One of my friends you will remember from the previous chapter, (he's the one with the bullet wound scar across his neck) had interceded to help out an acquaintance who was being threatened by an unusual type of criminal gang:

• As the logical result of Miami's drug madness, there were a large number of "entrepreneurs" making huge sums in the narcotics trade. There came upon the scene a particularly malevolent type of organisation, one that fed upon this illicit success by making drug traffickers themselves crime victims.
  

• This type of crinminal hustler preyed regularly upon successful operators of marijuana hydroponic "grow houses," where strong strains of pot were farmed, generally within an unoccupied private home modified to accommodate hundreds of maturing marijuana plants.
  

• The evil plan these crafty individuals executed involved kidnapping, extortion and even torture, to capture and force wealthy marijuana growers (who generally were unarmed) to reveal the location of their illicit cash.
  

• Often the grower would be held until his partners or family could ransom him through the payment of a large amount of cash, generally approximating what the kidnappers believed the 'victim" was worth.
  

• My friend had literally prevented such a grower from suffering such a fate, ingeniously negotiating directly with the hustlers, and persuading them that their target was broke, and gone from in the immediate area. He thus saved this grower from becoming a "crime victim."
  

 
Notwithstanding that he had been saved from being fleeced by these bloodsuckers, the grower failed to repay my friend a monetary debt he owed. You do not do that to a reformed former criminal. When the target's hydroponic home in the Carolinas was raided by US law enforcement, and the target arrested, he went back to my friend for help, after he bonded out.  This arrangant ingrate added insult to injury, from my friend's viewpoint, by asking for more help.  He decided to give the grower his just desserts.

• When the target asked my friend for someone to help him laundering money offshore, he asked me to contact law enforcement, and asked me to pose as a money launderer for the agency, to sting the individual when he delivered cash, thinking me a fellow criminal.
  

• the grower also asked my friend to transfer title to the corporation that owned his boat, which has been secured by law enforcement after the grower's arrest. This way, the grower could sell his boat to a bona fide purchaser, who might just take good title right from under the hands of lawe enforcement. I alerted the agents to this technique.
  

• Anyway, I was set up as a money launderer who would move the grower's cash offshore; he would then sneak out of the US, preferably to a Caribbbean country where there was no extraditrion treaty to the US, his illicit fortune intact and out of US control.
  

• The law enforcement agency wired me up for sound with a concealed microphone & transmitter, and I met up with the grower in Miami, in the presence of my friend who had convinced our target that I could do anything with flight capital in the tax havens.
  

• I made sure that the target fully and completely incriminated himself at our meeting, and set up a delivery of $50,000 in cash, to cover the formation of offshore companies, and the creation of accounts in a bank secrecy jurisdiction. The balance of the money would be deliveed to me later for offshore placement.
  

• The target later privately told my friend that, should anything untoward happen to his money, to kill me. He had no clue we were doing this thing together. Didn't he know that there is no honor amongst thieves? Especially when you cross one.
  

• The target delivered the money to my friend at the nearby Ft. Launderdale airport, and law enforcement swooped in and arrested him. His bail was revoked, and he later went to prison for the marijuana offence, as well as his attempt to launder his criminal profits.
  

Beating the bad guy, and recovering some cash for the US. Not a bad day's work for an ex-criminal. Just like old days, but this time I was on the right side.

Next week: more pro-active moves.