 cards.
With a little friendly persuasion in the form of extra money for drugs, Roger had broken a promise and told Miguel that his friend worked in the credit card disposal portion of a large bank in Newark. He had promised his friend one dollar per card, so he told Miguel he had to get at least two dollars each to make it worth his while. Miguel agreed.
Later that day Miguel called Alvaro. His tone was triumphant. He had worked out how he was going to cryptically explain that he had gotten “some” items Alvaro had asked him about, and then drop the number three hundred, only a slight exaggeration, and wait to hear the reaction. He was underwhelmed by the slight surprise in Alvaro’s voice but the thought of fifteen hundred dollars for the whole bag eased the pain. He explained he wasn’t sure whether the source could produce that number again but said, “He’d check it out.”
“Three hundred of these should hold me for a few months, so don’t burn up your contact. If he’s as good as you think he is, let’s keep him fresh.”
“I understand,” said Miguel, pleased that he had a source of something Alvaro wanted.
“I’ll call you in a day or two with a way to ship them to me, and how you get paid.” Then for the first time, praise. “Good work.”
Later that evening, having a drink at a bar next to a bubbly young girl from Costa Rico, Miguel thought how much he liked being on this end of the product chain: the producer, with Alvaro as the buyer. He liked it a lot. He decided to do whatever he needed to do to keep this part of the relationship going; the one where he had the power. Miguel developed a network of junkies and street people who provided him with dead plastic, and for less than the original two dollars per card. It was a steady enough stream that he had no problem shipping Alvaro up to three hundred cards every three months.
With the call-sell operation in full swing, and now additional money from dead stock, Miguel had never dreamed of having so much money. He spent it freely, going out every weekend. Other nights were not out of the question depending upon his mood. He was the life of the party, buying drinks for friends, and depending upon how drunk he was, strangers as well. Initially he only frequented the neighborhood bars, but over time he branched out. As he did, he met more people, all of whom were friendly to the free-spending young man. He built a large circle of what could generously be described as acquaintances—a more accurate description would be parasites.
Over the next few months, Miguel bought furniture, clothes, electronics, jewelry…in short, everything he’d ever seen and wanted. Finally, without a place to park it, a license, or a need, he bought a late-model sports car.
With this last acquisition, in his mind he had everything a man could want. He assumed women would be a byproduct of the money. For once, Miguel was correct.
Unfortunately for Miguel, his lack of self-control eventually spilled over from reckless spending and excessive alcohol to his old vice, drugs.
As Miguel’s drug problem worsened it affected the call-sell operation. Initially, because the product sold itself, all Miguel had to do was show up with the numbers. He could conduct most of his work while he was high, and he did. Within three months of convincing himself he was no longer an addict and could use coke or crack occasionally, on his terms, he was missing more days than he was making. In his lucid or scared moments, Miguel realized he had to do something. His answer was to hire someone to work the days when he wasn’t there. His rigorous vetting process consisted of selecting Anthony Chin-Lake because he was Asian. In the chemically induced fog of Miguel’s consciousness, his rationale was: Asians were smart, and he’d never seen an Asian police officer. With that, he “stepped back from the day-to-day running of the operation”
The arrangement worked for the seventeen-year-old Anthony in the summer. When high school started again in the fall, the times had to be adjusted. Due to the nature of Anthony’s school—progressive, where outcome mattered more than input—and the coincidence that he was very bright, Anthony could miss a significant amount of time and still score well on tests. By October he was bringing in more money than Miguel ever had and had three friends helping him cover the times when he could not be there. They were burning through numbers at a phenomenal rate but generating an equally amazing amount of income. Miguel was contacting Alvaro weekly to ask for more numbers.
Alvaro warned Miguel about too much business attracting unwanted attention. Miguel claimed he would try to slow down but said there were so many customers it might be difficult.
Miguel had no intention of slowing down. He had effectively divorced himself from the operation s
o he could concentrate on being a full-time junkie. He didn’t worry about “the Asian kid”—Miguel frequently forgot Anthony’s name—taking over because he knew he had the source of the numbers. Without them, there was no business. He was sure no one else could come up with that many numbers that often. The only thing that scared him a little was his own drug abuse. He had completely switched mindsets and resigned himself to the fact he was an addict and that there was nothing he could do about it.
Help with Miguel’s addiction came from an unlikely source. It would temporarily cure him of his addiction, but it would have much more significant, long-term consequences.
31 | Virtue Sentences Miguel
Brooklyn, New York, 09/25/09, 1648 hours
Miguel was hungry when he woke from his unscheduled nap. Having nothing remotely edible in the house he struggled to decide where to go for food. A line of coke helped him with his dilemma, and as with everything else in his life, immediate gratification won out. He used the Wendy’s drive-thru a block from his house.
With one basic need met, Miguel focused on a second. He decided to stop and see a girl he had met a few weeks prior at a club in Midtown, a short blond with an average body and pretty brown eyes, who was smokin’ hot on the dance floor. Miguel felt her moves would translate well to the bedroom. Since then he’d done everything he could to get her into bed. So far, all attempts had failed. He had set up a date for that evening, but didn’t want to waste his Friday night wining and dining her not knowing how it would end. On the flip side, he also knew that to have any chance of closing the deal, he had to at least stop over to her apartment and give her an in-person excuse as to why he had to break the date. He also hoped to find out where she planned to go that evening so he could avoid those clubs.
When they first met, Miguel had told the brown-eyed blond he was involved in international shipping, mainly from South and Central America. His excuse for the evening was that he had a shipment of merchandise coming into Newark the following day and he had to work with US Customs to make sure it wouldn’t get held up over the weekend. He thought mentioning US Customs would belay any fear she might have that he was involved in drug shipments. He felt that part was important because the first night they met, he had offered her cocaine and she had turned it down. Miguel wasn’t sure if she didn’t know him well enough, didn’t do drugs, or if it was just the public nature of nightclub that scared her. Whatever the case, he viewed it as an immediate challenge…and a turn-on. The challenge to get her to try coke for the first time was about as keen as the challenge of bedding her. Projecting his weaknesses onto his potential conquest, Miguel assumed if she tried coke, she’d love it and be hooked. Then she would see him as her source of the drug, and he could make her do anything he wanted.