The Good Rat (12 page)

It is tempting to see the cops as the evil and bloodthirsty figures of this story, deserving of their fate, and Burt Kaplan as more sympathetic, less savage. But that would be wrong. What happened with Jeweler Number One, who was an honest thief, and Jeweler Number Two, who was also a thief but not so honest, is instructive as a look at how Burton Kaplan and his partners operated their business schemes. It is also important because it involves the first murder carried out by the Mafia Cops at Kaplan’s direction. Rather than tell the tale myself, I let Burton Kaplan do the honor, since often he tells it better than even the greatest writer could.

• Q:
  Mr. Kaplan, in the mid-1980s, after you got out of Allenwood, did you get involved in a criminal scheme involving treasury bills?
  
• A:
  Yes. The fellow who was taking these treasury bills worked in a depository place that held these bills, and he would go through inventories every so often, but right after an inventory came, he could take these bills and sell them to us, and if someone called up and tried to check if they were legitimate, they would come back legitimate.
  
• Q:
  And who brought you this idea, this particular scheme?
  
• A:
  Anthony Casso. He asked me if I could sell them, if I knew someone who could handle it and sell it. I said, Let me check it out, let me see what I could do. I called up Joe Banda, and I asked him to come and see me.
  
• Q:
  Who was Joe Banda?
  
• A:
  Joseph Banda was a jeweler who was a member of the Diamond Dealers Club, who was a partner of mine in a diamond deal that we had in Africa, and he was involved with me in many illegal deals.
  
• Q:
  How had you met Banda?
  
• A:
  I got involved in a diamond deal in Africa with an African fellow that was a friend of mine by the name of Mamadou Kwaitu. His uncle was in the administration in a country called Upper Volta, and he became partners in a diamond mine in Central Africa called Bangi, and he gave his nephew Mamadou the right to sell the stones, the unpolished stones, the raw diamonds from this mine, if he was capable of selling it. And when the deal was offered to me, I asked Furnari if he knew anybody, and he told me that a friend of his by the name of Frankie Hot—I don’t know his last name, but he was in the diamond market downtown on Canal Street—and he said he would ask him, and then he made an appointment with me to go see Frankie Hot in the diamond market, and he introduced me to Joe Banda. Joe Banda and I had one-third apiece of the selling end of the diamonds from Africa.
  
• Q:
  Where did Joe Banda live?
  
• A:
  Williamsburg. Joe was a Hasidic Jew, and he wore the traditional clothing.
  
• Q:
  Okay. So when you approached Mr. Banda with respect to these treasury bills, can you tell the jury what you said to Mr. Banda?
  
• A:
  I told him that the bonds were still in the depository place and that I could get him numbers and pictures if he had the ability to sell them, and he said, I think I do, but give me the numbers of a couple and pictures and I’ll get back to you.
  
• Q:
  After giving him that information, did Banda indicate that he could fence those bills?
  
• A:
  Yes. He said he had an associate of his that could sell them overseas. He was a jeweler. The guy had a bank, a banker, and that for a given amount of money the banker would cash, sell the treasury bills for us, and we would get a dollar—if the treasury bill was worth a half million dollars, we would get a half million dollars, half of the money would go to Joe Banda, the banker, and the jeweler, and the other half of the money would go to me and Casso and the people that supplied the treasury bills.
  
• Q:
  And did there come a time that you went to Casso and actually obtained some of the bills?
  
• A:
  I went to Casso, and he wanted to give me two bills, and I told him, Let’s just try one, I don’t want to be responsible for two. Let’s just try one and see if it works.
  
• Q:
  Did he give you one?
  
• A:
  Yes, he did.
  
• Q:
  And what happened with respect to that bill that he gave you?
  
• A:
  I had met a fellow with Joe Banda in his car, and he asked me a lot of questions. He didn’t see—
  
• Q:
  I’m sorry, Mr. Kaplan. Let me interrupt you. You have the bill and you meet with, you say, a fellow named Joe, you met with Banda—and another man in a car?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  Did you see this other man?
  
• A:
  He was sitting in the front. The arrangements that I made with Banda, and Banda made with the gentleman, that he wouldn’t look at me and I wouldn’t look at him, so we could never identify each other.
  
• Q:
  At some point in time, did Banda indicate to you where this other gentleman lived who was in the car?
  
• A:
  I asked him, if we gave him the bill and the guy ran away, I wanted to know beforehand what the guy’s name was and where he lived and where he worked. And the night I met the guy in the car, he wanted to give me that—Joe had told him that before—I said, No, just give it to Joe and Joe will give it to me if I need it. If the guy tried to rob the treasury bill from us.
  
• Q:
  Okay. Did you ever learn that man’s name who you sat in the car with that day with Banda?
  
• A:
  I had seen his name at one time, but I don’t remember it.
  
• Q:
  Did you refer to that man in some way?
  
• A:
  Yes. That was Jeweler Number One. I don’t know his name.
  
• Q:
  What happens next with respect to this scheme?
  
• A:
  I turned over the treasury bill to the gentleman with Joe Banda in the car that day. I gave him an envelope with the bill in it, and he proceeded to—he told me he was going overseas, and he was going to cash the treasury bill and that they had a way that, once the money was free overseas, that they could make a phone call back here and that someone would have the money over here, so there was no trace of wires and things. It’s common in the Hasidic community. The money never—the money never travels back and forth, it’s just the percentages of interest for cashing it.
  
• Q:
  So does there come a time that you receive some money from this deal?
  
• A:
  Yes. Joe Banda gave me, about five or six, seven days later, he gave me about 130 thousand, and a couple of days later he gave me 120 thousand.
  
• Q:
  And do you remember, Mr. Kaplan, specifically the face value of the bonds or the bills you were dealing with?
  
• A:
  Yes. That was half a million dollars. One bond, one treasury bill.
  
• Q:
  So after you get the money from that, what happens? In the beginning, a few minutes ago, you mentioned that Casso had two bonds? And so what happens to that second bond?
  
• A:
  I had told him, Go get me the other bond, and while we’re doing the second bond, tell the guy that—to take a large amount of approximately ten million dollars, and we’ll do it all at one time now that we know it can go. These kind of deals don’t continue, they open up, you do it, and eventually the treasury bill will come back stolen, so let’s do it and try and do ten million the next time. Casso told me he had given the treasury bill to someone else—just in case I couldn’t complete the transaction, he would have another outfit—but he told me he told the guy, Just hold it, don’t, don’t do anything with it. And I asked Casso for the second treasury bill, and he said the guy told him that he would give it to him, and he never came back, and he asked him a second time, and the guy said, Listen, I gave it to a bank, a guy I know in a bank on Avenue U, and he tried to cash it and the bill got confiscated.
  
• Q:
  What did Casso say the name of the person was that he gave that bill to?
  
• A:
  It was—it was a made member of the Lucchese crime family. I only knew him as Leo the Zip.
  
• Q:
  With respect to Mr. Leo, did anything happen to him?
  
• A:
  Yes. Casso got very aggravated, because he now had the opportunity to sell ten million dollars’ worth of treasury bills, and Casso had him murdered.
  
• Q:
  And can you tell the jury, did you become aware of certain questioning that was taking place regarding this bond deal? And how did you become aware of that?
  
• A:
  Joe Banda came to me, and he said, We have a problem. I said, What’s the problem? He said, The banker is being questioned by Interpol. I said, What’s the problem? He got a hundred thousand dollars for doing this. Why should he have a problem misleading them? And he said he just found out, Joe told me he just found out. Till today I question that the banker never got the money, that the guy who said he was—who eventually became Jeweler Number Two never gave the banker the hundred thousand, and therefore the banker had every right in the world to give the authorities the information.
  
• Q:
  There was some indications that you had that there was law-enforcement interest because of the bonds getting some attention as being illegal?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  Okay. You described a meeting in a car before with a jeweler. You gave him a number. What jeweler number was that?
  
• A:
  That was Jeweler Number One.
  
• Q:
  Okay. Does he ever get killed, Jeweler Number One?
  
• A:
  No.
  
• Q:
  In discussions with the government, did you tell us that person’s name?
  
• A:
  I didn’t know his name. I learned it, and I forgot it.
  
• Q:
  Okay. How did you refer to him in discussions with the government?
  
• A:
  The one I met in the car was Jeweler Number One. The jeweler that—that had the banking connection was Jeweler Number Two.
  
• Q:
  Is Jeweler Number Two a person who you eventually give a murder contract to kill?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  

“Eventually,” meaning not just yet. In fact, there was another scheme, not so different from the one involving bonds, that sealed Jeweler Number Two’s fate.

• Q:
  Can you tell the jury who Tommy Carmada is?
  
• A:
  He was an associate of a fellow by the name of Frank Buschemi, who was a friend of mine, and he was a guy that always came up with schemes. He worked for a company that installed safes for businesses and people’s homes, and he was what we would call a tipster, gave people information and places to rob, and he had a connection in a place, a brokerage house where checks were being mailed to people.
  
• Q:
  Did he bring a scheme involving those checks to you? A criminal scheme?
  
• A:
  Yes. Carmada told me that the person that he has in the brokerage house gets the checks about two weeks before they are to be mailed to the individual people or corporations, and he said at that point he can get the checks two weeks before the people would normally expect them in the mail and he could give them to me
  if I had a connection to fence the checks, to cash them.
  
• Q:
  And as to when the checks came out of the place where they were, were they—you said they were hot. Can you just explain the distinction there?
  
• A:
  Yeah, they were definitely stolen checks.
  
• Q:
  But were they—
  
• A:
  They were not hot at that point because—
  
• Q:
  Explain that.
  
• A:
  Because the people that were going to get them, receive them, didn’t expect them two weeks before time, so nobody would be looking for them. They would be just normal good checks. He asked me if I could fence them.
  
• Q:
  What did you tell him?
  
• A:
  I called up Joe Banda.
  
• Q:
  Is that the same Banda that was involved in the treasury-bill deal with you?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  Was the treasury-bill deal first or this check deal first?
  
• A:
  The treasury bills.
  
• Q:
  How much time between the treasury-bill deal and the check deal, if you could approximate?
  
• A:
  Probably four years—’85.
  
• Q:
  What did you say to Mr. Banda?
  
• A:
  I told him the situation exactly as it was explained to me by Tommy Carmada, that I could get these checks two weeks before people expected them and if he had a connection to deposit them the same way he did with the
  treasury bills, we could get the checks and have them cashed and get the money before the people would ever expect them in the mail.
  
• Q:
  What did Banda say to you?
  
• A:
  He says he has the same connection with Jeweler Number One and that he would go and speak to him and get back to me.
  
• Q:
  Explain what you mean by the same connection with Jeweler Number One.
  
• A:
  They could cash it, and we would receive the money the same way as we received the treasury-bill money, without any wires.
  
• Q:
  This Jeweler Number One, was he the person that had come to the meeting with you in the car with Banda?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  So he was not killed in the bond deal?
  
• A:
  No.
  
• Q:
  Given what happened in the bond deal, why was it that you were willing to work with Jeweler Number One again?
  
• A:
  Because Joe Banda explained to me that he and Jeweler Number One lived up to their end of the bargain, that Jeweler Number Two was the one who put the money in his pocket and never gave it back. Joe Banda assured me that Jeweler Number One was a credible person.
  
• Q:
  Did there come a time that you received the checks from Carmada and gave them to Banda?
  
• A:
  Yes. I gave the checks to Joe Banda, and he gave them to Jeweler Number One, who flew overseas and deposited the checks.
  
• Q:
  Did you see him give those to Jeweler Number One, or did Banda tell you something about that?
  
• A:
  I didn’t see him give the checks to Jeweler Number One, but I met Jeweler Number One and I handed him the first treasury bill myself, and I—Joe Banda told me, I’m giving these checks to Jeweler Number One, and I assumed that he did.
  
• Q:
  Did Banda use the term “Jeweler Number One”?
  
• A:
  No. He says, I’m giving it to my friend who you met in the car.
  
• Q:
  So after you gave the checks to Banda, can you tell the jury what was the next significant thing that happened regarding this check deal?
  
• A:
  We waited four, five, six days, which was the normal period of time that Joe said it would take, and then Carmada started asking for the money on the checks. I went to see Joe, and I said to Joe, What’s going on with the checks? He says, Well, we didn’t get any money yet, maybe it’s going to take another couple of days. And then another couple of days went by, and I said to Joe, What’s going on with the checks? And he was a little evasive, and then he said, I think there’s a problem, I think that the checks were confiscated and that they were hot checks. They were not—they were not imported already, and the
  bank never cleared the checks and confiscated them, and I have a feeling that government is talking to Jeweler Number One.
  
• Q:
  Banda told you that?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  When he said “the government is talking to Jeweler Number One,” can you just explain what that means to the jury?
  
• A:
  The government was investigating the stolen checks, and they came back during the investigation to Jeweler Number One, and they were speaking to him.
  
• Q:
  That’s what Banda told you?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  Can you tell the jury what the phrase “stand up” means, or “he stood up”—what’s that mean in your life?
  
• A:
  Stand-up is what I used to be. When someone has a problem, they take their punishment and go to jail, they don’t give up anybody. They take—they take responsibility for the crime.
  
• Q:
  So didn’t Jeweler Number One stand up previously?
  
• A:
  Yes.
  
• Q:
  So what made you believe that he wasn’t going to stand up this time?
  
• A:
  Joe Banda led me to believe that.
  
• Q:
  Did Banda know at that point in time what you had done to Jeweler Number Two?
  
• A:
  He didn’t know.