The Chameleon Conspiracy

by Haggai Carmon

  “I hear you,” said David, digesting my words. “Anything to support it?”

  “Ward had a pronounced stutter. None of the imposters is described in the files as having that disability. On the contrary. The suspect in each of the eleven indicted cases actually has been pretty articulate,” I said, gaining confidence with my theory.

  “Go on,” said David, sounding interested.

  I picked up speed. “Let’s establish, just for the sake of our little discussion here, that twenty-year-olds couldn’t have pulled off the scams, because they weren’t sophisticated enough, and because the little evidence we’ve gathered shows the perpetrators appeared to be much older. Therefore, let’s suppose that whoever assumed the identity of four, and maybe even all twelve, young American men made a hit on a bank or on un-suspecting investors and ran with the money. Now, I don’t even have this con artist’s picture, if Ward’s identity was also stolen. The yearbook picture and the photos that Donald Peterson, the retired school principal, sent me were definitely of Ward. But apparently the FBI never asked any of the victims whether the scam artist’s photo was in a photo array that included that year-book photo of Ward. If my target wasn’t Ward after all, then whom was I chasing? I’m back to square one, hunting a single ghost or a cemetery’s worth.”

  “Dan, it’s Bob. Didn’t you just tell us that you think the FBI was wrong, and even the person calling himself Ward was an imposter who assumed Ward’s identity, and not Ward himself? So if the FBI was wrong on that, why wouldn’t they be wrong on the entire concept? Take your idea even further.”

  “How?”

  “How do we know that the twelve cases are connected? Maybe just two or three or none at all,” said Bob.

  “The FBI said so.”

  “They could be wrong, you know. You’ve just suggested it,” added David.

  “Anyway, the FBI’s conclusion isn’t proof, but assumption,” concluded Bob.

  “OK,” I said. “Although we’ve enough doubts concerning the FBI’s conclusion, we also must make assumptions that could turn out to be just as baseless.”

  “Like what?” asked Bob.

  “Like the one that seems most logical at this time, and take it from there.”

  “Fine,” said David. “How about that? Assuming that all of the cases are connected, who could mastermind such an operation?”

  “If it went beyond the one-person-crime-spree pattern we see in the usual identity thefts, I’d see a criminal organization with international activities, or some other structured body.”

  “Any basis for that?” Bob asked, more in curiosity than as a challenge.

  “No proof, just my hunch.”

  “Why?” Clearly, like David, he wasn’t the kind of guy who would settle for easy answers.

  “Because it involves young American men, none of whom apparently knew any of the others, who first left the country at about the same time, each for reasons of his own. Only after they left the country did the common denominator kick in: their identities were stolen. The first step of the conspiracy didn’t start here. It started somewhere, anywhere, wherever these guys lost their passports. Take Ward. He was traveling in Africa and Asia without known incident until he stopped writing his friends here. Since we don’t know where the others went, it could have happened anywhere. But the fact remains—their passports were also taken. Therefore, my conclusion is that an organization that operates in more than one location could be behind it. Besides, why limit ourselves to thinking it was a criminal enterprise? Maybe there’s a foreign power or a terrorist organization behind this.”

  “Any basis for that?” asked David.

  “Not at this time, but need I remind you that we lost our innocence on nine eleven? Things that weren’t plausible earlier are a reality now.” I didn’t want to elaborate, but in my mind was my Mossad training concerning planting sleeper agents in target countries. Those passports could now be used by foreign agents operating in any country that welcomes U.S. citizens. These could be used for far more dangerous purposes than money siphoning. I had no proof, just a hunch that I registered in my mind to develop later.

  David brought me back to reality, which he was very good at. In fact, I sometimes felt as if he were my anchor, always keeping me tethered only to the facts at hand. Yet one more thing I was going to miss when he was gone. “Maybe the passports were taken in just one location by a sophisticated scam artist?”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “That’s also a possibility.” But I suspected that David’s new theory was more farfetched than mine.

  Bob developed the idea further. “Have you thought of the possibility that these young men simply sold their passports to finance their trips, claimed they were lost, and applied for new ones?”

  “I did, and so did the FBI. The State Department told the Bureau that none of these men applied for a replacement passport. Besides, if all they did was sell their passport, why have they disappeared for good?”

  “Did you investigate whether these guys had more than one citizenship? They could be selling their U.S. passports and continuing to travel with their foreign passports.” Bob’s tone was per sis tent. He seemed unwilling to consider my speculations unless I could prove that I’d considered every possibility. I realized he was only doing his job, and so far it hadn’t reached the point where I found it to be irritating.

  “No go. If any of them had a foreign passport, his entry into the U.S. with that passport would have been recorded, and it wasn’t. Therefore, the genuine Ward left the U.S. only once and never returned. His passport and identity were given to someone already in the U.S., or who had initially entered the U.S. with a different passport under a different name, and then took Ward’s identity. It is possible that either all the additional passports were delivered to that someone while he was already in the U.S., or they were brought into the U.S. with him. That is, if all these cases are connected.”

  “Yes, but…” said Bob continuing to be the devil’s advocate. “To begin with, why does he need passports to steal identities? He just needs the bio details, Social Security numbers, and such.”

  I had an answer to that. “Because a U.S. passport is the best way of getting a copy of your old Social Security card, a driver’s license, and many other personal documents. Once you have these documents, the passport becomes secondary in the identity-theft scheme, other than for leaving the U.S. with your loot.”

  Bob wasn’t deterred. “Fine, but how do we know that Ward didn’t have yet another passport with an alias that he used to exit the U.S.? It’s not a big deal. If he managed to get eleven passports with aliases, he could get twelve.”

  “I still think there’s some organization behind it,” I said, but with less conviction.

  After we got off the phone, I decided to explore that direction. Was Ward the only solid name I had to look at? What about the others? I decided to stick with him, because chronologically he was the first to disappear. But the age issue made me more confident in my earlier theory that we had ourselves a case of identity thefts. All victims described the perpetrators as men in their late twenties or early thirties, but the young men whose passports were used were in their early twenties at the time the scams began. Although a victim doesn’t usually ask a purported business associate for a passport, in retrospect the discrepancy was too obvious to ignore.

  I turned to my desktop. I wanted to see if there were any news items about Ward. Maybe he’d sold photographs to some magazine in India, or had been arrested after a bar brawl in Indonesia. With more than ten thousand daily newspapers published around the world, maybe he had done something nice, or not so nice, that had been reported. Ward had disappeared in the early 1980s, before most international news was routinely computerized, and had then resurfaced irregularly starting in the mid-1980s. Still, I might get lucky. Maybe Ward’s irregular resurfacing was intended to establish a “clean” alias between scams? None of the other aliases turned up again for more than the one scam.


  I first ran a Google search. Nothing relevant. Then I tried the Dogpile search engine. Still nothing. Next I tried legal retrieving services and limited the search to newspapers and magazines. After scrolling down over hundreds of items, and just as I was about to give up, I got a hit on Albert C. Ward III. It was in a newsletter issued by the Jewish community in Sydney, Australia.

  A bigamous wedding was averted at the last moment last week, before Rabbi Applebaum was scheduled to celebrate the marriage of Mr. Herbert Goldman from the United States to Miss Sheila Levi, a member of our community. Just hours before the ceremony was to be held at our synagogue, Rabbi Applebaum received a facsimile from Loretta Otis, of Lexington, Kentucky, claiming that Mr. Herbert Goldman was still married to her. In the fax Ms. Otis said she had no objection to Mr. Goldman’s marriage, provided that he divorces her first and that they settle “some outstanding financial matters.” Rabbi Applebaum called Ms. Otis, who told him that Herbert Goldman’s real name is Albert C. Ward III, and he is using the name of Herbert Goldman because he acquired a U.S. passport in that name while living in the U.S. Ms. Otis told Rabbi Applebaum that Goldman informed her that he was traveling to Australia for business. According to Ms. Otis, Goldman rang her weekly from Australia, but recently told her, “I’m marrying an Australian woman, Sheila Levi, because that way I can get permanent residence in Australia. You shouldn’t worry, because it will only be a sham marriage, and I will always love you my sweet Loretta, my only true wife.” When it dawned on Ms. Otis that Ward was not going to return to the U.S. or pay her father back the $34,000 he had borrowed from him, she faxed several rabbis in Sydney and the Sydney Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, hoping to frustrate Goldman’s marriage plans. Rabbi Applebaum commented that Ms. Otis’s contact was timely, not just because the marriage would have been bigamous, but because he opposes people marrying out of their faith. According to Ms. Otis, Goldman, also known as Albert C. Ward III, is not Jewish.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said in deep satisfaction. I looked for the date. It was only ten days old! I called David Stone.

  “David, I need to do additional searching and verifications, but it seems that I might have a lead on Ward’s trail.”

  “Where?”

  “In Australia,” I said, and gave David the details.

  “How recent is the news item?”

  “Ten days.”

  “Let me run it by the Office of International Affairs at the Criminal Division,” said David. “Maybe they already have something on that.”

  Now it was time for cherchez la femme: look for the woman. If Loretta Otis had spilled the beans on Ward once, she’d do it twice. There’s nothing more dangerous than a spurned woman. Maybe a spurned man.

  I called the FBI field office in Lexington, Kentucky.

  They called me back within the hour to give me the news: Loretta Otis had been found dead the night before in her apartment. Homicide.

  “How did she die?” I asked, as if it mattered for my investigation. She was dead—I couldn’t talk to her in any case.

  “Gun shots, three times. Looks professional, and if we’re not mistaken, she was the target. Doesn’t look like a foiled robbery— nothing was taken from her house.”

  I told them about my initial finding in the media about the victim, and asked the Bureau to call me back as the police investigation developed. But I already knew why she had died, and feared I’d hit a dead end there anyway.

  David called me later on that day. I told him about Otis’s assassination.

  He reflected for a moment and asked, “Do you think Ward is connected?”

  “I can’t rule it out. Look at the sequence of events. First she faxes the Rabbi to stop the wedding, then the Rabbi calls her to verify, then the Rabbi refuses to marry Ward and tells him why, and within days, bang bang bang, and Otis is dead. Probably silenced either as punishment or to keep her from spilling more. It seems that our case is not dead after all. It’s very much in motion.”

  “OK. Let local law enforcement handle that—we’re only after the money. Anyway, I’ve just got the authorizations. Start packing, you’re going to Sydney. Your travel documents are on the way. We’ve received the cooperation of the Australian Federal Police. They have assigned an agent to assist you. His name is…Hold on, let me get the cable. Peter Maxwell. I’ll give you his number. Call him directly to alert him of your arrival time, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Peter Maxwell here,” said a friendly voice with a heavy Australian accent, when I dialed his number.

  “Hi, Mr. Maxwell, this is Dan Gordon of the U.S. Department of Justice.”

  “Hello, Dan, I’ve been expecting your call, and forget the mister, just call me Peter.” Peter Maxwell pronounced his name Pita. He was warm and open as he brought me up to speed. Goldman was still at large. Border records showed the entry of a Herbert Goldman, a U.S. citizen, through Sydney’s airport on March 1, 2004. On the immigration form he’d indicated a hotel as place of stay.

  “Which hotel?” I asked.

  “No name, just ‘a hotel.’ ”

  “I’m planning to come over to see the Australian Federal Police in action,” I said.

  “Please come, although I don’t expect a lot of action on this end. Hopefully we’ll find him. But it’s one hell of a big country down here, mate.”

  Three days later I arrived at the Sydney airport. To my huge surprise, all the red-eyed, weary passengers of my flight were stopped in the terminal’s hallway by uniformed policemen with dogs on short leashes. Without much ado, we were told—or rather ordered—to form two lines and put our hand luggage on the floor. Nice welcome, I thought, but times being what they were, it was reassuring in its own way. Policemen then walked two dogs slowly along each passenger line, letting one dog, then the other, sniff each piece of carry-on luggage. Ten minutes later it was over and we were let go, without even one word of explanation or apology.

  There were ways to look for drugs or explosives, but that one was the most unexpected. I knew they had to use at least two dogs per line: one dog trained for explosives that sits stock still and points if it finds them, the other trained to detect drugs by sniffing the luggage. Trainers had discovered that they couldn’t cross-train the dogs, or the sniffing narcotics dogs might set off explosives. If using both types of dogs, you’d take the explosives dogs down the line first. Then, if no explosives were found, would come the drug dogs, which could snurfle to their hearts’ content without setting anything off.

  Peter Maxwell, a tall man with a rugged, tanned face and a firm handshake, waited for me in the customs hall.

  “Welcome,” he said as he walked me past customs into his unmarked police car. “Was it too tiring?”

  “Somewhat,” I answered, deciding not to rant about the sudden search. “Any developments?” I was eager to jump into it.

  Peter smiled. “Yes, we found the lad at a Sydney hotel.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “No. Ten minutes after we started questioning him, he said he was sick and fainted.”

  “He actually fainted?”

  “You ask me, this bloke is full of shit, but just in case, we admitted him into a hospital.”

  “Is he under your watch? This guy can disappear in no time.”

  “We’ve got a warrant for his arrest on local fraud charges, so in fact he’s a detainee in the hospital.”

  “When can I see him?”

  Peter looked at his watch. “How’s this afternoon sound? I’ll drop you off at your hotel, and if you aren’t too tired, you can walk to the hospital. It’s very close to your hotel.”

  When we arrived at the hotel, I checked in, threw my luggage on the floor, and ran out the door. I was dog tired, but I hadn’t come to Sydney to rest. I had to see Albert C. Ward III right away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Manhattan, New York, September 11, 2004

  Crushed by the fact that I had been wrong about Ward, I had to find a new bearing.
I paced through the hallway outside my office. If the man in the hospital bed wasn’t Albert Ward, then who was he? His denials didn’t impress me. I’d seen con men in action, and wasn’t about to be convinced by this guy. On the other hand, there was firm scientific proof that he wasn’t Ward. Had I picked on an innocent person? I still had no idea of what the missing link could be. What about Otis’s faxed letter connecting Ward with Goldman? Why wasn’t that enough? But until the FBI and the Australian Federal Police cleared this matter up, I needed to move on. The solution had to be in the file. But where?

  I sat down at my desk and opened the file for the umpteenth time. First, I read my notes taken during my conversation with the high school principal. Ward had wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic Magazine. Maybe I should see if he had ever made good on that dream.

  “It’d take time to search the archives dating back to 1980,” said a very polite woman when I called National Geographic. “Not all our freelance photographers are included in our computer database. If the person you’re looking for sold us a photograph many years back, a manual search would have to be performed.”

  “Thanks, but can you please look to see whether his name appears on your computer database?” I asked. It was an absurdly long shot—lots of kids have dreams—but I had nothing to lose, and I could get lucky.

  “Let me see. You said his name was Albert Ward?”

  “Yes, the third. Albert C. Ward III.”

  I heard her clicking on her computer keyboard. “Yes,” she said. “I think I found something. There’s a series of photographs taken by a person with that name during a safari in South Africa in 1981.”

  “That’s great. Is there an address listed for him?”

  “Yes, we sent him a check to Comfort Student Hostel, Sandton Square, P.O. Box 97848, Johannesburg, South Africa.”

  Finally I was moving up in time, although just one year. At least I had an address overseas. “Thank you so much. Can you transfer me to accounting please?”