In the world of money laundering, you often wonder whether this will be the day that some law enforcement agency shuts down your operation. This may happen not because of some mistake you have carelessly committed, but because some client, already under arrest and looking at a long term in prison, discloses some critical details of your financial pipeline. It is called Substantial Assistance in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines;  the only way one can obtain a reduction in what might be a long sentence is to give up information useful in making additional arrests, or to assist the government in gaining possession of criminal profits.

The End of the Beginning.
The day began much like any other; I was in my law office very early, preparing for a commercial real estate closing. A Colombian client was purchasing an apartment building that morning, and I was going over the documents before business began for the day. Many money launderers are lawyers and accountants with numerous legitimate clients who have no idea their trusted advisor moves illicit funds for criminal organisations. They think he is just another diligent professional serving the business community.

Two Special Agents that I knew to be from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division in Fort Lauderdale, barged into the office and announced that I was under arrest. These agents had previously sought to obtain information from me about my clients' offshore tax haven financial activity, and had subpoenaed me to appear before a Grand Jury investigating my clients.

They were understandably quite unhappy when I refused to testify, and since the government prosecutor declined to give me immunity (I was also a target), they were unable to obtain details of the clients' tax haven corporations. Therefore, arresting me that day two years later must have been quite satisfying.

I was driven downtown to the US District courthouse, and learned that I was being charged with:

• Racketeering (RICO) Conspiracy, which could result in a sentence of 20 years to life in federal prison upon conviction.

• Conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by interfering with the lawful collection of taxes, another felony, with a 5 year term of imprisonment.

Dumped into a holding cell, I  was brought before a magistrate judge that afternoon, who released me on bond after a short hearing where he noted that my substantial ties to the community made me a low risk for flight. Since I had resided in Miami for twenty years, he knew that I was not about to flee before trial, and lose my license to practise law. 

How did a decorated military veteran of America's wars, who had never before been arrested, and with seventeen years of experience as a lawyer in Miami, come to be before the court under such circumstances? To answer that question, we must turn back the clock ten years, and enter the sordid world of narcotics trafficking at a time when it exploded upon the North American market.

The House on Twenty-Third Street.
It was a tattered, white wood-frame home in Miami's middle class Shenandoah neighborhood, complete with front porch swing, and an old Pan American Airways street number, evidently left by a prior owner or tenant. A quiet street in an anonymous, older part of town. Nobody paid much attention to the residents. 

That house had but one occupant; Let's call him Bill Baker. Bill was an American, born in St. Louis. The son of two missionaries, his family had moved to Cuba when Bill was a small child, and he grew up in that Caribbean nation. After military service with the Marines in Vietnam, Bill had moved to Miami, where he soon found that his unique bilingual, bicultural background made him eminently suitable as a liaison between Colombian drug smugglers, and Americans and Cubans seeking to move cocaine and marijuana to consumers throughout the United States and Canada.

Bill's home was the point of contact between the smugglers and the dealers, and I came to live in that home with him for several months at a critical time in my life, picking up not only a working knowledge of drug smuggling trade-craft, but a host of criminal clients as well.

In our next installment: the journey from lawyer to money launderer begins.