Cheater's Game

by Paul Levine

  “You are the folks who hold Kip Lassiter’s fate in your hands,” I continued. “Not me. Not Ms. Bolden. Not even Judge Speidel. What you do sets the course for the rest of his life. So, I’m making sure you realize the heavy burden that’s on your shoulders.

  “I was thinking about each of you this morning when I walked into this building carrying my coffee past all those reporters and photographers and bloggers and so-called social media influencers. And I wondered what you thought as you went through security and saw all that commotion that will only build with each day of trial.”

  I turned ninety degrees to look into the gallery, so the jurors would do the same. They would recognize some local television personalities and a few of the network and cable talking heads, too. The judge would instruct the jurors not to read or watch coverage of the trial. It is an admonition that is never followed.

  I spotted Gilberto Foyo from Ray Pincher’s office in the first row of the gallery. He returned my look and nodded. As far as I could tell, he was my only cheerleader.

  “You’ve seen the massive publicity. And in voir dire, you each said you can set it aside and decide the case solely on the evidence. But what is it you’re thinking? ‘This must be a big case.’ In this glorious modern building that looks like a giant ship. In this palatial courtroom. Every seat taken. A federal case with a distinguished judge. An indictment charging an astounding thirty-seven felonies. Thirty-seven!

  “Are you wondering, ‘Is Kip Lassiter some master criminal, some racketeer, some member of organized crime?’ Then you take your seats and look at my client. My nephew. The boy I raised. This clean-cut, bright, polite kid; the kind of young man you hope will show up one day to take your daughter to the movies. Maybe you wonder, ‘Am I in the right courtroom?’”

  Some jurors smiled, and I smiled right back. My demeanor is calculated to say: I’m a regular guy. Let’s chat. You can trust me.

  “A few minutes ago, Ms. Bolden quoted one of the judge’s instructions to you. She said your verdict must not be governed by sympathy. Good, because the defense isn’t looking for sympathy. We’re only looking for justice. And fairness. And equal application of the law. And I’ll have a lot more to say about all of those things in closing argument when I talk about who got prosecuted and who didn’t.

  “By the way, that jury instruction the prosecutor quoted was incomplete. Ms. Bolden left something out. The government does that a lot, shows you the favorable evidence and tosses unfavorable evidence out the window. My job is to stand outside, catch that discarded evidence, and bring it home.”

  “Objection! That’s argument.” Bolden was on her feet, glaring at me. “And over the line, even as that.”

  “Sustained. Mr. Lassiter, let’s save it for closing.”

  “Certainly, Your Honor,” I agreed. It was a minor infraction, a five-yard penalty for jumping offsides. “What the prosecutor left out,” I continued, “in the very same sentence of the judge’s instruction, is that your verdict cannot be based on ‘public opinion.’ Those reporters, those commentators, and those social media influencers don’t get to vote. Only you do.

  “Now, here’s the government’s entire case in a nutshell: Kip Lassiter helped some kids cheat their way into college. That’s it. Some might have gotten in anyway, if their parents had just contributed directly to the university, instead of going through Max Ringle’s bribery scheme. See, here’s the deal. Our elite universities sell admissions slots to children of major donors. Now, the universities might disagree with the word ‘sell,’ but that’s just semantics. And you’ll hear the evidence, so you can decide.”

  Three jurors nodded. Always a good sign, unless it meant they’re falling asleep.

  “You’re going to hear from Kip Lassiter,” I went on. “He’s going to admit to you everything he did. How wrong he was, how sorry he is. And that reminds me of something I learned when I went to college in Pennsylvania. There’s an old Pennsylvania Dutch expression: ‘Too soon old, too late smart.’ It applies to all of us. How many of us have said, ‘If I’d only known then . . .?’”

  I paused a moment and watched nearly every juror nodding, slight smiles on their faces.

  “Kip will tell you the worst decision he ever made in his young life was going to work for the con man, the fraudster, the professional liar, Max Ringle. Kip was nineteen when he started working for Ringle. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be judged for the rest of my life on things I did at age nineteen.”

  Margaret Bolden got to her feet, seemingly considering objecting, but didn’t.

  “I can’t sit down without a word about Max Ringle. I feel sorry for Ms. Bolden and her army of government assistants. Foisted upon them, the hero of their story, is a man who built his career out of a mountain of fraud, lies, and deceptions. How many hours did they spend preparing his testimony and whitewashing his character? Did they hold their noses when dealing with him? He’s as crooked and corrupt a man who has ever walked through those courtroom doors.”

  “Objection!” Bolden sang out. “That is beyond the pale.”

  “Rein in those horses, Mr. Lassiter,” the judge scolded, by which he must have meant, “sustained.”

  I moved one step closer to the jury box and said, “I’m going to wrap it up now, because I don’t want to wear out my welcome. I feel this great responsibility to my client, my nephew, Kip. But in truth, yours is even greater. You are sitting in judgment. In a way, you asked for this responsibility. You could have been excused. But you said you could be fair. I trusted each of you when you said that, and at the end of the case, I will trust in your verdict, which I believe will be not guilty on each and every count. Thank you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The Perfect Witness

  If Peter Wisniewski wasn’t an FBI agent, he could have played one on TV. Forty-six years old, undergrad degree in criminal justice from Fordham, law degree from Georgetown— solid Jesuit path that several generations have followed into law enforcement. Five years in the U.S. Army, commendations as a special agent in the Criminal Investigation Command, seventeen years with the FBI, currently the agent in charge of Operation Flunk Out.

  Grayish hair trimmed short, grayish suit not too stylish, button-down white shirt, blue-gray tie you wouldn’t remember ten seconds after you saw it. He stood a shade under six feet, appeared fit, and exuded competence. If he were a guest in your home and a grease fire broke out in your kitchen, he would put it out while you were wondering whether to call the fire department or douse the flames with baking soda.

  My overall impression was that Agent Wisniewski had testified in federal court hundreds of times without ever breaking a sweat. In short, the perfect government witness. As promised in the government’s opening statement, he was the tour guide. First stop: Los Angeles.

  Quest Educational Development started as a legitimate counseling and coaching service for the children of the well-to-do, Wisniewski said. But somewhere along the line, Max Ringle had devised his “guaranteed acceptance” plan, involving bribes disguised as charitable contributions.

  “The conspiracy had many tentacles,” Wisniewski said. “Ringle bribed varsity coaches and administrators at elite universities to designate his clients as recruited athletes when they were not. This facilitated their admission because of the relaxed academic standards for athletes. To accomplish this, Ringle arranged for résumés to be falsified, and photographs were doctored to create fabricated credentials. Ringle also created a phony charity to disguise the bribes as charitable contributions. Let’s call this part of Ringle’s fraud the ‘bribery tentacle.’”

  “What were the limitations of that part of the fraudulent enterprise?” Bolden asked.

  “Ringle could only use the bribery tentacle where he had corrupted university employees. To expand his reach to virtually every university, he needed a way to cheat on the college board exams themselves. That’s where the defendant came into the scheme and it expanded exponentially. It’s
the fraudulent exam tentacle.”

  “Please describe this fraud for the jury,” Bolden said.

  “It was brazen, and one might even say brilliantly devious.”

  A rare editorial comment from the FBI agent.

  “Ringle corrupted ACT and SAT administrators at several locations around the country,” Wisniewski continued. “He paid them to allow the defendant to take the exams in place of the actual students or to serve as a proctor and correct wrong answers.”

  Our tour continued in Kansas City, Houston, Miami, and back to Los Angeles, the test locations with corrupted exam proctors who let Kip in the door. Wisniewski recited chapter and verse of Kip’s transgressions. The name of each student and date of the test. The student’s prior test score and then Kip’s score, and the eventual admission of the student to Yale, U.S.C., Texas, Wake Forest, Stanford, UCLA, and Georgetown. Eighteen tests in total, eighteen successful admissions.

  Wisniewski identified surveillance photos of Kip entering and leaving the testing sites as well as photos from cameras inside the testing rooms. He called the photos the “smoking gun,” although Kip was holding a number-two pencil, rather than a nine-millimeter.

  Judge Speidel admitted the photos into evidence and one by one, they appeared on a large screen for the jury to see. The jurors sat up straight, necks craned toward the screen. In the one-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words department, a single photo stood out: Kip smiling at the proctor who was also on Ringle’s payroll. A big, cocky grin, as if one of them had just told a joke. I heard a juror snort derisively. The photo had an impact, and Margaret Bolden knew it.

  Next came the tapes, both audio and video. There was Kip on the phone with parents, asking for handwriting samples from their kids for the essay questions. Turns out he was a decent forger, as well as an imposter. More phone calls between Ringle and Kip, matter-of-fact discussions of test dates and target scores. First Ringle, then Kip.

  “Don’t ever go more than thirty percent above the moron’s prior test.”

  “Aw, Max. Don’t worry. I hit within five points of the SAT target every time and you know it. On the ACT, I’ll nail it. You want a 34, you got it.”

  Oh, damn. Kip sounded so cocky, so arrogant. That wasn’t the Kip I saw now, the one who wanted to live with integrity and give something back. But Margaret Bolden knew just how to create the impression of Kip the conspirator, the cheater, the fraudster, the criminal.

  Next came the audio tape made on Ringle’s terrace the day that ended with me face-down in the rose bushes. Belatedly, I had been right. The terrace was bugged with hidden microphones, and the recording was one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Kip. Aware of the taping and buttering the buns of the government’s case for his own ends, Ringle had urged Kip not to be modest and tell good old Uncle Jake about his scheme.

  The jurors leaned forward in their chairs as the recording began with Kip’s voice.

  “I’ve devised two plans. One is to take the tests as an imposter, and the other is to monitor the tests as a proctor. For the first one, I make phony drivers’ licenses and assume the identity of the student. That only works with the guys. For the girls, I bribe proctors to get in the door. That’s only in a few cities, but I’m working on several more for next year.”

  Oh, shit on a stick. I could almost see the words “imposter” and “phony” and “bribe” leap from the speakers and lodge in the jurors’ minds.

  My mood was plunging, but I kept my poker face in place.

  Never let them see your fear.

  Next to me, Kip fidgeted. I put a calming hand on his arm.

  “Was the defendant paid for his services?” Ms. Bolden asked.

  “He received between $25,000 and $30,000 per test, plus bonuses for hitting target scores,” the FBI agent replied. “The amount of his compensation depended on the total amount the client paid Ringle. The defendant earned more than six-hundred thousand dollars in total, but apparently had an interest in the overall profits of Quest, as opposed to simply being a salaried employee.”

  “How did you reach that conclusion?”

  Yeah, what the hell? I’m wondering the same thing myself.

  “We uncovered a bank account of the defendant in Grand Cayman with substantially more money than he had been paid on a per-test basis.”

  Oh, that.

  More documents were produced. Bank account records with Kip’s signature on the forms. A total of $1.3 million deposited, none ever taken out.

  Kip whispered to me, “I didn’t know anything about that.”

  “I know. I know. Quiet down.”

  By the time Bolden looked at me and said, “Your witness,” I didn’t want anything to do with the FBI agent. Not now, anyway. My stamina gone, my energy depleted, I saw little starbursts when I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, the clock on the courtroom wall showed 4:45 p.m.

  “Your Honor, noting the lateness of the hour, may I suggest we recess until tomorrow morning for cross-examination,” I requested in my polite lawyer voice.

  “You may suggest anything you like, counselor, but I don’t want to send these good folks out into rush hour traffic. We’ll work ’til six-thirty.”

  I nodded at the judge because that was better than saying, “Shit piss damn.”

  I braced both hands on the defense table to get to my feet. I felt unsteady for a moment, legs of jelly, and wondered about those two lawyers the judge mentioned. One stroked out. One pissed his pants. I wondered if anyone had done both.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Scienter

  “Mr. Wisniewski, we just heard about forty minutes of the government’s surreptitious recordings in which Kip was a participant, correct?” I began.

  Always “Mister” and never “Agent.” Always “Kip” and never “the defendant.” Humanize your own client and don’t give honorific titles to government witnesses.

  “That’s about right.”

  “In those recordings, did Kip ever say that he knew he was committing a crime?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “How many surreptitious recordings are there with my client speaking?”

  He consulted a notepad and answered, “Sixty-two conversations totaling thirty hours and thirty-nine minutes.”

  “And in how many conversations did my client say anything that would lead you to believe he knew he was committing a crime?”

  “None that I recall specifically.”

  “So he never said, ‘If I’m indicted, I’ll get the best lawyer . . .?’”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Or, ‘If I’m indicted, I’ll destroy evidence?’”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Or, ‘I’ll flee the country or bribe a witness anything at all that would indicate awareness that he committed a crime?’”

  “I don’t recall your client ever saying anything to that effect.”

  “To be clear, if he’d said any of those things, you would remember them, wouldn’t you?”

  He eyed me with a flinty look. “I suppose I would.”

  “Is it impossible for you to simply say ‘yes?’ Is that some G-man training I’m not familiar with?”

  “Objection, argumentative,” Bolden piped up at triple her normal volume.

  “Sustained.”

  “Mr. Wisniewski, you have a law degree, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know the meaning of the word ‘scienter?’”

  “It’s a Latin term meaning knowledge of wrongdoing.”

  “In the law, scienter is synonymous with intent to commit a crime, correct?”

  “Close enough, yes.”

  “Which, as you learned at Georgetown, is an element the government must prove to gain a conviction.”

  “That’s correct. But I might add there are many ways to prove—”

  “Don’t add anything unless you’re asked, sir.”

  Bolden leapt to her feet. “Your Honor, the witness was not
finished answering the question.”

  “He may complete his answer,” the judge instructed.

  “I was just saying there are many ways to prove criminal intent,” Wisniewski continued. “Usually, defendants aren’t caught on tape directly confessing their crimes, particularly in conspiracies like organized crime and racketeering. In my experience, you get leads from the recordings and put cases together from there.”

  “Perhaps your experience is too limited,” I suggested.

  He made a scoffing sound. “I don’t think so.”

  At the defense table, Kip looked troubled. I’d cautioned him against any shows of emotion. When a government witness scores a point, it’s best not to look like your prom date just stood you up.

  “Mr. Wisniewski, who was Gennaro Angiulo?” I asked.

  He gave me a crooked smile that said, Oh, that’s where you were going.

  “Angiulo was an underboss in the New England mob. And yes, he had a big mouth.”

  “Did the FBI record him saying, ‘I’m a shylock, I’m a bookmaker?’”

  “That and more.”

  “Did he also say, ‘We’re selling drugs. We’re illegal here, illegal there. Arsonists. We’re everything.’”

  “Yes, he did, famously. And he ended up doing twenty years in prison.”

  I glanced at the jurors to get a reading on their feelings. It’s good to know if they like the witness or hate the witness or just want to pee. Before I could ask another question, Wisniewski blurted out, “Gennaro Angiulo was an idiot. Your nephew is not.”

  “What! What! Did I ask you a question, Wisniewski?” I turned to the bench. “Your Honor, would you admonish the witness? Tell him his job is to answer questions and not polish his employer’s shoes? The hell!”