Red Card

by Ken Bensinger

To a trained teller, that looked highly suspicious. Under federal law, banks are required to file a currency transaction report to regulators for all cash deposits over $10,000. People who wish to avoid such government scrutiny often purposely make deposits just below that amount, breaking large sums of money into dozens of small transactions.

  The practice is known as structuring or, more colorfully, smurfing—a term allegedly inspired by the image of an army of little blue men making hundreds of small deposits all at once. It is illegal, and by deliberately reducing his deposit to come in below that threshold, Warner had inadvertently given the teller the impression he was trying to hide structuring. The SAR detailing the teller’s concerns was a very exciting find for Berryman.

  Soon, the IRS agent had gotten a lock on many of the U.S. bank accounts belonging to Daryan Warner and other members of his family, and had begun subpoenaing for the underlying account information. He’d also figured out that the Warners flew almost exclusively on American Airlines, which had several nonstop flights a day between Miami and Port of Spain, and so he pulled the carrier’s flight records as well.

  With all those documents spread before him, Berryman could begin to see a crystal-clear, and highly unlawful, narrative emerge. Spotting structuring was an IRS agent’s bread and butter, as easy and routine as writing a speeding ticket for a highway patrolman. Berryman had a good idea of what the Warners had been doing; now it was just a matter of proving it down to the last detail.

  So, throughout much of 2012, Berryman undertook the laborious task of gathering evidence, tracking down deposit tickets and bank surveillance camera video, interviewing tellers, and getting handwriting analysis to verify that the signatures he found did indeed belong to Daryan and Daryll Warner.

  It was meticulous, grindingly slow work, and Berryman loved it. It was exactly the kind of thing he relished for its completeness, for its elegance, for the fact that it didn’t rely on anything except rock-solid documentary evidence. He determined to the minute when the deposits were made; he had photos of the Warners making them courtesy of the cameras on ATMs; and, thanks to an interview with the teller at the Chase branch in New York, he had evidence proving intent: by intentionally reducing the size of his deposit to come in below $10,000, Warner displayed clear knowledge of the law he was shirking.

  The Warners had clearly been structuring for years, but Berryman decided to zero in on a five-month window starting soon after Warner resigned from all his positions in world soccer.

  In that stretch of time, Berryman found, Daryan and Daryll traveled to New York, Frankfurt, Aruba, Las Vegas, Colombia, Jamaica, London, Prague, St. Petersburg, Guadalajara, and Dallas. Sometimes they traveled together; sometimes alone; in almost every case they’d stop for a few days in Miami before heading back to Port of Spain.

  Nearly every time they set foot in the U.S., the Warner brothers would make a beeline to a bank branch or ATM to deposit cash. Mostly it was dollars, but also euros, rubles, and pounds. Berryman isolated 112 discrete cash deposits of less than $10,000 into ten different accounts at American banks made in the course of all those trips, amounting to a grand total of $619,563.70.

  On August 29, 2011, for example, the two Warners got off an American Airlines flight from Aruba to Miami and, within a few hours, made deposits of $8,954.82 and $8,210.77 into accounts held by Daryll at Bank of America and Citibank. Daryll returned to Trinidad the next day, while his older brother flew a few days later to Las Vegas, where he made three separate deposits of $9,900 apiece into accounts at Chase and Citibank, before returning to Miami, depositing $9,950 into a Chase account, $9,900 into a Bank of America account, and $9,800 and $9,900 into a Wells Fargo account. Finally, on September 7, he deposited $9,950 at Chase, $9,800 at Citibank, $9,920 at Bank of America, and $9,960 at Wells Fargo, all in Miami and Coral Gables.

  In the space of ten days, the brothers had deposited just over $126,000 in cash into seven different accounts at four different American banks.

  Looking at all the deposit records he’d gathered, Berryman reminded himself that Warner’s soccer days were over when all of this happened. He was a government minister earning a public employee’s salary in Trinidad. It was hard not to wonder where all that cash was coming from.

  * * *

  Miami’s waterfront is lined with soaring residential skyscrapers, glittering generic monuments to newly acquired international wealth jutting straight up from sea level. Over the past fifteen years, billions of dollars have streamed into these buildings, which seemed to sprout like saw grass as foreign investors used the real estate market to convert foreign currency into dollars and safely park them in the U.S.

  The Skyline Condominium, in the Brickell neighborhood about a mile and a half south of downtown Miami, is as good an example as any of what might be called the South Florida foreign exchange school of architecture, which prizes speed of construction over any pretensions of artistic expression. The white and blue tower, completed in 2004, is thirty-five stories high and commands sweeping views of Biscayne Bay. It has a doorman, private marina, swimming pool, beach volleyball court, gym, and valet parking, features that make the edifice almost indistinguishable from the towers to either side of it.

  In late 2005, Daryll Warner bought a three-bedroom penthouse in the Skyline for $990,000, financing the purchase with a mortgage that he applied for using false information about his employment, residence, income, and assets. He affirmed to the lender that he’d pay the $300,000 down payment from his own accounts, thus establishing that he was the sole purchaser, but in fact two-thirds of the money came from a cashier’s check drawn on the account of a company belonging to his older brother, with the remaining $100,000 from an account in the name of the “CONCACAF Centre of Excellence.”

  Late on the night of Tuesday, November 20, 2012, Steve Berryman sat in a car parked outside the Skyline, staring up at Warner’s unit and watching to see if all the lights had finally gone out.

  * * *

  Several weeks earlier, Jared Randall had received an automated alert from a Customs and Border Protection database that tracks the entry of every person coming into the country by air or sea. Law enforcement agents can submit names to watch out for, and as soon as one of those people so much as books an airline ticket, it alerts the system, triggering an automatic email.

  As the team expanded the scope of its investigation, its border watch list had grown large, and alerts arrived with increasing frequency as global soccer officials came in and out of the country. Pending arrivals represented possible opportunities, provoking long discussions between Norris and Berryman about the benefits of serving a subpoena at the airport, for example, or trying to corner someone else and get them to flip. But because of their overriding concerns about preserving the case’s secrecy, most alerts came and went with no action taken at all.

  This one was different. Jack Warner was flying into Miami for Thanksgiving, and his wife and both sons were going to be there as well. It was the opportunity the investigators had been waiting for.

  Heart surgery had put Berryman out of commission for almost three weeks. Since returning to work, his heart had gone into atrial fibrillation several times, terrifying episodes that made him think he might have a stroke at any moment. When he flew to New York from California early that week, he was still so weak that he couldn’t lift his suitcase off the luggage carousel without asking a stranger for help.

  But early on November 20, Berryman put on a suit and tie and appeared before a United States magistrate judge in Brooklyn federal court to swear to a sealed criminal complaint against Daryan and Daryll Warner, then hopped on a flight to Miami and staked out the condo until he was sure everyone was asleep, what agents called “putting a target to bed.”

  About an hour before sunrise the next morning, Berryman met up with Randall, two local FBI agents, and two Miami-based IRS agents in a church parking lot. Mike Gaeta, as the C-24 squad supervisor, had largely been absent from day-to-day work on the case, o
ccupied instead with overseeing the numerous different investigations his agents were working simultaneously, but he’d made the trip down as well. This was important. All of the agents wore bulletproof vests and nylon windbreakers, with “FBI” or “IRS-CID POLICE” printed in oversized letters on the back.

  They drove to the Warners’ building together, parked in the underground garage, and rode the elevator up to the lobby, where a security guard accompanied them to a second, high-speed elevator, turning a key in the control panel to prevent the lift from making any unwanted stops.

  The seven federal agents paused at the penthouse’s black door to unholster their sidearms, letting the weapons hang at their side. Then Gaeta, arrest warrants in hand, knocked. It was barely six in the morning on Thanksgiving eve and the building was completely quiet. As they waited, the agents stood in the carpeted hallway bathed in the silence, eyes wide.

  Finally Daryan, short like his father, but more muscular, with bulging biceps, a boyish face, and hints of gray in his hair, swung open the door, groggy from sleep.

  “FBI,” Gaeta barked. “You’re under arrest.”

  Daryan let the agents in and they spread around the apartment, going from room to room to ensure there were no weapons, before returning and putting their pistols back in their holsters. By then, the entire Warner family was in the living room, stunned looks on their faces. The brothers needed to dress and fetch their passports, Gaeta said, and while they did, perhaps Dad would be amenable to a nice little chat.

  As the other agents accompanied Daryan and Daryll to their bedrooms, Randall, Berryman, and Gaeta took a seat at the dining room table along with Jack Warner.

  If they couldn’t arrest the man, then maybe they could bust his kids in front of him and shock him into flipping. That was the big plan, and it was why Gaeta had made the trip to Miami. He was the talker, the one who had made a career out of converting hardened Genovese wiseguys into stool pigeons. He had started this case two years earlier and now, with any luck, he was going to take a huge step toward closing it.

  “We would like to talk to you about helping us,” Gaeta began, his New York diction seeming to thicken in the tense atmosphere. “This is your chance to come clean and fix things.”

  He wanted to know it all, he said. About the bribes. About Russia and Qatar winning the World Cup. About the tickets, the offshore companies, and about Sepp Blatter.

  “You promised a tsunami,” Gaeta said, referencing Warner’s oft-quoted statements prior to his resignation from FIFA. “We want to know all about the tsunami.”

  “Where,” Warner responded, “are you taking my sons?”

  It was as if the two men were talking past one another, making eye contact but not really listening. As Gaeta grew more animated, laying his New York accent on stronger, Warner seemed to stiffen, and his high-pitched Trinidad drawl grew more pronounced. His initial jumpy nervousness faded, and his narrow features progressively hardened. Warner was much tougher than anyone had guessed.

  “This is your chance,” Gaeta repeated, “to come clean.”

  By then, Warner had his cell phone in his hand and seemed increasingly eager to use it.

  “I’ll think about it,” Warner said, his eyes focusing now and filling with cold fury. “I’ll get an attorney.”

  It was over. The conversation had lasted less than ten minutes. Warner wasn’t biting.

  By then, Daryan and Daryll were ready to go. The agents stood, disappointed looks on their faces. They read the brothers their Miranda rights, placed handcuffs on their wrists, then escorted them out of their penthouse, down to the garage, and drove to the FBI’s drab, two-story field office in North Miami Beach.

  By the time they got there, Jack Warner had retained lawyers for his sons. Hours later, Daryan and Daryll flew to New York, accompanied by Randall and several other agents, while Berryman stayed behind in Miami to interview a few more bank tellers about deposits the Warners had made.

  The case he had made against them was strong. By structuring more than $100,000 in under a year’s time, each brother faced up to ten years in prison on top of significant fines. They had little choice but to cooperate, and before the month was out they, like Blazer, would be proffering to the prosecutors in Brooklyn in hopes of winning a lighter sentence.

  Norris and the others had viewed Warner as a key to the entire case, and had spent months strategizing about how best to reel him in before coming up with what seemed like a winning plan. But the wily Trinidadian had looked his antagonists straight in the eye, and he had not blinked.

  The day after his devoted sons were arrested right in front of him, Warner flew back to the safe confines of his native Trinidad, far out of reach.

  NINETEEN

  * * *

  “A SAD AND SORRY TALE”

  EARLY IN 2008, A FEDERAL grand jury in Brooklyn handed down a massive indictment targeting sixty-two members of the Gambino, Genovese, and Bonanno crime families, and in a series of takedowns in New York, New Jersey, and Sicily, federal agents made dozens of arrests. The Gambinos were particularly targeted, with fifty-four members of the family arrested, and eventually, an entire generation of Gambino leadership went to prison.

  The operation had been a resounding success, splashed across the front pages of the tabloids, which prosecutors proudly cut out, framed, and hung on the walls of their offices. But the arrests and subsequent convictions did not fully dismantle the Gambino family business. Instead, with the old bosses out of commission, new leadership quickly stepped forward to take over, forming a three-man panel to secretly oversee the syndicate’s criminal activities.

  In January 2011, agents unleashed an even bigger takedown, arresting some 125 people based on sixteen different indictments. All three members of the Gambino crime family’s new ruling panel were picked up, and in March of 2013, Norris temporarily left the soccer case to try one of them, a longtime mobster named Bartolomeo Vernace, handing the reins to Amanda Hector and Darren LaVerne.

  On April 17, after an exhausting five-week trial, Norris won convictions on RICO, narcotics, gambling, loan sharking, robbery, firearms, and murder charges, and Vernace was eventually sentenced to life without parole. But once again, the arrests and convictions did not fully dismantle the family business. Long before Vernace’s reckoning, another wiseguy, Domenico Céfalu, had stepped up as the new Gambino boss.

  That was how it worked, fighting organized crime. No sooner did you bust one generation of crooks than you were chasing after the ones that came up behind them.

  * * *

  On April 19, 2013, Sir David Simmons, former chief justice of Barbados, faced the CONCACAF congress in the Westin Playa Bonita in Panama to announce the results of the lengthy internal investigation of the administration of Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer.

  Working for the confederation’s Integrity Committee, Sidley Austin’s lawyers and a team of accountants had interviewed thirty-eight witnesses, reviewed four terabytes of data, and pored over reams of bank records, emails, and other correspondence. Their conclusion, Simmons said, was that CONCACAF’s prior leadership had “misappropriated funds” and “committed fraud.” Warner and Blazer had run the confederation entirely at their convenience, for their illicit profit, and should be condemned.

  The 144-page final report, which had not previously been public, laid out as a breathtaking narrative of self-interest, incomplete disclosure, and outright theft. Between his 10 percent contract, other fees, and liberal use of the confederation’s expense accounts to pay for his lifestyle, including rent, Blazer had skimmed an astonishing $20.6 million from the confederation between 1996 and 2011, the investigation found. He had put the soccer body at risk by failing to file its tax returns, and had caused it to buy numerous properties that were for his benefit alone.

  Warner, meanwhile, had abused his presidency to secretly take ownership of the Centre of Excellence, thus appropriating for himself roughly $26 million in funds that belonged to CONCACAF, including $462,200 se
nt from Australia’s soccer federation in connection with its 2022 World Cup bid. Warner had even set up secret bank accounts that only he controlled, in the name of the CONCACAF Centre of Excellence, that received deposits directly from FIFA that went to his benefit alone.

  “I have recounted a sad and sorry tale in the life of CONCACAF,” Simmons said. “A tale of abuse of position and power, by persons who assisted in bringing the organization to profitability but who enriched themselves at the expense of their very own organizations.”

  After the presentation, Jeffrey Webb, flanked by Sepp Blatter and Enrique Sanz, summoned reporters so he could loudly pronounce his disapproval. “Members are obviously very disappointed, some of them deeply disappointed,” Webb said. “They have a right to be.”

  * * *

  Webb had been the confederation’s president for only ten months but he was already a star in the soccer world.

  In late February, Webb had been named the Cayman Islands’ ”Person of the Year,” and in early March, Sepp Blatter appointed him chairman of FIFA’s new antiracism and discrimination task force.

  Still just forty-eight years old, Webb was one of seven FIFA vice presidents and an increasingly in-demand public speaker and ambassador of the sport; rumors began to spread that he might someday replace Blatter as president of the entire organization.

  He’d talked repeatedly with the leadership of South America’s confederation about their idea for a Copa América Centenario, and he’d spent several days prior to the Panama congress escorting Blatter and FIFA general secretary Jérôme Valcke on a tour of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and finally Cuba, where they had a face-to-face meeting with Raúl Castro himself. Everywhere he went, he touted the reforms he was making.

  Indeed, Webb had made changes, considerable ones, but rather than cleaning up the sport, they seemed directed at surrounding himself with people who were loyal only to him and would protect his growing book of illicit activities.