Criminals & Presidents: The Adventures of a Secret Service Agent

by Tim Wood

  Address? “Inglewood Boulevard, Redondo Beach, California.”

  Place of birth? “St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands.”

  Occupation? “Computer programmer.”

  Employer? “Eastern Airlines.”

  St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Nigerians typically claimed to be from the Virgin Islands, because it explained their British-type accent and the US Virgin Islands are a US territory, therefore, they could claim US citizenship.

  I knew this guy was lying to me, but I played dumb and then I led him through the transaction “Is this your credit card?”

  “Yes”

  “How did you get it?”

  “I made an application to First National Bank of Chicago.”

  “How many credit cards to you have?”

  “This MasterCard and a Visa credit card.”

  “Did you present this credit card at the casino cage and asked for an eight-hundred-dollar cash advance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you sign for this cash advance? Is this your signature on the credit card transaction receipt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get this ID?”

  “Texas.”

  “I thought you lived in California?”

  He paused. I could see the wheels spinning inside his head. He knows I just caught him in a lie. “Okay, I went to Houston and bought it from a guy. He had numerous state driver’s licenses and identification cards.”

  “How much did you pay for it?”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  “Why did you need a fictitious ID?”

  “Okay, I’m not really a computer programmer for Eastern Airlines.”

  Just another illegal alien living in the shadows. And scamming banks and the government out of every penny they could get.

  “What is your real name? Where were you really born?” I continued.

  “I would like to speak to an attorney,” he said. I placed him under arrest for violation of Title 18 United States Code Section 1028, Section A4: “Whoever uses a false identification document to defraud the United States.” It was thin, but the First National Bank of Chicago is a federally insured bank, thus the nexus to the United States.

  Back in the 1980s most banks didn’t have a 24/7 security hotline for cops to make an inquiry with the bank about a suspicious credit card transaction, so early that next morning I got on the telephone with a fraud investigator from the bank in Chicago. The investigator told me over two thousand dollars had been charged to that credit card, including a cash advance the day before (the day I interviewed him at Bally’s) at a Las Vegas casino for fifteen hundred bucks. The investigator said records indicated Rhodes had ten credit cards issued to him. The total credit card fraud, and the loss to the issuing banks was greater than fifty thousand dollars. One phone call and I had fifty thousand dollars in fraud.

  Rhodes was very uncooperative with the court. He refused to be interviewed by pretrial services, an arm of the court that helps the judge determine the defendant’s financial situation, criminal record, and his eligibility for bail. He obviously knew he was going to be deported and he was trying to delay the inevitable. A sharp special agent with US Immigration finally got the truth out of him when he couldn’t answer some simple questions about the US Virgin Islands. He came to the United States on a student visa…and just forgot to go back to Nigeria after college didn’t work out for him. A very typical scenario of illegal aliens. The good, old student visa trick! It worked like a charm.

  * * *

  The Neiman Marcus security manager said when the woman was making her purchase, the store clerk had kindly asked if she wanted to open a Neiman Marcus credit card account. A typical question a store clerk asks customers to this very day. Open an account today and you get an extra 10 percent off your purchase.

  “Of course,” the woman answered. “I’d love to open a Neiman Marcus credit card account.” I mean, come on! A fraudster can never have too many illegally obtained credit cards, right? Like I said earlier, why rob a bank with a gun? Oh, and the Mister? Yes, of course he’d like an extra 10 percent off today, too!

  What Mr. and Mrs. Credit Card Fraudsters didn’t know was that when they used the account numbers of their fraudulently obtained credit cards that they were using for the purchases at Neiman Marcus on the credit application, a sharp investigator from FDR in Omaha was on to them. He had placed an alert to “call me before extending credit” on the credit report. As Mr. and Mrs. Credit Card Fraudsters wandered the store waiting for their extra 10 percent off to materialize, the security manager was on the telephone with FDR. He confronted the two and they bolted immediately out the door onto Las Vegas Boulevard. The male grabbed the female’s purse out of her hand and headed south as she headed north.

  The security manager chased after them out onto the Strip, his head swiveling from south to north and north to south. He had to pick one and he went south in pursuit of the Mister. I was slightly impressed; running after a crook high on adrenaline and actually catching him is quite a feat.

  Unfortunately a struggle ensued. Adrenaline is something powerful and the fear of going to jail can really get a crook’s adrenaline pumping, especially when he is caught. So the Mister was able to wrestle free and disappeared into the throngs of tourists walking the Strip. But, I had to give the guy credit; it was a noble try by a dedicated security manager. I hope the guy got a raise.

  Unfortunately, the security cameras didn’t capture any good facial shots of the pair. That was always the case. I always wondered why in the hell they put security cameras high on the wall, usually in a corner, over looking the floor of a store. A good video or photo of the tops of heads of criminals doesn’t do much good when a cop is looking for an unknown suspect. The clerks and the security manager couldn’t give us much more than a description of their clothes, estimated age, race and gender. As the Beaver and I started to leave, I asked the security manager, “Is there anything else you can think of? Did they mention where they were staying? What hotel?”

  “No,” he said, “But you know, the guy looked a lot like Eddie Murphy.”

  We went by the casinos where they had gotten cash advances and gathered as much evidence as we could. I called the FDR investigator a couple of times later that afternoon in response to several pages from our after hours answering service. He indicated it appeared they were back together and hitting casinos in Glitter Gulch—the Union Plaza, the Lady Luck, and the Golden Nugget. He also told me they flew from Houston to Las Vegas using airline tickets bought with a stolen credit card. He discovered their return flight to Houston was leaving Las Vegas at two Sunday morning.

  The Beaver and I went to the downtown casinos and it seemed we were just missing them by minutes. We canvassed other casinos downtown and spread the word with the security departments, providing the suspects description and MO. We were having zero luck finding these two, but we still had their departing flight to bank on. If they showed up.

  We went to McCarran Airport around midnight and checked in with the airport cops. The Beaver and I walked toward the tram to get to the departure gate for the flight. Even in the eighties the Las Vegas airport was one busy place, handling millions of tourists dreaming of the big score at the Vegas casinos. But on that night it was pretty quiet and mostly deserted. As we walked toward the tram, we could see only two people waiting for the next tram. Two black males. One was tall and rather large, the second one was shorter. The closer we got, the more the short guy looked like Eddie Murphy. I nudged the Beaver, “There he is.” We were in full-on arrest mode. That’s our guy! We casually waited a few doors down from the two guys. No one else was getting on the tram. “Let’s get him before he gets on the tram.” We walked a little closer, ready to make our move. Wait! That’s Eddie Murphy…that’s the real Eddie Murphy! I’ll be damn if it wasn’t, “Good morning, Mr. Murphy.”

&
nbsp; We rode the tram out to the C gates with Mr. Murphy and, I guess, his bodyguard (the guy was huge). We went to the gate for the flight to Houston, waited and watched for Mr. and Mrs. Fraudster. Eventually, a black male and a black female, who matched the description, came to the gate. Beaver and I looked them over and both decided they had to be our suspects. We approached them and identified ourselves. I ask them their names. They both replied with a foreign accent, a British accent. We kindly asked them to accompany us to the PD substation at the airport. Mister Fraudster did look a little like Eddie Murphy.

  They both played dumb during the initial stages of our interview. They pulled the typical trick, pleading innocence, “That’s my credit card, that’s my name, maybe I’m late with my monthly payment, but I’ve been out of town…” We had heard those excuses before. But the lady’s purse had four different credit cards in four different names and two “Texas Department of Identification” cards with names to match two of the credit cards. These credit cards matched some of the fraudulent transactions made in Las Vegas that the FDR fraud investigator had told me about.

  We booked them into the Clark County Jail and I swore out an affidavit with John and Jane Doe arrest warrants. They followed the pattern and refused to cooperate with the US magistrate. I’m not sure if the court ever did determine their real names. Both ended up pleading guilty to the indictment and they were sentenced to only a few months each in a federal penitentiary. The US district court judge ordered they be deported at the conclusion of their sentences. I wouldn’t be surprised if they both lived in Houston.

  * * *

  There’s an old saying in law enforcement: We only catch the dumb ones. I don’t necessarily believe that, but I do know the dumb ones just make it easier. Take Ahmed Kalahi, for example, another Nigerian who made the mistake of trying to obtain a cash advance with a Visa credit card at Bally’s. By the time Ahmed showed up, the cashiers at Bally’s casino cage were really in tune with false identification. Kalahi presented the Visa credit card and a Rhode Island driver’s license to obtain a fifteen-hundred-dollar cash advance. The cashier compared the Rhode Island driver’s license against an “Identification Guide” booklet that had photos and descriptions of state issued driver’s licenses. It didn’t match, so she asked Kalahi his date of birth. The Rhode Island identification listed Kalahi’s date of birth as August 19, 1955; Kalahi told the cashier his birthday was April 21, 1954. Oops! Casino security grabbed him and called me.

  Kalahi told me that the Visa credit card was his and that he’d applied to Bank of America for the card. Bank of America was one of the few major banks with a 24/7 police hotline; I excused myself from the Bally’s security interview room and placed a telephone call to them. The bank records indicated Kalahi had applied for the card and it had been issued to him. The security investigator asked to speak with Kalahi. She asked him his social security number…he fumbled that one too. Time to go to jail, Mr. Kalahi.

  Kalahi told me he was a taxi driver in Washington, DC, and that’s all he would tell me. He refused to answer any personal history questions and he refused to sign the FBI fingerprint cards. The US magistrate released him on bail, which was a bit of a surprise. But I’ll be damned if he didn’t return to Las Vegas for his change of plea hearing.

  Change of plea hearings are held before a US district court judge, and it just so happened that the judge assigned to the case was in Washington, DC, for meetings. By pure coincidence, on his return flight to Las Vegas, the judge was sitting in the seat next to the defendant. And apparently, Mr. Khalil was one of those airline passengers that just love to tell their seatmate their life story. Somewhere over flyover country the judge realized his seatmate was coming to Las Vegas to plead guilty to credit card fraud in his courtroom.

  * * *

  Donnie, the Beaver, and I were arresting so many Nigerians it was completely unbelievable. I was discussing a Nigerian case with an investigator with a major bank and she told me her bank had started a database of addresses used by fraudsters, mainly Nigerians, to help the bank combat their fraud losses. When the bank received an application and the address of the applicant matched a known address of a previous falsely applied for credit card, they would flag the application for further inquiries to ensure the bank was issuing a credit card to a legitimate customer and not a fraudster.

  After our call, the wheels in my head started spinning—let’s set up a sting!

  I placed a phone call to another investigator with another major nationwide bank and he told me his department was doing the same thing with the known addresses from false applications for credit cards. I went into Donnie’s office and ran my plan by him and he thought it was a great idea.

  If we rent out a ballroom at a major Las Vegas casino, we could set up a “processing” station of Secret Service agents, other law enforcement agents, and bank investigators to verify a credit card as falsely obtained by the Nigerians we targeted. We send out mass mailings to known addresses used by Nigerians, tell them they won something “special,” something so tempting they couldn’t turn it down, tell them to report to the “Flamingo Room” at the “Whatever Hotel and Casino” on a specific date at a specific time.

  We tell them all they have to do to claim this tremendous prize is present their Visa or MasterCard with their identification and they win!

  Donnie and I briefed the boss on the sting. He actually thought we could iron out all the details and pull it off, but we were going to need money and manpower from headquarters to set this up and make it work. “Write up a detailed proposal, addressed to the SAIC of Fraud Division,” he told me. “I’ll sign it and we’ll send it up the chain. All they can say is no.”

  The boss said we should not start making any contacts with the US Attorney’s office just yet, even though without their blessing this sting was a pipe dream; and don’t contact any banks; don’t contact anyone about participation because if we can’t secure funding and a commitment from Fraud Division we would be wasting our time.

  Donnie and I put together a very detailed plan on how we envisioned this sting going down, how we could lure the known fraudsters to the ballroom, which statutes they could be arrested for, the estimated financial investment needed, and all the logistics to make the sting a success. And to our surprise, the Fraud Division actually considered my proposal. The Fraud Division ASAIC flew out to Las Vegas and we had a meeting to discuss the sting.

  It always comes down to money and Fraud Division decided funds were not available. In the middle of a presidential campaign money was tight. “But,” the ASAIC of the Fraud Division told me, “we like your initiative out there in the desert. Keep up the good work.”

  * * *

  Bally’s and a few other casinos had become very adept at spotting counterfeit identification documents. And there was a good reason for that. When a cashier finished a shift and counted out the till, it all had to balance out, and any shortage resulted in the cashier losing the money from his or her paycheck.

  It was the same for those cute change girls wandering around the casino floor. At the end of their shift, if the till didn’t add up, they were out the money. One night the Beaver and I responded to a call from the Circus Circus Casino. Security had one in custody for passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. This knucklehead tried to pass the counterfeit to a change girl and she spotted it as bad immediately. A casino is a dumb place to pass a counterfeit because change girls, casino cashiers, and dealers handle a large amount of cash daily. They are like bank tellers…counting bills constantly. Remember, a genuine FRN is printed by the intaglio method and that gives the note a rough, three-dimensional feel. Counterfeits printed by an offset press have the ink flat on the paper…they feel smooth to the touch. A seasoned cashier or bank teller doesn’t even have to look at a bill to tell it’s counterfeit…they can feel it.

  This change girl confronted the passer and he took off running for the front d
oor. She took off right after him, hollering and screaming for help from security. He made it out to Las Vegas Boulevard, but she didn’t stop at the door. No sir, she ran him down, with two overweight Circus Circus security officers trying to catch up to them. This gal tackled the bad guy on the sidewalk!

  It turned out he and his girlfriend had twenty thousand dollars in counterfeit twenties in the trunk of their car. We arrested both of them…and all because that change girl wasn’t about to be cheated out of twenty bucks when her shift was over.

  * * *

  The 1988 campaign began to wind down; I was working the shift on the Benson detail the night he had the one vice presidential debate with Senator Dan Quayle, the Republican VP nominee. I was holding a security post off of stage left, out of sight of the audience and TV cameras. When Senator Benson spoke his famous line about Senator Quayle, which was something like “I knew Jack Kennedy, Senator. And you are no Jack Kennedy!” The audience roared with laughter and I knew immediately the media would take that thirty-second sound bite and make it famous, and boy did they ever! Anytime, even to this day, when media pundits are discussing Dan Quayle, that sound bite gets mentioned.

  After the election loss of Dukakis and Benson to Bush and Quayle in November the Secret Service ended protection for Senator Benson. I remember Senator Benson as a fine Texas gentleman, he was a super-nice guy, and he once gave me a tip on cooking ears of fresh corn. “Stick ’em in the microwave with a splash of water. Set the timer for two minutes per ear. They will turn out perfect.” The Redhead still uses the “Benson Method” to this day.

  I was glad to get back to Vegas and my criminal cases. That campaign was a great learning experience for a young agent and I found I really enjoyed the protection mission of the Secret Service. Every now and then you’d run into an agent who hated protection, they just wanted to work criminal cases. I discovered I absolutely loved both missions equally. I couldn’t wait for my assignment to a permanent detail and I still had PPD in my sights.