Relentless Pursuit

by Bradley J. Edwards

  Alfredo Rodriguez pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was freed on bail. Coincidentally, Alfredo’s case was in front of Judge Marra—the same judge presiding over the still pending Crime Victims’ Rights Act case that I had filed back in 2008. Judge Marra entered an eighteen-month suspended sentence after Alfredo promised to cooperate with the government. Alfredo took this court document showing his guilty plea, put it in the front seat of his truck, and drove toward Miami. Before arriving at his house, he stopped at an apartment complex.

  Unfortunately for Alfredo, this was an apartment complex under surveillance for an operation targeting the running of guns and automatic weapons from South America. Alfredo walked out of the apartment carrying two AK-47s and multiple magazines of ammunition. He was arrested by FBI agents in the parking lot. Knowing that he was in big trouble, he explained to the agents that he was coming from the courthouse, where he had just pleaded guilty and he was cooperating in a major sex-trafficking operation. While the agents knew about the case and saw his court documentation on his front seat, this was not enough to convince them to let him walk.

  During this new investigation, the agents also confiscated numerous guns from his home. This whole ordeal was an immediate violation of the probation that he had been placed on only hours before, resulting in a five-year prison sentence. Alfredo was never given a chance to cooperate with the feds against Epstein because of these new charges. Even Judge Marra commented on the disparity in Alfredo’s receiving more prison time for having possessed the Holy Grail than Epstein received for committing crimes against the people in the document itself.

  More concerning for me was the fact that I learned of Alfredo’s arrest in the newspaper. You might think the FBI would have called to let me know that the man against whom I was a confidential informant pleaded guilty, then immediately bought assault rifles and ammo to do God knows what to God knows who. Because they arrested Alfredo before learning what he was going to do with the artillery, they didn’t think warning me was necessary.

  FIFTEEN THE NEW BERNIE MADOFF

  BY OCTOBER 2009, WE WERE putting pressure on Epstein from every angle. We had subpoenaed his friends and high-powered connections, deposed his employees, and uncovered his private travel information, including his flight logs. We were giving him a taste of his own medicine.

  One morning, I went to the twelfth floor of RRA and the war room where we were keeping the files related to Epstein. My lead investigator, Mike Fisten, was normally on that floor, but he wasn’t in his office. Mike and the files were missing. Something was off. I called him on his cell phone, asking, “Where are the files?”

  “Scott had us wheel them to his office,” Mike responded.

  “Why?” I inquired.

  “We weren’t given any information; just that it was urgent that all of the Epstein files be brought to his office. He sent his bodyguard down to the war room to load them on a cart and take them up. I went up there when they were delivered,” Mike explained.

  This made no sense to me, but Scott was the boss and could certainly say where the files were going to be kept. Scott did have extreme paranoia about security. Maybe with all the intense activity, especially given my FBI cooperation with Alfredo and the implication of other powerful people whom we now knew were frequent travelers on Epstein’s jet, he wanted to provide maximum security. But even if that was the explanation, why wouldn’t Scott discuss it with me first?

  After our first “interview,” Scott had spoken to me on only two occasions. The first time I was eating lunch in Bova Prime when he walked by my crowded table, shouting, “Have you gotten that pedophile yet?” loud enough to make sure that the entire restaurant heard him. The second time, I was standing in the hallway outside my office talking to Russell Adler when Scott asked, “How’s that case with that pedophile going?”

  Despite Scott’s quirks, I appreciated the resources of the firm and the way Scott was in his own world and let me do my thing without much interference. With this unannounced move of my files, though, he changed that. I went to Scott’s office but didn’t have an appointment, so I couldn’t get in.

  I went to Russell’s office. He was at his stand-up keyboard, looking past his monitor out the window at the Fort Lauderdale skyline. “Russ,” I started, but only got that one word out before he interrupted, talking a mile a minute, which was a normal tempo for Russ: “Brad, what’s up, man? We have all kinds of great stuff going on. You’re a rock star, the next great trial lawyer. Scott is taking notice. He’s personally reviewing your Epstein cases. He’s really busy with his other businesses, including the Qtask computer software that he’s working on, but he had Fisten and the guys bring him the files. You’re rising to the top fast. With that case, everyone in America is going to know you.”

  Still skeptical, I asked, “I don’t understand, what does any of this have to do with my files being in Scott’s locked office?”

  Russ fired back: “Before Scott was the power-broker businessman that he is, he was the best trial lawyer around. He wants to try the Epstein case with you personally. This is a huge deal. He’s personally all in. Imagine what you’re going to be able to do with these cases with literally unlimited resources.”

  For a second, this thought excited me. My mind drifted to Scott following me into a courtroom where Epstein and his tribe of high-priced lawyers had to sit quiet, taking the wrath of my closing argument. We had assembled all of the evidence. Epstein’s famous political friends testified and were forced to tell the truth in the face of irrefutable proof and a judge threatening perjury charges against all of them. Even Clinton suddenly understood the common definition of “sexual relations” and testified against his pal. Not only did the jury decide that all of Epstein’s money would go to the many victims he hurt, but the judge ordered Epstein and his buddies to be removed in handcuffs. Epstein’s hundreds of victims cheered. Finally, justice.

  When the daydream faded, reality set back in. My files were not accessible. Scott was not accessible. His office was like a sealed vault with multiple layers of protection to keep everyone out, including me.

  This was not an exaggeration. In order to get into Scott’s office, you had to tell his assistant that you wanted to meet with him and wait outside the door. She would then let you through a door into a room with a private elevator on one side and another series of doors on the other. Once you were granted permission to enter one of those doors, you were trapped in an area where only Scott could let you through a corridor into his office. He had an enormous twenty-five-foot conference table and a desk with six computer screens that rose on elevator platforms out of the mahogany. The upholstery on his office furniture was Ferrari leather. Now my case files were in Scott’s secret compound, and I had to try to figure out how to speak with Scott.

  Scott claimed to have an open-door policy each Tuesday, which he called “Talk to Me Tuesday,” but, inevitably, those meetings would get delayed into “Whine to Me Wednesday” or “Try Me Again Thursday” or “Go F*** Yourself Friday.” This kiss-ass meeting scheduling process was bullshit and wasn’t worth the time it would waste. I didn’t have that time to burn. I just continued to do what I was doing. I decided that trying to talk to him about the physical files wasn’t worth the trouble. Most of the materials were stored on the computer to which I had access, or their contents were in my head at this point, so I resorted to alternative options.

  On October 23, 2009, a week after he took the files, I got an email from Scott demanding that I and three other attorneys, including Russell Adler, report to his office immediately. I didn’t go. I was not happy with him. He’d had my files in his office for that long and hadn’t said a word to me about it. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the chance to, either.

  Days earlier he had called one of his firm-wide meetings. He sent an email demanding every lawyer report to the firm’s barroom—a glass-enclosed alcohol-filled bar on the twenty-second floor of our office building. It was not a small room, b
ut it was tight with forty or more lawyers crammed in. Scott walked in twitching and holding a martini. He was noticeably irritated.

  He began frantically pounding numbers on the oversize conference phone on the table, connecting the RRA Boca, Caracas, and Miami offices so that he had everyone’s attention.

  Once they were on, he slammed his martini on the table, spilling most of it on himself as he cocked his head to his favorite position before launching into a nonsensical tirade at full volume: “I’ve built the most successful f***ing firm in Fort Lauderdale, maybe the United States. You lazy f***s are just coasting. The numbers suck. What the f*** do you assholes do all f***ing day? Money doesn’t sleep, you f***s. I can fire all of you right now and am close to doing it and just shutting this firm down. You have no appreciation for what has been given to you—this opportunity, you’re just going to coast until I fire you. I will do it; I haven’t decided whether it will be one at a time or all at once. I built new offices for half of you. And you repay me by doing nothing, sitting around with your thumbs up your f***ing ass. Get the f*** out of here and go do something to show me you want your job—for those of you that don’t know what I mean, go make me some goddamn money.”

  His rant ended with him stumbling, clearly drunk, and holding the conference phone in his hands, screaming into it like the Scarface scene where Tony Montana yells at Sosa. After we went back to our floor, another lawyer who was infatuated with Scott told me that we really should feel more gratitude for Scott. I remember thinking, Are you kidding? That guy is a lunatic.

  Now, less than a week after his tantrum, Scott was demanding that I go to his office along with three other lawyers. I could not imagine why, if three other lawyers were there, I also needed to be there. I had work to do and frankly didn’t have time for Scott Rothstein. His flamboyant drill-sergeant, football-coach style might have had a certain amount of charm at first, but it had grown old. So, I ignored him.

  Apparently this was unprecedented. No one ignored Scott, which I learned that very day when his assistant, and Russell, and Marc, and Scott, frantically continued to call me to get me to the meeting. I was in the office, and now ignoring them was becoming more time-consuming than just going. I eventually answered the phone for Russ. He knew what to say to make me move: “Brad, get up here. It’s about Epstein.”

  When I got there, I found four others in the room, including Scott, and at least one lawyer on the phone. Scott was standing over nine boxes of Epstein files and silenced everyone as I walked into the center of the room. Providing no context whatsoever, Scott, seeming like he was on some sort of stimulant, shouted, “Brad, just the person we need—we need an answer quickly.”

  “About what?” I asked, really wanting to ask much more but also knowing it was not the time to overstep, especially since everyone in the room knew I had been intentionally ignoring all of them for the past fifteen minutes.

  “You don’t need to know anything. I have a simple research question about structured settlements. I need a simple answer,” he said impatiently.

  Russ jumped in. “This is important, everyone, let’s get an answer,” taking the spotlight off of me.

  Scott continued: “Guys, I need you. You are the smartest in this firm, and we are the best firm in town. We are close to something monumental. You do your magic and get me an answer and I will do mine. There is no time to waste. Go back to your offices and send me the answer.” It was obvious this question was the most important thing in the world to Scott.

  We all walked out of Scott’s fortress together. As soon as the door shut behind us, I turned to Russ. “What is going on?”

  “Scott’s talking to people only he has access to. Not only Epstein’s people but his rich friends who we know were involved. They want to settle the case for hundreds of millions,” he explained. “Confidentiality is everything for them, though. The victims will likely structure their settlement monies.” I knew that if the clients ever decided to settle the cases, a structured settlement would make a lot of sense. Structured settlements are essentially tax-free annuity payments that grow over time and are common for these types of cases. “The structured settlement statute in Florida has a provision that requires court intervention if the victims ever transfer or sell the structure, which would destroy confidentiality. Scott wants to assure the bad guys that this isn’t going to come back to haunt them one day,” Russ said, justifying the urgent “research project.”

  I called Paul Cassell, the former federal judge and legal genius working most closely with me on all Epstein-related matters, and did my best to run through everything. It made as much sense to him as it did to me. He had the same questions I did. “Hundreds of millions of dollars? Who was involved in settling this? Clinton? Trump? Wexner?” he speculated. I had no answers. The concept was not far-fetched at all. I’d always assumed that billionaires (and politicians who relied on billionaires for survival) probably communicated directly with each other in ways that I wasn’t aware of. Scott was very politically tied in, too, having just hosted John McCain at his home for a fund-raiser—he had a wall lined with photos of him posing with famous politicians who would answer his call at any hour.

  After hours of research, even after all his “answers” were in, Scott gave us nothing in return. Russ would only say that Scott was working on it, but that Scott would not tell him much either.

  Later that week, it became obvious this was not the only project Scott was working on. He sent out a firm-wide email that also needed an immediate answer. The firm had an important client being represented in a white-collar criminal matter related to wire fraud. He had questions about countries that would accept the client and not extradite him back to the United States while the criminal matter was being negotiated.

  Of course, I knew RRA had top-notch criminal defense lawyers. But I never really thought about the conversations that went on between criminal clients and their lawyers. I guessed this was a normal ask from a criminal to the law firm he employed to maintain his liberty. Still, Scott’s email left me uneasy. It didn’t matter much to me—I didn’t practice criminal law, nor did I have any immigration experience to know which countries didn’t have extradition treaties with the United States. I ignored it. Later that day, a thorough response to that email came back—RRA’s expert immigration attorney, Sara Coen, replied to all with her well-reasoned legal analysis. In short, her answer was Morocco. There was no extradition, and a wealthy client could live a decent life while the good lawyers at RRA went to work defending him against these federal financial crimes.

  The following Saturday, on Halloween, just before I took my kids out trick-or-treating, I got a call from Russell, who said he had something urgent to talk about. I walked into my backyard with the phone to my ear. “You sitting down?” he asked. “Scott is in Morocco. There’s money missing from our firm trust account. He didn’t tell anyone he was leaving.” My mind was racing. Did he go to Morocco to deliver money to that major white-collar criminal client? Why would that be a big deal—oh, because the money he was delivering was coming from the firm trust account?

  “Why are you calling me?” I asked naively. “Does this have something to do with Epstein?”

  “I don’t think so. Nobody can get a hold of Scott,” Russ said. “We don’t think he’s coming back. We don’t know much, but we’ve confirmed that RRA does not have a white-collar client that needs to know how to abscond to a safe-haven country to avoid prosecution,” he continued. “Scott is the client.” When we hung up, I was still a little baffled, and thought it must be an exaggeration.

  Terry and I put on our Superman and Superwoman costumes after dressing our boys as little superheroes. We walked the neighborhood, going door-to-door for candy. I waited until we got home to try to tell Terry about the call. She cut to the chase. “You’re already spending too much time thinking about the possibilities. If it was as big a deal as Russ is making it, then it would be all over the news. Figure it out on Monday,” she said.


  When I went to work the following Monday, lawyers at the top of RRA were all huddled in corners. No one seemed to know what was really happening. Stuart Rosenfeldt called a meeting downstairs in the same banquet room where Scott had given his motivational speech during my first week at RRA. Not only for lawyers; for the whole firm, every employee. He confirmed what Russell told me on Halloween. Scott was gone and was not coming back. He had taken so much money from the firm’s trust account that Rosenfeldt thought the firm would probably have to close and file for bankruptcy. This news was surreal. Without knowing more, there was no way to make sense of it.

  RRA had never struck me or anyone else as a “normal” law firm, but the abnormal things about it never suggested to me that the firm was just a house of cards. In fact, by reputation, appearance, and the quality of the work and capabilities of most people in the firm, the opposite was true. It wasn’t as if you saw gangsters walking the hallways. Well, not the obvious kind, anyway.

  To be fair, there were two convicted felons who worked for Scott, one of them a former Italian Mafia associate, but both employees were only document runners whom I was told Scott was giving a second chance in life. Every day there were also at least four uniformed Fort Lauderdale police officers walking the hallways as if they were patrolling the Federal Reserve.

  Any place where uniformed police officers are routinely on duty would not strike a normal person as a place where you’d expect to find massive criminal activity. Bank robbers, in my mind, did not normally hide out in a police station. What’s more, there was a good explanation for uniformed police to stalk the halls of the firm.