Path to Justice

by Jim Dutton

  Nick said, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “I wonder why Luis didn’t want the money sitting in U.S. banks? It couldn’t be that Luis was worried that U.S law enforcement would seize and forfeit the money?”

  “It was things like that, along with Luis’ highflying lifestyle, that made me seriously question what was going on. I looked into the standard business practices of businesses which operate on both sides of the border—how they are paid; whether in dollars or pesos; are they moving large amounts of cash dollars into the U.S. and then wiring it back?”

  “What did you come up with?” asked Ana.

  “If one is selling legitimate products in Mexico, it’s generally paid for in pesos, not cash dollars. If legitimate products are sold in the U.S., they are generally paid for by check or credit card, hardly ever cash. So I questioned Luis about it.”

  “What did he tell you?” asked Mario.

  “He just gave me a long line of bullshit. It didn’t ring true. He acted real nice and invited me to take a trip up to Montana with him. We were supposed to combine fishing with opening up Canada as a market for his products. I went up there. We met up with a Harley-riding real estate agent about property and did some trout fishing. We also met with two Canadian guys who scowled a lot, grunted, and said there was a market for Luis’ products in Vancouver. A few weeks later we went back and met a couple of lowlifes who were part of Luis’ entourage. That’s when we made the run to the Canadian border and traded duffle bags of drugs for bags of cash.”

  “So you finally figured out that something was amiss? That your $50,000 retainer was not just for balancing the books? That just maybe, Luis and his henchmen were exactly what they seemed, cartel drug dealers, with so much illicit cash on their hands that they didn’t know what to do with it all?” Nick asked.

  “I may be a bit slow on the uptake, but not entirely oblivious. It confirmed my fears; it was drug dealing. Luis, even told me after we made the Canadian border delivery, ‘If you’re thinking about getting out of this, it’s too late. You’re part of it. You’re looking at 20 years if you are caught. If you think about going to the authorities, you’re looking at life, not as in prison, but as in dead.’”

  Mario asked, “Have you been to his compound in the hills above Rosarito Beach?”

  “Yeah, a few times. I met with a couple of other bigwigs in his organization. Luis had an American Latina that we had dinner with, I think Felicia was her name.”

  “Oh, yeah? Tell us about her,” said Ana.

  “Not much to tell. When he said jump, she said how high. She was attractive, young. He met her at the track in Del Mar. Luis and at least one of his bigwig buddies are really into horse racing. I didn’t see Felicia the last time I was down there, a couple of weeks ago. I asked Luis where she was. He told me we wouldn’t be seeing that “bitch” anymore. She was being taken care of. I knew not to ask more questions about her.”

  “How did Luis seem the last time you saw him at the compound?” asked Nick.

  “Nothing much different. Just a bit more pissed off than usual. His right arm was in a sling. I asked him what happened. He just said, ‘Nothing, twisted my shoulder a bit.’ I didn’t ask him the follow up question, If it is just a twisted shoulder, why is blood seeping through the sling?”

  Nick said, “You must be getting tired. We’ll let you go in a bit. But before we do, we want to tell you about what you need to do for us. First, you’re to keep us informed of what’s going on. Mario will work with you on a protocol to report in. We’re also going to want you to wear a wire a few times. We want you to meet with the Sakias and Hector Morales to pin down what they know about the illicit nature of the money they are laundering for Luis and the cartel.”

  “Wait a minute. Wearing a wire, I’m not going for that. If they suspect something, pat me down, it’s all over.”

  “Relax Lester,” said Mario. “First of all, the money laundering operators aren’t heavy hitters. They were legitimate businessmen that have been turned by the lure of the all mighty American dollar and a bad economy a couple of years back. They won’t be checking you for wires. Have they checked you in the past?”

  “No, but the squeeze is on. The search warrants you just did made them uneasy, even if no search warrants were executed on their businesses or residences.”

  “Look Lester. It’s not like in the movies. A radio size transmitter isn’t taped to your body. We know you like to scuba dive. We saw your gear at your home. We’ll provide you with a button size microphone and transmitter, hidden in a diver’s watch. It transmits on 150 to 174 megahertz, higher than normal frequencies. Our receiver recorder will be hundreds of yards away. The watch is battery operated and has a two hour life. We’ll discretely monitor the location. We’ll have a pole camera set up outside the meeting places by our installation team. They look like your local utility company, fixing some wiring. You couldn’t be safer.”

  “I still don’t like it. But it sounds like I don’t have much of a choice.”

  “Now you’re getting the idea,” said Nick. “We’ll iron out the details tomorrow.”

  After Mario left with Lester, Ana and Nick stayed in the conference room. Nick seemed lost in space. “Earth to Nick, wake up!”

  “I was just thinking. Luis had his right arm in a sling. That would’ve been just after the Coast Guard shot up the Donzi off of Carlsbad. The blood seeping through his sling, probably a bullet hole. It would’ve been the Donzi driver’s right arm that would have been struck by a bullet as the Donzi crossed the Coast Guard’s path. It seems that Luis likes to take risks. He delivered the first load of dope to Canada and he just drove the back-up boat for a coastal drug delivery. If nothing else, he has huevos.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Nick and Mario were in Nick’s office, bullshitting about the Padres chances this year. “You know the Pads Nick, start out slow, get revved up after the All Star break, and then barely miss the playoffs. It’d tear your heart out if it didn’t happen every year.”

  “Hope springs eternal at the start of every season. They got a couple of new ballplayers. Their starting pitching is pretty good, and they have a great bullpen.”

  “Yeah Nick, that just means a lot of 2 to 1 or 3 to 2 losses. Boring. I never knew you to be the optimist.”

  “Usually I’m not. Certainly, not about the scumbags we deal with. But with baseball, you have to let yourself go, dream a bit. All teams start even. Hell, even with a rotten season, a team is often not eliminated from the playoffs until September. But enough of that. We have a grand jury scheduled in three weeks. Give me a recap on how Sendow did with his meetings with the heads of the money laundering organizations.”

  “He did well. We had video cameras set up outside of each location on utility poles. Each had an excellent view of the front door of each office. For two weeks before the meetings, we tracked the comings and goings of the Sakias and Hector Morales, and others, into and out of their respective offices. Sendow met with Morales at his L&M Freight office in Calexico. We set up in a van a couple of blocks away, receiving the audio transmissions from Sendow’s diver’s watch.”

  “What were the reasons Sendow used to set up the meeting?”

  “He said with the recent search warrants and the seized vehicle in L&M’s name, as well as the fact that the feds seized some compromising records from his own offices, that they needed to talk. We have Sendow and Morales on tape talking about Morales’ company being on the title of one of the drug transport vehicles in Missoula. We also have Morales expressing his concern that he got involved in laundering drug proceeds. He was really worried about what the feds would do next—execute search warrants on his home and business locations, or worse, arrest him.”

  “Smart guy,” said Nick. “We’ll get to him soon enough when we close down the investigation.”

  “They also discussed the need to upgrade the method they use
to launder money. Sendow told them it was time step up the game to trade-based money laundering. Morales was familiar with the idea. He knew some people in L.A.’ s garment district involved in that type of scheme. He gave Sendow some names that I’ll pass on to the L.A. Money Laundering Task Force. Morales told Sendow that he has an auto parts business that could be used for trade-based laundering. He was fine with the idea that his car parts company would receive drug derived cash from the Familia for the purchase of auto parts. Morales would then use the cash, minus his small percentage, to buy the auto parts wholesale for resale to a legitimate Mexican auto parts dealer. That Mexican auto dealer would pay a Mexican casa de cambio for the auto parts he received from Morales’ company. The casa de cambio would then turn around, minus its small percentage, and pay Luis the money in pesos. Morales said he would use the casa de cambio they had used to facilitate past laundering, Numero Uno. Morales agreed that even though this would be a more complicated method to launder the money, it’d be a safer method to avoid detection from law enforcement.”

  “This was all on tape Mario?”

  “Every bit of it. We’re getting it transcribed and pulling out the highlights to present to the grand jury.”

  “What happened with Mr. and Mrs. Sakia?”

  “Basically the same thing. Sendow used the same reasons for the meet, the recent search warrants and need to upgrade the money laundering operation. The Sakias, through their food import business, are already operating a trade-based scheme. They discussed the need to insulate the Sakias more. They won’t bring U.S. cash dollars across the border to put in their accounts in U.S. banks, but instead will receive the cash dollars directly from the drug distributors at their wholesale food offices in Chula Vista. They’ll use the cash dollars to purchase wholesale food from Latin America and then sell the food to North American buyers. The Sakias agreed that this will create a paper trail that the feds won’t be able to pierce. The Sakias told Sendow that it would take time for them to reconnect with their wholesale food suppliers in Latin America. All is on tape and is being transcribed. We’ll have the important excerpts to give to the grand jury.”

  “Well done. Can you send in Jerry and Pepe? I need to talk to them about the witness list for the grand jury.”

  “Here’s the updated witness list,” said Pepe as he barged into Nick’s office, followed by Jerry. Nick looked through it. It only had two civilian witnesses, the rest were law enforcement. That’s the great thing about a federal grand jury. A prosecutor can present all the evidence in support of an indictment to a grand jury through law enforcement agents. Unlike a trial, where an attorney normally has to put on the witness who saw or heard something, an agent can tell a grand jury what an eyewitness told him he saw or heard—the agent testifies to hearsay.

  Further, it’s just the 19 grand jurors in the room with the witness and the prosecutor. There’s no defense attorney. And, it only takes 12 of the 19 grand jurors to approve the indictment proposed by the prosecutor. Finally, the standard of proof to return the indictment is just probable cause to believe the suspect committed the crime. The prosecutor doesn’t have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person did it, like you have to at trial. Because of these lower standards, former New York Appellate Chief Justice Sol Wachtler, in a 1985 interview, told reporters that “by and large” a prosecutor “could indict a ham sandwich.” A lesser known fact is that Judge Wachtler had the opportunity at a later time to reflect upon the grand jury process from a defendant’s perspective. He was indicted by a federal grand jury and was sentenced to fifteen months in federal prison after pleading guilty to threatening his former lover and her daughter.

  After looking through the list, Nick asked, “Have the two civilian witnesses been served?”

  Jerry replied, “Felicia isn’t a problem. We went through the Deputy U.S. Marshall in Topeka who is handling the witness protection. But we haven’t been able to serve the Montana fire fighter, Drury Betts. He’s off on another pre-fire season photo trip with his bud, Zack Reynolds. Neighbors think they’re holed up in Glacier National Park. There’s no cellphone service in the park. Glacier hasn’t even opened yet because there’s still quite a bit of snow on the ground. They’re in Zack’s old Chevy van.”

  “We need Drury for the grand jury. I want this case to come alive for the grand jury. It’s about real people, not just law enforcement telling the jurors what witnesses told them. There are a couple of counts that are a little thin, like the conspiracy to murder Felicia and the aggravated assault on Ana. Drury is how we originally tied this investigation to the Baja Norte Family. He can identify Luis as making the first Yaak drug delivery and Drury was later held at gunpoint by one of Luis’ minions. The jurors will relive the danger the cartel poses through Drury’s eyes.”

  “I get it Nick, but Drury is off the grid, gone mountain man on us,” Pepe said, exasperated.

  With a slightly raised eyebrow, and a glint in his eye, Nick replied, “I hope you have winter clothes and snowshoes because you’re going to Glacier National Park. Contact the law enforcement jurisdictions around the park and see if they can locate the van. You can fly into Great Falls and rent a four-wheel drive. Great Falls is only about two to three hours east of Glacier, depending on what part of the park you end up going to. If you have time, don’t forget to send Rona a postcard. She likes to hear from us when we’re out and about.”

  “Nick, you forget I’m a warm-blooded boy. I’m used to the desert. I’m Mexican. I think there must be a Civil Rights, Fair Employment Act, which requires you to make an accommodation and not send me into the cold.”

  “I’ll make you an accommodation Pepe. You can take a bottle of tequila with you to keep warm. On your way out, send Josh in, we need to discuss the way we’re going to approach the grand jury.”

  “Hello Nick. I guess I’m next. Where are you going to send me? Missoula maybe?”

  “No such luck Josh. Your Montana cowgirl is just going to have to wait awhile longer for your charms. We need to make sure we’re on the same page on how we’re going to present evidence to the grand jury.”

  “What do you mean? We just put on the agents, present the favorable evidence, and presto!, we get our indictment.”

  “No Josh. We aren’t playing it that way. This is too important of a case. We’re not going to ram something down the grand jury’s throats. We’ll give them a fair view of the evidence. If there’s some exonerating evidence that points to innocence, we put that on as well.”

  “Nick, you know we don’t have to do that in federal court. As long as the prosecutor doesn’t commit misconduct that prejudices the case, like misleading the grand jury, the indictment will be upheld if any evidence supports it. The evidence doesn’t have to be substantial. The reviewing court doesn’t look at the sufficiency of the evidence in support of the charges in the indictment.”

  “I’m aware of that. But we’re going to handle this grand jury like it was before a California grand jury, subject to California law— we have to tell the grand jury about exonerating evidence and if they want to have that type of evidence presented, then we put it on. I also don’t want any double hearsay. I don’t want an agent to get on the stand and testify that another agent told him that an eyewitness said this or that. We need to put on the agent who talked directly with the eyewitness.

  “We’ll be splitting up the law enforcement witnesses. You’ll take the ones who testify about the money laundering operations and the search warrants. I’ll handle the two civilian witnesses and the agents who will testify about the drug smuggling operation. Are you good with that Josh?”

  “Fine. It should make us better prepared for trial.”

  “Great, can you send Rona in?

  A few minutes later, there were three taps on Nick’s door.

  “Come in Rona.”

  “How did you know it was me Nick?”

  “C’mon,
after twenty years of working together, you don’t think I know your door tap? The good news is that I reminded Pepe and Jerry to send you a postcard from their travels in the northern wilds. Any bad news for me about document preparation for the grand jury?”

  “Not really. All the documents and evidence seized from the search warrants are numbered and indexed into the computer. You have separate hard copies of all the documents.”

  “Yeah, I’ve gone through most of them, and made a tentative exhibit list which identifies the documents I want to present by the Bates numbers. I’ve annotated the exhibit list to describe each document and how it fits into the case. I’ll email you a copy of the list.”

  “Thanks. I know the drill. Abbie C. and I will pull the exhibits, number them and put them in separate folders, ready for the grand jury. You, Josh, and the witnesses will have separate exhibit books for use before the grand jury. Also, most of the blow-ups you requested are finished. We have photos of some of the Canadian border distributions by cartel members, the satellite photos of the Otay Mesa Ranch, maps of pertinent areas in Montana and southern California, and key phrases blown up and highlighted from the various transcripts of taped conversations.”

  “Rona, I don’t know what I’d do without you?”

  “Not much. Without me and your dedicated secretary, Abbie, taking care of you, you’d be even more of a mess. I see that Abbie cleaned off your desk and even washed your coffee cups. Nick, you have to wake up to the 21st century, just a little. Secretaries don’t clean out their bosses’ coffee cups anymore.”

  “Hell, I know that. Secretaries aren’t supposed to even get you coffee. I have faithfully gone to my political correctness training. But Abbie C. is old school. I don’t ask her to clean my desk or wash out my coffee cups. She just does it once in awhile. Maybe she can’t stand the clutter, even from afar.”