The Hunt for Maan Singh

by Hipólito Acosta

  The case had taken on a new identity under the title of “Operation Sikh and Keep,” purposefully punning on the religious connotation. Buoyed by the progress they had made, but feeling sorry about Flores, A. J. and Poli hit the bars.

  Poli, now installed in the Juárez office, in early 1997 had developed a convicted smuggler by the name of Carlos Martínez, alias “Enrique Babaco,” into a confidential informant. After a plea bargain and credit for time served, Martínez agreed to share what he knew and go undercover as Babaco for the INS. Prior to his capture, he had been in the business so long that he practically knew every single smuggler in South and Central America. He was considered the supreme coyote, who knew the trade from A to Z. But Martínez was not the typical smuggler, his having been college-educated, and a thorough gentleman, soft-spoken and even an expert with computers. He walked with a severe limp that he claimed was a motorcycle injury, but others said it was a gunshot wound. Martínez who seemed to be reformed, returned to El Salvador, where he had been living with his family, and immediately began re-integrating himself into the smuggling network. By September, he was shadowing a group of twenty-eight Central Americans and three Egyptians bound for Minnesota. He dutifully contacted Poli, who went down to Chihuahua City to meet Babaco and then alerted the INS agents in Arizona to capture the ring-leaders as they crossed the border.

  It was after he had thus proved himself that Martínez confirmed to Poli that he knew Maan Singh personally and agreed to go down to Ecuador and meet with him. That same September 1997, Babaco introduced Poli, otherwise known as “Fernando,” to Singh as a wealthy Mexican rancher interested in making some money by smuggling aliens; it would be a great opportunity for partnership. Here, for the first time, an INS agent was face to face with Maan Singh. At Maan Singh’s hotel, Hostal Bavaria, Fernando also got a glimpse at a dozen or so Indians and Pakistanis waiting their turns to make the trip north.

  After agreeing to set up a relationship with Fernando, the tight-lipped Singh dismissed him, saying, “Okay, we’ll be in touch through Babaco,” and walked towards his group of clients and began addressing them in Punjab. Following the meeting, Babaco briefed Poli on the work he would be doing for Singh: helping to smuggle twenty-three Indians on a boat named “El Almirante” from Cuenca, Ecuador, to the Guatemalan coast on their way up through Mexico and into the United States. Poli immediately charged Babaco with taking photos of the ship, the captain and the aliens. He stressed that any operation at sea that was related to the INS had to take place without putting the aliens in any danger whatsoever.

  On returning to Juárez, Poli put Babaco in contact with A. J., who persisted in debriefing him with as many as five calls a day. To cut through all of the anecdotes, A. J. insisted during each phone conversation that Babaco “follow the money.” After about three weeks of A. J. badgering him five times a day, Babaco finally came up with the name of Gunvantla Shah in North Bergen, New Jersey, and his telephone number. The Dallas office subsequently contacted the Newark Office of the INS, which had never heard the name, and together they subpoenaed telephone records. Newark agent Rick Van Ohlen warned A. J. that his boss, Dimitrious Georgeakopoulos, was extremely territorial, a “real asshole.” This would be confirmed later in the case.

  In spite of obstructionism from the Newark office, on November 24, 1997, the DOJ gave a green light for the team to install a pen register on Shah’s phones. The standards for obtaining permission were much lower than for an outright wiretap. All the pen register monitored was the numbers called, but it gave the INS the ability to trace the identity of the callers. Once the register was installed, the phone records of Gunvantla Shah revealed thousands of telephone calls at all times of day and night to India, Europe, Central and South America. The registered numbers became a basis for obtaining wiretap permission later on in the operation. One recurrent number was in Quito, Ecuador. Both Dallas and Newark began subpoenaing and tracing all the numbers in the United States that appeared on Shah’s records. It turned out that Gunvantla was the banker for the system, in which physical cash never crossed the oceans. A. J. soon realized, from a former case he had worked in Oklahoma City, that it was a “hawala” network. Continuing an age-old East Indian practice known as “hawala,” money transfers were based on a system of trust in which people send a sum of money to a “banker” in the United States for a disbursement in India or Pakistan, or anywhere South Asians live; the U.S. banker contacts his associate in the target country to disburse the same sum deposited minus interest charges, which are levied at each end of the transaction. Gunvantla was actually collecting fifteen percent interest on millions of dollars transferred.

  A. J. took these new findings to Poli, and they both began to develop an undercover plan. Amer Sultan was no longer in play because he had been burned in San Antonio. The novel solution to substituting Amer was to forge an arrangement with an American airline to fly the South Asian pollos from Quito to Miami and then to Dallas. Under this arrangement, A. J. would phone in to the gate agents in Quito the list of passengers with phony passports and the aliens would be allowed to board—the INS indemnified American Airlines for allowing the illegals to fly into the United States. A variation on the plan called for transporting the aliens from Ecuador by boat to Guatemala and then to Miami.

  Poli and A. J. proceeded to forward paperwork to staff officers in DC to present to the INS undercover review committee. However, the staff officer, John Connolly, responded, “A. J., I can’t take this to the committee. It’s just too complicated. You guys are gonna have to come up here and present it yourselves.”

  So A. J. and Poli let out all stops, preparing a PowerPoint showing the Hostal Bavaria, “El Almirante”—a fishing vessel used to smuggle the first group of aliens and one of the most difficult approvals of the DOJ; as a matter of fact, the boat never made its destination and is still a great mystery—would be commissioned, pictures of the fuel on board and of the captain, as well as the agents. They even included a photo of Navtej Sandhu, who was a top target for Sikh and Keep and had previously been convicted of human smuggling. Eight of the twenty-three aliens to board “El Almirante” were to be brought there by Sandhu. Foremost on their minds was convincing the committee that they had provided for the safety of the aliens.

  A second issue the review committee would bring up concerned how many passengers would be smuggled via the airlines and how they would be controlled, how the agents would substantiate that the aliens were not terrorists coming to do us harm. A. J. was ready for that also: pictures would be taken in advance of the passports and they would run them through all the intelligence agencies; no one would be allowed to come to the country if they were a security risk. It was even better than normal entry procedures because the INS would actually get a chance to weed out and identify bad actors while they were still thousands of miles away from the United States, and they could be arrested before they even left South America.

  Finally, records would be kept where they went and who paid for them so all the aliens could be used as witnesses and for criminal counts. They would be located along with other illegal family members, and the businesses that paid for them would be identified and raided.

  Before heading to DC, A. J. and Poli even arranged for the U.S. attorney, Matt Yarbrough, to accompany them to the meeting to cover the legal questions.

  When the trio arrived at the Department of Justice in DC, however, they received a pail of cold water in their otherwise enthusiastic faces.

  Frank Marín, ranking member of the DOJ undercover review committee, sporting a bad perm, gritted his teeth and said, “What?! The INS smuggling aliens! No way! Look, I really admire what you guys are trying to do, but if us smuggling isn’t bad enough, you/we can’t guarantee the safety of the immigrants that you will actually be smuggling. We have no choice but to turn down your request.”

  “Are you the final authority?” asked Matt, rather brazenly. “Who can we appeal your decision to?”

  To which P
oli added, living up to his gung-ho reputation: “You don’t know me. I don’t take no for an answer. Are you the final authority, or can we appeal it to someone else?”

  A flustered Marín looked around the room filled with DOJ executives and back to Poli and said, “Well, ah, ah, . . . you can go to Deputy Attorney General Jack Keeney. But before you do, you have to get Commissioner Meissner’s personal approval.” He smirked, confident that these rubes from the hinterland would make no headway.

  Poli’s simple reply was, “Okay,” and he jumped to his feet and shouted, “A. J., Matt, let’s go.”

  As the trio ran out, it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. They ran up the stairs to the seventh floor, followed by some DOJ members trying to beat them to Meissner’s office. Some fifteen others tried to stuff themselves into an elevator and cut the Texas trio off.

  On dashing into Meissner’s outer office, the trio encountered her secretary, who refused to let them in to see the commissioner. Poli then darted out into the hall, running, and busted into the office of Mark Reed, the Acting Executive Associate Commissioner of Field Operations, ie., the number three ranking executive for the INS. Running up to Reed, he blurted out, “We need to see Meissner right away—the committee turned us down, and we want to appeal . . . we need her to intervene.”

  “Jesus, you’re fucking crazy,” Reed said, but nevertheless started walking down the hall for the commissioner’s office.

  This time, the trio escorted by Mark got by the executive assistant. Reed knocked on Meissner’s door and stuck his head in.

  “What is it, Mark?”

  “We need to appeal a decision at DOJ . . . it’ll need your personal concurrence . . . for an undercover operation. . . . ”

  “Well, who’s working the case?”

  “Poli Acosta.”

  “That’s all I need to know. You have my concurrence,” said Meissner, who had recently given both Poli and A. J. an award.

  The next step was to reach Jack Keeney, whoever that was, someone completely unknown to the trio. Poli immediately thought of his boss, Phyllis Coven, the director of International Affairs for the INS. So they high-tailed it down to the street, now covered by a heavy snowfall for November, and trudged two long blocks to her office suite. Poli and his compadres walked into her inner office without an appointment and bypassed her executive assistant.

  “Phyllis, look, I need your help. The undercover review committee turned down ‘Sikh and Keep.’”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Well, Meissner gave us the okay, but we have to appeal it to a guy named Jack Keeney.”

  Laughing, Phyllis said, “I know Jack. He’s a friend of mine,” and she proceeded to dial his direct line. After the pleasantries, she summarized the issue. A few minutes later, she said into the phone, “Okay, we’ll be there at three.” Then she dialed another number and asked Lou Nardi, director of investigations for the INS, to join her at the meeting with Keeney.

  Phyllis grabbed her coat and the group went out onto the street to get a cab. It was 2:30, Thursday, but getting a cab in the snow was near impossible. The Texas trio worried that they’d not make it in the time that Keeney had ordered, so they hotfooted to the appointment. About 2:55, they rushed into the DOJ but faced delays through security, which was very tight. Finally, they made it up to the second floor and were ushered into a conference room to await for Keeney.

  Seated facing the door, the trio was chagrined to see a scowling Frank Marín enter, wiping snow from his overcoat and taking off the fedora that had protected his perm. He tugged his scarf off, incredulity written all over his face.

  Keeney followed Marín in, sat down and wasted no time. “Phyllis, what’s this about?”

  Phyllis Coven summarized.

  Keeney then asked Marín, “Frank, what was the basis for the denial?”

  “Wa-wa-wa . . . there were some unanswered questions that the agents could not respond to, like how they’re gonna keep tabs on the smuggled aliens.”

  “They’re going to be shadowed all the way through,” interjected Poli.

  “Bu-bu-but what if they get lost? What guarantees do you have?” said Marín.

  “We don’t have any guarantees,” answered Poli.

  “Aren’t they going to come in anyway?” asked Keeney.

  “Yes,” Poli and A. J. chorused in unison.

  “Well,” referring to the report that A. J. had written, Keeney said, “it seems to me to be a reasonable proposal, well-written, well thought-out. So, I want a white paper on my desk by 8 am Monday. I’ll render my decision by 10 am. Okay?”

  It turned out that Keeney had been with the DOJ for some forty years; he was a sharp seventy-six years old. When he retired a decade later, he was the longest serving employee of the U.S. government. During World War II, he had been captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner of war. He had an intimidating presence, but made people feel at ease. To Poli and A. J. he was the first one in the hierarchy to listen to them with an open mind.

  After he left the conference room and out of earshot, A. J. whispered to Poli, “What the hell is a white paper?”

  Matt said, “Don’t worry about it. You write it and I’ll format it,” knowing full well that it was simply a formal proposal like so many he had written in his job and in law school.

  The Texas trio then hit the first bar they ran across, an Irish pub a few blocks from headquarters.

  A. J. and Matt were flying back to Dallas and working on the white paper. On Saturday, they conferred with Poli over the phone and through fax, and by Sunday afternoon they had finished the document and got it on to Keeney’s desk that Sunday night.

  At 9 am Monday, Poli, Lou Nardi and Phyllis joined Frank Marín and a couple of his fellow attorneys in the same conference room. At 10 am promptly, Jack Keeney walked in a said, “I have only one question: Are you going to do any electronic recording outside the United States?”

  Poli smiled to himself and smirked at Frank Marín, and gave a safe answer: “Yes, but only on embassy grounds. We don’t want to violate any country’s sovereignty.”

  “Well, heck,” rejoined Keeney, “you’re violating a bunch of other laws. What’s one more?”

  “Sir,” said Poli, “if that statement is a concurrence for us to record outside the United States, I will take it as such.”

  “You do whatever it takes to get you home safe.” Then Keeney rotated to meet the eyes of all seated around the conference table and concluded, “I will approve this operation, but it’s to be worked under strict Department of Justice guidelines and reporting.”

  All rose, shook hands, and the original doubters and obstructionists from DOJ pretended to be Poli’s best friends, patting him on the back and saying what a great case it was.

  Poli was headed back to Ciudad Juárez via Dallas, where A. J. and Matt had worked all weekend preparing the white paper.

  CHAPTER 4

  The plan that was set in motion involved a two-prong approach of monitoring Singh’s smuggling of aliens by sea on a fishing vessel sailing from Port Esmeralda in Ecuador to the northern coast of Guatemala and from there overland through Mexico to South Texas. The second prong was to board the aliens trafficked by Maan Singh and Navtej Sandhu on American Airlines flights from Quito to Miami. From Miami, they’d be brought into Dallas, where undercover agents would record phone calls and document the addresses and modes of transportation to the aliens’ ultimate destinations. Gunvantla’s transactions in New Jersey would be monitored to see if the movement of the aliens triggered his hawala activity to pay. The plan involved finessing an airline to board aliens without proper documentation, because they would otherwise be subject to severe fines. This last obstacle was overcome when A. J., after conferring with the Department of Justice, assured the senior analyst, John Warner, of corporate security at American Airlines that they would not be cited for any violations. The stage was set.

  The Department of Just
ice Undercover Review Committee had tight control of the project from the outset. Poli flew down to Ecuador and took over the Quito office to make sure things got off to a good start and there was consistent follow-through. Poli met with confidential informant Babaco every night to ensure the aliens would be safe, have enough provisions and water for the ocean voyage and not be exposed to danger. One major exposure would be that of other smugglers high-jacking ships for their valuable human cargo. Constant communications would be implemented ship-to-shore. The captain of the ship would maintain daily contact with Babaco, who would forward the info to Poli, and he to A. J.

  Twenty-three aliens were lined up, their coyote in Guatemala, Álvaro Valencia, flew down for last details and “El Almirante” fishing boat took on supplies. The norm for such smuggling operations was to board some forty aliens, but the DOJ undercover committee doubted that their agents could control so many for safety reasons. Babaco, as the DOJ mouthpiece, with some difficulty convinced Maan Singh and the ship captain that this was a trial run on a new route, and that it was better not to put the entire load of aliens at risk and, thus, ensure their investment.

  Just before the ship left port, Maan Singh gave Babaco a check from a London bank for supplies. The operation was already paying off. For the first time, DOJ had Maan Singh’s signature on a payoff, and evidence of his complicity.

  Eleven days after the approval of the DOJ undercover committee, “El Almirante” sailed on Thanksgiving Day 1997, from Port Esmeralda, loaded with fuel and supplies for a two-week trip. Like most smuggling vessels, “El Almirante” would have to sail beyond the national waters of the countries along the way. A. J. was able to monitor all of the ship-to-shore calls from El Almirante, but after only a week “El Almirante” went silent, and A. J. began to sweat it. Evidently, “El Almirante” was caught in a storm, got lost and was using up all of its fuel. The vessel had to divert to Panama to refuel. After leaving Panama and once again on the high seas, “El Almirante” sailed again into another storm and was lost. With communications broken down and the DOJ undercover committee frantic and on Poli’s and A. J.’s backs, it looked very bleak for this prong of the operation. A disaster in the making.