by Tim Wood
Paul met me at the door and let me in. The apartment was rank and smelled of old socks and urine. There was a girl sitting in the kitchen, she looked early twenties. She was fiddling with something on the small kitchen table, but I couldn’t quite see what she was up to and she barely acknowledged me. Paul had me follow him down the hallway to a bedroom. My gut tightened up a little, as I was fearful a pat down was coming. I was talking up a storm, being as accurate as to my location in the apartment and what we were doing so Donnie and the “cavalry” would know exactly where I was and who was in there in case I needed help.
I’m not a tall guy by any means, I’m just shy of six foot, but this guy was short. His head came up to my sternum. He wore thick glasses, had slicked-back jet-black hair with dandruff flakes, a dingy white tank-top T-shirt, and black trousers. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a 1950s gangster movie. Plus, he had an East Coast tough-guy accent, with a deep voice. A hand-rolled cigarette dangled from his lips. He squinted to keep the smoke out of his eyes. And skinny; I could see the outline of his ribs through the worn fabric of his T-shirt. His bare biceps…well, he didn’t have any bicep muscles that I could see. I started to relax; if this guy starts any shit with me, I’ll kill him if I blow too hard on him!
The bedroom really stunk; I was trying not to breathe too deeply. He was standing way too close for comfort so I stepped back a little. “What’s a matter,” he growled.
“I’m tryin’ to quit smoking, man!”
He laughed, “Yeah, me too!” That broke the ice and he asked me in that deep, smoky Jersey gangster accent, “Watcha got?”
I pulled the Treasury check out of my back pocket and held it up for him. “Nice,” he said. “A Ben Franklin up front and a Ben Franklin when we cash it. That’s the deal. Let me see the license.” I handed him my undercover Nevada driver’s license. He took a big, deep drag of the cigarette, “This’ll work just fine. And I’m going with you to cash the check. You don’t leave my sight.”
“Hey sure,” I told him, “No problem.” I followed Paul back into his living room. Paul sat down at a desk against the wall and opened the top right side drawer. From my angle I couldn’t see into the desk drawer, but he fished around and pulled out an X-Acto knife. He had a bright desk lamp attached to the desk with a clamp and he put half sleeves on his arms, the ones like an accountant wore in an old movie. I was half expecting him to pull out a green shaded visor to put on his head to finish the ensemble.
Paul had a typewriter, colored pens, stencils, and all kinds of shit on that desk. Plus, he liked to talk while he worked, so I let him go on and on about how skilled he was at making counterfeit driver’s licenses. I walked over and stood by his desk and watched him work. I made a half-assed attempt at a narration of what he was doing, for the amusement of Donnie out in the car and, more importantly, the tape a jury might hear someday down the road, if this case went to trial.
Paul was very accommodating, answering my inquisitive questions about the finer points of altering a driver’s license. All of a sudden it seemed like we were best buddies; he’d completely let his guard down and wasn’t questioning me about anything. He was focused on altering that driver’s license. “First, I gotta pull back the lamination so I can change the name,” he told me, “Then the hard part is getting the lamination stuck back on the front so it doesn’t look like it’s been fucked with.” Keep talking, Paul, just keep talking…and pull that jail door shut behind you.
Paul scraped the name off my undercover driver’s license and put it in the typewriter. He looked at the name on the check, “Pat Thomas,” he looked puzzled. “Pat,” he said again, “That’s a girl’s name.”
“Patrick,” I quickly said. “Put Patrick Thomas on the license.”
“Oh yeah,” he mumbled, “Oh yeah, oh yeah…perfect, perfect, perfect.”
While I was getting as much incriminating evidence out of Paul’s mouth as he would provide, I glanced over at the girl in the kitchen. She was shooting a syringe full of heroin in between her toes on her left foot. Wonderful. Come on, Paul; let’s get this done so I can get out of here.
Suddenly, the front door opened and I felt like I’d stopped breathing. Roland walked in with two young ladies. Two rough-looking young ladies; two very drugged up young ladies.
Roland didn’t say shit to Paul. Paul didn’t say shit to Roland. I didn’t know what to say to anybody. Come on, Paul, finish up, buddy…Let’s go!
Roland and his girls plopped down on the old, smelly couch. Finally, Paul says to Roland, “Today is payday,” and he chuckles. Roland got up and walked over toward the desk. He stood behind Paul and put his hands on Paul’s shoulders, as he peeked over to look at Paul’s work.
I looked over at the couch and one of the girls was setting up a laboratory on the coffee table. Great, more dope. Roland asked Paul “What’s the take?”
Paul said, “Two hundred bucks, baby.” Roland gave me a high five. No shit! I made a mental note to take a hot soapy shower after this deal.
Roland rejoined the drug party on the couch and casually asked if I wanted a hit.
“No, thanks, pal, my probation officer frowns on that stuff.”
Finally, Paul pushed his chair back from the desk and held up the shittiest-looking altered driver’s license I had ever seen. The font he used to change my undercover name from “Henry Detmer” to the “Patrick Thomas” was obviously way off and the ink was darker than the original. It was a piece of shit, but hey, Title 18 United States Code Section 1028 doesn’t say it has to be a good counterfeit identification document; it just has to be counterfeit. “Perfect!” I exclaimed, as I stuck the driver’s license in my pocket, “Let’s go get paid! I’m going to Acapulco!”
Paul looked up at me as the smoke from his cigarette stung his squinty eyes, “Don’t ya owe me something?”
“Oh yeah,” I said and I pulled out a hundred-dollar bill from my front jeans pocket and gave it to him, “Here you go, Paul, one hundred dollars.”
Paul walked over to an easy chair and started putting on his shoes, I walked over to the door and cracked it open just a hair. I could see Donnie, Beaver, and the ATF agents on the stoop. Paul jumped up and walked toward the door to follow me out. As I opened the door, Donnie and the guys burst in. I slipped outside and reached down to turn off the tape recorder. The Beaver stepped out of the apartment and handcuffed me. He took me off to one side and acted like he was reading me my Miranda Warning. Donnie and one of the ATF agents led the handcuffed Roland out of the apartment and put him in the back of Donnie’s car. The other ATF agent followed behind with a handcuffed Paul. Two LVMPD officers, who Donnie had called when he heard the conversation about the heroin, walked in and arrested the three girls for possession. All in all, it was a good day.
Believe it or not, these guys decided to go to trial on this case. Tammy was the star witness and did a fine job on direct examination by the AUSA, and she held her ground on cross-examination by the two defense counsels. They, of course, tried to paint a picture for the jury that she’d set up the defendants, that she approached Roland and asked him to get her a counterfeit driver’s license, and that Roland and Paul had refused to help her, but that she kept pestering them until they agreed to “just help her out.”
She, of course, denied that any of that was true and on re-direct examination the AUSA was able to reestablishing her credibility for the jury. Like all trials with a snitch, it would come down to who the jury believed was telling the truth—Tammy and a Secret Service agent or Roland and Paul.
When I testified, the AUSA had me introduce the tape recordings of my conversation with Paul on the telephone, setting up the meeting at the apartment. Then we played the tape recording of the meeting in Paul’s apartment. We introduced the altered driver’s license, the “spurious” Treasury check, and the one-hundred-dollar bill I gave Paul into evidence for the jury. On cross-examination, P
aul’s attorney tried to convince the jury that I’d entrapped Paul by telling him to change the name on my undercover driver’s license to “Patrick Thomas,” trying anything to put doubt into the mind of at least one juror.
In his re-direct of me on the witness stand and again in his closing statement, the AUSA was able to clearly define entrapment for the jury and establish legal precedent that my suggestion for the name on the driver’s license was not even close to entrapment.
The jury deliberated for less than an hour and came back with a guilty verdict on all counts of the indictment. At his sentencing, Paul’s lawyer argued for leniency from the judge; poor old Paul had AIDS. But, the US district court judge was not buying it and sentenced Paul to five years imprisonment and Roland to four years.
Chapter 4
An Easy Mark
Airline ticket fraud was big business back in the eighties. This was in the old days when you could buy and sell airline tickets from one person to another; the name on the ticket didn’t matter. You could buy a ticket on United Airlines for a flight on January 1 and if you didn’t use that ticket on United on January 1, you could use it on American (or any airline) and use it on any date after January 1. It was a crazy system and it was ripe for the fraudsters to get involved. And boy, did they ever.
Back then; some large corporations had credit accounts with the major airlines for their employees to charge airline tickets and hotel rooms while on business travel. If a crook obtained of one of these account numbers, he could travel the world, bill his hotel to that account, eat all the room service he wanted, drink all the champagne he could hold and order up a limo to take him to the airport for his next adventure. The bad guys could use this corporate account number for only a short period of time until the corporation reconciled their travel expenses against employee travel. But in the meantime, the crook could live the high life for at least thirty days on that stolen corporate account number.
I have always said all criminals, especially fraudsters and counterfeiters, come to Las Vegas at some point. They come to Vegas to continue their scams or to spend the cash they’ve ripped off from banks, the government or the innocent victim. Either way, eventually, they show up in Sin City. Donnie’s mantra was that when you work a fraud case, you could bet the suspect is not who he says he is and it is not the first time he has done it. Both are absolute truths about scam artists.
One sunny April morning, I got a telephone call from a lady named Missy who owned a small one-man travel agency on Rainbow Boulevard in Las Vegas. She had a very interesting and complicated story to tell me. Missy said she had been dealing with a very wealthy client for the past few days, a Mr. Martin Malcheski. He had contacted her travel agency and purchased numerous first class airline tickets and also had her make reservations at four and five star hotels all over the United States. She said she thought he was a high roller, a common occurrence in Las Vegas, and she thought she had hit the mother lode when he kept using her small business as his personal travel agent. She was raking in the commissions and he was scamming the crap out of her. All fraudsters need an easy mark and unfortunately, Missy took the bait and swallowed the hook.
Martin Malcheski’s real name was Mark Matthews. Matthews was a credit card fraud master, who had been arrested and convicted of credit card fraud and incarcerated in a federal penitentiary. Matthews had escaped and was on the run from the US Marshals. You’d think if you were lucky enough to escape from prison, you’d lay low, get a job, and try to blend into society; you know, move to Iowa and get a job at the local feed store. But not Matthews, he was addicted to the easy money that comes from bilking travel agents with stolen credit card account numbers. Of course, Missy didn’t know that at the time, and I didn’t know it, either, until I started the investigation.
Once Martin realized Missy was his “easy mark,” like any good con man and scam artist he used every opportunity he had to take advantage of her. According to Missy, Martin had called her just two days ago from the Las Vegas Airport saying he was on his way to the Big Island of Hawaii and at the last minute decided to make a one night stop in Las Vegas for some R&R. Unfortunately, according to Martin, the travel agent he’d used for this trip was an incompetent boob and had totally dropped the ball. His hotel reservations at Caesar’s Palace were made for the wrong day, and the hotel was telling him they had no rooms available. Martin told her he was still at the airport and was at a loss as to where he could find an acceptable hotel room for the night.
Missy tried her contacts at all the big hotels and she wasn’t having any luck finding him a room. It was getting late in the day, so she did what any fine, upstanding travel agent would do for a high-roller client: She offered him a room at her house for the night. Not only would he spend the night at her house, but she also paid for a limo to go out to the airport and bring him directly to her home; bringing this escaped prisoner to the home she shared with her husband and two small children. Fortunately for Missy and her young family, he was just a con man and not a pedophile or a crazy serial killer.
Yesterday morning Missy paid for Martin’s limo ride back to the Las Vegas airport so he could catch his flight to Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. And her husband loaned Martin his three hundred dollar Rosetta Stone Spanish learning course, because Martin wanted to learn Spanish for his upcoming trip to San Juan! That’s all he took from their house, but he stole tens of thousands of dollars in airline tickets and hotel rooms that Missy was left to pay for. I guess she got lucky.
Missy told me Martin telephoned her after he arrived at the Hyatt Hotel in Kona, Hawaii, to thank her for her hospitality during his short layover in Las Vegas. Martin told her he would be in Hawaii for a few days and he was extremely happy with her professionalism; she was the best travel agent he’d ever used. He told her he would be calling her again for more airline tickets and hotel reservations once he had an itinerary for his next travel assignment.
Missy told me American Express had just telephoned her and told her the American Express account number she had been charging all of Martin’s tickets to was stolen and Martin was not authorized to use that account number. She was in a panic, a complete utter panic.
* * *
About a month before Missy called me, I had been working an airline ticket fraud scam that involved an unknown suspect using the alias Marcus Hanes. Dennis Bowery, a marketing manager for a large local travel agency in Las Vegas, called me and related that Mr. Hanes had defrauded their agency for ten thousand dollars over a five-day period.
Hanes was using Bowery’s travel agency to purchase airline tickets for his personal first class travel all over the United States. Hanes used a United Airlines issued corporate account number for the tickets and United Airlines had eventually notified the business the account number had been compromised. The business contacted Bowery and advised him all charges by Marcus Hanes were unauthorized and fraudulent. As a matter of fact, the victim business had no employees named Marcus Hanes.
Bowery told me that Hanes had telephoned the travel agency the day before and ordered a prepaid first class airline ticket in the name Marcus Hanes for travel from Seattle to Honolulu to Los Angeles. Mr. Bowery said Hanes asked for the ticket to be sent Federal Express to the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel in Seattle and he would pick up the ticket when he checked in later that day. He told the travel agent that he would be calling back between one and two o’clock that afternoon to order some more tickets.
One thing I learned working in the LAFO fraud squad was that the masters of these cons could and would disappear into thin air in a heartbeat. You have to remember this was the 1980s…the personal computer was still evolving and false identification was easy to make and use. There was no Internet. Shit, there was no e-mail or voicemail! A cop, much less a young cashier at a casino cash cage, wouldn’t know the difference between a Delaware driver’s license and a French passport. If it looked official, you were good to go. So I had
to jump on this one and I had to get moving fast. I needed help and I needed it now.
I looked at my watch; it was eleven thirty in the morning. Shit! Not much time to pull this caper together. I ran into the Beaver’s office to fill him in and before I could open my mouth he asked, “Where are we going to lunch today?” The Beaver and I had been on a crusade to find the best cheeseburger in Las Vegas—and we’d found some tasty ones already, but not today. Well, not right now, we might have time for a cheeseburger later this afternoon…
I grabbed Beaver and we hustled down the hall to see the boss. I told the boss I was thinking we could get the Seattle FO to do a controlled delivery of the airline ticket at the Four Seasons Hotel. When Marcus Hanes checked in and claimed the ticket, they could arrest him. In the meantime, I’d go by the travel agency and tape the incoming call from the suspect when he called to order more airline tickets. I figured that way we have the suspect on tape admitting he bought the airline ticket with the stolen account number. Then I would get the ticket from the local travel agency and I would send it overnight express to the Seattle FO. All they had to do was make a controlled delivery and make the arrest. Bada-bing, Bada-boom! We got him!
The boss said he would call Seattle and see if they could assist us with the controlled delivery and make the arrest. The Beaver gathered up the recording equipment to tape the incoming call and we drove to Bowery’s travel agency.
By the time we got the recorder set up on one of the travel agent’s desk phone and briefed the receptionist to transfer any calls from Mr. Hanes to Sherry’s desk, it was close to one o’clock. Beaver sat down at Sherry’s desk, waiting to play travel agent with Mr. Hanes and we waited and waited. Finally at about two o’clock, Mr. Hanes called in. The Beaver was a good bullshitter and when Mr. Hanes balked at speaking with “Bob” instead of Sherry, well the Beaver just jumped in there with the old, “I’m so sorry Mr. Hanes, Sherry had a family emergency yesterday and I’m filling in for her today.”