The Last Undercover (16 page)
I had mixed feelings about the first two encounters. Although Jeff admitted to having downloaded child pornography on his computer, a federal violation, he also said he deleted it. Seldom, however, does “delete” really mean delete; our computer experts could probably still recover the deleted images and we would have a prosecutable case. But Jeff said he was seeking help for his sexual addiction. Did we want to interfere with any recovery that might be possible for him by maintaining contact or by arresting him? A more pragmatic problem was the fact that, should we arrest him, my identity would be compromised and any attempt to target other members of NAMBLA would be futile. Based on his statements, if he could be believed—and I did believe him—he was not involved with any of the youth at his church, so that was not an immediate issue. Besides, he said the senior pastor knew of his orientation and took no action.
The decision was made somewhat easier because the U.S. Attorney’s office was not prepared to charge Devore or issue a search warrant for his computer. We didn’t have enough. Arrest warrants on TV crime dramas are issued on the basis of partial fingerprints or the word of a highly suspect witness. No such luck with any U.S. Attorney’s office in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, not-so-affectionately called the Ninth Circus because of its highly controversial decisions and record of reversals by the Supreme Court. If we wanted a warrant, “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” was usually the standard, rather than the “probable cause” requirement of almost every other jurisdiction.
In late January, Jeff sent me an e-mail and attached a couple of stories. Although the stories were not pornographic in the federal criminal sense, they were sexually explicit and disgusting. One was entitled, “No More Bananas,” the story of a man’s sexual encounter with a twelve-year-old. It featured the tag line, “Better than seducing a boy is allowing him to seduce you.” Each time we thought of backing off, Jeff provided this sort of extra incentive to continue. The stories demonstrated to me that his rehabilitative efforts were failing.
THE FIX IS IN
Los Angeles, 1995
I
have often told agents new to undercover work that a successful undercover assignment is one from which you return alive. Obviously, that is melodramatic, but success truly is a relative term. Not every operation results in front-page news or mass arrests. Instead, successful undercover operations go where the evidence leads, where the targets direct. This can be troublesome in the FBI, where a detailed and approved operational plan must be followed and permission obtained to deviate from the investigation of crimes listed in the initial paperwork.
I had no idea where the NAMBLA investigation was going to lead. I knew that to date we were unsuccessful at identifying significant prosecutable criminal activity, but I believed that if I continued in my undercover capacity we would be successful. In the mid-nineties I worked a case that was not as expansive as we initially thought, but it did take us in directions we did not anticipate.
In the summer of 1995, I had just returned to an organized-crime squad after my second round of working gangs. A thirty-day “temporary” assignment following the 1992 Los Angeles riots that lasted more than three years. I welcomed the opportunity to return to investigating mobsters and was hoping to find an undercover assignment with a wallop. Instead, I found one with a gallop.
Less than a week after my return to the OC squad, a colleague approached. She was investigating fixed races at Los Angeles–area horse racing venues and thought an undercover operation might be the best way to prove the violation. I had only been to the track on one previous occasion and I didn’t know a quinella from a gelding, but by the time the investigation ended I had become a successful handicapper and actually won a lot more money than I wagered. Initially, I wasn’t even sure I wanted the assignment and questioned why we were getting involved in the investigation: There was no apparent organized crime angle and the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) had primary jurisdiction over horse racing matters. Our squad did, however, handle sports bribery investigations—thus the reason for FBI involvement. Finally, I figured working the paddocks had to be better than being saddled to a desk.
The FBI learned that several gamblers who frequented the tracks were bribing jockeys to alter the outcome of races. Contrary to what many people believe, a fixed race doesn’t usually mean the gambler knows which horse is going to win, but rather he can eliminate the probable winner by paying the jockey riding the favorite to hold his mount back. In a typical race, certain horses have little or no chance of winning. The favorites, however, can often be narrowed to two or three horses. Of course, the thrill of placing a winning bet on a long shot makes for an exciting day at the track, but the odds overwhelmingly prefer a given race’s two or three favorites. When one or more of these horses are eliminated from consideration, picking the winner is much easier.
The Pick Six is a bet in which the gambler wagers on the winner of six selected consecutive races. For as little as two dollars per bet, a gambler tries to select the winner in each of the six designated races. The payoff on a winning Pick Six ticket is often in the thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands. But tickets could end up costing a lot more than two dollars: by selecting multiple horses in each race as possible winners, the cost of the wager is multiplied exponentially. It was not unusual for our targets to place bets costing several thousand dollars, thus increasing the odds of successfully winning the Pick Six. If no one places a winning bet for the Pick Six on a given day, all of the money in the wagering pool is carried over until the next day of racing. It was on these carryover days our crew began working in earnest.
As soon as a carryover was announced, they began their homework, attempting to identify the probable winners for the next day’s racing. More importantly, these gamblers also identified which jockeys were riding the favorites. By paying those jockeys not to win, the crew increased their odds of winning, while at the same time decreasing the cost of the ticket—they knew which horses
not
to bet on. While the gambling public busily wagered on the favorites, wasting their betting dollars and beefing up the wagering pool, our crew eliminated those horses from their tickets.
An informant identified the targets but refused to testify against them or introduce an undercover agent. It was going to be up to me to infiltrate the betting ring and sell myself as a gambler. Convincing professional gamblers I was one of them was going to take a great deal of preparation. I began studying gambling and horse racing, poring through books, newspapers, and magazines.
Mike Kilpack of the CHRB provided me with considerable intelligence on the suspects. I also spoke with an older man with strong mob ties whom I convicted in the early eighties and had since become an informant for the FBI. He was a sports gambler, and once he learned the FBI was paying his admission to the park and would provide him with betting money in exchange for educating me, he was on board.
My mentor had a reputation for being a sophisticated gambler with connections all over the country. In his younger years, he was close to the Kennedys, Jimmy Hoffa, and well-known organized crime figures. I always enjoyed his company and loved listening to his stories, but I soon learned that even sophisticated sports gamblers had a tough time picking the ponies. We went to the track several times and never came home winners. In fact, I’m not sure he ever won a race. Each afternoon with him was an enjoyable experience, but I realized just how hard this assignment was going to be.
My two female case agents went with me to the track several times as we familiarized ourselves with the various venues and identified the key players. I watched and I listened. The track had a vocabulary all its own and I needed to learn it quickly. Soon I not only knew what a gelding was, but I knew the difference between an exacta, a quinella, a trifecta, and a supertrifecta. I realized a “nickel” was five hundred dollars and a “dime” bet meant you had wagered a thousand dollars. I learned to read the tote board and the
Daily Racing Form.
I learned how to “wheel” a bet and even wager beyond the “chalk.” I was becoming fluent in track talk.
I also tried to pick up the habits of various gamblers—how they held their programs, how they marked their selections, which periodicals they purchased, how they dressed, when they arrived, when they left. To be successful, I needed to present the authentic appearance of a degenerate gambler who lived for the track and the next big score. I had about a month to accomplish what most of these men learned to do over a lifetime.
Before the actual undercover operation began, we received information that on September 28, 1995, several races were being fixed at the Los Alamitos racetrack in Orange County, California. Arabian horses and quarter horses, rather than Thoroughbreds, were running that night. The Pick Six carryover that evening was eighty-one thousand dollars, a large amount for a smaller track.
According to sources, Fingers, someone identified as a major race fixer, paid off two jockeys to fix three races. Fingers was banned from every track in California, but he could bet the race in Mexico, where the wager would not appear in the pari-mutuel pool.
Fingers was truly a character. A golf hustler and a professional gambler, he prided himself on being an excellent handicapper. A favorite trick of his was to tout different horses in the same race to several different gamblers, then collect his percentage of the winnings from the person who placed the winning wager.
In 1991, he was with an associate who was fatally shot outside a hotel following a successful night of gambling at Hollywood Park. Fingers was initially a suspect, but was eventually cleared, although rumors abounded at the track. Many still believed Fingers was involved in the murder.
At the Los Alamitos track that evening in one of the suspected races, the even-money favorite came in fourth. The horse jumped at the starting gate and at one point was ten lengths behind the lead. In a second race, a horse that went off as the favorite at 7-5 odds, ridden by the same jockey, finished third and was disqualified to fourth because of interference. Even to my untrained eye, the race looked funny. The jockey we suspected was starting from the number one post, next to the inside rail. Before the race ended, his horse had run across the track to the outside of the pack, blocking several of the other favorites from advancing. It seemed pretty clear to me. But afterward, in discussions with the steward, a state employee paid to officiate the races, he claimed that particular horse had a history of “lugging out”—running to the outside—so the steward could not say with certainty the race was fixed or the horse’s conduct was unusual. Would the steward’s opinion sink the investigation before it began? Just how difficult was it going to be to prove race fixing?
Once the administrative approvals were in place, I began a six-month undercover assignment, never returning to the office. My only contact with the FBI would be weekly meetings with my case agents at some discreet park or restaurant. I spent every race day at Santa Anita or Hollywood Park, two of the most famous racetracks in America. It was like living inside a Damon Runyon story.
Los Angeles, after the New York Conference
In February, I met again with Jeff, this time at a casual Beverly Hills restaurant he recommended. My case agent and I had decided to make one more attempt to obtain sufficient facts for the probable cause we needed to get a search warrant for his computer. We reasoned that the wording in a search warrant affidavit could be written to conceal the fact I was an undercover agent. Should we find prosecutable images, Jeff might even confess and agree to plead guilty without any need for disclosing my identity.
At dinner, he told me he was no longer attending the 12-step sexual addiction program. The program defined “appropriate” sexual intercourse as the act between a married man and his wife. Jeff was gay, he said, and couldn’t or wouldn’t accept that premise, so he dropped out of the program and refused to seek help elsewhere.
Two probationary agents were providing backup during the meeting, and I suggested they cover us from inside the restaurant. Let the Bureau buy a meal; the pay’s not that great and I figured they deserved the perk. I didn’t have to work too hard to persuade the agents; they sat several tables away in the very crowded restaurant.
Shortly after we arrived, while we were waiting for our dinner, Jeff excused himself to go to the restroom. When he came back, he had a big smile on his face.
“Do you see those two guys sitting over there?” He nodded in the direction of my surveillance team.
“You mean those two?” I said referring to the agents.
“Yeah. When I went to the bathroom, the cute one couldn’t take his eyes off of me.”
I laughed and said they were both a little old for me, but maybe I could fix him up for the evening. Once again, my surveillance agents lost points for lack of subtlety. The agent’s interest played well with Jeff, though; he never suspected.
I told Jeff my computer crashed and I lost my entire collection of child pornography. He said he would like to help, but once he began the 12-step program, he deleted the pornography on his five-year-old computer. I probed, trying to determine exactly how he deleted the images. He said he merely pushed the delete button, and they were gone. I knew then the images could probably be recovered if the FBI decided to pursue the matter with a search warrant. He did volunteer that the images would be “of interest to law enforcement,” a comment that clearly signaled child pornography.
Jeff returned to the theme of our previous meetings: he seemed confused, was questioning his boy-lover orientation, and suggested he didn’t even think he was a BL. As much as I hated everything NAMBLA stood for and as vehemently as I disagreed with their efforts to justify “Greek love,” I was beginning to feel sorry for Jeff. Maybe the FBI should back away, I thought, and give this guy a chance to sort himself out.