My answers seemed to frustrate him. “Why would a bank loan you money?”
I found it an odd question and told him he would have to ask the banks.
Then he pulled a piece of paper out of a folder with a flourish. He said it was a loan application and pointed to the document. “Is this your signature?”
I looked at the paper. I saw my name, but it was definitely not my handwriting. “No.”
“Did you initial this here and here and here?” Nordlander pointed with a stubby finger.
“No.” Those were my initials, CE, but I had not put them there.
Nordlander asked a few more questions. Then he and his sidekick sat in awkward silence. I was anxious for Laurel and Hardy to leave. Finally, they stood up and headed toward the door.
“Can I just . . . ? Why are you asking me these things?”
“I saw that movie about you running across the Sahara Desert,” Nordlander answered, “and I got to wondering how a guy like you could afford to do something like that. I decided to open an investigation into you.”
I was rattled enough by their visit to call Chris Justice as soon as they left.
“IRS agents?” he said. “You didn’t talk to them, did you?”
I admitted that I had spoken with them at length. “I have nothing to hide.”
I could feel him shaking his head over the phone. “The Feds don’t knock on your door unless they have already decided that you are guilty of something. Do not talk to them again without me.”
Chris’s words left me on edge for a while, but as time passed, I forgot about Nordlander. I figured my answers had satisfied him. Now, with this indictment in my hand, I knew they had not.
Hours went by. I paced. I sat and stared. I paced again. Finally, a little before 3:00 p.m., a guard appeared and said it was time to go. Chris had arranged for Scott Coulter, his law partner, to represent me, and Scott was waiting for me in the courtroom.
“Nice suit.” He grinned and gestured at my red prison jumpsuit.
“Thanks.” I knew he was trying to put me at ease.
The charges were read and a date was set for my next court appearance, which was to be in Norfolk, Virginia. Then the lawyer for the Feds asked the judge to keep me in custody. I should be considered a flight risk because of my vast travel experience, he said. Thankfully, the judge didn’t agree and released me on a $15,000 bond.
I had not slept or eaten in thirty hours. I was filthy from sitting on the floor of the county jail. I thought of the dirty dishes I’d left sitting in my sink. I couldn’t wait to wash them. Normally, I was not big on household chores. Now, the thought of doing something normal, cleaning up a manageable mess, comforted me.
After shedding my jumpsuit and signing some papers, my jailer walked me to an elevator that went to an underground garage. When the elevator doors opened, there stood Special Agent Nordlander next to his car.
“How was your evening?” he said with a smirk, feigning Southern manners.
“Lovely.”
I asked Nordlander how I was supposed to retrieve my property. As if by magic, he held up a plastic bag that contained my cell phone and few other things that were in my pockets when I was arrested. He handed me the already-opened bag, and I reached in for my phone while he watched me intently. When I arrived, the phone had been fully charged and I had turned it off before they took it from me. Now it was dead. Shit. How was I going to get home if I couldn’t call someone to come get me?
“Need a ride?” Nordlander asked.
I lived about ten miles from the courthouse. I looked at Nordlander’s car parked conveniently right in front of me. His partner was standing next to the open driver’s-side door, looking at me over the roof of the car.
I hesitated. I just wanted to get home. “Okay, sure.”
“Turn around, I need to cuff you again,” said Nordlander.
I protested, but he put the cuffs on and shoved me into the backseat. Then he leaned in close, reaching over me to fasten my seat belt. His aftershave was overpowering, and his holstered gun was inches from my face. He went around the car and slid in beside me.
We pulled out of the garage and headed toward my apartment.
After about five minutes of silence, Nordlander leaned over to me. “You want me to give you some unsolicited advice?”
I hesitated. Then, with an edge of sarcasm, I said, “Sure.”
“We have you on tape. You should go to the US attorney and make a deal.”
I didn’t know what Nordlander was talking about, but I was too exhausted to give it more thought. I got home, took a shower, and called my kids. They were upset, but I assured them that there was no need to worry. Then I called my mother. She was becoming increasingly forgetful and confused, so I explained to her in the most simple terms what had happened. I told her it was all a wild misunderstanding and it would be sorted out soon. Finally, I called my dad.
“Charlie! I just talked to Chris Justice,” he said. “This is absolute horseshit!”
“I really don’t understand what’s happening.”
“I’ve been selling real estate for fifteen years. What the banks were doing during the mid-2000s—if you had a pulse, you could get a loan! What someone earned had almost nothing to do with it.”
“So, you think it will be okay?”
“Absolutely. Just keep your head on straight. We’re going after these bastards. Send me everything you have and try not to worry too much.”
“Thanks, Dad. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Charlie.”
Early the next morning I reported, as ordered, to the office of Karen Franks in the Greensboro Federal Building. She was to be my pretrial probation officer, whatever that was. Ms. Franks treated me with kindness, even though one of her jobs was to make sure that my new ankle monitor fit. I asked if she had any colors other than black. She gave me a courtesy laugh. I think she’d heard that one before.
I was allowed to travel only within the Middle District of North Carolina. I couldn’t leave home before 8:00 a.m. and had to be back by 7:00 p.m. If I wanted to go anywhere else, I needed permission. Without the ability to travel, I had no way to earn money. Paying my rent and providing for my kids required work outside my ankle monitor’s home range.
News of my arrest seemed to be everywhere: in the newspaper delivered to my front door, on television, and on running blogs that I regularly read—the same outlets that only days before had been touting my accomplishments. Their reports of my “downfall” seemed to have a certain glee. Many simply reprinted the government’s press releases about my “mortgage fraud scheme,” and my guilt became the de facto truth. Not a single reporter bothered to contact me.
I realized that people who had decided I was a jerk after seeing Running the Sahara were quick to believe that I was guilty of a crime. Online, I saw comments like “See, I told you he was an asshole” and “He stole millions from his water charity.” “He burned his properties down for insurance money.” “Career criminal!” “Con man!” A few people even suggested that I stole money to finance the run across the Sahara—as if Matt Damon had needed me to spot him cash.
I always believed I didn’t care what others thought about me. I was wrong about that. I was devastated. But I knew it was pointless to defend myself. It would just add fuel to the fire.
On the plus side, I also had many supporters. Friends offered to help with my boys. Others spoke to the media on my behalf and wrote letters to the local newspaper attesting to my character. Some brought me casseroles and pies. Over and over I heard, “Charlie, I’m so sorry,” as if I had been diagnosed with a terminal disease. I didn’t want people to be sorry. I hated the sadness and worry in their eyes. I found myself comforting them, telling them everything would be all right.
I had to appear before a judge in Norfolk to determine my trial date. At
the brief hearing, I was told my modest income qualified me to have a public defender if I wanted one. I said I did. Then I was told to see the “pretrial probation supervisor.” I greeted a woman seated behind a desk. I asked her if I was in the right place. She didn’t look up. I waited. She picked up a piece of paper and without inflection began reading a long list of what I could do and could not do.
Then she finally made eye contact. “Don’t screw up or I will put you in a jail cell until your trial.”
I nodded.
“Down the hall.” She pointed. “Piss test.”
I wasn’t worried about what the urine sample would show. My problem was the actual peeing, which had to be done with an officer hovering over my shoulder, close enough to hold my penis if he chose to. Thankfully, he did not. Since my arrest, I had gotten little sleep, and I hadn’t been eating or drinking enough. I was stressed and so dehydrated that I couldn’t get any pee to come out. It was already past 3:00 p.m., and I was anxious to get started on the long drive back to Greensboro, so I drank about a gallon of water while I sat in the waiting area, hoping this would speed things along.
After two more attempts, I still couldn’t go. If I didn’t pee by 5:00 p.m., I would have to come back in the morning to try again. I stood over the toilet with my eyes closed, trying to ignore the officer behind me humming an Elton John song. I had the water running in the sink, willing tiny drops of urine into the cup below. Each time I pushed, I would get a little more, but I just couldn’t quite let it go. If I pushed any harder, I was sure I would shit my pants. The officer behind me made small talk, trying to help me through the ordeal. One final push unleashed a furious fart that parted the poor guy’s hair, but released enough pee to get the job done. I turned around and apologetically handed the officer a thimbleful of my warm urine.
My pee was “clean” and I left the courthouse a few minutes after 5:00 p.m., exhausted but well hydrated. A $50 parking ticket was tucked under the windshield wiper of my car. With the combination of rush-hour traffic and my stopping to pee every twenty minutes, the drive home took more than seven hours.
The damage the arrest did to my life was swift and sweeping. Sponsors dropped me without discussion. I was uninvited from several speaking engagements that I had been counting on to pay the bills. Most painful of all, I was kicked off several nonprofit boards, including that of H2O Africa, the clean-water charity I helped found. I wasn’t just removed; I was purged, erased—as if I had never existed.
A few months earlier, I had started seeing Norma Bastidas, an accomplished runner and mountaineer and a no-nonsense woman devoted to her two young sons. At the moment of my arrest, she was halfway up Mount McKinley. Even if I could have contacted her, I wouldn’t have. I had climbed that mountain and knew that it required complete focus. I’d tell her once she finished. We had gotten serious quickly, but I guessed that this would be the end of us. I was right.
- - - -
Walter Dalton, the public defender assigned to my case, was about my age, slender with graying hair and a thick mustache. Right off, he told me that he was a runner. This seemed like a good omen. My excitement was short-lived. Dalton spent the next twenty minutes sighing and rubbing his brow and telling me about his overwhelming caseload. He was spread too thin, he said, to devote much time to my case—and he knew little about real estate. He had only defended one case relating to mortgage fraud.
“And how did it go?” I asked.
“Oh. He pled guilty. Pretty straightforward.”
I tried to stay upbeat. I hoped that once Dalton understood the facts of my case, he would see the likelihood of getting a win. I was pumped when he suggested that we go to his office to review the “discovery” materials. During discovery, the prosecution was required by law to turn over all the information gathered during their investigation, even if it was not favorable to their case.
I walked into Dalton’s office expecting to see a large box of paperwork that we’d soon have strewn on every surface. Instead, he handed me a CD.
“That’s it?”
Dalton nodded. “There are hundreds of files on that disc. You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
I would have preferred to hear, We have our work cut out for us. Either way, I just wanted to get started. “Could you give me an idea of what’s on it? What am I looking for?”
“No idea. Haven’t had a chance to look it over. . . . Oh, one thing was mentioned in the note attached from the prosecutor. Besides documents, there are about three hours of audio files on the disc.”
He had my full attention now. Ever since Nordlander’s baffling statement about having me on tape, I had scoured my memory, trying to think what conversation could have been recorded. “We’re listening to the audio now,” Dalton told me. I was thrown by his use of the word we. Just then, a young woman in her midtwenties stepped into the office.
He introduced her as his intern and said that she would be helping us out for a few weeks. She said she had listened to the first two hours of the recording and had so far found nothing of significance. She pulled up a chair for me and booted up a computer.
I watched in amazement as file after file dotted the home screen. “Are these all to do with my case?”
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
She was right. Every file folder had within it dozens of documents. I had just been handed a giant haystack. I had to assume some needles were to be found, but I had no idea where to begin.
The intern put headphones on and went back to listening to the audiotapes. Time melted away as I navigated my way through the hundreds of pages of documents. Some were related to mortgages; others were filled with jargon that was so confounding that I couldn’t categorize them.
“Oh! I think I found what we are looking for!” Dalton’s intern said loudly. She took off the headphones. “Do you remember having lunch with a female undercover IRS agent?”
I looked at her blankly. That seemed like something I would remember.
“Her name was Ellen Burrows. Does that ring a bell?”
I thought hard for a moment, then recalled meeting a woman named Ellen outside my apartment building about a year ago. She was attractive and fit and told me that she was moving into my building. She asked me a few questions about the neighborhood and about me, and she told me she was an avid runner. Then she invited me to lunch.
“Sure!” I had said, flattered and pleased that I had made such a great first impression.
We had lunch once and I never saw her again. I had chalked it up to a mutual “nice, but nothing special” feeling.
“It’s just a few sentences.” The intern handed me the headphones. “Sorry. You almost got out of there alive.”
I was embarrassed that the intern had just listened to what I’d thought was a private conversation. In more than two hours of talking to a pretty woman over lunch, who knows what stupid things I might have said. I hit play. Then I rewound and listened again, certain that I must be missing something. I took the headphones off and turned to the intern. “Is that it?”
She nodded yes.
“There’s nothing there. How could the prosecution possibly use that against me? Do you hear a confession in that?”
The intern shrugged and searched the air for a response, but found nothing. “You should probably talk to Mr. Dalton about that.”
Ellen Burrows had told me that she was in the business of helping people with their investments. I remembered she had steered our conversation in that direction. That wasn’t one of my usual go-to topics, but she seemed fascinated by what I was saying, so I went with it. The alleged evidence was a thirty-second clip of my talking to her about real estate. In one run-on sentence, I told her I’d had a couple of “liar loans,” and that a mortgage broker had listed my income as $400,000 even though he knew it wasn’t true. It was a casual remark�
�I didn’t explain that I’d only learned about liar loans—lender slang for loans that required little or no documentation—recently, when I watched a 60 Minutes investigative report by Scott Pelley. After I watched the show, I had been curious enough about my own loans to dig out of a drawer the envelope containing the closing paperwork for one of mine where I’d tossed it in 2006—unopened—when it came in the mail. My broker had filled out the application for me over the phone, and I hadn’t paid much attention to the details. Sure enough, I seemed to have gotten the kind of loan Pelley had described.
I sat frozen as I realized this was what the prosecution was calling a confession. This wasn’t evidence of anything other than my misguided attempt to impress a woman who seemed oddly turned on by mortgage talk. I didn’t confess to a crime. If anything, I had accused John Hellman, my mortgage broker, of lying about my income without my knowledge. And anyway, how could I confess to something I didn’t even know existed at the time I took out the loans back in 2005 and 2006?
Invigorated by the flimsiness of Nordlander’s so-called evidence, I spent several more hours looking at files: internal IRS memos, MOIs (memorandum of interview,) bank statements, mortgage paperwork, and tax returns. I was shocked to see an inventory of my trash. Really? Nordlander had been diving in my dumpster? Suddenly I felt queasy. I had seen and heard enough for one day.
I met with Dalton a few more times. I was dismayed to realize that he was developing my “defense” on the assumption that I would plead guilty. He may have believed that I was innocent, but his strategy was built around avoiding the worst possible outcome, which would be my being found guilty after going to trial. He said if that happened, I would receive a longer prison sentence than if I just pleaded guilty now.
Dalton was relieved and excited when Assistant US Attorney Joseph Kosky and Agent Nordlander came to him with a plea deal. I could plead guilty to any of the fifteen charges against me. Take my pick! Dalton sketched out the charges on a dry-erase board, then explained the weight of each one and crossed out the ones I should avoid.
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