987: Robert Mazur | How Money Laundering Works Part One

987: Robert Mazur | How Money Laundering Works Part One

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show,

[00:00:03] Robert Mazur: I have to be absolutely laser focused on my enemy. Although I really do care about my wife and my kids, I can't be thinking about the birthday party I just missed. I have to have two brains, my Sela undercover brain and my maser brain. Both of them have to be functioning at the same time because everything that I do on behalf of Sela has to be calculated by maser.

[00:00:25] I have to move conversations in directions where I'm getting actionable intelligence.

[00:00:35] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed to more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers.

[00:00:58] Even the occasional organized crime figure, cold case, homicide, investigator hacker, real life pirate, or special operator, tech mogul, or music luminary. And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about it, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation and cyber warfare, AI crime, and cults and more.

[00:01:19] That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. My guest today, Robert Maer, has laundered money for Pablo Escobar and other drug cartels. He's worked for the mob crooked businessmen, and worse, unfortunately for most of his clients, Robert Maer was a fed.

[00:01:40] Today we'll dive deep into the murky world of money laundering and organized crime. I wanted to know how this works. Who's involved, how money is laundered in the first place? Of course, I'm asking for science here folks, and how Robert helped the Feds take down massive international crime rings from the inside.

[00:01:56] He's had a couple close calls and we are very lucky that he's still here with us today. Alright, here we go with Robert Maser. You are listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Robert Mazer. We'll be right back.

[00:02:11] So thank you for doing the show today. I know at some level, media is obviously somewhat dangerous for you at, I guess at some level, so I appreciate the trust

[00:02:20] Robert Mazur: first and foremost. Well, thanks. Yeah, there is a little bit of a. A security risk because I've continued, especially now that, you know, there's a second book and we're working on a second movie, it's like taking a scab off of an old wound.

[00:02:32] There's some people who aren't very happy with me.

[00:02:35] Jordan Harbinger: Not only that, but I, I wasn't gonna jump into the, that part so quick, but yeah, you've been a part of some movies about this. I mean, one with Brian Cranston, the Infiltrator, which like, you can't really beat that. I mean, he's an awesome actor. I hope you got to meet him and Very much so.

[00:02:48] But now there's a second movie. So like you said, you're picking at the scab off the, the old wound for the cartel guys that you busted. But also when you're filming a movie and doing meetings and stuff, there's like 40 people in a room and you got. Calendar invites, and it's like, we're gonna be at this restaurant having a party.

[00:03:06] And it's like, that's kind of the opposite of showing up remotely on a podcast from a darkened room where no one can see your face. Right. That is, lots of people know when and where you are going to be with tons of advanced notice, and that's like, not ideal.

[00:03:19] Robert Mazur: Well, a lot of 'em didn't know that I was actually gonna be on set.

[00:03:22] Okay. We kind of kept that a little quiet. And some of our, it's amazing what they can do with when they're making films, what a lot of our shoots that were shown to be allegedly in New York and parts of the Northeast were actually shot in London, outside of London at a place that used to be a factory, uh, making nuclear weapons.

[00:03:42] Okay. So the, it was pretty remote and, uh, the security there was fairly good. So I didn't make it very well known. And I, I certainly didn't get involved in, uh. Acting in the film. So, uh, I was behind the scenes and I was constantly in the ear of Brian and, and other actors, uh, to the chagrin of the producer trying to explain to him why I thought certain lines were flat and why I thought other stuff really flew.

[00:04:08] So, and thankfully I got a lot of ear from Brian and he did actually do a lot of the stuff that I had suggested. So we have a great working relationship. I enjoy speaking with him. That's why I brought the second project to him initially.

[00:04:22] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:04:23] Robert Mazur: And he's very eager to do it. We're moving toward, with the help of Brad firm and.

[00:04:27] A great director. We're moving forward with a screenplay that we're trying to get perfected and go from there.

[00:04:33] Jordan Harbinger: That's amazing. I, again, I was gonna talk about the movie stuff later on in our conversation, but I, I find it quite funny, the image of like, oh, we'll let you be on set 'cause it's a movie that's about you and why not?

[00:04:44] And then you're suddenly like, let me talk to the lead man about this. And I can just see some producer being like, can we uninvite this guy? He's like really harsh in my vibe

[00:04:53] Robert Mazur: right now. Uh, why, who invited this guy? Well, yeah, because producers are all about time, right? 'cause time is money. So if I'm talking to the, one of the actors, they decided the last minute.

[00:05:04] I mean, we, we know we're gonna shoot that day, we get the day sheet. Mm-Hmm. I would try to catch 'em a little bit earlier, but you know, when they change what they're gonna say or do. Yeah. It could slow things down. And there's a bondsman there who's making sure that you're Yeah. Staying on time and Yeah.

[00:05:17] So I, I was a producer's nightmare.

[00:05:20] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. They're like, we can't really uninvite the guy, but how do we mention to him sort of, is there like a polite way where we can say, stop talking to Brian Cranston in the middle, in the middle of shooting. I don't know. But obviously you wouldn't have done it if you didn't have a good reason to.

[00:05:36] Right. You're not just trying to get face time with the lead man. You're trying to make the movie better. So I suppose there is some tension there that the juice is worth the squeeze at some level.

[00:05:44] Robert Mazur: Yeah, I mean, I'll give you an example, a quick one. In the infiltrator, they ended the film fictionally, where the wedding actually occurred.

[00:05:51] Instead of it in reality went down in a bachelor party the day before. The main bad guy from Columbia. Roberto El Caino was in the film A fugitive at that stage and Mm-Hmm. Showed up at the wedding, allegedly having been able to use another name and staying under the radar. Mm-Hmm. And so Brian said to me, um, what would you have said to Roberto if he showed up at the wedding?

[00:06:15] And I said, I think I would've said something along the lines of, it's wonderful to see you, but there's a part of me that wishes you weren't here because we had developed a friendship.

[00:06:23] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:06:23] Robert Mazur: And he said, oh, that's it. We're gonna use that. And that's exactly the line that they wound up using during it.

[00:06:28] So I know it's really important for me to be very selective in the picking of times where I might say that type of stuff. And I would be emailing back and forth with the director the night before when I got that day sheet, and giving him some of my thoughts. So a lot of times he would actually deliver that.

[00:06:45] And believe me, there were a lot of talent to people there. So I only had a minimal effect. What was actually said. Sure. On the screen.

[00:06:53] Jordan Harbinger: So backing up the trucks, now that people are thoroughly confused. All right. He was in a movie something, something that Brian Cranston. What does the guy actually do? Oh, I've covered some of this in the intro of course.

[00:07:02] But you started working initially with what US Customs Chasing Money

[00:07:06] Robert Mazur: Launderers for Pablo Escobar. Actually, I started with what's was then called the, um, criminal Investigation Division of the IRS. Ah. In that case I wound up working with other agencies on drug cases, handling the, kind of the financial side of it.

[00:07:22] It's typical, I mean that agency is the agency that did the paper trail that put Al Capone away for income tax evasion. So I was really excited to get involved with that agency. I had an accounting background and business administration finance major and I wound up getting involved in, uh, the criminal investigation division IRS doing forensic accounting work for law enforcement.

[00:07:43] Then I decided when we were working on with customs that it was probably better for me to move over to customs as a special agent in comparison to other agencies. Customs was moving pretty fast. I mean, for example, I, I, at IRS, it might take three levels of a review on an affidavit for a search warrant before I could get the search warrant approved.

[00:08:04] And you know, you've gotta make sure that your probable cause is fresh. Yeah. And so at times you would almost lose the freshness of the probable cause through all the bureaucratic layers. And I'm talking to the customs guy and he, I said, well, what do you guys do? He goes, well, I write the affidavit, I pick up the phone, I call the magistrate, I go to the magistrate's house.

[00:08:21] He reads the affidavit. He goes, okay, that's good. And he gives me the search warrant. I said, I, I think I need to work for your agency. And that's what brought me there. At IRS, I was trained as an undercover agent as well, and did undercover, but. When I went to customs after getting through all the basic trainings, I, I was also trained there as a long-term undercover agent.

[00:08:39] Jordan Harbinger: How do you get started in an undercover operation? I know you eventually went to the DEA, uh, of course. So moving around a bit, but how do you get started in an undercover operation like this? You can't just walk into a bar in Medellin with a Hawaiian shirt on and be like, sure. Would like to meet this Escobar fella I keep hearing about.

[00:08:57] Right. That's not, you gotta have so many connections and backstopping and

[00:09:02] Robert Mazur: where do you even begin? Yeah. Well, it's a much more sophisticated plan than a lot of people would recognize. It starts with, first of all, you've gotta have the personnel who are able to do that type of work, and that starts with volunteering.

[00:09:14] Yeah. Because they can't make you work long-term undercover. So I volunteered because I, I was on a task force that was trying to identify and prosecute the most significant money launderers for the Medellin cartel. We were having, I would say, average success at best, not even that really. And I decided that, well, we decided that we needed a new tool in our toolbox, and that was gonna be the long-term undercover technique.

[00:09:38] So we needed somebody who was going to be trained as a long-term undercover agent who had the capacity, the, the ability to be able to convincingly pose as a money launderer. My background's very different from most people who are law enforcement officers. I'm not a criminal justice major. I was a business administration finance major, did a lot of accounting, worked in a bank and a brokerage firm.

[00:10:00] I know books and records having worked for the IRS. And so, in my view, I felt as though that my background tended to give me an opportunity to be able to more convincingly pose as a corrupt businessman. And so I went through the undercover training, which is done not just by trainers, former long-term undercover agents.

[00:10:19] Uh, my mentor at that training was a guy by the name of Joe Pistone. The book in the movie, Donny Brasco is named after Joe and I, our families, uh, have become good friends. I talk to him often. He made a big difference in, in my life and my understanding of about the effective ways of doing long-term undercover.

[00:10:38] And so once you get through of all that, now you need to actually, if you're going to go after an organization, you've gotta go through a written proposal, an overview of the project, an assessment account. It's a business plan. It's like a business plan. Yeah, that's exactly, uh, what it is. You gotta talk about your resources, what you're gonna need.

[00:10:55] In that particular case, as I wrote in the book, if I had asked for more than, I think the cutoff point was $30,000. If I'd asked for more than $30,000 in operating funds, then the plan had to be approved in Washington. And I knew letting this get to the Washington level was not gonna be, at least in my view, is not gonna be to my advantage, because I really felt as though we needed to stay as low under the radar screen as we possibly could.

[00:11:22] So I asked for like. 29,900 bucks. And the an advantage is once you get approved, this is called an Attorney general's exemption. The Attorney General, his or herself, has to actually approve the written plan along with certain agency heads. And, uh, that's because you're gonna be committing a crime. And the crime you're gonna commit is money laundering.

[00:11:39] Mm-Hmm. And so what we did, we laid out the plan, we got the approval, and under that proposal, you're allowed to use the profits from the undercover operation to defray the cost of the undercover operation. I see. Well, it didn't take us long before we were making millions of dollars, and we had more than enough money without using taxpayer funds to really sophisticate the operation.

[00:12:01] But key to the operation were three different informants. Two were informants of mine who were associated with one of the New York Italian American organized crime families. And one of them was an informant from Columbia who had an import export business. So with those informants, we were able to do a lot.

[00:12:19] Can I pause you for a sec? I

[00:12:21] Jordan Harbinger: just think it's so funny 'cause of course, what people are, are hearing right now, and I know you we're, we're probably going a little bit fast for some folks. So I, I wanna reiterate the idea that you ask for this smaller amount of money so it doesn't have to go all the way up the food chain knowing also we're gonna be committing a crime.

[00:12:36] And the entire point of this crime is to generate a ton of cash, illicit cash. So you could have asked for like a dollar, right? Or whatever you needed to buy, like the calculator and folio that you needed to start laundering money in some other sort of expenses. But like you're really people who don't know what money laundering is, right?

[00:12:57] And we'll get to that in a second, but if you're opposing undercover as a drug dealer and your crime that you're gonna be committing is you're gonna be slinging cocaine, you're gonna have profits from that cocaine that you can then put back into your undercover, illicit business. Money laundering is just

[00:13:10] Robert Mazur: pure money.

[00:13:10] Oh. But there are Department of Justice guidelines. You can't sling cocaine. Oh, I see. That's gotta be approved at the highest levels, I would imagine. Yeah. In order for you to be able to do that. And also, please keep in mind also that money laundering facilitates crime. Mm-Hmm. And so we were authorized by the Attorney General to actually commit that money laundering offense.

[00:13:29] But we needed, we needed startup money. And the way the operation worked, my whole theory is that you don't want to be knocking on somebody's door and trying, as you said in the beginning, Hey, where's that Paolo Escobar? Dude, I wanna meet him. Right. Because I can launder money. No, you don't do it that way.

[00:13:44] My whole theory kind of goes back to, uh, high school. If you wanna date the cheerleader, the captain of the cheerleaders, you don't go up and ask her. You've gotta have somebody put that idea in the cheerleader's head.

[00:13:55] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:13:56] Robert Mazur: So in this instance, what we did, my partner, amazing undercover agent, better undercover agent than me, more of a street guy, ran as my manager of my street operations.

[00:14:06] I mean, when he walks in a room. I had to show like documents and this, that and the other thing, and convince people I was what I was. This guy walks in a room and they go like, I don't know what crime he commits, but he's definitely a criminal. Mm-Hmm. So he worked with them with the understanding in their mind that my boss is the one who's helping me to open the accounts and get some of this money laundered.

[00:14:28] But he ne he never wants to meet you. He's not going to do big money. But let me tell you, brother, if you could ever meet him and you could convince him otherwise, the river of money. Mm-Hmm. That could be laundered, would be outrageous. But he works for his own family, meaning an organized crime family. And that's really his main job.

[00:14:46] So he's not really wanting to expose himself. So after six months they were banging on the door. Yeah. They wanted to meet me in the worst way and that's how we really were able to get them to get us moving. Then if people didn't wanna do it the way I wanted it done. 'cause like so many undercover agents feel as though they've gotta please the bad guy, which is the worst thing they can ever do.

[00:15:09] And, and my theory was, okay, I'm gonna deal with this first level guy and if I can't get him to sell to his clients, which are the major cartel leaders, if he can't convince them that I need to be more involved in managing their assets, so I don't get caught, I can't just take money in, launder it and send it back.

[00:15:30] Mm-Hmm. If he can't get 'em to do that, then I'm not gonna work for with 'em anymore. And eventually I told the guy, I said, listen, I'm hearing you. You can't convince them. That's okay. You can put us face to face. Let me convince them myself if I fail, we'll continue to work. But I want that opportunity to be able to convince 'em, and that's how I met the bigger guys.

[00:15:49] That makes a lot

[00:15:49] Jordan Harbinger: of sense. I'm stuck on one thing you'd mentioned before about not being allowed to sling cocaine or whatever. I know I've interviewed some mobsters on this show before and I always make them show me their court documents and they always get permission from, oh, I guess it is what you said, right?

[00:16:04] They get permission from the Department of Justice to do, to basically commit certain crimes as part of their agreement to be an informant. And a lot of the times it's like racketeering. But I remember on one set of documents it was like associated with the sales of illicit substances or something like that.

[00:16:21] And I assumed that meant drug dealing.

[00:16:23] Robert Mazur: Yeah, no, you, you can do buy busts and you can do buys and you can sell coke in smaller quantities that is approved to be done. And a lot of times this is the way it really does work in the big world, and that is that somebody says, okay, well I'll give you a sample so that you can test it.

[00:16:41] And you know, the big deal, let's say, is gonna be a thousand kilos. Maybe they'll take him, let him cut into a kilo and take so many grams. Mm-Hmm. But they're not gonna on a regular basis, and with, in the guidelines, they're not gonna allow a lot of dope to move. Now in, in our case, I must admit that there was a time in Detroit and I thought it was the stupidest thing that could have ever been done.

[00:17:05] I think it was 109 kilos. They let that walk. Wow. That was ridiculous. Geez. They sold it to, uh, drug traffickers from the Middle East. I think they were Iraqis, but I haven't properly identified in the book the Infiltrator. That was a decision that was made on the ground that DEA went crazy over because customs should not have made that.

[00:17:25] They tried to claim that they did that because they didn't want to compromise the undercover operation, but that's ridiculous.

[00:17:30] Jordan Harbinger: That's crazy.

[00:17:31] Robert Mazur: Yeah. That's where I'm from.

[00:17:31] Jordan Harbinger: I'm from Detroit. And there's a lot of Iraqis there, but a lot of them are Christian and Catholic and there's, they were, they were Christians.

[00:17:38] Yeah. So if they're Christian or potentially Catholic, there's a group that no one has ever heard of outside of Michigan, apparently in Iraq called Chaldean. Have you heard of this? Yep. Yeah, they were Chaldeans. Okay. Yeah, I

[00:17:49] Robert Mazur: identified 'em in the book. They're Chaldeans,

[00:17:51] Jordan Harbinger: you know, you grew up with these guys, they're all over, like, they're your school and you know, your gym and like a lot of them are of course, normal, upstanding citizens of the United States.

[00:18:01] So I wanna highlight that, like Absolutely, absolutely. It's just like Italians and mobsters, you know, one in a million or so are in organized crime. So I just wanted to highlight that because I hate, you know, you gotta be careful when you paint people with a brush like this, uh, when we're talking about organized crime.

[00:18:15] But it makes sense that they were dealing with Chaldeans because there's like a large organized criminal contingent of Chaldeans, which no one has heard of, but specifically in. Detroit area, Dearborn, Michigan,

[00:18:27] Robert Mazur: where I grew up.

[00:18:27] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:18:28] Robert Mazur: Yeah. And, and the Coke was actually being driven up from, uh, Miami on 18 wheelers up into Detroit.

[00:18:34] But a lot of times, uh, the Mein cartel, they work closely with the Canadian Italian organized crime and Canadian Italian organized crime in the biker gangs. Virtually every port in Canada, uh, including, you know, those that are in north of Detroit. And so a lot of the Koch actually comes in from Canada and comes from north down to south, into Detroit.

[00:18:56] Jordan Harbinger: What organized crime is in Canada. You mentioned bikers. That makes sense. I, I guess when you think of Canada, you don't think of organized crime, but there surely there are

[00:19:03] Robert Mazur: groups. Oh, major, major organized crime. Canadian Italian organized crime. Just like there's American Italian organized crime, they work very, very closely with the Hell's Angels in controlling the ports.

[00:19:15] In Canada, it's common knowledge. Your listeners should just put in Canadian organized crime bikers, ports, and then they'll get all kinds of information about it. I'll have to do it. I'd love to do a show about

[00:19:26] Jordan Harbinger: Canadian organized crime. 'cause it, you never put those words together. It's just not a thing.

[00:19:30] Robert Mazur: Yeah. I testified as an expert witness in Canada against three major Italian, um, Canadian organized crime figures that they had these massive operations. Scary. Yeah. I guess that stuff's

[00:19:42] Jordan Harbinger: still alive and well. So how do you build a background? You know, if you're undercover as a drug dealer, you pretend to be a dealer, you learn about drugs.

[00:19:50] Maybe some other guys vouch for you, but you're undercover as a money launderer. So what do you need? You need, like I'm imagining you basically have to build an office and get a bunch of tax returns or financial documents and you gotta have fake clients. You gotta have a fake company. Like, it's not as easy as just being like, yeah, I know this guy who sells heroin.

[00:20:07] Robert Mazur: Yeah. I realized that I, we couldn't do this in the way that sometimes law enforcement traditionally does it. They'll Mm-Hmm. As you say, open up a business and it's kind of like, put the lights on when the bad guys are in town. Shut the lights off later. You can't do that. Yeah. So I was blessed with, I thought it was an advantage that I had a friendship with leadership at customs.

[00:20:27] But then in addition to that, I had worked with them already while I was with IRS. So they knew that I was serious about what it is that I wanted to do. Mm-Hmm. And they gave me 18 months before I even came on stage to put. My backstop together. Wow. And my theory was that I needed to be embedded in real businesses.

[00:20:46] So with the help of those three informants as well as what I would consider to be a concerned citizen who had other businesses, I was embedded in a, a real investment company and mortgage brokerage business. We had a jewelry chain with 30 locations on the East coast. Mm-Hmm. An air charter service with a private jet, even a brokerage firm with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

[00:21:08] So, wow. When I would entertain targets, they could come back anytime they wanted. And all those businesses were operating 24 7, and I was involved in them. It wasn't uncommon for me, let's say they might come to Florida. I had a guy who was at one time a bodyguard for a coppo. I prosecuted him. Most of the informants that I had throughout my law enforcement career were people I prosecuted.

[00:21:35] They knew. That I would treat them fairly. It wasn't personal at all. We put cases together against them and I tried my best to put the biggest, heaviest sentence against them that I possibly could. And I also made it very clear to them, listen, your tongue is the key to getting your out yourself outta here.

[00:21:51] Mm-Hmm. If you decide that you wanna provide honest, substantial assistance and you want to help this country to be able to make bigger cases, then I'll work with you. We're not gonna screw you. We're gonna do the real thing the way that we're supposed to do it. And this one particular guy decided to do it.

[00:22:09] He went into the witness protection program. He did five years in prison. He came back out and he wasn't really targeted because his boss, who he was working with, wound up committing the cardinal sin. One, he was moving a lot of coke that his bosses didn't know about. And number two, he was using it. Ooh.

[00:22:28] He was using it. Mm. That's a cardinal sin. Yeah. So nobody came to really kind of whack my ci, my informant. And eventually I needed a house when the bad guys came in town. So instead of using the, uh, 350 bucks a month that they'd probably give me for a one bedroom studio, right? I talked to this guy and I just said, Hey, listen, this is what we need to do.

[00:22:52] You're gonna be my cousin. You're gonna be my bodyguard. And one thing I'm telling you right now, if you do any contact with any of these people and I don't know about it and it's not authorized, I promise you we will find a way to prosecute you again. Mm-Hmm. Because that's a big no-no informants are not allowed to do that type of thing.

[00:23:13] You gotta stay on script. And as long as you stay on script, this is what I'm looking for. Let's take pictures with me and your family. I'm your cousin. We'll have those that are, we will be able to put around the house. My story to these guys is gonna be that this is my house, but my cousin stays there with his family when I'm not around.

[00:23:30] I'm not around most of the time. So he would leave and go into a hotel. If bad guys came in town for two weeks, he'd leave. I'd have the house. It was a nice house. It was the type of situation, I mean, like, you know, you went into the bedroom and you opened a master closet and there was a three foot walk-in safe.

[00:23:48] Yeah. And this guy enabled me through other contacts to be involved in the brokerage firm. As a, an advisor? Yeah. To the brokerage firm. So it wouldn't be uncommon for the bad guys to come in town. I'd entertain them in Florida. We'd get on the private jet, we'd fly up to Teterboro, there'd be a limo at the base of the stairs when we got off.

[00:24:09] Get in a limo, go down to Wall Street, we'd go into the brokerage firm. I'd talk to them about, you know, what we did at that time before nine 11 mm-Hmm. We, because we had a seat. I could take him on the, on the floor of the stock exchange. Oh wow. So I took him on the floor of the stock exchange and, you know, everybody's screaming and they're doing what they're doing and I, I could explain to them a little bit about what was going on at night.

[00:24:31] There might be something going on on Wall Street like for an IPO and a, an initial public offering where there would be a, a meeting where investors would be there and stuff. And I, sometimes I'd take them to something like that. But most importantly I was in social clubs that you either had to be a politician or a gangster or both to be able to be a member, you know, so I would be able to take him to the social club.

[00:24:56] This one guy, Roberto Eno, who was the most important guy for me to get close to, Roberto, was a jeweler, had a high-end jewelry store, had that in la he had an import export business. He exported seafood. You could imagine what that was used for. Yeah. And he was also a real estate developer. He. A fight promoter of course.

[00:25:15] And,

[00:25:16] Jordan Harbinger: um, because without saying Yeah, he was in a boxing and promoted fight. So why, why is, what is up with, this is a whole other show, but what is up with boxing and elicit money? Like it's just, you, there's so much of this Yeah. From the kenahan to, I mean, it's just all over. It's like you can't separate those two things.

[00:25:31] That sport is wrapped in corruption.

[00:25:33] Robert Mazur: Yeah. For those who read the infiltrator, they'll, they'll find out that one of the launderings that we did was to finance a world championship fight. It was the super flyweight, the champion from Mexico against the champion from Columbia, and it was at the, uh, Jackie Gleason Arena.

[00:25:51] It was really weird. I mean, I came in with Roberto because he was one of the promoters of the fight. We used the drug money to, actually, we put it through my, my mortgage company made it look like a loan. And that was actually used to, uh, pay for some of the costs of the fight. Most of their money that they were making back then was cable probably is now too, but they were making money from the cable, but there were a lot of people, there were a couple thousand people there at that fight.

[00:26:15] Jordan Harbinger: Oh. From like the pay-Per-view cable. Yeah. Yeah. Pay perview cable. I was like, they mafia sells cable. That makes so much sense. Now, no. One of the pricing and service sucks. No. Okay. That, that makes more sense.

[00:26:25] Robert Mazur: But it was kinda weird being, um, right there at ringside. Every time you watch a fight, you always, I always get kind of interested in who are those people that are sitting right in that first row.

[00:26:34] Yeah. You know, when I get Roberto, who's one of the major distributors for the Medellin cartel sitting next to me on the other side, I've got this Cuban mobster who's a distributor for him. And we're sitting there watching, um, the action and, and uh, it was kind of surreal, but, you know, that was what my life was back then.

[00:26:52] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. God, that must've been, I really feel like this would've been such a. Fun job to have in many ways. I mean, stressful, but like when you're in your, how old were you at this time? Twenties, thirties. I was in my thirties, uh, during this operation I was from 36 to 38. Okay. You're just unfortunately at the point where you realize you can probably die and that this isn't a good idea all the time.

[00:27:14] Right. Like, it'd be great if you were 28 and you're doing this, you're like, I'm riding in private jets, front seat. At a boxing match. I've got all these crazy mafia guy friends. Only, I'm not going to prison because I'm the one putting them in prison. And we can do whatever we want in a lot of ways. But yeah, 36, 38, you're starting to be like, these guys could just bury me out here and no one would ever find me.

[00:27:37] And maybe I have a family at this point, right? So,

[00:27:40] Robert Mazur: oh, I did. And you know, my children were nine and 11. Oh man. My wife and I had been at that stage, we'd been married 13 years. Mm-hmm. But you know, you talk about putting a young kid out there, 26, 27 years old. That's the worst, worst idea. Worst idea in the world.

[00:27:55] You've gotta have somebody who's gonna be rooted, who has family, who, if you took a new hire and freshly married, move him to a city where he doesn't have family. His wife's gotta stay home alone, and he's flying all over the world. First of all, you're headed for a divorce. There's no doubt in my mind on that.

[00:28:14] Yeah. And you're not gonna have somebody who's grounded, who's gonna be thinking operationally as much as they really should be. Where I knew, and this is something that every single undercover agent, I stress to them, they have to remember the bad guy smarter than you.

[00:28:29] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:28:29] Robert Mazur: Don't ever forget that. Bad guy's smarter than you.

[00:28:32] They're looking for any kind of little tiny sign that they can possibly see, and if they pick up on it, you're dead. And so, although people go like, wow, you were in Paris and going to these great hotels and restaurants and all that other stuff. Yeah. It wasn't that exciting. I go, no, no. You know what? What really got me and what I don't think is a good idea, but I confess to other undercover agents, was my motivation and can be your demise, is that information became my heroine.

[00:29:04] Mm-Hmm. I had to get the next big piece of information and the risk had to be higher. Then the last risk, or I wasn't accomplishing my mission. You know, I was in the military, but I was never in a battle where somebody was shooting at me. I gotta think that it's very similar to being on a battlefield where you have to recognize that I have to be absolutely laser focused on my enemy, and although I really do care about my wife and my kids, I can't be thinking about that.

[00:29:33] I can't be thinking about the birthday party I just missed. I can't be thinking about that at all. Mm-Hmm. I have to have two brains. My musella undercover brain and my maser brain. Both of them have to be functioning at the same time because everything that I do on behalf of Mosela has to be calculated by maser.

[00:29:49] I have to move conversations in directions where I'm getting actionable intelligence, and I can't do that if I'm just hanging out.

[00:30:00] Jordan Harbinger: You are listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Robert Maser. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Thorn. If you're on the hunt for top-notch vitamins and supplements that are not only personalized but also scientifically proven, if you've gotta check out Thorn, what's great is they have at-Home Health Tests to check your thyroid, gut health, menopause, vitamin D, even a biological age test, and then they can provide a personalized health plan.

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[00:32:57] To clarify, ELA was your undercover identity and your real name, of course, Bob Maser. I. I'll throw that in the intro, but just in case people are like, wait, who, what? Yeah, that actually makes a ton of sense and I, I was also wondering how you could possibly enjoy it because on the one hand it's like you gotta live the high life.

[00:33:14] If you're a money man of a drug cartel, you got fancy food, great hotels, private jets, you're balling outta control. And then it's like, but also if you get too drunk and you say something and the guy's like, wait, what? You said that, but you told me. And then they start to realize that something's wrong.

[00:33:30] You're like, I am possibly dead now. Or the like, best case, the operation is blown. Worst case you're gonna be in a hole in the desert or whatever. That's scary.

[00:33:40] Robert Mazur: I'm a detail freak by nature, whether I'm the doing undercover or whatever. I mean accounting background, formerly irs. Mm-Hmm. I take a different approach.

[00:33:50] You know, until I got into college, I was at best a B minus student than in college. Maybe I was a B student, but I tried harder than anybody else. I. That was out there. There's nobody that can outwork me. I promise you that I will work harder and more focused than the person who gets the easy A and for me that works.

[00:34:09] And so I was constantly looking to make sure that I could get new actionable information. And at times some of the information was so mind-boggling. Mm. I mean, I worked myself into, you gotta remember, there's two sides to this. As a money launderer, you can't launder money all by yourself. And so there are other people who were in the money laundering process.

[00:34:32] And for me, in, in that first operation, um, it was the senior executives of what was the seventh largest privately held bank in the world at the time. So I'm dealing with people on a board level, um, in a situation who they are representing, not just. My interests. I, my financial advisor also was the financial advisor for the corrupt leader at the time of Panama, Manuel Noriega.

[00:34:57] Wow. And I was getting information about Manuel Noriega on a continuing basis because he trusted me. The investment advisor trusted me, and I would of course bring up conversations about Noriega. And because of the fact that Noriega was being paid off by the people I was working with on the other side.

[00:35:15] But he was also, you know, he had hidden accounts for people who were running other countries, president Zia of Pakistan. He was managing accounts actually for Casey, the CIA director at that time. There were intelligence operatives, there were drug traffickers, there were arms dealers, there were corrupt world leaders, money launderers.

[00:35:38] I mean, the international banking community has a very, very unusual array of clients, but they all have the same need. And that is. They have money seeking secrecy from governments, and so they're looking for people with highly sophisticated methodologies that are gonna help them to be able to do it.

[00:35:57] Casey wants to do it because he doesn't want our enemies to find out who we're sending money to. Noriega wants it because he doesn't want the rest of the world to know that he's on the take. Mm-Hmm. The cartel wants it because they wanna be able to hide their money from the government that's gonna steal it.

[00:36:13] And so, you know, everybody has that same common interest. It was part of the thing that really, it just drove my hunger for more information. I was so excited to be able to get information that I knew was tremendously actionable. I mean, a month before we ended the operation, Roberto Alcaino had trusted me so much that he told me that, you know, there was more than a ton of dope sitting on a dock and it was gonna be coming in.

[00:36:40] A lot of people wonder, why does he tell the money launder? That's because, do the math. There was. A thousand kilos or 1200 kilos. Each kilo is selling for, at the time, wholesale probably $15,000. So there's a lot of money that has to move quickly and the people who own the product want that money back within 10 days in Columbia.

[00:37:02] So if you've got a money launder, you're gonna rely on, you need to give 'em a heads up that they need to be ready. Oh, and Roberta gave me so much information Yeah. That we were able to seize. I mean the customs in DEA found the load. It was in Camden, New Jersey, across the river from Philly, and it went to Chelsea to a warehouse in Manhattan.

[00:37:24] And uh, Roberto wound up going there. I told everybody, don't move that stuff, because he was there when he packed the 40 foot container. Right. And he knew exactly how it was packed, but they had to take it all apart and take out the. A couple of thousand pounds of Coke. So when he was there and they opened it up, they used customs people to pose as the warehouseman.

[00:37:48] And I got to talk to Roberto about this later when he was in handcuffs months, months, months later, because I continued undercover for a month after he got arrested. But what he wound up doing is he's sitting there and he is looking at these guys and he's going, their gringo, their hands look like pillows, they're speaking English.

[00:38:06] These aren't dock workers. I've never seen these guys before. So he ran out of the place and get jumped in a cab. And then it was a chase all over Manhattan that finally customs won. Wow. But you know, now I had a situation where I was worried that I would be compromised because I was one of the last people he talked to before he wound up getting arrested.

[00:38:29] So we did what they did in Goodfellas and you know, when somebody gets arrested, you go to the mattresses and you're not, you know, all the bad guys don't talk to anybody. Because if you do, you never know who's on the phones. Mm-Hmm. Who's listening in. So I didn't talk to anybody. And then Roberto's wife, we had a, a way to send codes to one another.

[00:38:46] And I wound up talking to her payphone to payphone. She said to me, uh, Roberto has a message for you. I just visited him in the tombs in New York and I'm really worried about this message. And she goes, well, you know, he feels you're the only one he can trust that he wants you to take over. And so now for the last 30 days, for those who saw the movie, Austin Powers and the character Mini Me, I became Roberto's mini me.

[00:39:12] And I ran his operation. So she gives me the list of the distributors, how much product everybody's holding needs me to collect money to pay the lawyers. And I'm like, I'm now right in the middle of it. Yeah. I've gotta pay the suppliers. It was a lucky. Accident that happened, but Roberto was a hundred percent believed in me, and that's what got us there.

[00:39:34] Jordan Harbinger: You wrote in the book, I found out in a few days what would take a normal investigation months to learn. And this is exactly why, right? Because it's like, normally they gotta do all this detective work and they find out there's a drug shipment here. Meanwhile, you got this guy's wife and all his associates being like, all right, here's our next 10 shipments and the dates and where they're gonna be and how much is in each one.

[00:39:52] And you're like, great. Just like, here's the document that I would've spent a year trying to assemble and not

[00:39:57] Robert Mazur: getting on time. Probably. We had undercover agents in different cities meet with his distributors to, uh, collect cash from them. And we timed that at the same time of the bachelor party where a lot of people came to a country club thinking that I was gonna get married.

[00:40:13] And so we, we timed the pickups and I also timed an offer I made to pay the suppliers in Columbia to. They flew in and met me at my, well, one guy flew in with a, a woman who was a girlfriend of, of Roberto's to pick up 400,000 bucks. And so, um, I met with him. So the supplier gets arrested, distributors are getting arrested, the bankers are getting arrested.

[00:40:37] A lot of the drug traffickers that I dealt with were getting arrested. And, and that's basically how that particular case concluded.

[00:40:43] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. The, essentially, what was it you were having a fake wedding. Can you take us through that a little bit?

[00:40:48] Robert Mazur: Sure. These cases are important, but they're mostly important for law enforcement being able to put their hands on the bad guys and be able to arrest them.

[00:40:56] It doesn't prove anything if you have a beautiful looking indictment and the bad guys are sitting in a country that doesn't allow extradition. Mm-Hmm. And so we needed to come up with something that was going to, in an ideal situation, lure them to the middle district of Florida, Tampa, where the indictment was returned by the grand jury.

[00:41:15] So I'd say it was probably in the summertime in when we had to come up with something and one of the other undercover agents said, you know, I think they really like us. And I think that they would come to a family event. Mm-Hmm. What about a wedding? And there was a, a female agent who had at times appeared as my girlfriend slash fiance, who now was going to be the person that I was allegedly gonna be marrying.

[00:41:47] And a lot of their families, I mean, she became good friends with Roberto's wife, with other people who were involved in the, uh, in the operation. So it made sense to them. And that was probably the toughest undercover meeting I had, was not with a bad guy, it was actually with a wedding planner at the, uh, Innisbrook Country Club where I was supposed to act like, you know, the happy groom.

[00:42:10] Yeah. You know, and we made all the arrangements with nobody knowing. That we were really feds because you know, the bank had a branch in Tampa and had financial relationships with actually some of the people who were board members at the country club. Oh my God. And there was no way in hella we were gonna take the chance of saying that, you know, this is what's gonna happen.

[00:42:32] Right.

[00:42:33] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God.

[00:42:33] Robert Mazur: We needed to lure them to the country club, which we did. It was a three day affair.

[00:42:38] Jordan Harbinger: Let me just, I'm imagining you with this undercover, this female undercover, and the wedding planner's. Like, what do you think of the creme brulee? And you're like, oh yeah, it's great. And she walks away and you're like, okay, do you think we can lure all these guys at the same time?

[00:42:50] How are we gonna swoop in and make the, like you're just sitting there tasting your fake wedding food. It's gotta, at some level it's funny 'cause it's ridiculous.

[00:42:57] Robert Mazur: Well, it's surreal. Surreal. There's no doubt about that. I mean, it was an important part of the formula because, you know, one guy came from Pakistan.

[00:43:04] There were people who came from Columbia, a guy came from Panama. We missed a couple people that unfortunately we didn't get our hands on, but we got our hands on a lot of people that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten our hands on had we not come up with that kind of a plan. So, mm-hmm. You know, it's kind of like going to today's events where you, you see this FBI informant who was providing information allegedly about Joe Biden's corruption in Ukraine and, and they arrested him in Miami, but the indictment had been returned in San Diego and you have a Miami magistrate that's gonna let the guy out on bond.

[00:43:36] You know, we want it in our home court. We don't wanna have to deal with the unknowns and. But that's even an advantage to have 'em in some other jurisdiction in the United States. But forget it, if you're gonna have 'em in Pakistan or Columbia, you're not. Right. You could not, uh, get them to the United States.

[00:43:50] So, yeah. So the night before the scheduled wedding, there was a party out by the big pool at the country club. You know, you can imagine the carved dice and the string orchestra and all that other stuff. And there's a lot of people who were there that were posing as family, that were actually law enforcement officers.

[00:44:11] And we arranged it so that we had one of the informants went around to all the bad guys and said, uh, Bob doesn't know this, but we're gonna do a bachelor party in Tampa tonight. And so the limos will be here shortly and all the guys are gonna be going there and you know, there'll be other entertainment here for your wives this evening.

[00:44:32] So, um, we'll call you when that happens. So, you know, now that the limos line up. So one or two of the family members, which are really agents, get into the limo with one of the bad guys. We tried to do it that way and not put more than one bad guy in a car, and then they drove to a high rise that had like a 10 level parking and they went to different levels so they didn't run into one another.

[00:44:56] Mm-Hmm. They get on an, an elevator, they go to different floors, and when they get off the elevator, there's a full arrest team there that takes 'em down. And, and as I noted in the book, one of the guys, there were a lot of people in disbelief, but one of the guys who, um, got off there was a, an arrest team, uniformed arrest team that included two female officers and they put the cuffs on him and the guy is laughing and they said, why are you laughing?

[00:45:20] He said, well, I've been to a bachelor party like this before where the women dress up as cops, you know, where's the party? And it took him a while to convince him that he was actually under arrest. Like, no, really? You're going to prison? The funniest story.

[00:45:33] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And he is like, no, no, no, no. Yeah, take me to prison, baby.

[00:45:35] Yeah, no, no, no. You're really actually under arrest and you're spending the night in jail and you're probably gonna be there for 30 years after we're done with you. Like his hangover the next day was probably nothing to envy, I'm sure. Wow, that's amazing. I did wonder how you managed to arrest all those people at once.

[00:45:52] 'cause how do you, yeah. Getting 'em to go in separate elevators is smart, right? You don't want like 30 or 40 or however many guys all in. One big old party bus and then you're trying to wrangle 'em. No, especially because these are hardened criminals who are probably not super keen on going to jail and willing to kill somebody in order to avoid it.

[00:46:10] Robert Mazur: Yeah. It was like about a 30 story high rise in downtown Tampa, so, and on the top was a restaurant at the top where they thought that that party was actually going to occur. The funny thing is that the owner of that restaurant was the, it was called Macbeth's. He was the sponsor of the law enforcement softball team.

[00:46:31] So we, the guys all had Macbeth shirts on that were, you know, related to the place at the top. Gosh. So that's where they thought the party was gonna be. Oh

[00:46:40] Jordan Harbinger: my gosh. It seems like, especially in the eighties, right? There's no email, there's no mobile phones. It must have been hard to separate this stuff from your regular family life, right?

[00:46:49] Because aren't bad guys calling your house, don't they have to see you in person? Well, first of

[00:46:54] Robert Mazur: all, there were mobile phones. I had one of those giant ones, sleek, a sleek shoe phone, and uh, and, and actually there was a New York number in it and a Miami number in it. Okay. Because I was back and forth between New York and Miami.

[00:47:07] And so I never, ever used any of the phones at my offices. Okay. Undercover offices or my cell phone to communicate with my office or with the bad guys. I had a home in Kiska. So generally speaking, I would go maybe at about, oh say. 11 o'clock at night, sometimes a little bit later there. This was the, the timeframe of banks of payphones, so behind BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, along Brickell Avenue, there were three long lines of payphones.

[00:47:45] There were probably 20 payphones in a row, so there's a massive number of payphones there. I drive there. Of course, all the other cars that were parked there were Bentleys, Mercedes, BMWs. They were all guys with polished fingernails and speaking Spanish that were on the phones, talking to Columbia, working their deals.

[00:48:05] I'm on the payphone and I'm talking to the prosecutor, to the case agent, to my wife, because everybody knew that the smartest thing to do would be to use a different payphone every day. Yeah. You don't wanna use the same payphones. 'cause if people pick up on that, they might tap that payphone. You don't wanna make patterns.

[00:48:24] So, you know, payphones became my way, um, that I would be able to communicate with other people. Sheesh man, I, and I had contact agents. I had contact agents in each town. Yeah. So they had undercover phones. So I could use my undercover phone to call another undercover phone. That was a contact agent for me.

[00:48:42] That phone was to be used only, you know, to speak with me about, you know, okay, where am I gonna be? What am I doing? I couldn't have surveillance on me all the time. That's too dangerous. But there has to be surveillance at times when there is potentially a risk. Say for example, if you're receiving a couple hundred thousand dollars in cash, yeah.

[00:49:03] It might be a ripoff. So, you know, there needs to be cover teams. But for the most part, most of my meetings, people just knew where I was gonna be. Where I expected to go and we'd operate that way. When you're

[00:49:17] Jordan Harbinger: creating an undercover profile, of course you gotta know everything about yourself, your undercover identity, et cetera.

[00:49:23] But when you're doing it with a bunch of other people, 'cause you had colleagues right? A a lot. 'cause you're running this big operation. Yep. Mm-Hmm. I assume you all memorize and discuss tons of the details of each of your stories with one another as well. Right. Let's look a study group. 'cause I

[00:49:34] Robert Mazur: made them prepare them in writing because you know what's gonna happen?

[00:49:38] You're not gonna be in every meeting all the time. Right. I've got this female agent who's posing as a fiance, who very well may wind up in the room alone with them, and then I'm not there. So we can't play off of one another on what's being said. So we better all have a very, very clear understanding. I mean, these things were super detailed, like what's your favorite drink?

[00:50:00] What high school did you go to? What? Mm-Hmm. Your parents, how many siblings? Who's dead, who's alive, who's sick, who's not sick. I mean to the nth degree details. And if you weren't gonna do that, then you weren't gonna be involved in these meetings. There's no way. Because you're gonna create a liability force.

[00:50:17] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It seems like, look, if I've worked with you, let's say, even for merely 10 years, right? And I'm your money laundering colleague. I gotta know all kinds of weird quirks and small details about you. Like I can't just know like, oh yeah, Bob went to the University of Michigan. He used to be an attorney.

[00:50:32] It's gotta be like, he always asks for extra chili flakes and he puts it on Hawaiian pizza. And that always ruin the pizza for everyone else. And it's a running joke with our crew that you're gonna go with him and he is gonna order a crappy Hawaiian pizza and put chili flakes all over it. Like you have to know these little things.

[00:50:46] 'cause it's probably a terrible example. I suppose you could just not put the chili flakes on your part of the pizza, but it's an idea of the granular detail that you would have on a colleague or a coworker or somebody you've known for a long time. You'd have little quirks that were annoying, that were kind of funny that other people commented on a lot.

[00:51:01] Robert Mazur: Absolutely right, and one of the things that I always tell undercover agents is when you're building your persona, you wanna build it as closely to your real persona as you can. Robert ELA was a person with a business background from Staten Island who worked in a bank and worked in a brokerage firm, and now was involved in an investment company, mortgage brokerage business, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:51:22] Well, Robert Maser, born and raised on Staten Island, had a business background, worked in a bank, worked in a brokerage firm. It was very easy, even to the point that when we started building things with respect to the fiance, it was, well, how did you guys meet? Well, I used the same story how my wife and I really met.

[00:51:44] I was really good friends with my wife before we ever started dating, and I liked her friend, her best friend. She liked my best friend. We tried to set each other up, they wanted nothing to do with it, and we were sitting there one day and said, well. I really like you. You know, would you like to go out?

[00:52:00] And so that became a part of the persona between me and the fiance. That was how we met. We met because we were trying to hook each other up with our best friends. Mm-Hmm. Best friends rejected us. So you wanna build as much as you possibly can based upon what your real life is all about. I grew up on Staten Island in a neighborhood called Mariners Harbor.

[00:52:22] At the time it was a very Italian neighborhood. There were a lot of wise guys. Mm-Hmm. In the neighborhood. And I wrote in the book, my grandfather worked at one time, along with a lot of people from his family, the Pharo family for Lucky Luciano. So I knew a lot about, you know, that stuff. But my mom always said, you go anywhere near any of those people or you do anything that comes close to that, you know, you've had it.

[00:52:46] My mom and dad were dedicated to the idea that their two sons were gonna be the first in the family to go to college.

[00:52:53] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:52:54] Robert Mazur: And we were, and we were gonna have. Good educations good businesses. We weren't gonna get anywhere near any of that kind of stuff. So I didn't have to really worry about understanding that.

[00:53:07] Jordan Harbinger: What does your mom think about you? Like, oh, my son went to college. Oh, he joined customs. Oh, he joined the da. Wait, now he's hanging out with all the people that I wouldn't let him hang out with when he was a kid. What's going on here? She must not have been super thrilled about that. She

[00:53:20] Robert Mazur: must have been worried about you.

[00:53:21] Uh, yes. She was worried about me because I was her baby. Yeah. But you know, she was very proud of So as, as my dad was, my dad was a World War II vet. My dad fought in Africa, in Italy, and in France. Hardly ever talked about it was a very, very patriotic guy. My brother fought in Vietnam, hardly ever talks about it.

[00:53:41] Very patriotic guy. My mom worked for the US Army as a civilian employee. She became the comptroller at Fort Wadsworth and later Fort Hamilton. The two army bases on either side of the Veno Bridge. Mm-Hmm. Family, god and country. Are the mainstays of the people who meant the most to me in my life. And that's another important thing about being grounded, because if family really, really matters to you and your maker really matters to you and your country really matters to you, you're far, far less likely to become a victim like my partner in a subsequent undercover operation who went to prison for 11 years.

[00:54:25] Mm-Hmm. And be compromised. And it's very, very important for people who do this type of work to recognize that there is potentially, if you don't operate smartly, there is a potential for you to compromise yourself. Mm-Hmm. And to, before you even realize it, slide down a slippery slope that there's no way in hell you can come back from.

[00:54:49] I was very fortunate. My parents were ideal models for me. My leadership gave me the opportunity to train me. I was taken very, very seriously. Long-term undercover training, and then very seriously to build this undercover operation. And I was surrounded by extraordinarily talented people. You know, at the height of the operation there were probably 150 agents, analysts, supervisors, administrative people, and prosecutors who were part of the operation.

[00:55:20] So by far, I was not a lone wolf in this thing. I got the privilege of earning a leadership role in the undercover team. But there was an investigative team, a prosecution team. There were many, many other moving parts that were extremely important. And if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now,

[00:55:39] Jordan Harbinger: man.

[00:55:39] I guess you mentioned your, your partner in another operation went to prison. I guess it's gotta be tempting at some level, knowing you got a trunk or a duffle bag with 2 million bucks in it to just try and vanish with it or. Take a couple hundred thousand off the top, especially if it's eighties, nineties money, you could do a lot with that.

[00:55:56] So the temptation is definitely there, especially if your job is to move it around and hide it. It's like you probably think, well, I can let these guys know that some of this is gone and tell the other side the same thing, and I could get away with this.

[00:56:08] Robert Mazur: Well, his compromise started even before the undercover operation, because he was a young officer with very little experience.

[00:56:16] Mm. Who was taken from a uniform position after 18 months and thrown in vice because he was Puerto Rican and spoke Spanish. Mm. And they thought, well, you know, we're gonna have him do undercover work. Well, that's not a reason for selecting someone to do undercover work. And then they put him with two informants from Columbia who were extremely manipulative, and he started making some cardinal sins right in the beginning.

[00:56:43] Initially, he did everything by the numbers. He met with another officer. When he met with them, everything was on paper. Then he started to like them. Then he started to meet with them alone. Then he started to socialize with them. I had pictures of him when he was with the two informants with their kids and his kid.

[00:57:01] He was divorced in the park and they were, you know, doing a little park picnic. And so now he's with them one-on-one. And the very first

[00:57:10] Jordan Harbinger: mm-Hmm.

[00:57:10] Robert Mazur: Thing that the manipulative informants did to test him was they said, we're gonna be working with you and you're gonna be doing undercover, and we're gonna be working with you undercover.

[00:57:22] And your investment for us, you're not gonna be able to do it the way you're doing it now you're not dressed right? Mm-Hmm. Let's go to the store and let me show you the kind of clothes you need to be wearing. So they go to the mall, shows him the clothes, and the guy goes, you know what? It's an investment for me between us.

[00:57:41] I'll buy this stuff. And he buys the guys a bunch of clothes for the guy, and the guy lets him do it. Well, of course the light bulb goes off in the informant's head and goes, Hmm, I got something to work with here. So now the next thing he does is he goes, and you know, you, you need to have some nice jewelry.

[00:57:59] And he takes this watch off of his arm. It was ara, it was worth about 10 grand at the time. And he says, here, I'll loan this to you. Mm-Hmm. The guy takes it. The cop. The cop. The cop takes it. Yeah. Well now they know, okay, he's taking this stuff. There's something else that's going on. They're hanging out.

[00:58:17] Personally, his personal background was his mom was on assistance living in the Bronx, and she was ill, and he had two divorces and he was paying child support out the yin yang. And he was always talking about his financial problems. Huh. Well, what do you think that's gonna lead to? Yeah. And so the informants start explaining to him.

[00:58:38] How it is that he might be able to make some money. And then before you know it, he's down the slippery slope.

[00:58:43] Jordan Harbinger: Man, it seems very difficult. You mentioned selecting the right people for the job. How do you know if someone's gonna be corruptible or not? I guess, or don't you?

[00:58:52] Robert Mazur: Well, we wind up getting polygraphs.

[00:58:55] Well, of course, I'd like to say that my former partner that did 11 years beat the polygraph. Yeah. Because he's such a psychopath. But there are ways that people can actually study, looking in a mirror and say false responses and eventually convince themselves that it's not that false of a response.

[00:59:14] Right. And you know, it takes a little training, but they could do it. You know, you'd gotta know enough about the background.

[00:59:18] Do you really want an agent who has bankruptcy? Do you want a guy who's got. To divorces and financial stress? No, obviously not. You know, you wanna make sure that these are people who have good sound financial backgrounds, who have good sound character, and you know, you gotta do a quality background in order to make sure that you are hiring people who deserve this type of responsibility that you're willing to give to them.

[00:59:46] I'd like to say that corruption is something that only happens elsewhere, but unfortunately it is a situation in, you know, the US law enforcement community. Maybe not to the degree that it might be in some other countries, but it is, it's an ongoing problem and it's something that I also do a lot of instructing or presenting to law enforcement agencies and, and I love to get the opportunity to talk to people who are in management, in law enforcement and ask them to confront themselves about the fact that what do you normally do when you have a circumstance like my former partner who went to prison for 11 years?

[01:00:24] What do you do with that knowledge? What they normally do is they try to sweep it under the rug because they really don't want the public to see that these chinks in the armor exist because they don't want the public to lose faith in law enforcement. Now, I can understand that kind of an approach, but my view is that you need to use that.

[01:00:47] That story needs to be used within the law enforcement community to help people to recognize how even a good guy can become a bad guy. Mm-Hmm. And how it can absolutely turn around. You don't wanna sweep this under the rug. You want to talk about it. You wanna talk about what happened, why it happened, how you can prevent it from happening.

[01:01:06] And to help officers who might be working with another person and go, you know, I need to pull his reins in 'cause I can see him making a problem. You know, I know law enforcement officers who deal with informants and the informant goes, Hey, yeah, my brother's gotta use car lot. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[01:01:22] And then another officer goes, Hey, well me, I'm gonna go look and see what they got on the line. No, no. You don't do business with informants or family members or friends of informants. No. No. That's not part of what you're supposed to be doing. It's part of getting down that slippery slope and making stupid judgment decisions that ultimately you turn around and you go, well, why not go for a little bit more?

[01:01:44] I've already made these other mistakes.

[01:01:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

[01:01:47] Robert Mazur: and then you really make the big mistakes.

[01:01:51] Jordan Harbinger: This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Robert Maser. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Quince. As the weather heats up, it's time to swap those bulky winter layers for something lighter, like a crisp 100% European linen shirt. I don't know what makes it European a hundred percent or other.

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[01:04:22] I am more than happy to surface that code for you. Yes, it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of part one with Robert Maser, I can see that process, right? Like, oh, he's gotta use car a lot. He goes there and takes a look, and then somebody's like, oh, isn't that the guy that give him a really good deal?

[01:04:41] Just give him the car. Well, now I gave him a car. Okay, why? Why you driving a used car? Let me get you a nice car. No, I can't really do it. I mean, it's just like one thing and then you're like, well, I gonna get in trouble for that. Uhhuh. What am I now? It's part of the operation. You just start rationalizing this stuff.

[01:04:55] And suddenly it's like dot, dot, dot. They're wiring you a hundred thousand dollars to look the other way when they do something or whatever.

[01:05:03] Robert Mazur: One of the things that early stage stupidities that my former partner did, he wanted to be a superstar. Mm-Hmm. He had great informants. Well, they gave him great information.

[01:05:12] Well, in turn, they were looking for a little bit of help. So he goes and tells them on two occasions about investigations that were being started focusing on them, don't deal out of your club. They know about that club. Mm. You're gonna get yourself in big trouble. And he told 'em on another time, Hey, they got a warrant for your arrest.

[01:05:31] The guy fled. He went to New York. Oh man. He was getting the opportunity to make big cases against the competitors of his informants that made him look like a superstar in the eyes of law enforcement. But he was paying a price for that as he continued to slide down the slippery slope because he was doing things that he really didn't think at first.

[01:05:52] We're all that bad. Look, I'm getting something for the government on this, so yeah, maybe I'm helping this guy a little more than I should, but look at that. We arrested five people, we seized five kilos, we seized this, we did that. Somehow he rationalized that stuff out. I can see that

[01:06:09] Jordan Harbinger: though. You know, I can see how this happens and I, I don't sympathize really.

[01:06:13] Or I guess 'cause I think the guy sounds like he'd made a lot of dumb mistakes. But I can really see, I mean, and I suppose you can too, you can really see how this, I. Is tempting in the moment how it's easy to rationalize, especially if you're like, look, we arrested five dangerous people, so what we let one other guy go and he is feeding us a ton Information.

[01:06:30] Seems like a good deal, but it, it's a bargain with the devil in many ways. Yep, absolutely. There's a throwaway line in the book, and by the way, if people buy the books, please use the links in the show notes. It helps support the show. There's a throwaway line in the book. You say, you're talking about meeting with sources and you say through silence and active listening, these people can offer up more than you bargain for, or more than they planned on talking about.

[01:06:52] What are you using to draw people out when you're talking with them?

[01:06:56] Robert Mazur: Sure. So a good example of that, I think if your, uh, listeners watch the film, the Infiltrator. Mm-Hmm. This is a bad guy using active listening. It's Roberto Volcano. He's sitting there in a movie theater alone and in walks Brian Cranston and he turns to Cranston and he says, so Mr.

[01:07:19] Musella, what can you do for me? He doesn't say anything after that. And what happens is the person to whom that active listening comment is made becomes a little uneasy and feels like they have to fill the space. So now they've gotta give the information that this guy is looking for. Best example, I can give you that of what happened to me where somebody used active listening on me.

[01:07:45] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[01:07:46] Robert Mazur: And it goes to a personal story, you know, my mom was in the process of clearly passing away and, um, priest from hospice came by and he just turned to me and he said, how you doing? And I said, oh, I'm doing fine. And he just continued to look at me. Mm-Hmm. In kind of an inquisitive way. And I felt like, alright, he's not buying what I said.

[01:08:09] I guess I better tell him. I said, well, you know, the fact is I'm not doing well. I. This is what's bothering me. And I started opening up and I was talking to him and I was telling him things that I was otherwise not inclined to tell him. And so anytime you can use that type of an approach, mm-hmm. Instead of trying to say, well, hey, this is what I can do for you and I can do this, I can do that, I can do the other thing.

[01:08:33] You know, my approach would be I can help you. The way I help people changes based upon their needs, their capabilities. So. What is the problem that problems you face, that you need the most help on from me? You know what my capabilities are, what is your greatest concern? And don't say anything after that.

[01:08:58] Just look at 'em and wait. Let the time go. They're gonna feel like they gotta say something, right? And, and they're gonna start talking about it.

[01:09:05] Jordan Harbinger: It's almost like get enough rapport to ask 'em what keeps 'em up at night and, and, and they're just gonna unload on you. I would imagine a lot of these guys don't have a lot of people they can talk to anyway.

[01:09:14] Robert Mazur: Yeah, I probably hit it off best with Roberto. One of the number one things that you have to do if you really want to try to establish rapport and communicate with people is you have to be willing to do the homework. Before I met Roberto, I knew I was gonna have the opportunity to, if I could get past guy number one, there had been failed big investigations of Roberto previously.

[01:09:39] So I knew about his family, about his businesses. What his likes, his dislikes were. Well, guess what? When I'm gonna be talking to him, a lot of his likes, he's not gonna know I'd got this because I did my homework. But for example, he came to my home, actually my informant home, but he came to my home in Florida through another informant.

[01:10:05] I had the use of a Rolls Royce. I knew Roberto was a collector of Rolls Royces. He had five of them. So I had it parked in the garage, and when we got to the house, I popped the garage till we walked in through the garage. Never saying a word about the Rolls Royce. He saw it and immediately he was glued to it and he, oh wow.

[01:10:27] I said, yeah, well, and I knew everything about that particular Rolls Royce, and I talked about it. I told him, you know, I really wanted to become a collector. Oh, I, I wanna be a collector too. Mm-hmm. Now we're buddies. We're starting to become buddies. We have a lot in common. He, even though we became kind of like buddies.

[01:10:42] He would promise bigger, bigger jobs. And I'm getting a hundred thousand, 150,000. I know he's moving thousands of kilos at a time. Mm-Hmm. I'm not getting the biggest part of his business. Right. But he keeps promising it to me. So I went to this informant whose home I was using, the former, uh, bodyguard, and I said, you know, what would you do in this kind of a situation?

[01:11:07] You know, you got this guy who's got a lot of potential. He keeps promising that he's gonna do big stuff, does a little bit here, does a little bit there, but never really delivers. He goes, oh, that's easy. I'm gonna give him a gift. A gift. What do you mean? He goes, I'm gonna give him something. That's the next time.

[01:11:23] He says, listen, we're partners. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do another thing. I'm gonna give him a gift and I'm gonna bless our relationship and it's gonna be a gift that's really gonna be something that's meaningful to him. Now, Roberta was a religious guy and I said, the government's gonna give me like.

[01:11:41] A 12 inch black and white tv. If you give him as a gift, I mean, I, what am I gonna do? He goes right here. Let me show you the type of thing I'm talking about. So he goes into his safe and he takes out this gold studded, it was like quarter inch bars of gold and studded with diamonds. It was a cross. Wow.

[01:11:59] And was worth like 25 grand. Yeah. So I said, well that's great, but you know, we can't buy that from you. So he goes, no, here's, I got an idea. I'll loan this to your agency and you just make sure you get it back from him at the end of the thing. And I go, well, I'm about the, I cross the T guy. I'm gonna go back to my boss.

[01:12:18] I wrote up this borrow agreement. He wasn't getting any money for his cooperation. Right. Okay. And so we said, okay, we'll borrow this. We'll try to get it back for you at the end. If we can't get it back, it's worth 25,000 and we'll give you a $25,000 award for your help. This case. So with that, signed off by my boss, I get the cross.

[01:12:43] So now it's a time when Roberto flies into Teterboro with me. We're at the brokerage firm. The guy at the brokerage firm did a great job. We're sitting there talking. Now he's related to the guy that I'm is my informant. So he knew who I was. We had him signed up as an informant as well. And you know, he starts with this story of like, you know, this fricking SEC, they're just giving me a hard time because my last name ends in a vowel.

[01:13:11] They think everybody who's, everybody who's Italian is in the mafia. This is garbage, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So we leave there, we go to a social club. Now we're in the, the limo. We get to his, his apartment building, which is like right near the United Nations. The female agent is in the car.

[01:13:29] He goes to get out and just as he's closing the door, I grab it and I open it up and I go out. I closed the door and I said, you know, Roberto, you've told me many times that you know you are prepared to begin a partnership with me. You know I'm not an idiot. I know. You know, what we're doing right now is you're putting your toe in the pool, you're not jumping in the water.

[01:13:49] I mean, what's the matter? Don't you trust me? What's going on? He goes, oh, I trust you. We're like, brothers. I go, if we're gonna really get involved in this business, this is a situation where we have to make a promise to one another, and the promise is that I'm, I'm prepared to die for you, or you prepared to die for me.

[01:14:08] Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we're, we're in it. We're blood brothers in this thing. I go, alright, that being the case, my family has a tradition and in honor of that tradition, we have a gift for you, and this is our gift to you in honor of the partnership that we now have. I. He opens it up. Now this guy's a high-end jeweler.

[01:14:30] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I see.

[01:14:31] Robert Mazur: He opens this thing up and he is got this $25,000 cross. He couldn't believe it. Oh my God. I said, and there's one other thing, and now an agent's not gonna do this, but I said, see her in the car. And at the time I was 37, I said, I'm 37 years old, I have no kids. My family's Italian. That is not acceptable.

[01:14:52] So she's gonna be my wife. Don't ever talk business in front of her. Never. And as long as we, you honor that and you honor the fact that we're prepared in our partnership to risk our lives for one another, let's do it. And he said, okay, compadre, I'm, I'm in The money started flowing like crazy.

[01:15:12] Jordan Harbinger: Mm. And

[01:15:12] Robert Mazur: it worked because I don't think in a million years at that stage, he thought that I was an agent.

[01:15:19] Never. Nor did his wife. And the day that they did this, they arrested him and they did the search warrant on his, on his apartment by the un. So his wife eventually gets in touch with me, making me the mini me, and she goes, thank God DEA did not take the splash board out from underneath the dishwasher, because that's where Roberto's fake passport and a lot of the blocks of cash were hidden.

[01:15:44] Oh my gosh. She goes, I've already destroyed the passport. I tore it up. I don't think that she did destroy it, because he would've needed that in order to get access to accounts that were in that name. Mm. But she said she'd already destroyed it, but she wanted to give me the money because that money needed to go to the lawyers.

[01:16:00] And they need, they, you know, they needed help and, and then I needed to work with their distributors and stuff. But, you know, little things like that, little things like taking the time to really understand who these people are and what makes them tick. Not only just doing your homework on that, but also knowing to be asking these open-ended questions that you should be asking, preparing yourself for being compromised in advance of being with these guys.

[01:16:34] I thought about all that, and of course everybody goes like, well, people not in law enforcement go, what if they told you the only way they're gonna do business is you gotta snort a line with them?

[01:16:42] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[01:16:43] Robert Mazur: And I go, well, that's really easy. 'cause I had this built into my background. I've already told them, listen, you guys are the cherry on the top of the cake.

[01:16:52] My bread and butter is my family. Mm-Hmm. If they think that I'm outta control, they're not gonna give me the tens of millions of dollars that I wind up having to move for them. You're gonna get me killed. So if that's that important to you, take your line and put it where the sun doesn't shine. Mm-Hmm.

[01:17:08] Because I am not taking the chance of losing my main gig. Now the other problem that I had was, of course, women. I wasn't prepared for this one. So I'm with the first level guy and we're at a men's club and he comes by and this is in the movie, and he's got two women, one under each arm. And he goes, Mr.

[01:17:28] Bob, this is for you. Take her upstairs into the private room. And my mind's flying like a thousand miles a second. Mm-Hmm. And that's when I came up with the idea of, listen, I'm a 36-year-old guy, I have a fiance. I've never been married before. I don't wanna screw this thing up. Mm-Hmm, thanks, but no thanks.

[01:17:48] That ain't gonna happen. And they had a funny line in, in the movie where Cranston delivers that line and says, well, you know, I have a fiance and I don't wanna compromise that. And he goes, so. You have a fiance, so come on, take the girl. No. So I hadn't thought about that type of compromise and I really should have.

[01:18:07] But you really need to pre-think Yeah. A lot of that type of

[01:18:10] Jordan Harbinger: stuff

[01:18:10] Robert Mazur: out.

[01:18:10] Jordan Harbinger: You gotta be convicted as well. Right? Convinced of your own, of your own red lines. 'cause I, I can imagine it would be tough to be in that situation. They're like, alright, don't do the line, but come on man, no one's gonna come. And you're like, well, I'm serving my country.

[01:18:24] I guess I'll just, you know, I don't have to go all the way. I can just kind of hang out for a minute, have a drink. Right? I mean, it's real, it's a real slippery slope. Especially when you're a 37-year-old guy and you're with a bunch of gangsters and you're, it'd be an easy thing to rationalize, I think, at that point.

[01:18:37] Robert Mazur: Well, one of the things that stuck out in my mind was, you know, the first thing that Joe Poone taught me, which was think trial from day one. Mm-Hmm. Remember there's gonna be a jury of 12 of your peers who are gonna be, or 12 of their peers, but there's gonna be everyday people.

[01:18:52] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[01:18:53] Robert Mazur: And keep in mind also that you need to be convinced that your informant.

[01:18:59] Or even the bad guys. If you're not recording it, they may be recording it. Right. And carry yourself like every single second that you are in this mode, you are going to have to show to a jury and not be ashamed of,

[01:19:17] Jordan Harbinger: right? Oh man, that makes a lot of sense. And good. Think of trial from day one. Nothing.

[01:19:21] Nothing, nothing kills the mood when you're being presented with two, uh, beautiful women. Like thinking of your trial and having to talk to 12 Boomers about why you did what you did, right? And your whole, right? Yes. All your conviction is based on whether or not the old ladies staring at you, thinks you're a decent person after you tell this part of the story

[01:19:40] Robert Mazur: and almost Stockholm syndrome.

[01:19:43] Almost occurred for me with respect to the jury. Mm-Hmm. In that, in this first case I got on the witness stand in the middle of March and I got off in the middle of June. I was on the witness stand every court day for three months. Wow. And so the jury really, really knew me and really, really knew the defendants and the lawyers.

[01:20:03] And one of the things that I try to help undercover agents know is that there is a definite formula defense attorneys use to attempt to embarrass agencies and agents Sure. In undercover operations. And one of them is role reversal. Role reversal. So do not ever answer a question because you're trying to be courteous to a question posed using your undercover name.

[01:20:30] One of the lawyers, a guy named name Jay Hogan, who is a big representative of Columbian drug traffickers outta Miami, would started it. I always call calling me Agent ela. I would politely say over a period of almost three months, Mr. Hogan, my name is Maser. Muela was my undercover name. And then I would answer the question.

[01:20:51] And eventually it got to the point where he would call me Muela and I could look up and see the jury and see them roll their eyes and kind of look at me with sympathy in their faces. And so I thought I knew the judge, judge Hodges pretty well from many cases. And I decided to take a risky chance. And not every undercover agent should do this 'cause she could get locked up doing it.

[01:21:14] But what I said was, uh, Mr. Hogan, you've called me Agent Muela hundreds about hundreds of times. Mm-Hmm. If you'd like tomorrow, I'll bring a name tag. My name is Maer, so ha ha ha. Next day we come in, in between my notes, I have a yellow sticky. I had two yellow stickies and with a black sharpie, I wrote Maer.

[01:21:35] First question out of the box from Hogan agent, Marcella, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I took it out and I put it on my chest and I said, Mr. Hogan, I promised I'd bring a name tag and here it is. And, and, and my name is Mazer. He tried to laugh it off and the jury laughed. Mm-Hmm. I had told him, oh, I brought a second one so you could put it up by the podium as well.

[01:22:00] And that's when he walked toward me. He took that and he was walking back and I said, and we all know, you know, my name is amazing. Wow. You could hear a pin drop in the courtroom. He turned around, he's screaming at me. Everybody knew. He knew. He knew. He knew. Right. And thank God the judge, well, the judge warned me not to volunteer any information, just answer the questions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[01:22:26] There are other judges that I think would've probably had the jury leave and would have probably had me sent down to the lockup for at least the rest of the day. Really. But anyway, I got away with that and Hogan. Completely lost credibility in front of the jury. But role reversal is something that you've gotta be very, very aware of in reality that you don't become a victim of role reversal.

[01:22:49] And two, that you have the armor on and prepare yourself with respect to as a law enforcement officer ever answering a question when someone poses it as though you are an agent, whose last name is your undercover identity. Because they'll run with that, and then they'll say, you know, this guy doesn't even know who the hell he is.

[01:23:10] Hmm. Did you notice he's been answering questions to his undercover name? He loved that life so much, he never wanted to leave it. He got my guy to do things that he'd never do because he didn't want this over. I mean, you could hear it all coming right? There's no doubt about it.

[01:23:24] Jordan Harbinger: Interesting. That's a very creative technique from the lawyer.

[01:23:27] But it's also, it must have been so annoying for the judge. The judge let you get away with it. 'cause she was probably super annoyed by the whole thing as well. 'cause it's just Yeah. It's like this endless repetitive, you correcting him, you correcting him, and, and he just thought he was gonna wear you down eventually it didn't happen.

[01:23:44] Robert Mazur: Yeah. You know, and another extraordinarily important thing is, and I, and I, when I talk to undercover agents, I bring up the example of Abraham Lincoln who had a adversaries that he needed to somehow, these were people who ran against him. Mm-Hmm. Who somehow he needed to get them to be supportive of him.

[01:24:02] And what he did was he made them cabinet members within his own administration after he became president. Right. So what do you do when you have a bad guy who doesn't like you and is trying to make your life miserable? And I had that happen to me in that Roberto had his main distributor. Was a Cuban guy who actually had been in the Bay of Pigs, who was seeing me as a challenge maybe to being Roberto's favorite, and somebody who might be able to cause Roberto to do things with me that this guy would've otherwise had done with him.

[01:24:41] And so I had to find a way to get him not to hate me, not to dislike me, and to see me as an ally. So what I did was I went to Roberto and I said, listen Roberto, I would never work with anyone on your team without your permission. I've noticed that his name was Tuto. I noticed how Tuto really carries himself so tremendously.

[01:25:07] I have a few things that need to be done that I think if you'd give me the permission to work with him, he could do good things for me and I can do good things for him. He said, sure, sure. Don't worry about it. So then I had two agents. Opposing his bad guys couriers. And I said to Tuto, listen man, I'm gonna have a delivery 150 grand in Miami.

[01:25:30] You know, I'll pay you X amount. Could you pick up the 150, keep it overnight, then I'll have you deliver it to somebody else the next day.

[01:25:38] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm,

[01:25:39] Robert Mazur: sure, sure, I'll do that. Okay, fine. So we took money, our money, not government money, it was profits from the undercover operation, right street wrapped 150 grand.

[01:25:49] He met with the undercover, got it from him, took it to his house, held it, gave it to another agent the next day. And he got paid for being a courier. And then I said to him, you know, I know you go to Columbia a lot, I gotta get these checks down there. If I pay for your airfare, could you go down there, deliver them to so and so in the medan cartel who was working with me and Tuto knew this guy, was somebody important in the Medan cartel?

[01:26:15] Mm-Hmm. And I paid him to do it. Well now he's working for me. Right. And now we're becoming buddies. So what happens? He comes to me and he goes, you know, Bob, I I, I know about your family. I got a problem. I got these Cuban guys in Chicago. They owe me 250 grand and they won't pay. We just need somebody to grab one of 'em, you know, and scare 'em and get the money.

[01:26:40] And I said, well, I don't know, you know how much that's gonna cost you? Now I had already talked to one of my informants who used to collect those types of debts, and uh, the fee's gonna be 50%. So I told him, you know, well, I could get somebody to do it, you know, but it's gonna cost you 50% of it. He goes, well, 50% is better than nothing.

[01:26:59] Yeah. And I said, okay, well, what if we grab one of them and somebody says, I don't care. Do you want us to go all away? You never said, do you want us to kill him? You would just say, you know, do you want us to go all away? Yeah. Yeah, you gotta, and I go, well, that's gonna cost you even more. And he said, well, you know, I gotta get this resolved because these guys think that they can do it.

[01:27:23] They know other people, everybody's not gonna pay me. Mm-hmm. Now instead of being my enemy, he's coming to me asking me to do work for him. Obviously we're not gonna kidnap anybody. And I kept delaying that because it happened near the end of the operation. But you know, that's how you have to deal with somebody.

[01:27:41] You've gotta find a way to bring them, as Lincoln did on his team, show them you trust him so that they can return and show trust to you. So by the

[01:27:52] Jordan Harbinger: way, what you're talking about is, the guy said, I know about your family you were using. Part of your backstop was that you had mafia connections. And there's a funny anecdote in the book where you go to this Italian restaurant and your fake cousin Dominic is like, if you mess with him, we'll kill you.

[01:28:07] You know who we are. 'cause it's to sort of show that you're connected. A connected guy. And so he knew about this. Yeah. And was like, Hey, can you leverage this? 'cause I can't go to my own people to get this debt settled.

[01:28:19] Robert Mazur: Yeah. And actually, I always denied to them that the mafia even existed Uhhuh, because that's what a mobster does, right?

[01:28:26] I did. You're right. I had, I had this guy, his name's Alex. I had Alex come to the table and Alex always had 15 different things going. He had a suntan lotion company. He had a, he was selling clothing, he was doing all kinds of stuff. So he comes there, he goes, boss, boss, I, you know, I, I know you're busy, but can I just talk to you for a minute because I've gotta get back to So-and-So, and something.

[01:28:46] And I go, yeah, yeah, okay. I said, well, I apologize Roberto, I need to talk to Alex for a minute. He's my cousin. Mm-Hmm. He takes care of sensitive things for me. So then he leaves. I didn't say anything. Roberto goes to me. He goes, let me guess Sicilian, Brooklyn. Started stealing cars when he was 13. I said, Roberto, you almost got it right.

[01:29:07] He started stealing 'em when he was 12 and Roberto just laughed his butt off. So they're the ones who came up with the idea, not me. And that's a technique, right? Called using passive reinforcements. You never wanna tell somebody you're of mobster. Mm-Hmm. You give them the passive reinforcements that makes them say to other people, he's a mobster.

[01:29:30] Jordan Harbinger: I used to do something similar with dating. This is such a funny connection, right? It's like if you tell somebody I'm kind of a big deal around here, it's like a joke, right? It's like, well sure you are sure you would say that. Yes, I'm very impressed. Whatever this guy is, nobody. But if your friend tells him, they're like, okay, there's an element of credibility here.

[01:29:47] Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. You know, he didn't tell me his friend told me. But if they find out for themselves that you're well liked or you got a successful whatever it sort of message you're trying to convey. It's much more credible because they're the ones that came up with it. Right. It wasn't you telling him.

[01:30:03] It wasn't your friend telling him it wasn't some elaborate show. It was something they deduced and that that has the highest level of credibility. You got it. That's it. That's so funny. You are about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with an undercover FBI agent posing as an Islamic terrorist.

[01:30:23] clip: I live with and grew up with the religion of Islam after nine 11, and knowing full well that this was not the religion that was being portrayed, it kind of broke me a little bit inside. I was in law enforcement. I spoke Arabic. I'm a Muslim, and my knee jerk reaction was to simply help working undercover.

[01:30:41] It definitely is an adrenaline rush, unlike anything I could describe. Putting your arm around someone telling them that you're their best friend, getting them to believe you. But what attracted me a great deal to this case, or what blew my mind about this case was the fact that he was arguably one of the smartest, most brilliant men I've ever been in front.

[01:31:03] This guy was on the precipice of curing infectious diseases. The shit that he talked about in his work was science fiction. How could someone so smart, so brilliant, such a gift to humanity, turn into a fucking killer, an absolute disgusting piece of garbage overnight? He was the epitome of evil. So we were going up to his apartment and it was right next to ground zero, and he put his arm around him and looked up to where the towers were, and he said, Tamara, this town needs another nine 11 and we're gonna give it to him.

[01:31:42] I've heard him say so much. Horrible things for so long that you think at that moment in time, I could have just accepted it and gone up and did my job, but I couldn't. I imagined killing him right there and that I imagined stabbing him in the eye with a pen I had in my pocket and leaving him for dead.

[01:32:02] Jordan Harbinger: To hear more from Tomer El Nouri about what drew him to the exciting and dangerous life of undercover law enforcement work, check out episode 5 72 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's the end of part one, part two, out in a few days, if not already, all things Robert Maer will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com.

[01:32:20] That includes transcripts, advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please, I would love it if you would consider supporting those who support the show. Also, we got our newsletter. It's recently revamped. Gabriel and I write it together now. It's a hell of a lot of fun.

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[01:33:05] That's where all the sane people are hanging out these days. This show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends and you find something useful or interesting.

[01:33:21] The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who is interested in organized crime, crime stories, uh, financial crime, share this episode with 'em. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you for part two.