Missing Man (3 page)

Bob's arrival in South Florida was perfectly timed. In the mid-1980s, the world of organized crime was undergoing a sea change. It was the era of
Miami Vice
, as Colombian drug cartels smuggled tons of cocaine into the United States by the plane- and shipload. Bob, who spoke some Spanish, jumped right in and soon found a new informant, a Colombian-born fashion photographer, Baruch Vega, who shot assignments with top models such as Lauren Hutton and Christie Brinkley. During those years, it was almost impossible for law enforcement agencies to get information about the cartels because arrested gang members knew they would be killed if they squealed. So Bob and Vega concocted an off-the-wall strategy to try to trick cartel leaders into letting their subordinates cooperate.

The plan revolved around a fictional character they created—a corrupt FBI agent named “Bob Roberts” who was willing, if paid off, to get arrested gang members out of jail by telling his bureau bosses they had agreed to become informants. Vega told cartel leaders, with whom he hobnobbed while on photo assignments in Central and South America, about Roberts and how gang members only needed to pretend they were cooperating to be freed. Cartel heads liked the deal, so they gave Vega bribes meant for Roberts and told underlings about him. After Vega pocketed the cash, Bob or another agent, pretending to be “Bob Roberts,” visited a gang member and said they could get out of jail but only by sharing real information about drug running.

By the early 1990s, Bob became one of the bureau's resident experts on another ethnic crime wave—the flood of mobsters, thugs, and financial con men who, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, arrived in the United States from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe. Many of the gangs set up shop in Brooklyn and Miami, and Bob was sitting in his office in 1994 when a terrified-looking man walked in. The man, Alexander Volkov, had fled to Florida from New York after learning that a feared Russian enforcer was looking for him.

Volkov was hardly an innocent. He and a partner had operated a Wall Street investment firm called Summit International that was really a Ponzi scheme. When the scheme collapsed, a Russian bank that had invested with Summit hired a gangster named Vyacheslav Ivankov, who headed a gang based in Brighton Beach that specialized in blackmail, loan-sharking, and murder. Volkov initially hid out at the Miami home of a friend named Leonid Venjik, who convinced him that his best hope for staying alive rested with the FBI. Soon afterward, Volkov, his Summit partner, and Venjik agreed to become part of a bureau operation aimed at Ivankov. The three men told the Russian gangster they were coming to New York to strike a deal to repay the bank's money. After Ivankov listened to their proposal, he responded with death threats, which were captured on hidden FBI video cameras. He was indicted and convicted on extortion charges, a case that marked the first successful prosecution in the United States of a major Russian criminal.

By then, Bob's connections in the world of intelligence gathering were deepening. He worked closely with CIA operatives on Colombian cocaine cases and traveled to Europe to represent the FBI at international law enforcement meetings about Russian organized crime. In 1992, at a conference in New Mexico about Russian crime put on by the Justice Department for FBI agents, prosecutors, and others, he met a CIA analyst named Anne Jablonski. They clicked immediately. She was a walking encyclopedia of information about Russian gangs. He entertained her with stories about the Russian mobsters he was chasing in Miami. He soon gave her a nickname. He called her “Toots.”

*   *   *

When SafirRosetti hired Bob in 2004, the firm was eager to build its product counterfeiting business. Bob brought an old client, Philip Morris, to the firm along with one of his informants, Leonid Venjik, the Russian émigré in Miami who had worked with him on the Ivankov case. Venjik had a network of sources in Eastern Europe, and Bob used him on product counterfeiting investigations. Soon, Venjik started sending in reports warning that Philip Morris had a mole within its ranks.

The informant said his sources had spotted an executive from the company's Richmond, Virginia, headquarters selling technical expertise and equipment to cigarette counterfeiters in Bosnia. That information included Philip Morris's most closely guarded secret, the “recipe” of tobacco varieties and additives used to produce a Marlboro's distinctive taste. As a result, the counterfeiters were flooding the market with fake Marlboros that looked and tasted like real ones. In a SafirRosetti report to the cigarette maker, Bob provided a description of the mole, who was called “David.”

From conversations overheard by the source, “David” is employed by Philip Morris in a very responsible position, but not in a sales capacity—rather he is involved primarily in “technical operations” and he displays a familiarity with the equipment and machinery involved in the manufacturing of tobacco products; he also shows a technical expertise in the areas of tobacco filters and paper, along with how “production lines” are operated.

“David” mentioned that he was going to be attending some type of “seminar” which Philip Morris was holding in the United States at the beginning of July 2004.

While at SafirRosetti, Bob continued to hear from other old informants. In 2004, one sought his help on behalf of the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. The Kazakh president was then at the center of the biggest foreign corruption case ever brought by U.S. prosecutors. In the previous year, an American oil industry consultant, James Giffen, had been arrested and charged with paying millions in bribes to Nazarbayev and other officials in the former Soviet republic to win oil exploration contracts. Federal prosecutors froze Nazarbayev's Swiss bank account, alleging it contained $70 million in kickbacks paid him by Giffen.

Bob's source said that he and one of Nazarbayev's closest associates had been secretly meeting for months with FBI agents in New York in an attempt to cut a deal on behalf of the Kazakh president. In exchange for unfreezing his Swiss bank account, Nazarbayev was willing to help the United States track down Al Qaeda terrorists and identify traffickers in chemical and biological weapons. They hadn't made any headway, so Bob's informant asked him to contact his government sources. Bob drafted a memo and apparently sent it to several agencies, including the CIA. He wrote that the Kazakh president was willing to help the U.S. government by:

1. Identifying and locating leadership, membership and associates of Al Qaeda, utilizing the full cooperation and resources of the Kazakhstan government's special services, including the country's intelligence organization.

2. Identifying and locating traffickers in weapons of mass destruction (WMD) such as chemical, biological and nuclear devices or materials.

3. Any and all counter-terrorism targets as identified by the USG.

In the memo, Bob suggested setting up a meeting between a top U.S. official and an emissary of the Kazakh president. “This may, in fact, be the last opportunity to engage in dialogue along these lines as credibility has been lost because of the time and effort already invested” by representatives of Nazarbayev, he wrote.

Right around that time, two Miami-based FBI agents visited Bob at his SafirRosetti office. For months, he had been passing along to the bureau information Leonid Venjik was giving him about counterfeiters selling fake Marlboros. As was his practice, Bob hadn't revealed Venjik's identity in the memos, referring to him simply as his “source.” The FBI agents told Bob they were interested in the information and were hoping he might give them his source's name or set up a meeting with him. Bob smiled. He replied that he had never given up an informant during all the years he spent in their shoes and he wasn't about to start.

The visit hadn't been a friendly call. It was a test and Bob had failed. The DEA already knew that Leonid Venjik was Bob's informant because the drug agency, along with police officials in Austria, were investigating him for trafficking in counterfeit Marlboros and cocaine. Venjik had even bragged to an undercover DEA agent that he was playing Bob by feeding him dribs of information in order to use his role as an informant to collect money from SafirRosetti and shield his crimes. Bob had been totally in the dark, and if he had given up Venjik's name to the FBI, the episode might have ended there. But by refusing to do so, he heightened the suspicions of some DEA and Austrian investigators that he had known about Venjik's activities. He then dug himself a deeper hole. After Venjik's arrest in Austria, Bob flew there in December 2004 to visit him in prison and gave Austrian authorities a sworn affidavit attesting to his honesty. He was doing exactly what he warned young agents not to do for an informant, and, with each well-meaning step, he made things worse for himself.

In early 2005, he learned that a federal prosecutor in Miami was asking questions about him, a sign that he might soon face charges. Chris urged him not to worry; everyone knew he was honest, she said, and they would come to their senses. But as the months passed, the federal prosecutor handling the inquiry, Joseph Cooley, let Bob twist in the wind. When Bob tried contacting Cooley, his calls weren't returned. It was a tactic he had seen prosecutors use when they wanted to make a target sweat.

Bob became so gripped by anxiety that he called David McGee, the lawyer in Pensacola. Dave had spent twenty years as a federal prosecutor before going into private practice, and he knew Bob from his days as an FBI agent. Bob asked Dave to represent him as his lawyer. “I'm going to get eaten alive by the knowledge that my life, my livelihood, my reputation will be in ruins by the time that people find out this is a big mistake,” Bob said in a note. “I did not spend a lifetime in law enforcement and investigations … to go over to the other side.”

On that same day, Bob sent a letter to Joseph Cooley from Panama, where he was working on a case for the Center for Justice and Accountability, the human rights organization.

I am writing this letter from Panama City, Panama where I am trying to locate and bring about the apprehension of an international fugitive wanted by the Government of Spain for torture and human rights violations. I believe that I'm getting close to getting this guy, utilizing 35 years of experience in this business and the assistance of sources I recruited and directed.

A horrible tragedy is about to happen to me and it is in your power to do something about it. A miscarriage of justice and colossal error is about to take place, in effect ruining my life, my reputation, in effect, all that I have built over a career spanning more than thirty-five years.

It is very tough to be able to concentrate my efforts on catching bad guys when you hear the kinds of things that I am now hearing.

I have not done anything wrong.

I have not conspired to violate any law.

I have lived a life dedicated to law enforcement, even after I retired from the FBI
helping practically every federal agency, foreign law enforcement agencies, INTERPOL and the U.S. intelligence community.

I strongly urge you to hear my side of whatever story is being put to you and your investigators, and that this be done as quickly as possible.

Cooley's response was more silence, and Chris's faith began to waver. Bob told Dave McGee she had started to ask him what they were going to tell their children if their father was indicted. Bob had alerted his bosses at SafirRosetti about Venjik's arrest, and the firm scrambled to stop payment on a $50,000 check it had sent him. Explaining to Philip Morris that its money had been going to a trafficker in counterfeit Marlboros wasn't going to be easy. SafirRosetti executives told Bob they were closing his office in Boca Raton. He was a talented investigator, they said, and offered to send him freelance jobs, but they had come to realize something about Bob that he probably already knew: he didn't have the polish, the patience, or the interest to make it in the corporate world.

That spring, while on a trip to Washington, Bob visited Ira Silverman, the retired television journalist, at his home in Falls Church, Virginia, a D.C. suburb. The men had been close friends since the 1970s, when Bob was a young DEA agent and Ira was digging up crime stories for NBC in New York. They both loved chasing crooks, and Ira would show up unexpectedly at Chris's apartment when she and Bob were dating to buttonhole him and talk about cases. Ira became such a regular presence in the lives of the Levinson kids that they grew up thinking of him as an uncle.

On the day of Bob's visit, the weather was pleasant and Ira suggested that they sit in the backyard. Bob said nothing to him about his troubles at SafirRosetti or Joseph Cooley's inquiry in Miami. Still, Ira sensed something was very wrong. Bob had always been happy and upbeat. That day, he seemed defeated, almost suicidal. Out of the blue, he told Ira that he felt that his life had been shit and that he should have spent it doing something of value. Instead, it had all been a waste. When Bob left, Ira was worried about him.

In the end, Cooley dropped his inquiry after finding the evidence didn't implicate Bob. The investigator was relieved, but he was back out on his own and needed to find work fast. He grabbed one of the first cases he was offered even though its financial terms weren't appealing. Typically, private investigators get their fees and expenses paid as they work on a case. But they can also enter into contingency-style arrangements, forgoing part of their payment until the conclusion of a case. Most investigators steer away from the arrangement, which is known as a “success fee,” but Bob apparently agreed to work on that basis for a New York law firm, Reed Smith. It was defending the Bank of Cyprus in a lawsuit brought by a group of investors who claimed that the bank had laundered Russian crime funds. Bob spent three months on the case. When the judge hearing the lawsuit delayed issuing a decision, his bill to the law firm, which exceeded $100,000, was left hanging.