Duplicity - A True Story of Crime and Deceit

by Paul T. Goldman

  “Can you connect me with an agent in the prostitution unit, so I can make the appointment myself?” I asked.

  “No, I cannot do that. Goodbye.” And before I could ask anything else, the dial tone confirmed the end of our call. Once again, I was frustrated. Had I overstepped my bounds by following up? Was I wrong to assume I would somehow play a part in their investigation? Despite what they had told me two weeks prior, was the FBI undecided as to whether or not to take the case? Would justice ever be served?

  I remained a man driven by questions and devoid of answers. Something had to give, and I refused to let more weeks slip away waiting for a call from the FBI that might never come. I decided I would kickoff the investigation by getting an investigative reporter involved. I headed right for my office and called Jim Wilson, the contact I’d made at the Palm Beach Post. He wasn't in, so, I left a message, asking him to call me back. He did call the next day. I had wanted to wait until all law enforcement avenues were exhausted before giving him the story. Now, since those avenues were pretty much kaput as far as I was concerned, I decided it was time to offer up my tale. Although all I gave him was the fifteen minute version, Jim said he was interested, and we agreed to meet the following day.

  The building occupied by the Palm Beach Post was far more welcoming than the police precincts I’d been frequenting of late. The walls were painted a vivid yellow in contrast to austere gray, the halls were alive with chatter and bustle, and the guard hovering around the reception desk even had a sense of humor.

  Imagine that.

  “This is my first time in the offices of a major newspaper,” I admitted, signing in on a wooden clipboard. “Where’s the newsroom with all the reporters banging away on their typewriters, like in the movies?” I asked with a grin.

  “They use these strange things called computers now,” he said with a serious expression, but a twinkle in his eye. “And Clark Kent isn’t in today!” he added, much to the delight of the older woman running the desk. She laughed as she looked up at him, shooing him away with her hand. He chuckled and moved back to his post.

  I took a seat on a couch in the lobby until Jim Wilson walked over and greeted me a few minutes later. I immediately stood and shook his hand, thanking him for taking the time to meet with me. Unlike the crisp, neat appearance of the FBI agents, Jim looked like he stepped on his clothes a few times that morning before putting them on. His wrinkled, short-sleeved shirt was untucked and oversized, his corduroy pants were begging for a belt, and his sandy hair hadn’t seen a brush since the security guard had last seen Clark Kent. To put it kindly, Jim was casual.

  Jim took me back into a conference room to hear my story and take copious notes. This time, however, it was more like a conversation than a report, with Jim reacting to every sordid detail and interrupting me at every turn to clarify something. I wasn’t sure if his method was any more effective than the others, but I sure preferred the interaction and apparent interest.

  “Not to tell you your business, Jim, but why don’t you use the angle of a woman who marries men to steal their assets and, by the way, spends her weekends as a prostitute? I’m telling you, uncovering the inner workings of a prostitution ring by the husband of the madam, you’ll win the Pulitzer,” I predicted, with a smile.

  Jim stared straight ahead, perhaps deep in thought, and didn't respond immediately. After a minute, though, he placed his pen down on the table, intertwined his fingers, extended them for a loud ‘crack’ of his knuckles, and sat back in his seat.

  Jim continued to ask me a series of questions delving into my life before Audrey, and my own theories about how I got involved with her. Providing this information for Jim, also provided some welcome release for me. This wasn't a therapy session, this wasn't a testimony. This was two men talking about life. When I finished, it was my turn to ask questions.

  “Well Jim, what do you think of this story for your paper?”

  “To be perfectly honest, you seem to be suggesting that we do a sting on Tony Sawgrass to find out how he operates. We can't do that, because we don't have the resources.” Jim picked up his pen and began to use it as a backscratcher. “Also, we can't follow Audrey around twenty-four hours a day, or hire a private investigator to do it.”

  “Well, what can you do?” I asked, a little frustrated.

  “I can run a few background checks,” he said, struggling to reach a part of his back not easily scratched. “I can call some tricks, call Audrey, Royce, and Tony Sawgrass. I can also call some of my friends to look into the Spencer County Sheriff’s Office corruption. To write this story, I need more evidence. If I wrote it now, I’d be sued for slander.”

  “I understand, Jim,” I said, though I was still disappointed. “So, how many people will be working on the story with you?”

  “Just my editor,” he admitted, returning the pen to the table with satisfaction.

  “Oh. I guess it was naïve of me, but I imagined telling my story to ten investigators.”

  “Sorry, Paul, but unlike the cops, I can promise you one thing,” he said with a smile.

  “What’s that?” I asked hopefully.

  “Unlike the cops, I’ll keep you informed on my progress.”

  “Well, good luck, Jim and thanks again for your time.” I stood up slowly and headed back into the lobby where the guard and the receptionist had found a new joke to laugh about. Confronted with another roadblock, I was tempted to ask the guard what time he expected Clark Kent to return, because I certainly needed him now.

  No matter. I was already reaching for my cell phone to call information. By the time I was out to my car, I was speaking with Mia O’Shea, an investigative journalist at Channel 12, WPTH. Within minutes, I had given her the highlights of my story, and arranged to meet with her the next day.

  “I have good news, and I have bad news,” Mia stated after our meeting, flashing a beautiful, pearly white smile. Mia was a beautiful woman, around forty years of age, and she wasn’t only a “behind the scenes” investigator, but reported her stories on the air as well. Mia had listened with the same look of amazement that I had now become accustomed to seeing in everyone who heard my story for the first time. Heartache for the kids, sympathy for me, and anger towards Audrey. But I wasn’t looking for pity, and I was done being seen as pitiful. “The bad news is,” she continued, speaking to me in what sounded like an “on air” voice, “I cannot do the story for fear of being sued. The good news is, however, that I can cover your trial and Bob's too, and bring the story to light that way.”

  “That's a great idea,” I said.

  “Hey, I can also contact my buddy at the FBI to see if they're on the case,” Mia offered.

  “That sounds really good, Mia. Thanks!” I said, happy to have found a way to follow up on the FBI. I ended our meeting by asking her to call me as soon as she heard anything.

  “I will, Paul.” Mia led me down to the lobby, but on the way had one more question for me. “I take it Audrey was really great in bed, huh?”

  I was stunned by this question. Not knowing what she really wanted to hear, I just told her the truth. “Actually, some males fantasize that having a prostitute constantly at your beck and call would result in non-stop, fantastic sex. The harsh reality is that it's all business, and, as I found out, it's hardly non-stop, once she's achieved her financial goals. It's all about the money.”

  “I understand, Paul. Well, you take care.”

  On my way home, I had time to reflect. Perhaps I'm finally making some progress, I thought. I had spoken to three cops and two FBI agents, and hadn't gotten anywhere. It felt good to have a newspaper guy and a television reporter on my side, helping me get the story out.

  Not satisfied, however, I began to brainstorm alternative approaches while the date of my divorce trial quickly approached.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Compaq

  December 7, 2009

  The last play before halftime was a long pass. Just as the receiver jumped h
igh to make a one-handed catch, a loud pop startled me. Then came more pops, like firecrackers exploding in furious delight. Pop, pop, pause, pop, pop, pop. I left the play in mid catch and ran into the kitchen to rescue the popcorn from the microwave.

  “Is it ready yet?” Johnny called from the family room, struggling to stay awake at least to halftime of the Sunday night football game.

  “It’ll just be a minute, buddy!” I called back, the smell of the popcorn now filling my nose as I turned to grab a big bowl from the cabinet. Much like our Saturday nights of reading or movie watching, our Sunday nights watching football and enjoying some after-dinner popcorn was becoming a pretty consistent, weekly ritual. And there was really not much else I would have rather done.

  With the beep of the microwave announcing a job complete, I opened the door and gingerly grabbed the steaming bag by its corner and flipped it down onto the countertop. “The game’s back on!” Johnny alerted, and so I emptied the popcorn into the bowl, and tossed in some extra butter.

  “Okay, I’m on my way,” I replied as I turned to rejoin my son on the couch. I reached to turn out the kitchen light when my eyes caught sight of my laptop still open atop the kitchen table. For business, I had my own desktop computer up in my office, and I kept the laptop downstairs for family use. Johnny and I had checked tonight’s football game match-up before dinner, and I guess I forgot to turn it off. Scolding myself for being so absentminded, I reached over to close it. As I did, an idea came over me. When Audrey and I were married and living here together, she would always say how much she loved having a laptop, so I bought that one for our joint use, and I would often come home to find her perched on the couch with it or quickly returning emails as she made dinner in the kitchen. It never occurred to me to ask whom she might be sending emails to. But, it did occur to me now.

  The next morning I pulled out the Yellow Pages to find a computer “geek” who could see what was inside the laptop. I looked up “computer repair” in the Yellow Pages, and called the first number. A man named Sam answered the phone.

  “My name is Paul Goldman and I have an interesting situation I was hoping you could help me with.”

  “How can I help you?” Sam asked, with a vaguely familiar accent. I gave him the “least you need to know” version of my story, and asked if there was anything he might be able to do to retrieve erased emails or files.

  “No problem,” Sam replied. “I can easily look at everything on the hard drive. I’ve got a very good software program for that.”

  “Sounds great! Can you come by tomorrow and have a look at it?” I asked, surprised by how simple he made it sound.

  “Sure, I’ll be by around noon.” And at exactly twelve o’clock, my doorbell rang. I opened the door, expecting a gawky, computer nerd with taped glasses and a pocket protector. What I found, however, was a thirty year old, polished man who had recently moved to the States from Israel, where he had been a Network Administrator for many years. I invited him in, and showed him my laptop.

  Sam was serious, eager, and extremely knowledgeable about computers. I liked him immediately, and couldn't resist telling him the reason he was here. Needless to say, Sam was shocked and angered at my story. While he worked, he provided me with a running commentary of what he was doing, which I appreciated greatly. Sam had brought with him an advanced computer recovery software program and, over the course of the next two hours, made some very interesting discoveries.

  “What’s that?” I asked Sam, pointing to an unknown file I had never seen before. I was peering over his shoulder while he worked, looking for anything unfamiliar.

  “It’s a WPS file. Let’s open it and find out what's inside.” When Sam opened the document, a page popped up entitled “To Do List,” which Audrey had created on February 6, 2008, at a time when I thought we were happily married. I looked down the list and six items popped out at me, six items that were totally inconsistent with Audrey's claim of being a stay-at-home mom living on a fixed income.

  Expedia

  Debit-business (*2) -2- Stuart

  Savings - $501 (-2-Mom)

  Nextel Upgrade- Record capabilities/alarm/photos

  Phones- T-Mobile

  IBIS / land

  We looked at item number 1. “Sam, why would Audrey have Expedia on a to-do list for February? We took our trip to California in January. Was she planning another trip in February? To where?”

  “I don't know, Paul,” Sam responded.

  “Look at that second item. It looks like she was getting two debit cards, for business, and wanted to make sure the statements were sent to her trailer in Stuart, not my house where I might see those additional bank accounts.”

  “From what you told me, Audrey claimed to have no other job besides being a stay-at-home mom. Why would she possibly need two business cards?” Sam asked.

  “That’s a great question, Sam,” was all I said and my eyes moved on to the third item, listed as “Savings.”

  “You know, Sam, Audrey told the judge that she lived on a fixed income of $1,600 a month in child support. If that was really the case, how could she save $501, and why was she giving it to her mother?” I shook my head in confusion, and then I saw the fourth and fifth items, which proved once and for all that Audrey did have other phones in addition to the AT&T phone she claimed, under oath, to be her only phone. “My private eye videotaped Audrey using two phones, one black and one red. In the tape, she used the black one as a walkie-talkie, just like I had in my business to talk with my partner Daniel when he was in the field. Mine was a Nextel.”

  “In 2008, Nextel was the only company that had walkie-talkie phones,” Sam added. “It appears she wanted to upgrade her Nextel, and maybe buy another phone, a T-Mobile.” I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down a reminder to have Adam send a subpoena to both phone companies.

  “Look at this last one, Paul. I have a friend who lives in Ibis.”

  “I know it too, Sam.” I said. “It's all built out now, but in 2008, there were still building lots available. I guess Audrey bought some land to build a house on.”

  “You can check the tax assessor's office to see if there is anything under her name,” Sam recommended. “Unless she bought it under some corporate name.”

  “I'll check it out. Thanks, Sam.” Ibis, along with the Savings, the phones, and the debit cards all prompted the same question: where was all the money coming from? I decided that the answer to this might interest a judge as well.

  I asked Sam to print out the “to do list” for me to add to my now sizeable dossier on Audrey. Next in line was a Word document that I didn't recognize. It was a letter from Audrey’s father, Richard Allen, to FEMA, referencing Application #920958216, rental assistance request:

  We had been renting a temporary residence at 1502 S. Ocean Court, Fort Lauderdale, FL while our damaged condo was being repaired. Our 12 month lease there (copy enclosed) expired on November 30. We paid $1,400 rent for October (copy of check enclosed) and asked our landlord to apply our pre-paid last month’s rent of $1,400 (copy of receipt for first month, last month enclosed) to November. We had to have a mover place our furniture and belongings in storage and find a short term rental to live in after November 30. We found a month to month rental at 23511 North Main Street, Apt. #23, Stuart, FL and paid $1,500 rent for December and $1,500 rent for January (copy of rental receipts enclosed).

  Reading this, my mind went back to the very first time Audrey took me to Ft. Lauderdale to meet her parents. They were staying at that small condo in Seaside Terrace while their home was being renovated after serious hurricane damage had left the house unlivable for anyone except, apparently, Audrey and her small children. This letter was a request for FEMA aid and, though everything in the request seemed in keeping with their actual schedule, the reference to a rental property on 23511 N. Main Street, Apartment 23 wasn’t exactly forthcoming because that was the address of Audrey’s trailer, co-owned by Audrey and her father according to its Motor
Vehicle Report.

  Based on the letter, it looked like Mr. Allen charged FEMA $1,500 a month for two months to rent his own trailer to himself. He also alleged in the letter that rental receipts were attached, which certainly would look legitimate to FEMA, since Audrey and her father had different last names. So, Richard Allen rented his own property from his daughter, the landlord, and then billed FEMA $1,500 a month. Notwithstanding that illegality, the fair market rent for that dump was probably closer to $500 a month, if that. Clearly, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. This was a clear attempt to defraud the federal government and, again, made a nice addition to my ever growing evidence file on Audrey. I also made a note to contact the FEMA fraud department.

  Satisfied with what we had found, I was all set to thank Sam for his time when he offered another capability.

  “Now let’s use my backup utility and download every temporary internet file on the hard drive,” Sam said, eager to unearth more for my benefit. “This will show the websites she went to, and, if we’re lucky, the web-based emails.” This search took about a half hour and when it was done, Sam transferred the files to my office computer. I then paid him, thanked him for his time, showed him out, and hurried back to my computer, preparing myself for what these pages might reveal. I should have prepared more.

  There were approximately five thousand web pages, and though a lot of them were pages I’d visited, just as many were not. As I began to search through them, only about one in five were readable and at the top of each page, its website address was displayed, along with the date the site was viewed. Slowly working my way through, one of the first significant discoveries I made was Audrey’s visit to dating sites such as “Jewish Singles,” “Fast Cupid,” and “Nerve.com,” all made exactly five days after we closed on our California house. Though she only browsed the first two, she actually joined Nerve.com, a site that also happened to be the most sexually explicit of all the dating sites. On it was her profile, complete with R-rated answers to most of the questions about herself and the types of people she was looking for. Audrey's answers clearly made her popular, because she received over a hundred inquiries in just thirty days. One hundred new potential victims. Obviously satisfied, she then visited a page that asked if she wanted to delete her profile, Lady_Audrey_3.