by Tim Wood
Chapter 10
Nigerians in My Backyard
Not all Nigerian fraudsters were transient to Vegas; we had a couple of guys I was chasing after who were local residents. I’d received some information from a Las Vegas bank fraud investigator that four checking accounts had been opened in four different names at four different branches of the bank. The names on all four accounts were foreign, African sounding last names with common English first names such as John or Charles; typical of Nigerians. Whoever was opening the accounts was kiting checks into the accounts.
Check kiting is a simple scheme utilizing the processing delay between the bank where the check was deposited and when the check clears the bank of origin. The fraudster will deposit checks drawn on closed accounts, inflating their checking account and get access to those funds before the original bank can notify the depositing bank that the original check was worthless due to nonsufficient funds.
The investigator told me that bank surveillance photos of ATM transactions showed the same black male using all four accounts. Bank employees at a fifth branch believed the ATM photos resembled a new customer known as Charles Musigbe.
I did a drive-by of the address provided by the investigator and wrote down the license plate numbers of two cars sitting in the driveway. One was registered to Charles Musigbe and the other car was registered to Matthew Musigbe.
Charles Musigbe was of record in the LVMPD database for an application to work in a casino and I was able to get a good photo. The photo from the PD and the photos from the ATM transactions were very close. Those damn ATM photos were grainy black and white in those days, and it never failed that the angle of the lens was always off-kilter just enough that you couldn’t get a really good look at the face. But, I thought, “If it ain’t him, it’s his fucking brother.”
A different bank in Las Vegas called and reported a very similar case. This investigator, who just happened to be the Redhead, told me a man opened a checking account with a Nigerian passport and a Trinidad driver’s license. The driver’s license number was written in the format of a US Social Security number. This should have been a red flag for the teller who opened the account. If people would just take the time to stop and think, “Wait a minute, why does this customer have a Nigerian passport and a Trinidad driver’s license?” You would think they would have at least asked the customer about it! It always seemed pretty obvious to me. But, then again, I guess most people don’t think they are about to be scammed. Do you think they have US Social Security numbers in the country of Trinidad? He had been kiting checks through the account and the loss to this bank was over eight thousand dollars in five days. What? She couldn’t tell me about this over our morning coffee?
The name on this account was John Musigbe. Musigbe was depositing checks from a closed account at an Atlanta bank. He was using his ATM card to withdraw available funds before the Redhead’s bank was notified by the Atlanta bank that the account was closed. Musigbe was also writing checks at local merchants and using his ATM card as a “check guarantee card.”
I canvassed some of the merchants where he wrote bad checks and found a couple of witnesses that positively identified Musigbe from a photo spread. People, in this case, witnesses, remember other people if there is something unusual about that person…something that stands out. All of my witnesses recalled the transactions because of the guy’s accent and his mannerisms. He was a foreigner. And he was buying high-dollar items. Clerks tend to remember that kind of stuff.
It was starting to look like I was into a Nigerian fraud ring living in my backyard.
I got a telephone call from a Las Vegas US Customs special agent. US Customs at JFK Airport in New York had intercepted a package mailed from Lagos, Nigeria, addressed to a John Alitio at the same address as Musigbe. Three Nigerian passports, official-looking documents, three different names, all with a photograph of Musigbe. It was time for a controlled delivery and a search warrant.
* * *
We did a lot of controlled deliveries when we worked a credit card fraud case. One of the most common ways for fraudsters to use their stolen credit cards was to purchase merchandise over the telephone and have it delivered to their homes or even vacant homes. We’d worked a fraud case in L.A. where the suspect would find vacant homes—perhaps homes listed for sale and the owner’s had already moved out. The suspect would hide out where he could watch for the UPS man leave the package on the front and then he’d casually walk up and grab the box.
We received outstanding cooperation from UPS, FedEx, and the other delivery services with these cases. Donnie, the Beaver, and I took turns working these “undercover” assignments; they were always fun. I had dressed up like a UPS man so many times over the years I was half expecting to get a bill for union dues.
We always wore an UHF transmitter and a tape recorder when doing these controlled deliveries. If you went to trial it was good to have the crook on tape admitting he ordered the goods. You had to be careful about what you said to the unsuspecting crook. Everything on that tape is discoverable for the defense and I’m not talking about illegal things, such as entrapment, but more mundane things that a defense attorney could pounce on at trial to make you look incompetent. Defense attorneys will use anything to put doubt in a jury’s mind.
Donnie had one of these fraud cases and the boss decided he wanted to get in on the fun. “Sure, boss, have at it! I’ll take one of the surveillance positions down the street.”
The boss put on the uniform and got in the delivery truck with the security manager, who was our driver. This particular case involved using stolen credit cards to order merchandise for delivery to a home. Thousands of dollars’ worth of everything you could imagine had been delivered to that address. The boss exited the truck and took the package to the door. I was sitting with Donnie in his G-ride listening to the UHF transmission of the boss. A young girl about sixteen answered the door. “Package for Debra Brown. Are you Debra Brown?” says the boss.
“No,” says the young girl, “I’ll go get her,” and she closed the door. The young lady who answered the door had a very deformed face; her jaw and teeth were hideous and she looked a little like a horse.
After the young girl closed he door, the boss said out loud, and to us on the UHF transmitter, and preserved for eternity on the tape recording, “Jesus fucking Christ that girl was fucking ugly. Holy shit! Oh my God, holy shit…!”
Donnie and I were cracking up—we couldn’t wait for the boss to take the stand, if this case goes to trial, he is going to be so embarrassed! I guess that’s what happens when the boss, who hasn’t worked a criminal case in years, gets back in the saddle with the boys for a little undercover work.
* * *
Our plan was to do a controlled delivery of the package at Musigbe’s residence. I met with T.J. over at the US Attorney’s office and we drafted an affidavit for a search warrant. Federal search warrants are not that easy to get. You have to have specific information that, concealed in the dwelling is, or potentially is, evidence of a violation of a federal statute backed up by solid probable cause. The home is sacred; even a crooks home.
I had good probable cause that Musigbe was committing credit card and bank fraud, and I could have just gotten an arrest warrant, but I wanted to get inside his house and find more evidence. I was sure my investigation was just scratching the surface of a Nigerian fraud ring. I was sure there was more to this than opening bank accounts with counterfeit passports, false identification and kiting checks. The records and documents inside his house could reveal information about a whole gang of Nigerian fraudsters. I always kept Donnie’s first rule of fraud cases in mind—“they aren’t who they say they are, and it isn’t the first time they’ve done it.” If I arrested him, I could have hoped he would give me consent to search his house, but I wasn’t counting on that. Nigerians were notorious for not cooperating. I needed a search warrant
The US magistrate signed off on the search warrant, with one exception. The search warrant would not be valid unless and until the package was delivered by US Postal Service employees and Musigbe signed for the package and took it into his home. I got in touch with a Las Vegas postal inspector (PI) and he agreed to help us out by delivering the package. But we had to made sure Musigbe was home for the delivery, so we set up a surveillance of his house.
Early the next morning, Donnie drove the surveillance van over to Musigbe’s neighborhood and found a good spot where we could see the front door, the surrounding yard, and the driveway. The Beaver and I stayed put in the back of the van while Donnie got out and walked down the street and around the corner. The boss was waiting and took Donnie back to his G-ride. We hunkered down and waited.
Surveillances can be a kick in the pants, but they can also be boring as hell. Hours and hours of sitting…and waiting…and then the suspect stirs and things get interesting. But in the meantime you sit, and you watch and you wait. It wasn’t long before the Beaver and I were bullshitting to pass the time.
The Beaver told me he was thinking about going camping in Colorado and he wanted to know if I knew any good spots where he could pitch a tent and swing in a hammock all afternoon. “Somewhere high up in the mountains,” he told me, “where the daytime high isn’t over seventy-two degrees.” I told him I knew a great spot just south of Aspen, Colorado; it was kind of between Aspen and Crested Butte. That sounded good to him and he wanted to know how I’d found that place.
Back in my Marine Corps days, I was a bombardier/navigator in the A6 Intruder. The A6 was an all-weather attack, close-air-support jet aircraft. The A6 could deliver a nice-size payload of bombs on a target, and to ingress a target we flew at low altitude to evade enemy radar. Consequently, we completed training runs by flying low-level training routes. These routes were published by the FAA, specifically for military low-level training.
I had a good friend in my squadron who was a pilot. He and I were always taking weekend cross-country flights all over the western United States. We both liked to hike, backpack and camp so we’d make notes on remote places we saw as we zipped passed at four hundred and fifty knots, three hundred feet above the ground.
One Friday morning, my buddy Bronco and I were in the squadron ready-room preparing for a weekend cross-country flight to the East Coast. It was one of those CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited) September days over the entire United States. Bronco came up with a great idea. “Why don’t we fly the VR 1244 (a published military low level training route) through Southern California and Arizona to a bombing range near Yuma, then we could fly at low altitude up through Colorado and land at Buckley AFB in Denver to refuel.” Bronco suggested we continue on to the East Coast from Denver and arrive just in time for happy hour at the officers’ club. “Outstanding plan,” I said to Bronco. “Let’s do it!”
We got the charts out and started planning. Thirty minutes later, we had it all worked out—take off IFR (instrument flight rules, meaning we were under positive radar control by the FAA) from Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, cancel the IFR flight plan, enter the low-level training route to Yuma, make two passes at the target and drop our twelve MK-82s (five-hundred-pound high-explosive bombs) to get our required training mission ticked off the board, then fly VFR (visual flight rules, below eighteen thousand feet mean sea level) at low altitude toward Aspen, Colorado; pick up our IFR flight plan when we get over Aspen; and land at Buckley AFB. I was engrossed in the low level training route flight planning, making sure I had the latitude and longitude correct for each turn point, the outbound headings and I marked the significant terrain features of each turn point on my map, in case our computer system went tits up on us and I had to navigate like a World War II B-17—dead reckoning. The flight profile coming off target at Yuma to Aspen was 150 minutes. “One point five” said Bronco. “We’ll have plenty of gas for the low-altitude sightseeing trip trough Colorado!”
So off we went in to the wild blue yonder. Two marines thinking 150 minutes (two and one-half hours) was only one hour and thirty minutes.
The first phase of our plan went off without a hitch. We zipped through the desert of Southern California at 450 knots and two to three hundred feet above the ground. As we approached Silverwood Lake, just west of Big Bear, California, the last turn point before scooting toward the flat Arizona desert and Yuma was the Silverwood Lake dam. We flew low and fast over the water headed directly for the dam. “Did you see those girls?” Bronco asked me. A ski boat was in the lake and off to our left. “I saw a flash of bright orange on the bow,” I said. One gal had on a bright orange bikini.
“Let’s give them a thrill!” And Bronco executed a perfect knife-edged four-g left-hand turn over the dam, circling back to make another run at the boat. As we completed the 360-degree turn, we disappeared behind the mountains on the west side of the lake. We popped back up over the horizon and commenced a simulated bombing run on the ski boat. Bronco offset our A6 to the right and climbed to twenty-eight hundred feet, rolled inverted; in a left hand climbing turn we visually acquired the target; he snapped it back into a perfect ten-degree dive bombing run, right at the boat.
If you’ve ever been to a military flight show, you know how frickin’ loud a jet aircraft is when it whizzes past you. It is deafening. We were in the ten-degree dive and the ski boat filled our canopy. We could plainly see three gals, three southern California blondes, tanning themselves with no bikini tops on. Those gals were jumping up and down and waving to us. It was a sight to behold. Though I’m sure their ears rang for hours after that low flyby.
We continued on to the bombing range at Yuma, made two runs at the target, dropping six bombs on each pass. Training mission complete; let’s go sightseeing! We climbed to three thousand feet above the ground, slowed to the FAA regulation speed of 250 knots, and settled in for some VFR sightseeing of the Rocky Mountains.
As we headed over the Four Corners into Colorado, I was sitting to the right of Bronco in the cockpit, fat, dumb, and happy with my terrain chart making notes on awesome-looking camping country when I looked over at Bronco. He was tapping the fuel indicator gauge with his finger. Just like you do to your riding lawn mower when you think the gas gauge is broken. I clicked the ICS (inter-cockpit communication system). “What’s up? What’s the problem?”
“This thing is broken,” he tells me. “It says we only have five thousand pounds of jet fuel in the tank.”
“Did you transfer the wing tanks to the main?”
“Well yeah,” he says. “You think I’m stupid?”
How could that be? Our flight planning indicated we should have seven to eight thousand pounds…it was only one plus thirty coming out of Yuma. “I know,” says Bronco. “One hundred and fifty minutes.” I think the lightbulb suddenly blinked on bright in our heads at the same time, Holy shit! One hundred and fifty minutes is two and a half frickin’ hours, not one and a half hours. No wonder we’re we low on fuel.
Needless to say our sightseeing trip over Colorado was done. I got out the A6 manual and started doing some serious low fuel flight profile planning. I dialed in Buckley AFB on the navigation and got the distance from our current position. The book said we could make it if we immediately initiated a climb to “Flight Level God” and pulled the power back to idle and basically glided down hill into Buckley.
I got on the radio with Denver Center and requested an immediate high altitude flight profile with an in-route decent direct into Buckley. Then the dreaded words came back from air traffic control: “Delta Tango One-Five, do you want to declare an emergency?”
I looked at Bronco. Bronco cut in on the radio, “Negative emergency, Denver Center; we just need to conserve some fuel.”
We got our clearance and Bronco pushed the throttles to MRT (military rated thrust, which is a nice way to say we put the pedal to the medal in order to climb as quickly as possible). We hi
t our assigned altitude and Denver Center cleared us to descend at our discretion to the initial point for Runway 32 at Buckley. As we glided down to a breathable altitude and it looked like we would actually make it to the end of the runway without flaming out, I looked at Bronco and reminded him that the manual says A6s have been known to flame out with a the fuel indicator gauge reading six hundred pounds—basically saying the old analog gauge was only accurate plus or minus six hundred pounds. He didn’t think that was funny.
We landed and taxied to the transient aircraft line to refuel and file our flight plan for the next IFR leg to the East Coast. Once we stopped and the flight line airman chalked the wheels, Bronco went through the engine shutdown procedures. He shut down the number one engine with the throttle and number two engine just up and quit…out of gas.
The Beaver looked at me like I was nuts. He wanted to know if Bronco and I always did dumb stuff. “I thought you were smarter than that?”
I laughed. “Me, too. I learned a very valuable lesson that day.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t let a pilot do a navigator’s flight planning.”
We sat there in the back of the surveillance van not saying much for a while, watching Musigbe’s house, waiting for some sign he was home.
The Beaver yawned. “Okay Shakespeare, you got any other stories for me? I’m about to fall asleep.”
“Hey, did I ever tell you about the time Bronco and I diverted into Malmstrom AFB in Montana?”
The Bronco and I were on one of our infamous weekend cross-countries, zipping around the western US. We were scheduled to land and RON (remain over night) at Mather Air Force Base, near Sacramento, California. Our rule of thumb was, if you planned an RON, be sure it was at an air force base; they had the best bachelor officers’ quarters (BOQ) and the best officers’ clubs.
We were out just getting instrument flight time that weekend to keep our IFR instrument ratings up to speed. We were at flight level twentysomething, drilling holes in the sky. Half asleep, half bored, but always thinking about a new adventure. Bronco hit the ICS and woke me up, “Ever been to Montana?”
