Emergency

by Neil Strauss

  I asked him about asset protection, and he suggested a law firm called Tarasov and Associates that most of his friends used. I trusted his recommendations more than the speakers at the conference, who seemed to view safety more as a marketing niche than a personal right.

  I returned home emboldened by a new sense of mission and overwhelmed by the amount of work that lay ahead. I booked a trip to St. Kitts during Carnival in December, left a message for AIG to open a private banking account, e-mailed Grandpa for PT advice, and set up a meeting at Tarasov to hide my assets.

  It was a good start.

  If you wanted to withdraw your entire life savings and move it to a bank in Switzerland, what would you do?

  Now that I’d decided to hide my assets offshore, the information from the Sovereign Society conference about the government tracking withdrawals and transfers of more than $10,000 applied to me. It seemed impossible to get the money from my American bank to the Swiss bank Spencer recommended without ringing alarm bells. Even if I moved it in small increments, there would still be a paper trail detailing exactly how much money I’d transferred.

  So I did what any resourceful American would do: I bought a book on money laundering.

  After all, it isn’t a crime to move money secretly as long as the income’s been reported to the IRS and any other necessary reporting requirements are met. And my intention wasn’t to hide my earnings from the government, customs, or creditors, but to protect it from bank collapses, inflation, seizure, and lawsuits, which required leaving few traces of where it went.

  Securing money overseas is not a new idea. Even in the novel Gone With the Wind, Rhett Butler keeps his earnings in offshore banks, enabling him to buy a house for Scarlett O’Hara after the Civil War—in contrast to his Southern colleagues, who lose their fortunes due to blockades, inflation, and financial collapse.

  For more practical, non-fictional inspiration, I bought Jeffrey Robinson’s 1996 book The Laundrymen. I’d always wondered how empty video stores renting movies for $3 a day could stay in business, and why I’d see Russian thugs running clearly unprofitable frozen yogurt stands on deserted side streets. According to Robinson, it’s because, in order to make illegal funds appear legitimate, crooks will slowly feed the money into the cash registers of a normal business.

  “It’s almost impossible to spot an extra $500 coming in daily through the tills of a storefront stocked with 15,000 videos,” he writes. “Nor would anyone’s suspicions necessarily be raised if that same owner ran a chain of twenty video rental stores and, backed up with the appropriate audits, awarded himself an annual bonus of $3.96 million.”

  Buried elsewhere in Robinson’s book was the answer I was looking for. The best legal way to surreptitiously move money, it seems, is to buy something that doesn’t lose its cash value when purchased. For example, there’s a black market for people who transfer money by buying expensive jewelry, art, watches, and collectibles, then selling them in their destination country for a small loss—usually no greater than the percentage banks charge for exchanging currencies.

  So once AIG Private Bank in Switzerland returned my phone call—assuming that, unlike Spencer’s lawyer, they were actually willing to work with me—I planned to go shopping for rare coins.

  But if it was all so legitimate, why did it feel so wrong?

  While I waited to hear from the Swiss bank, I drove to Burbank to meet with the asset protection lawyers Spencer had recommended, Tarasov and Associates. The receptionist led me into a room with black-and-silver wallpaper where Alex Tarasov sat at a large mahogany desk with a yellow legal pad in front of him. With this pad, he would rearrange my business life forever.

  “You did a very smart thing by coming here,” Tarasov said. Twenty-five years ago, he had probably been a frat boy. Maybe even played varsity football. But a quarter century spent sitting at desks scrutinizing legal papers had removed all evidence of health from his skin and physique. “By taking everything you own out of your name, we can hide it from lawyers trying to do an asset search on you.”

  “So if they sue me and win, they won’t be able to get anything?”

  “We can make it very difficult for them to find the things you own and get at them. It’s not impossible, but the deeper we bury your assets, the more money it’s going to cost to find out where they are. And if we can make that time and cost greater than the worth of the assets, then you’re in good shape.”

  Like Spencer had said, this was just insurance. The cost of setting this up would be like taking out a policy against lawsuits.

  “So what do you own?” he asked.

  I laid it all out for him. “I have a house I’m still paying for. I have some stocks and bonds my grandparents gave me when I was a kid. I have a checking and a savings account. And I have the copyrights to my books.” I paused, trying to remember if I owned anything else. I thought there was more. “I guess that’s about it. I have a secondhand Dodge Durango, I guess. And a 1972 Corvette that doesn’t work.”

  In truth, I didn’t own that much. But ever since my first college job, standing over a greasy grill making omelets and grilled cheese sandwiches, I had started putting money in the bank. Since then, I’d saved enough to live on for a year or two if I ever fell on hard times or just wanted to see the world. I didn’t want to lose the freedom that came from having a financial cushion and not being in debt for anything besides my house.

  “Here’s what we can do,” Tarasov said. He then sketched this diagram on his legal pad:

  The stick figure was me. As for the boxes, I had no idea what those were. “These are boxes,” Tarasov explained. I was clearly getting the asset-protection-for-dummies lecture. “Each box represents a different LLC”—limited liability company. “If we can wrap everything in an LLC, and then all those LLCs are owned by a holding company, and that holding company is owned by a trust that you don’t even technically own, then you’re safe.”

  I liked that last word. But I didn’t understand the rest of it.

  “So we’re just basically making everything really complicated?” I asked.

  “That’s the idea. We’ll even put your house in a separate LLC so that if someone trips and falls, they can’t get at anything else you own.”

  When Tarasov was through explaining everything, I couldn’t tell whether I was protecting myself from being scammed or actually being scammed myself. But I trusted Spencer, because he seemed too rich, too smart, and too paranoid to get taken in. So I told Tarasov to start wrapping me up in LLCs until my net worth was whatever spending money I had in my pocket.

  “Once we have these entities set up, we can talk about transferring them to offshore corporations,” Tarasov said as I left.

  It sounded exciting, though I worried that by the time he was through charging me for all this, I wouldn’t have any money left to hide.

  Either way, my net worth would still be zero.

  My next order of business was long overdue: to make my computer as secure as possible. That is, if my Internet searches for second citizenship options and private Swiss banks hadn’t already caught the government’s attention. For this, I enlisted the help of Grandpa.

  He had responded instantly to the e-mail I sent after the Sovereign Society conference and, like a true money-minded PT, tried to sell me a series of books he wrote, Bye Bye Big Brother, for the bargain price of $750. Fortunately, I found a much cheaper abridged version his publisher was selling online.

  In combination with a few Internet resources, I used the chapter titled “Secure Internet Communications” as my primer on computer safety. I spent an entire day downloading and installing encryption programs, firewalls, spyware destroyers, and software that supposedly enabled me to surf the Internet without being traced or tracked. Eventually, I hoped to use two computers: one solely for going online and a second laptop with all my data but no means of connecting to the Internet.

  Though Grandpa’s computer advice made me feel more secure, my long e-mai
l correspondence with him fanned other flames of paranoia. “Convicting someone [who’s taking the steps you are] would bring glory to some little assistant D.A. or federal attorney,” he warned. “The way out is not necessarily leaving at once, but just be ready to move ass and assets at the first whiff of shit coming your way.”

  I thought back to a year earlier, when I felt like my life and livelihood were at the mercy of terrorists, the government, and the economy. Though those threats had grown even worse since then, I had become stronger, more stable, more informed, more resilient. All I needed to do now was visit Wendell in St. Kitts. Then I’d truly be able to leave when, as Grandpa put it, the first whiff of shit came my way.

  I was almost free.

  But, as Spencer continued to remind me every time we spoke, I still wasn’t safe.

  I have an office of one.

  In that office is Tomas. I had hired him as an intern to help with the deluge of e-mails and obligations that came after The Game so I could be free to write other books.

  In silence, Tomas watched me voraciously pursue my search for a second citizenship at the expense of almost all other work—until one day, as we ate lunch in the kitchen, he told me he had a wife.

  “A wife? How’s that?”

  Not only was Tomas gay, but to make money, he placed ads on Craigslist offering, according to his headline, “Hairy Muscle Man Massages.” The posting was accompanied by this picture:

  His fee was $100 per hour. Judging by the BMW convertible he drove, which far outclassed my Durango, business was clearly booming.

  “I had to get married for my citizenship,” he said. “She’s crazy, but she’s really good in the immigration interviews.”

  “So the whole time I’ve been working to get out of the country, you’ve been working to get in?”

  “Yep.” He smiled, exposing his sharp canine teeth and, along with them, a slight satisfaction at having successfully kept his secret from me.

  Though Tomas was born in the Czech Republic, he was so Americanized that I’d never realized he wasn’t actually a citizen. I guess assisting me a few hours a week was his way of having a legitimate job.

  Five years ago, he said, he began the process. After talking to immigration lawyers, he decided that the quickest and easiest way to an American citizenship was through marriage. So he paid a female friend thirty-five thousand dollars to marry him. They even cosigned an apartment lease and opened a joint bank account to make it look official.

  “Being American was always a fantasy of mine, ever since I was eleven,” he said as he downed the dregs of a protein shake. I couldn’t believe we’d never discussed it before. “I never felt like I belonged in the Czech Republic. I was always trying to escape this Eastern European subservient mentality.”

  As he spoke about it, I was overcome with a feeling of shame. There were millions of people living in conditions of extreme poverty all over the world, most of whom would sacrifice almost anything for a chance at a better life in America. I remembered the day the janitor of one of the buildings I grew up in became an American citizen. He told me he’d tried to escape from Romania five times by swimming across the Danube. Once, after he was caught, prison guards beat him and urinated on him for wanting to leave. As soon as he became a citizen here, he changed his name from Liveu Anei to the most American name he could think of: Lee Grant, after the Confederate and Union Civil War generals. Soon, he and his wife were investing in real estate, wearing matching jogging suits, and taking Love Boat–style cruises in an effort to be as American as possible.

  “I love America,” he’d always tell me when he was in a good mood, before his wife left him.

  But what is America? In truth, it occupies less than one quarter of the geographical mass known as the Americas. Its proper name is the United States of America, though in truth it’s hardly a name. France and Brazil—those sound like countries. The United States of America is more of an umbrella term, describing a hodgepodge of separate states bound together by an agreement, like a bundle of twigs tied with twine.

  Even the flag, with its fifty stars and thirteen stripes, displays no single national identity, unlike the sole maple leaf of our neighbors to the north or the eagle eating a snake on the Mexican flag. The stripes represent the original thirteen colonies; the stars celebrate the fact that the country has since grown to fifty states. If there’s a message here, it has to do with accumulation. In fact, no other national flag has that many stars, making us the best accumulators in the world.

  Thus, perhaps my labors of the last year weren’t anti-American but the most American thing I could possibly do. For my plan was not to forsake my American identity, but instead to start accumulating passports, citizenships, bank accounts, escape routes, and safe havens. I just wanted more stars on my own flag.

  A few weeks later, just before I was scheduled to fly to St. Kitts, I accompanied Tomas to the convention center in downtown Los Angeles to watch him get naturalized as a citizen. More than 4,000 people became Americans with him, followed by four thousand more in a ceremony immediately afterward. Most of the soon-to-be Americans were from Mexico, El Salvador, the Philippines, and, in a sea of black chadors, Iran.

  Onstage, an Asian judge in a black robe and caftan sat at the center of a table, surrounded by uniformed immigration and police officers. An immense American flag waved behind them. The audience was asked to rise while several hundred soldiers, most of them Mexican-born U.S. residents, marched into the auditorium and filled the front rows. In exchange for their service to the country, they, too, would become citizens today.

  Afterward, the judge told a story of how his father had moved from China to America for a better life. Then his captive audience, with photocopied handouts to help with the words, recited the pledge of allegiance and sang the national anthem. This was followed by one of the most touching scenes I’d ever seen.

  “I hereby declare, on oath …,” the judge began.

  “I hereby declare, on oath …,” repeated 4,000 people two minutes away from becoming U.S. citizens.

  The judge continued, one voice leading 4,000: “…that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” Thousands of people sobbed as they spoke these words.

  “That I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Hundreds more could hardly utter the words because of the immense, relieved smiles on their faces.

  “That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” Others boomed the words passionately, as if their lives depended on them.

  “That I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law.” Others seemed nervous, as if one wrong move would cause them to forfeit the rights they were about to receive.

  “That I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. So help me God.”

  “You are now citizens of the United States,” the judge announced. “Congrat—”

  Before he completed the word, the room erupted with the sound of the largest exclamation point in downtown Los Angeles. Afterward, the new Americans looked around an auditorium full of strangers who had just become brothers. Tears involuntarily filled my eyes. For the Iranian woman in the burka standing next to Tomas, it had been fourteen years since she’d begun the process to become an American citizen.

  It was as if 4,000 movies—full of hope, anxiety, ambition, tragedy—had just ended before my eyes. In that moment I realized that for every person who sees America as a villain, there’s someone else who sees it as a hero. If anyone who wanted to decimate our country was in the room, they’d realize that it wasn’t a presi
dent or a general or a businessman they were planning to destroy, but the dreams of hundreds of thousands of their own brothers, sisters, and countrymen.

  Afterward, Tomas, in tears, filled out a passport application form, turned in his green card, and received his long-awaited naturalization certificate. Later that night, I joined Tomas and his friends for a celebratory dinner at a restaurant called Sur. The conversation soon turned from clubs and gossip to politics.

  Tomas’s housemate, an attorney, began talking about new laws that, as he put it, “enraged” him—like the Military Commissions Act, which allows the government to declare U.S. citizens enemy combatants and imprison them without a trial, and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, which gives the president the power to declare a public emergency and station troops in any city in America without permission from the local government.

  “Get ready for martial law,” Freddy, the attorney’s much younger boyfriend, sighed.

  “I read an article recently that said the voting machines in Ohio in 2004 were rigged,” the attorney continued.

  “Yeah, and we go to other countries and preach about how they need to have free elections,” Freddy interjected, “but we don’t even have that privilege ourselves.”

  Suddenly, we all went quiet and looked at Tomas. It was his first day as an American citizen, and we were ruining it.

  In that silence came my opportunity. I was finally able to ask what I’d been wanting to since he’d first told me about his quest. “In this climate, when America is doing so poorly economically and politically, especially since you already have a European passport, what made you so motivated to become an American citizen?”

  Tomas didn’t hesitate to respond. He’d probably known the answer long before he ever came to America. “It’s not about freedom,” he replied. “America is one of the least-free countries in the Western world. Things are so controlled here compared to Europe.”