The Corporation

by T. J. English

  OTHER ARRESTS AND SEARCHES WERE COORDINATED TO TAKE PLACE SIMULTANEously with that of Rydz. Given the name “Operation Corporate Raider,” the undertaking was massive: various arrest teams involved 170 detectives and sergeants and 66 federal agents.

  Nene Marquez was taken into custody by the Policía Nacional at his home in Spain.

  Luis DeVilliers was arrested at his home in Miami. His son, Luis Jr., was arrested at Challenger Video, their warehouse filled with illegal joker poker machines.

  Hit man Chino Acuna was taken, without incident, on a Miami street where he was being followed by undercover cops.

  Orestes Vidan, the accountant, was arrested at his office, which was filled with ledgers and documents related to the operation of the Corporation going back decades.

  Evelyn Runciman was arrested at Gables by the Sea, an exclusive gated community where she lived with her new husband, one of the richest men in Miami. Runciman had recently given birth to a child. She was allowed to change clothes and then taken into custody.

  In New York, Tony Dávila was arrested at his home in Queens. Luis Perez was served with an arrest warrant at Rikers Island correctional facility, where he was already being held on other criminal charges. The detectives who served Perez then drove by El Baturo, a bar and book-making spot in the Bronx that was popular with Cuban boliteros. They entered the bar and announced, “All of your Corporation buddies just got arrested all over the world. The government also took every penny they have and every piece of property they own. So unless you want to cooperate with us, you’ll be next.”

  In the suburb of The Hammocks, west of Miami, José Miguel Battle woke up and prepared to have his live-in nurse drive him to the local Publix supermarket to buy groceries. Battle had been feeling better, but his condition was problematic. Aging was a bitch. Going to the supermarket was his biggest adventure of the day.

  As he left his condominium, he first stopped by a series of kennels on the property where he kept his dogs. Two dozens dogs had been preserved from El Zapotal, a small number compared to what he used to own. El Padrino fed the dogs. He watched them jump around and slobber all over one another. It was one of the last remaining pleasures he had in his life.

  Battle got into in the front passenger seat of his Cadillac. The nurse got in behind the wheel and drove them both to the market. Neither Battle nor the nurse realized that they were being followed by a surveillance team of detectives.

  At the market, in the produce section, Detective Doug Mew walked up to Battle and informed him of his rights. He was placed under arrest.

  They drove back to Battle’s condo, where he was allowed to change his clothes and retrieve his identification and some other incidentals. As he walked out the front door of his condo surrounded by detectives, he turned to his nurse and said, “Please take care of my dogs. I don’t think I’ll ever see them again.”

  ONE FINAL ARREST NEEDED TO TAKE PLACE, AND THAT WAS OF MIGUELITO BATTLE. When the team of cops arrived at his home on the morning of Operation Corporate Raider, they discovered that Junior and his wife were not there. They were on a cruise ship currently out on the Caribbean. At his home, the search team found their itinerary. The couple were in the Presidential Suite aboard the Celebrity Summit. According to their itinerary, the ship’s next port of call was Costa Rica the following morning.

  Shanks, Gonzalez, and other lead investigators met at the mobile headquarters in downtown Miami. It was around noon, and a press conference was scheduled to announce the arrests at 3 P.M. They needed to make a decision about Battle Jr.

  It was determined that the Summit had Internet access. Shanks figured that Miguelito would hear about the arrests of his father and everyone else before they reached Costa Rica and was therefore a flight risk. They would have to arrest him at sea before the ship arrived in port.

  On a day filled with complicated maneuvers and an unprecedented use of manpower, the investigators now set out to arrest Battle Jr. on the high seas.

  The U.S. Coast Guard had no cutters in that area of the Caribbean. Shanks contacted the Pentagon and spoke with a captain from the U.S. Navy. He was told that naval warships on cruises in the southern and western Caribbean usually carried a Coast Guard law enforcement contingent on board. The captain told Shanks, “We have two ships in the area. But unfortunately they are not positioned between your cruise ship and the port. Even at full speed, I’m not sure we could catch them before they arrive in Costa Rica.”

  Shanks told the Pentagon Navy captain that he would get back to him. When he did, it was on a conference call with the chairman of the board of Celebrity Cruise Lines.

  Shanks explained the predicament to the chairman, placing an emphasis on Battle Jr.’s role in the Cuban Mafia and that he was likely facing a life sentence, meaning that when faced with arrest he might resort to desperate means. Initially, the cruise line chairman was not impressed. “My vessel can’t just heave to in the middle of the ocean and come to a halt. We have thousands of passengers to consider.”

  Said Shanks, “Sir, if we can’t do this at sea, I will arrange for armed guards from the U.S. embassy in Costa Rica to be on the pier. They, along with naval personnel, will obstruct your vessel from disembarking until after we have boarded what we now consider a hostile vessel to arrest Mr. Battle. We would rather not subject your passengers to that, but unless you order the Summit to slow down so that we can intercept at sea, you give us no other choice.”

  The cruise line chairman was quiet, and then he said, “Is there a way to arrest this Mr. Battle while it’s still dark out?”

  “Affirmative,” said the Navy captain. He gave the chairman a course and speed for the Summit, plus a longitude and latitude so that the cruise liner would rendezvous with the USS Thomas S. Gates, a guided missile cruiser of the Ticonderoga class. The Gates would maintain a distance of one mile and send out a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment to make the arrest of Battle at 2:30 A.M., under cover of darkness. If all went according to plan, the operation would be conducted without most passengers on the vessel even knowing that it had taken place.

  Everyone agreed. Shanks went to a nearby hotel and took a nap (he hadn’t slept in nearly two days). He awoke, showered, and went back to headquarters. It was an astounding experience. Shanks and the other lead investigators of Operation Corporate Raider were piped into all radio transmission between the Navy and Coast Guard vessels, as well as being in on an open mic on one of the arresting officers. They listened to the sound of the Coast Guard ship’s engine and the splashing of waves as the officers approached the cruise ship, where they were met by security personnel who allowed them on board and led them to the Presidential Suite. Using a passkey to enter the cabin, the officers surprised Battle in bed and placed him under arrest.

  From their post in downtown Miami, it was, for Shanks and his fellow investigators, as if they were there. They could even hear Battle’s wife, Grace, crying as her husband was informed of his rights and taken into custody.

  THE FIRST TO FLIP WAS LUIS DEVILLIERS, WHO FEARED THAT IF HE REMAINED IN lockup, Battle would find a way to have him killed. Oracio Altuve, who had been flirting with becoming an informant for fifteen years, also agreed to testify. Luis Perez cut a deal and agreed to testify. A woman named Consuela Alvarez, who had been a bookkeeper and secretary for the Corporation in New York and in Miami, was in jail at the time of the arrests. She reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and offered her services as a witness.

  The biggest fish of all was Abraham Rydz, whom Shanks and Gonzalez had set their sights on from the very beginning. Rydz’s older daughter, Vivian, had been arrested and charged with being a member of the Corporation on what even the prosecutors, if they were being honest with themselves, would admit was a bogus charge. Her involvement in one of her father’s bolita spots back in the late 1970s was ancient history, but the investigators had acted on the expectation of using her arrest as a bargaining chip with Rydz. And they had another bargaining chip. On t
he day after El Polaco’s arrest, they set up surveillance cameras at the safe deposit boxes of DeVilliers, Battle, Rydz, and others. On camera, they caught Margaret Rydz stuffing a carrying bag with cash. After she emptied out the account, she left behind a newspaper article in the safe deposit box about the arrest of her husband.

  Shanks and Gonzalez met with Rydz in an isolated room at the federal lockup. They told him that not only were they charging his daughter, but they were also going to charge his wife with money laundering for removing ill-gotten proceeds from their safe deposit box. What the two men did not know, until Rydz told them, was that she had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and didn’t have long to live. Getting Rydz to flip was not difficult. In exchange for his cooperation, the charges against his daughter and wife would be dropped, and he would be released pending his testimony at trial, so that he could spend her remaining months with his dying wife.

  As the trial date approached, it sometimes seemed as though the case might become ungainly and get out of hand. Coordinating the efforts of so many different jurisdictions was difficult, with investigators in New York not always aware of what the Miami investigators were doing, and vice versa.

  In New York, ADA Dennis Ring and Detective Tom Farley were responsible for tracking down Willie Diaz, who would be an essential witness on the subject of the arsons. The only problem was that nobody knew where Diaz was. For a time, he had been relocated into the witness protection program, but in the 1990s he had voluntarily left the program and disappeared from the radar. The New York investigators had been looking, but they were stumped. Then one day Ring was at a family party speaking with a postal inspector he knew who was involved in a criminal investigation in Brooklyn. The investigator asked him, “Hey, you’re working a big Cuban Mafia case, right?”

  Ring said, “Yes, I am.”

  “Well, I got this guy we’ve been using on one of our investigations. This probably won’t mean anything to you, because everything he’s telling us is old news from the 1980s, but he’s loaded with stories about an arson war between the Cubans and the Italians back in the day.”

  Ring listened to the postal inspector, not saying anything until he was sure. “You’re talking about Willie Diaz.”

  “That’s not the name he uses.

  “Brown-skinned Puerto Rican, about three hundred pounds, surly disposition?”

  “Well, yeah, that does describe him pretty well.”

  Willie Diaz had returned to Brooklyn under a different name, had gotten himself into trouble with the law, and was now cooperating with postal investigators as a way to avoid criminal charges.

  Detective Tom Farley and an NYPD apprehension team picked up Willie Diaz and brought him into the office of Dennis Ring, on Jay Street, near the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Guess what?” said Ring. “There’s a big racketeering case about to take place down in Florida and you are going to be one of the star witnesses.”

  Willie Diaz wasn’t happy to hear it; he cursed and said, “No.”

  Ring explained that he would either be a witness or a codefendant. “Your state cooperation agreement from the 1980s isn’t binding with the federal government. You could now be charged with everything you admitted to on the stand at the Lalo Pons trial.”

  Diaz was livid, but he had no choice.

  Willie was immediately taken into the custody of the Brooklyn DA’s Office; he was put up in a hotel and kept under twenty-four-hour guard. But he still had a phone, and on a number of occasions he called the office phone of Dennis Ring and left messages saying “I will fuck you up,” among other threats. Diaz blamed Ring for all his problems.

  Certainly, when a man who has admitted to playing a role in the killing of eight people threatens your life, you take it seriously. But the prosecutors needed Willie Diaz. And since they had him under lock and key, they felt they could monitor his every move. Still, it was unnerving for Ring and the other investigators.

  THE TRIAL GOT UNDER WAY IN FEBRUARY 2006, TWENTY-THREE MONTHS AFTER THE arrests of the defendants. By the time jury selection began, many of those indicted had become cooperators or copped pleas and been dropped from the case. Left standing were nine defendants, and two of those—Evelyn Runciman and her stepfather, Valerio Cerron—had been severed from the case. They would be prosecuted at a separate money-laundering trial.

  On the day opening statements were scheduled to begin, Battle Jr., surprisingly, tried to negotiate a plea deal. The prosecutors, including Tony Gonzalez and co-prosecutor David Haimes, were for the deal. Miguelito would plead guilty to most of the charges against him. Some of the charges would be dropped. In exchange, he would receive a two-year sentence, which meant, if he were given credit for time served, he could be out of prison in months. Plus, the deal specified that the government could not go after his share of a $100 million real estate deal in the Canary Islands that the investigators had learned about after his arrest.

  Shanks was against the deal. In fact, he was outraged that the government would even consider it.

  A few months before trial prepartions began in earnest, Shanks had retired from the Miami-Dade Police Department. More than thirty years had been devoted to the department, with the last half of those years working cases related to Battle and the Corporation. Upon his retirement, Shanks was immediately employed as a special investigator with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, so that he could see the trial through to the end. Though he was not a supervisor on the case, merely a hired gun, Gonzalez and the other prosecutors recognized Shanks’s singular devotion to the case. He had been given veto power, which meant that his insistence that Battle Jr. be prosecuted to the full extent of the law be given deference.

  Said Gonzalez to Shanks, “Okay. We’ll do it your way. But if we lose on the Battle Jr. counts at trial, it’s on you.”

  On March 2, the presentation of evidence finally commenced in the courtroom of Judge Alan Gold—the same judge who had scolded Shanks and Gonzalez for having tried to use RICO-type evidence against Battle at his gun possession trial. Now the tables had been turned and they were all involved in one of the biggest RICO trials ever presented in the Southern District of Florida.

  Tony Gonzalez gave the opening statement for the prosecution. From his first words to the jury, Gonzalez went for the jugular, the emotional main vein of the case. Before even mentioning bolita or Battle or the Corporation, he told the story of Jannin Toribio, burned to death in an arson fire on her fourth birthday. It was a startling opening, unsettling, some might say a cheap stunt, but it certainly worked by establishing the horrific image of that child’s death as a motif that would haunt the trial for the six months of its duration.

  To say that the government’s case was ambitious was like saying an astronaut hopes to get off the ground. The investigators had succeeded in putting together the case that Dave Shanks had always dreamed about—a sprawling assemblage of racketeering acts and conspiracies spanning forty years. The danger was that the size of the case—the sheer number of witnesses and predicate acts and criminal charges involving multiple defendants—would overwhelm the jury, making the trial narrative too dense or complicated for anyone to follow. Another issue was the ages of the defendants and many of the witnesses. Battle Jr. was the only defendant under the age of seventy. Looking at the defendants, so clearly in their final years, begged the question: why not just let these old codgers die of old age and save the government the massive cost of prosecution?

  The answer to that question was Jannin Toribio, a child whose death cried out for justice.

  If the trial had a star witness, it was Abraham Rydz, El Polaco. From the stand, Rydz talked with a wistful nostalgia about the vagaries of the gambling business, what a crapshoot it was, how you could be up one minute and down the next. “It was a Sunday morning about nine-thirty, ten o’clock, and we were bragging with each other about how much money we had. And he told me, ‘I have something like one hundred fifty or two hundred thousand dollars,’ and I s
aid I had about the same. That same day, Sunday, at three o’clock in the afternoon, we had to go looking for people to borrow money from to pay the hits. So, that’s the kind of business we’re talking about. We’re talking about even when you made money, it wasn’t a sure thing, you were gambling. The word is ‘gambling.’ You could get hit very big, and you could lose everything.”

  Most of all, Rydz talked of the highly personal nature of the relationships between the generation of Cubans who had come from the island, in the wake of revolution and displacement, and formed a tight cultural bond around the concept of bolita, a game of chance and business partnership based on each banker’s willingness to cover for the other in times of need.

  To Rydz, it was about business, making money, and it was on this account that he eventually parted ways with José Miguel Battle.

  During cross-examination, Jack Blumenfeld asked Rydz, “Let’s talk about when the three of you would discuss business or policy issues or have to make decisions.”

  “What do you mean, the three of us?”

  “You, José Miguel, and Migue.”

  “The truth is, sir, José Miguel was out of it. José Miguel was not interested in making money. José Miguel was interested in his name, in his pride, in the way he dressed, and other things. But he was not interested in the business at all.”

  Rydz, during his cross-examination by the attorney for Battle Jr., seemed to pull his punches, hedging his testimony to give the impression that Junior was not involved in many of the crimes for which he had been indicted, especially as it related to the murders of Ernestico Torres and Palulu Enriques, and also the many arson deaths. This angered the prosecution team, especially Shanks, who whispered under his breath to Tony Gonzalez things like “this is bullshit,” and “this is a violation of the terms of his cooperation agreement.”

  As annoyed as Shanks was by Rydz’s covering for Battle Jr., the defense lawyers in the case became disgusted by Shanks. At numerous times during the trial, when the prosecution, due to scheduling conflicts, was unable to have one of their many witnesses at the courtroom when they were scheduled to testify, Shanks was put on the stand. Having been designated as the prosecution’s primary “expert witness,” he was used to stall until the original witness was able to arrive. The defense lawyers got sick of hearing from Shanks, and his longtime involvement in the investigation became an issue at the trial. One lawyer suggested that Shanks’s “vested interest” in a guilty verdict was what the case was all about, the need of one cop, on behalf of the entire criminal justice system, to justify a career devoted to virtually only one case.