Criminals & Presidents: The Adventures of a Secret Service Agent

by Tim Wood

  Postal inspectors investigating the Boston Patriot’s crimes gave him his moniker. He was an unknown suspect. He was using newly issued Bank of Boston credit cards stolen from the mail before they reached the mailboxes of the true cardholder. And he was using counterfeit Massachusetts and Rhode Island driver’s licenses as identification for cash advances at New England banks. Postal inspectors in Boston had obtained bank surveillance photos of him standing at teller windows getting cash advances. The early photos showed a white male with dark hair and glasses wearing a white New England Patriots football jersey…it seemed he was always wearing the New England Patriots jersey…and thus, the Boston Patriot was born.

  The three of us worked with the Comchek security department all the time on various credit card fraud cases in Las Vegas. All those Nigerians getting cash advances at the casinos were cashing Comcheks to get their money. One day I was on the telephone with an investigator from Comchek, discussing an arrest I’d made on a Nigerian. As we wrapped up our conversation, he casually mentioned he had a fraud case involving twenty-seven Comcheks cashed at Las Vegas casinos on the same day. He said nineteen different credit cards had been used to fraudulently obtain the cash advances at nineteen different casinos. He told me he’d been unsuccessful with tying these cash advances to a known suspect, “Would you be interested in taking a look at them?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Send them to me and I’ll see if I can come up with something.”

  When I got the original Comcheks I took a good look at them. The fronts of the checks were automatically filled in by the check printer machine, with the name of the individual cardholder and the credit card account number used for the transaction and a time/date stamp the check was printed. The backs of each check were endorsed by the cardholder, and all casino cage cashiers who completed the transactions wrote the cardholder’s identification number and state in the blank spaces provided on the check. Each check also had a time/date stamp on the back, indicating the casino name, date, and time it was cashed.

  Multiple Rhode Island driver’s licenses had been used as identification for the cash advances; I ran each driver’s license number through the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, and each driver’s license number proved to be fictitious. The nineteen credit cards were all Bank of Boston MasterCards, and an investigator from Bank of Boston told me each card was issued by Bank of Boston and bank records indicated they were mailed to the true cardholders. All nineteen true cardholders reported they did not receive the MasterCards in the mail.

  The Boston Patriot had finally hit Las Vegas.

  I noticed a very interesting pattern. On July 25 the first two transactions were at Bally’s Casino, followed by one across Flamingo Road, at Maxim’s Casino. Then at the corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard the suspect hit the Flamingo Hilton for two transactions of twenty-four hundred dollars apiece. Just north on the strip his next stop was the Holiday Casino, then the Sands Casino, and the Riviera Casino. Each of these cash advances was for twenty-four hundred dollars and all on the same credit card. The next two Comcheks were cashed at the Sahara Casino on Las Vegas Boulevard. Both cash advances were for twenty-four hundred dollars on the same credit card account. The suspect then crossed Las Vegas Boulevard and hit the Stardust Casino for two twenty-four-hundred-dollar cash advances and continued back south on the strip to Caesar’s Palace. And he was right back to the corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard. The time and date stamps on the Comcheks showed he had time to walk from one casino to the next. He made a nice loop, from Flamingo Road north on the strip to Sahara Road and turned back south to Flamingo Road.

  The next date time stamp was at the Palace Station, off the strip on Sahara Road west of I-15. Then the Vegas World back on the strip north of Sahara Road. Downtown to Glitter Gulch and Fremont Street, where he hit the Golden Nugget. Across Fremont Street to Binion’s Horseshoe, the Union Plaza, over to the Vegas Club, then the California Club.

  Then he hit the strip again, the Maxim, the Marina Casino at Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard. He finished up at the Stardust one final time. Jesus fucking Christ. Sixty-four thousand dollars in cash advances in one night, in less than eight hours. Not a bad day working at the Fraud Mine. He was raking in the cash at an eight-thousand-dollar-per-hour pace.

  No doubt the Boston Patriot was in Vegas. Now I just needed to identify this unknown suspect and get him in custody.

  I packaged the original Comcheks up and sent them off to the Secret Service Forensic Lab in Washington, DC, with two requests. First, I requested a handwriting examination to see if the same unknown person authored the endorsements on the backs of all twenty-seven Comcheks; secondly, I requested a fingerprint/palm print examination to see if this unknown suspect had fingerprints on file with my buddies at the FBI.

  It took a few weeks, but I finally got the handwriting analysis back from the lab. The Secret Service handwriting examiner concluded that the same, unknown hand authored all twenty-seven signatures. Beautiful. Now I knew it was one guy and one guy only. I’m not after a gang; I’m after one guy. The MO was definitely the Boston Patriot. The handwriting report stated that a review of known Secret Service handwriting specimens revealed the author was not of record with the Secret Service.

  For aeons Secret Service agents have routinely obtained handwriting examples from suspects. It was part of our investigative protocol, going way back to US Treasury check investigations since Uncle Sugar started issuing paper checks and Secret Service agents started investigating forgery of those checks. We continued that protocol with our fraud investigations. Always get a handwriting sample from the suspect or defendant. It might come in handy someday to another agent. But this guy was not of record, so chances were a Secret Service agent had never interviewed him.

  Now I had to wait for the fingerprint examination and it was worth the wait. The Secret Service lab positively identified Edward Capone’s fingerprints on all twenty-seven Comcheks. Who the hell is Edward Capone? And where is he?

  I briefed T.J. on the case and he told me to write up an affidavit for an arrest warrant. “Let’s get a warrant in the system in case he gets stopped by the police somewhere. Then we can get him extradited to Las Vegas and bring him to justice.” His last known address was in Providence, Rhode Island. I contacted the postal inspectors in Boston and sent a request to the Secret Service offices in New England to attempt to locate and arrest Capone.

  I did a utility search for Clark County Nevada and I’ll be damned if he didn’t live right in Las Vegas. Or at least someone with the same name and social security number did. The Beaver and I set out to try and positively identify Capone. As the Beaver drove us out toward his residence I was trying to come up with a good surveillance plan to watch him for a positive identification. As normal for the Las Vegas RA, all three of us were very busy and a long drawn out surveillance this week wasn’t going to work. The Beaver told me to not make this so damn complicated. We know what he looks like, we’ve got good photos of him…let’s knock on his door and if that’s him we’ll arrest him.

  Sometimes simplicity is the best road to take. It was mid-morning and we rang the doorbell. Edward Capone, in his boxers and white tank top T-shirt answered the door. “Edward Capone? Secret Service,” I said as I began to identify myself. Capone’s eyes got real big and he retreated backward into the small apartment living room. He was just out of my reach and I couldn’t grab ahold of him. The Beaver and I were dressed in our normal casual attire and we both had our gold US Secret Service badges hanging from our necks by chains. I had my Secret Service credentials in my left hand, the Beaver and I quickly stepped through the threshold into the living room.

  The space between the front door and the back of a couch in the living room was about three paces; Capone was stepping back, retreating…I got the impression he thought we were a couple of wise guys sent to break his legs, I started yelling, “Police, police!�
�� and the Beaver moved quickly toward Capone to grab him before he could get to a weapon. In the next split second, all five foot eight and three hundred pounds of Capone fell backward over the couch and the Beaver fell forward on top of him.

  He sat handcuffed on an easy chair and asked if he could get dressed before he met the judge. “Sure,” I said, “Which way is the bedroom?” I grabbed a pair of sweat pants off the bedroom floor and how about a shirt? He needs a shirt. I looked in his closet and found the white New England Patriots football jersey. Perfect. The Boston Patriot was in custody.

  The Beaver and I took Capone to the US magistrate for his initial appearance. As the judge entered the courtroom and took the bench, Edward Capone collapsed out of his chair and sprawled on the floor. The two courtroom US Marshals rushed to his side. My suspicions that he was tied to organized crime increased dramatically. Mobsters always passed out on the courtroom floor. Why do they do this? I don’t know, it must be in the mobster handbook…

  Donnie arrested a made guy once, an old Chicago guy left over from the Spilotro years. What’s the first thing he did in the courtroom? Fainted. “Call an ambulance,” his lawyer screamed. I tell you, they always do that or something very similar. The Beaver once arrested another old Chicago guy for counterfeiting. This old mobster only had one leg, but walked around with the aid of a prosthetic. We had been following this guy around Las Vegas for weeks, and if you didn’t know he was missing one leg, you would never know it by watching him walk. He barely had a limp. The Beaver indicted him and contacted his attorney to arrange for a voluntary surrender to the Secret Service. On the agreed upon surrender day, the old mobster showed up in a wheelchair, without his prosthetic leg.

  It is always something with these guys, trying to play the sympathy card with the court, I guess.

  Of course, Capone was okay and ready to proceed, but not without his attorney scolding the government for arresting his client at his home—bursting in, disturbing the neighbors and the quiet serenity of everyone’s mid-morning coffee. Mr. Capone would have gladly turned himself in but these two thugs from the Secret Service barged into his home and the government refused to bring the defendant’s prescription medicine along to the US Marshals lockup. Of course, Capone didn’t say shit about needing prescription medication when we led him out of his apartment in handcuffs; the only thing wrong with Capone was his crime spree was over and he knew it.

  As the court proceeding got under way, the judge reviewed the financial statement of the defendant. He qualified for a public defender, but yet, one of Vegas’s most expensive defense attorneys was sitting at the defense table.

  After his arrest I sent notifications to all the New England area Secret Service Offices, hoping one of them could get their US attorney to prosecute him for the crimes in their jurisdictions. But unfortunately no US attorney on the East Coast was aggressive enough to take the case. And I guess you can’t really blame them. Why take up court time for a defendant who is in prison? The Boston Patriot pleaded guilty to my indictment and only served eighteen months in the federal penitentiary followed by three years’ probation.

  Chapter 12

  Leroy’s Race and Sports Book

  The Food Stamp Act of 1964, administrated by the US Department of Agriculture, was enacted to ensure “No American Goes Hungry.” The actual “coupons” or “stamps” are printed by the US Treasury and are thus an obligation of the United States, and counterfeiting a food stamp is the same as counterfeiting a Federal Reserve note. Believe it or not, the US Secret Service investigates food stamp fraud. Nowadays printed food stamps are obsolete and have been replaced with debit cards. But back in the eighties when I was in Las Vegas, your uncle Sugar was giving out paper food stamps, actually called food coupons. We didn’t work many food stamp cases; as a matter fact, in L.A. I don’t remember ever working one. But Las Vegas was a different situation.

  The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Inspector General (IG) also investigated food stamp fraud. The USDA IG’s regional office in Sacramento had jurisdiction over the state of Nevada, and one day they paid a visit to our office in Las Vegas. The Agriculture IG had received numerous complaints from citizens that stores and shops in Las Vegas were committing food stamp fraud by accepting food stamps for goods and items other than food. So the USDA IG had decided it was time to do a little food stamp enforcement in the Las Vegas area.

  They wanted to put together a small task force of IG agents and Secret Service agents to investigate the suspected fraud. It sounded like a great idea and I volunteered to be the Secret Service case agent. And, boy, did I get my hands full with this one! Never volunteer.

  As the three of us sat in the boss’s office and he explained the proposed taskforce, I couldn’t figure out why Donnie and the Beaver were sitting on their hands. I was squirming left and right and falling all over myself to get the boss to assign the case agent duties to me. They were sitting on their hands because both those guys are a lot smarter than me.

  The USDA IG case agent and I went over to see T.J. at the US Attorney’s office. If the US Attorney was not all in on this one, that is, if he wouldn’t agree to prosecute the suspects we wanted to turn into defendants, we would be wasting our time. And that’s probably why we didn’t work food stamp fraud cases in L.A. The US Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, like most cities across the nation, had dollar thresholds for prosecution—they only wanted to touch the big-time crooks. But not T.J. “I’ll prosecute any case you bring me, boys. Go get them.”

  And so we did…

  There is a tremendous amount of paperwork that goes into an investigation, and if you throw in some undercover work with consensual intercepts, the paperwork gets pretty heavy. It wasn’t long before I realized Donnie and the Beaver knew what they were doing when they wanted no part of this operation. Jesus Christ! Suddenly, I was swamped.

  Each time an agent uses a tape recorder or the UHF transmitter, or uses the telephone to record a conversation with a crook, reports and requests have to be submitted to headquarters before you use the equipment. In an emergency, an agent can get verbal approval from headquarters to intercept a suspect, but that was the exception and not the rule. If an agent doesn’t have the proper authorizations in place, a defense attorney can get the entire recorded evidence declared inadmissible, and then your case is shot.

  The USDA had a long list of tips from ordinary citizens on merchants who were suspected of abusing the food stamp system, and we set out to see if any of the tips were worth investigating. The USDA case agent was Special Agent Paul Broxterman. And he was an outstanding undercover agent. He was a skinny kid with a scraggly beard. One of those beards that was splotchy with a little hair here and a little hair there. And when he pulled on his blue jeans and cowboy boots, he was the last guy you thought was a cop. He was good, very good.

  Paul and I spent about three months working these food stamp cases and we became close friends. I think the Beaver was a little jealous. I didn’t have time for cheeseburgers with the Beaver for a long time. I didn’t have time to hit the gym in the mornings with the guys; I didn’t have time for a beer on Friday nights with them. I was one busy little agent. Paul and I were about to arrest thirty-five defendants, but first we had to build the case.

  To work these food stamp fraud investigations we had to wire up Paul with the UHF transmitter and a tape recorder. We didn’t have a snitch, so we had to hit these merchants cold to see if the complaint was true—that they were accepting food stamps for items other than food. We weren’t out to entrap any merchants: either they were abusing the system or they weren’t. Paul would go into one of the stores reported to the USDA and try to buy cigarettes or other nonfood items, or redeem the stamps for cash. If the merchant didn’t bite and Paul was turned down we’d close the case against that particular merchant as unsubstantiated, and move on to the next one.

  One of the citizen complaints the USDA receive
d was that people were buying and selling food stamps right on the sidewalk outside the welfare office in North Las Vegas. Paul would wire up, take a pocket full of marked USDA control food stamps and sit on a bench outside the welfare office. Holy crap, business was good! I could not believe how many folks would stop and asked this scraggly bearded bum if he had any food stamps for sale or if he wanted to buy some food stamps. Our ultimate goal was to find an organized ring that was dealing in illegal food stamps; we didn’t necessarily want to arrest some poor guy just trying to pad his pantry to feed his kids—that was never our intention. But to get Paul into a criminal ring, he had to see who was buying and who was selling. Like I’ve said, I’m always been amazed at how many people, otherwise honest citizens, wouldn’t think twice about cheating their uncle Sugar.

  Paul had a few repeat customers and we started to focus in on these guys—maybe they were part of a ring. Paul was a good actor and he could talk the talk and walk the walk. One guy kept showing up to buy food stamps from Paul, but he’d only pay twenty-five cents on the dollar. The going rate was fifty cents; this guy was obviously a good target. We figured he must be reselling the food stamps to make a profit, so we started a surveillance of him. He was an older gentleman named Harold, who looked like an old Vegas gambler if there ever was one. Skinny as a rail with gray, ash-colored skin. A cigarette dangled from his lips at all times and he squinted when he talked to you, trying to keep the smoke out of his eyes. He smelled of whiskey most days. He was so skinny there was no way he was using food stamps to feed himself. He was obviously on the Vegas diet of nicotine and alcohol. As I watched him through my binoculars I thought to myself, He looks like a cigarette, with his close-cropped gray hair as the ash hanging off the end!