One gangbanger told Owen that while it was true that they sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of fake Ecstasy and that they liked to beat up and rob “candy ravers,” it was not true that they had sold the fake E that led to the death of a twenty-year-old college student at a rave in the Poconos in April 1998.
“You'd think we were murderers,” the guy scoffed, “but all we do is rob people.”
The victim swallowed what he thought were three Ecstasy pills that turned out to be a mix of drugs that included horse tranquilizer. A BTS member at the party allegedly passed along the pills. A dozen kids got sick, and the twenty-year-old collapsed in seizures and fell into a coma. His devastated parents had to give doctors the go-ahead to cut his life support system.
The Brooklyn Terror Squad started out as a team of graffiti taggers who called themselves Bomb the Subway in the late 1980s. But as the rave scene grew they got greedy, exploiting suburban naïveté by selling breath mints and niacin tablets as Ecstasy, Epsom salts as crystal meth, and incense as opium that became so popular after they started calling it “Red Rock Opium” that clubgoers asked for it by name and paid $150 an ounce. One BTS member who admitted to climbing through ravers’ windows, tying them up with phone cord, and robbing them told Owen he got his start selling real Ecstasy to Lord Michael Caruso at Limelight in the mid-1990s. That was back when clubgoers politely waited in line at Limelight for a free cup of Caruso's Ecstasy punch. Those days were over. As Owen wrote: “[J]ust as the Hell's Angels went to love-ins to prey on ‘60s hippies, just as Woodstock gave way to Altamont, today's blissed-out teenagers make attractive targets for a pack of predators like BTS. Ecstasy's empathy-inducing effects are great in theory—but only if the person you're sharing your soul with isn't looking to knock you upside the head and jack your backpack.”
The Details article put BTS on DEA's radar and Seeley-Hacker infiltrated the group through an undercover introduction. Soon he was buying real Ecstasy pills from a founding BTS member, an exotic Italian-Irish-black-Cherokee woman from Sheepshead Bay named Melody Jones, aka “Miss Melody,” who was supplying her crew with X, mushrooms, and cigarettes dipped in PCP. DEA wiretapped Jones's line, pinpointed her supplier, spun off on his line, and by February 2000 had identified the crew's Ecstasy source: an Israeli-born thirty-year-old New Yorker named Ilan Zarger, who had a swaggering style and a laughing-devil tattoo on his chest.
Zarger's phone tap was a bust. He was too sophisticated to talk business on the line. But it didn't matter—Customs had a gold-mine informant, someone who ran a Times Square shop with the typical trinkets and cheap souvenirs. Zarger and his crew liked to use the basement of the store to hang out, bullshit, count money. Agents listened to and watched Zarger on secret videotapes bragging about his connections and telling the informant that he wanted to introduce him to one of his suppliers—a guy named Koki. That Koki.
Zarger's phone records confirmed he had been making calls to Jacob “Koki” Orgad. But New York backed down because California was gearing up to arrest Koki and his entire ring.
The dead body in the Lexus in December 1999 had given legs to the L.A. case, and a secret investigation on Koki's network, dubbed Operation Paris Express, was being led by Los Angeles International Airport Customs. The investigation was so expansive, that police, DEA, and Customs agents from L.A., New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Ft. Lauderdale, Paris, and the Netherlands aided the case. The cop net had to be wide because in just a year's time, from February 1999 to April 2000, Koki and his associates had employed nearly fifty couriers from California, Nevada, Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and Florida.
Shortly after Gagne and Lacewell secured their enhanced CCE indictment against Oded Tuito, Los Angeles had gotten its own indictment against Koki and several agents flew to New York to arrest him. On April 7, 2000, Koki was picked up outside his three-bedroom midtown Manhattan penthouse apartment as he was returning home from dinner with two women. French authorities raided his Paris apartment. L.A. agents raided the organization's West Hollywood stash house and found cash, handguns, brass knuckles, and a bulk money counter.
Koki was extradited to Los Angeles. As he sat in prison awaiting trial, more than twenty-five suspects in his ring were arrested on Ecstasy trafficking, conspiracy, and money-laundering charges. Some $19.5 million worth of Ecstasy pills, three BMWs, and more than $170,000 cash were seized. Authorities estimated the ring had raked in $34 million in ten months.
But in fall 2000, the L.A. case self-destructed due to a prosecuto -rial error. The fed attorney was having trouble bringing in out-of-state witnesses to testify and the judge dismissed the case due to the lack of a speedy trial. In a panic, L.A. DEA called N.Y. DEA and said: You have to do something. Koki's going to walk.
Lacewell and her colleague AUSA Jed Davis jumped on it, drafting a criminal complaint against Koki and his organization and serving him with an arrest warrant in L.A. before he could even get one foot out the courthouse door.
Koki was eventually extradited from Los Angeles back to the Eastern District of New York, and Jed Davis took over the case. Lacewell already had enough on her plate, working with Gagne on Oded Tuito and with Seeley-Hacker on BTS. In fact, the BTS case had become increasingly complex as its bizarre criminal partnerships began to unfold.
Back when news of Sammy Gravano's February 2000 arrest on Ecstasy charges had first hit the New York tabloids, Ilan Zarger dropped another bombshell in the Times Square basement tape recordings.
“Hey, you saw about Sammy the Bull, he got picked up in Arizona?” Zarger chatted with the informant in March 2000. Lacewell's jaw dropped as she listened to Zarger brag to the informant that he used to compete with Sammy for Arizona and had even sent a soldier to Arizona to stand by, ready to “whack” Sammy—if needed.
Lacewell was savvy. She knew that lots of cons would brag about whacking a guy like Sammy the minute he was safely in jail. But Zarger was dropping names, places, and plots.
In June and July 2000 Zarger, several of his associates, and a dozen members of the BTS crew were arrested. Lacewell and Seeley-Hacker questioned each new cooperator, running down in detail every single piece of potentially incriminating information Zarger revealed in the secret basement videotapes.
Zarger's Arizona distributors were ultimately identified as twenty-five-year-old Ilana Steinberg—a sharp college graduate and daughter of a wealthy Dallas family—and a guy named Jason DePalma. Intelligence confirmed that back in July 1999, Mike Papa beat up DePalma outside a nightclub in Arizona, at Gerard Gravano's bidding, so that DePalma would have no doubt about the pain that was in store if he dared to muscle in on Gravano's Ecstasy territory. Zarger immediately sent a bodyguard named “Macho” to Arizona to shadow and protect DePalma and Steinberg.
Tensions between the rival Arizona crews were high when Gerard suggested they all have a sit-down with his father. Sammy, Gerard, Papa, DePalma, and Steinberg met in the summer of 1999 at Uncle Sal's, his “best-kept secret” restaurant. Sammy took one look at Ilana Steinberg and told her to wait at the bar—he didn't talk business with women. He later invited her back and apologized after learning she was a full partner.
“I own Arizona,” Sammy declared. “It's locked down. You can't sell pills here without going through me.”
Arguing with Gravano seemed unwise, so DePalma and Steinberg agreed to a lopsided deal instead: Gravano could buy their pills at cost and they'd also have to pay him a kickback of up to $1 for every pill they sold on his turf.
The crime circle was now complete: Koki was selling pills to Ilan Zarger, who was selling them to the BTS crew in New York and to Sammy the Bull in Arizona.
By March 2000, New York Customs and DEA had started a joint investigation against Sammy under the auspices of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. The feds had caught flak for Gravano's cooperation deal against his former bosses back in 1991 when widows of Sammy's victims had been quoted as saying the brutal killer g
ot off with a slap on the wrist. This was the time for the feds to prove they weren't playing favorites. As Lacewell put it: “It was very important that Sammy—who was a lapsed cooperator—be brought to justice not as retribution or vengeance but to show that he wasn't above the law and wasn't getting any special treatment, and that even the district that used him as a cooperator would bring him to justice, that he would be held accountable.”
In December 2000, federal arrest warrants went out for Sammy Gravano, Gerard Gravano, and Michael Papa. Sammy Gravano was served at his prison cell in Arizona. All three men were already dealing with state Ecstasy charges in Arizona and now they faced additional federal charges in New York and a maximum of twenty years in prison.
Sammy was later transported to New York for arraignment, where he pleaded not guilty. That day would be burned in Linda Lacewell's mind.
One unresolved question was who would try Sammy first, Arizona or New York. The judge asked Gravano if he had a preference. Sammy paused. He looked over at Lacewell and saw a young prosecutor who was still cutting her teeth on organized crime. She felt like he was sizing her up, and she imagined that he was probably even thinking, Yeah, I can take her.
Sammy looked at Lacewell, and then he looked at the judge.
“I'll go to trial here first, your honor,” he said.
Okay, Lacewell thought. That's the way it's going to be.
80 AGENT, HUSBAND, FATHER
BOB GAGNE AND HIS very pregnant wife moved into their new Long Island house on a Saturday in late June 2000. They had been living in Kristen's grandmother's apartment for six months, saving money, when Bob found them a three-bedroom, two-bath Colonial fixer-upper in a quiet family neighborhood at a decent price.
“It needs work, but it's got good bones,” Gagne told Kristen.
The previous owners were going through a divorce, and shortly before the house went into escrow, the husband, who had moved to Manhattan, overdosed on painkillers. When Bob and Kristen finally moved in, the place was a mess. There was trash everywhere and animal feces stains on the carpets. Every room needed painting and new carpets. They needed new tile in the kitchen, fencing in the front yard. Kristen was focused on the nursery.
Kristen was a machine through her pregnancy. She read every pregnancy book on the best-seller list and ate crates of strawberries because they were supposed to be good for a developing baby. She worked up until the day she gave birth, and she gained just twenty-three pounds. She was firmly against drugs and wanted an all-natural delivery. Gagne coached her breathing through Lamaze classes. They decided to wait to know the sex of their child, but Gagne knew Kristen dreamed of having a little girl.
Five days after moving into the new house, Kristen taught a spin class in the morning and in the afternoon she went into labor. It was a long, painful delivery and Gagne held her hand as she screamed and pushed. When the baby finally came out, the first words out of Gagne's mouth were, “You got your girl!”
He stared at their little baby and instantly began to count—ten fingers, ten toes, two arms, two legs. Okay, good. Apgar score? Ten out of ten—good, good. They were in the clear. He took a breath as the little wide-eyed being, his daughter, was placed in his arms.
Gagne wanted to bring his wife and child home and clean up the place as quickly as possible—wash away the dust and sanding Spackle, get rid of the carpet layers and scratchy-faced men who left their sharp tools lying around.
Gagne thought very little about Oded Tuito that summer. His new family was the perfect distraction. On weekends he worked on the house. He built a barbecue pit in the back and a white picket fence around a verdant front yard. Come six o'clock on weekdays, when his colleagues on Long Island were going out for beers, Gagne couldn't wait to get home to look at his daughter.
81 “HI, I'M JACKIE”
JACKIE SUAREZ HAD ROMANTICIZED her upcoming stint at Gracie Square Hospital, imagining herself standing on a terrace in wraparound black sunglasses and a robe. Then she was hit with the cold reality of the system.
Gracie was a psychiatric care hospital, treating both chemical abuse and mental disorders. The patients looked like shuffling zombies to her, cigarettes were banned, and the nurses wouldn't give her any meds to help her calm down. She rocked herself to sleep that first night and woke up the next afternoon shaky and pale with the chills and red eyes.
Her mother smuggled cigarettes in. Suarez enjoyed them in private in the bathroom and sold a few for $1 apiece. A friend smuggled her a vodka cranberry cocktail and the sweetness made her long to return home. She couldn't understand the ones inside who told her they had entered rehab voluntarily. That was like surrender.
Two weeks later her insurance ran out and she was sent to a federal treatment center in Port Jervis, New York. She traded a private suite at Gracie for a top bunk in a room with three other women. Her roommates were surly heroin junkies with greasy hair and no teeth. Suarez was always a loner, but here in this cramped room she felt painfully alone. The required AA and NA meetings irritated her. She refused to introduce herself as an addict/alcoholic; it was just “Hi. I'm Jackie.” She didn't want to share her life story with complete strangers and being told she had to give up partying entirely was ludicrous to her. Why couldn't she just cut back? Suarez resisted the cult of participation—the open weeping, group hugs, serenity prayers. She wanted out.
When her thirty days were up, she came home to find her job and apartment were still hers. She was elated and wanted to start anew; even simple pleasures like walking through Times Square made her happy. After six weeks of sobriety, she decided she had earned a night of treating herself. It would be a private date in her apartment—just Jackie and a gram of coke, some good music, a couple of beers.
It was July 2000 and her sentencing date was in late September. She knew that even with her cooperation agreement, she could get up to seven years or as little as probation. She started to panic as the date approached and she knew her drug patch had to have tested dirty. Fuck it, she thought. She figured she deserved a little sympathy for all that time in rehab. But Judge Raggi didn't see it that way.
On July 12, Suarez was arrested when she showed up for a routine meeting with a pretrial services officer. The marshals took her in cuffs before the judge. Her attorney, Gagne, and Lacewell were waiting in the courtroom. Suarez's drug patches indicated she was still using and the judge was remanding her to the Metropolitan Detention Center until sentencing. Suarez felt a wave of nausea overcome her. She seethed with hatred for everyone in that room—the judge, her attorney, Gagne, Lacewell, and especially the scared girl in the handcuffs.
The Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) was dreary and dehumanizing. She was strip-searched and given a used tan jumper three sizes too big. Her cell was cold and smelly, a thin dirty mattress on a concrete slab.
As the weeks at MDC turned into months, Suarez began to suss out the different cliques—the Hispanic women and the Jamaicans, the black girls and the random straggly white women. She had strained visits with her family. Thankfully, she had cigarettes. The bottoming out of her life seemed to erase her desire for drugs. She kept a detailed journal, honing her experiences with raw honesty.
“I could have definitely used some alcohol and some drugs,” she wrote of this period in her life. “But the fact that it was impossible lessened my desire to have them. I just put it out of my mind. How pathetic was that, after months of soul searching, rehab, and my trying to curtail my drug use? The only thing that made me stop caring about getting high was incarceration.”
Gagne and Lacewell mentioned during a visit that Miami DEA was interested in questioning her about Tuito's soldiers in Florida—Meir “Benny” Ben-David and Yosef Levi. The pair had recently fled to Israel. If Suarez's information strengthened the Florida U.S. attorney's indictment, Judge Raggi might look more favorably on her case at sentencing September 23.
She agreed to go, and by September, Suarez was in Miami. She shared a tiny cell with an angry black woman
with gold teeth and cornrows who called her a “red nigga” and farted loudly in her direction. “I'm Puerto Rican,” Suarez corrected her.
She spent months waiting for prosecutors to call and her sentencing date had to be postponed to January 26, 2001. She threw herself into the library and the gym. At night, from her tiny cell, she could see downtown Miami and the neon lights of South Beach. It made her miss the nights in Nice with Tuito.
In November, Miami prosecutors finally called for her and she identified Ben-David and Levi from photographs. She retold her story but didn't feel like it meant much to them. She wanted to get back to New York.
When her meeting was over, her attorney took her aside to share some unsettling news: Oded Tuito had been set free.
82 “A VERY BEAUTIFUL
AND CLEVER TRICK”
THE FRENCH LÉGAT FOR the Department of Justice called Linda Lacewell in October 2000 with an unfortunate development in Tuito's case. Lacewell's first call was to Bob Gagne.
“You're not going to believe this,” she said.
Tuito had a team of French lawyers who'd found a loophole big enough for the Fat Man to squeeze through: his Algerian parents.
Under French law, if your parents were born prior to 1959 in Algeria, which was a French colony at the time, then you are eligible for citizenship.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Gagne yelled. “This is fucking unbelievable.”
Gagne and Lacewell knew Tuito had applied for French citizenship almost a year earlier, but the French prosecutors had assured them it was of little concern.
“They were telling us, ‘Eet's imposseeble, eet takes yeerz,’ “ Gagne said with disdain. Tuito had somehow managed to get his application on a fast track.
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