Multimillionaire businessman Mansar al Kassar has been tied to three decades of international crime, arms deals, and terror attacks.
This is from a twenty ten National Geographic documentary titled Inside the DEA, which offered an unabashedly flattering portrayal of the Drug Enforcement Administration and its so called narco terrorism stings.
Kassar is the quintessential bond bad guy helved.
The film focused on the DEA's investigation of Mansar al Kassar, an arms dealer who became known as the Prince of Marbea for the mansion he owned in southern Spain. The DEA tricked Kassar into thinking he was selling arms to you guessed it, the FARC. As the War on terror fully eclipsed the War on drugs, narco terrorism stings allowed the DEA to stay relevant in the public eye and
worthy of congressional funding. Following this assist from National Geographic, the DEA turned to CBS's Sixty Minutes for an in depth look at another case, this one involving a Russian arms dealer named Victor Boot.
Boot has been protected by powerful friends and long considered untouchable by law enforcement, but three years ago, the DEA devised a bold undercover operation to capture him.
Nicknamed the Merchant of Death, Boot was the inspiration for the two thousand and five movie Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage.
How many close your coupes do you have?
Whatever we say it is because no one else will know the difference.
Three years after that movie's release, the DEA arrested Boot in Thailand, where he'd agreed to sell weapons to FARK agents, who were of course paid informants. Boot spent more than a decade in a US prison, but in December twenty twenty two he was released.
This has been a negotiations that had been going at the highest levels, but had been happening behind closed doors.
Boot was one half of a prisoner swap with Russia for WNBA star Britney Griner.
It is unclear at this point who the White House is going to swap for. We actually just have that in. This is Victor Boot, the convicted Russian arms dealer. This is a huge deal. It is breaking right now.
The DEA would like you to focus on Gasar and Boot. James Bond bad guys, as federal agents describe them, but they are exceptions, Most people caught up in dea narco terrorism stings are like Flavio Georgescu, no serious criminal connections. That is, yes, until well paid informants pretending to be FARC members showed up. I'm Trevor Aronson from Western Sound and iHeart Podcast. This is Alphabet Boys, episode ten, See Something, Say Nothing?
Hi, Flavia?
Hey, how are you?
It's July twenty twenty two, and Flavio is in New York. He's out of prison after serving nearly eight years, and he's been transferred to a halfway house in a rough area of the Bronx.
How are you doing a little bit hard?
It was not that is like I always think.
About what's that.
It hasn't been easy transitioning to the halfway house?
Is that what you mean?
Oh?
Yeah?
And that environment changed me a little bit. Right now, I just see it because over there was like a time capsule. But right now, like, okay, I tried to go outside in the you know when I see people running around and screaming, and that was not bo I'm gonna I'm gonna make it.
Flavio could have received a life sentence following his conviction a trial, but he didn't. The judge gave him ten years, which will end up being about eight years in prison, a year and a half way house in another year on probation. It's a life altering sentence, no doubt. It means Flavio spends his entire forties behind bars, but it's not exactly the kind of sentence you'd expect a narco
terrorist to receive, and that's really the point. Flavio, like most caught in DEA narco terrorism stings, is a terrorist, a drug runner, or an arms dealer, and he's certainly not a narco terrorist. These days, most of the people prosecuted as part of DEA narco terrorism stings are free, having served sentences like Flavia's, or in some cases, even
less time. They all just had the misfortune of getting swept up in a nearly two decade hustle that the DEA ran using unsuspecting people around the world to gin up so called narco terrorism cases and secure millions of
dollars in funding every year. If you're inclined to believe Flavio's story that he called the CIA to bust Wan, a FARK representative who was secretly a DEA informant, The story is altogether tragic, the case of a man who sought to help the US government only to be prosecuted and imprisoned by the US government, and the personal costs of this for Flavio have been devastating.
I don't have a small modil of water.
Still do one another one.
There's this piece of tape from the DEA's undercover sting I find haunting now, so many years after it was recorded. It really has nothing to do with the DEA's case. It's just small talk between Flavio and Wan. But this small talk seems appalling to me in hindsight. Flavio and Wan are at the area in Bucharest, Romania. This is the first time they meet.
How many kids you have? I don't have kids kids.
Wan tells Flavio that he has seven children, and he asks Flavio if he has any kids.
I traveled too much.
And I have time for the kids.
You will, though, and find your way.
I travel too much, Flavio says, I haven't had time for kids. Wan tells him you will.
Yeah, you'll have to, because why is it going to be a loan loan all age by yourself.
Flavio had only been married to his wife Andre for a few years when the DEA arrested him in Montenegro. He and Andre had big plans like most couples do, but after Flavio's arrest, Andra moved to New York and liquidated everything they owned to pay for his criminal defense, which of course ended with Flavio being sentenced to prison. Andra stayed in New York, building a new life for
herself and supporting Flavia in prison. She felt a duty as his wife to be there for him, but soon after Flavio arrived at the halfway House, Andre filed for divorce. She'd helped him through prison, and now with Flavio out, she's done.
Andre hates me because I destroy her life. I took the best years from her life. Intend to to have children together, Intend to have a normal family myself. I believe on you. I believe on this on Dao, which I took to protect and defend his nation. And I said, man, this is my chance right now, this is what I'm gonna do with this investigation. We're gonna be so crazy, will be so big, show the armless laundry and everything would be amazing. And look at me. I'm I'm I've
you know, sometimes I said, I don't know. I I asked, got to keep me healthy. But sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I feel like and see this room, I feel like, you know what. I was better not to wake up and just go to sleep and go to sleep forever. And that's it.
Because Andre.
Andre introduced me years ago to Flavio and his case, I wanted Andre's voice to be part of this story. I really tried to make that happen. One afternoon, she and I met at a coffee shop in Manhattan to talk. I agreed not to record our conversation. Andre told me that she's never doubted that Flavio was working for the CIA, or at the very least that Flavio thought he was working for the CIA. But she told me that doesn't
make her any less angry about what happened. In Andre's view, even if Flavio had been working for the US government, he'd put her in there marriage second behind whatever sort of operation he was running against Juan and the other Colombians. Flavio didn't need to get involved in any of this, as Andra sees it, and he should have been thinking about her and the risks involved in what he was doing,
and that's what she's unable to forgive. So now with Flavio in a halfway house and the divorce finalized, Andre wants to move on with her life. No Flavio, no talk about the CIA calls, and no interview with me. And honestly, I get it. I can understand where she's coming from. So I never pressured Andre again, do you.
I don't know? It's so it's so much. Andre hates me. Do you understand that?
I tell Flavio that I think losing Andre is the highest price he paid for all this.
He agrees.
She hates me for what I did to her. I put her to so much pain and to so much soft and humiliate her and destroy her life for nothing.
How many kids you have?
I don't have kids, And.
I guess this is why I find that moment of small talk between Flavio and Wan so haunting.
I travel too much. I didn't have time for kids.
You will, though, and find your way.
He's telling Flavio that he should have children. You don't want to die old and alone, one says, But secretly one knows that will likely be the consequence of what he's doing. He knows He's going to send Flavio to prison, and he knows that Flavio as a result, may very well die old and alone.
And when I'm gonna die, who are gonna be next to me? In the last moment of my life? I lost my wife, I lost my father, I lost it, not everything, BA what I'm gonna do right now?
Like travor is, I'm I'm like I said, I'm at this point. I feel so scared.
More.
After the break, Massimo Romagnoli and Christian Ventilla, Flavio's two colleagues and the weapons deal with Wan, received leniency in their sentencing because they agreed to plete guilty and testify against Flavio. Massimo was released in prison in September twenty seventeen, and Christian roughly a year later. They're now back in Europe. Christian is quiet about his new life, but Massimo, that's another story.
Romagnol delid.
Important.
Massimo is back in the public eye in a big way, as if he had never been convicted of participating in an arms deal to send weapons to terrorists. You can find him talking about politics on Italian.
TV toms Go.
Massimo is at exclusive events, speaking on panels with public officials and corporate executives.
Romaannolis the progress of consulting.
In Antanto.
Vitore, and Massimo posts a lot of videos of himself dressed to the nines and traveling first class around Europe.
Bimbi.
Massimo has not only crafted an image for himself as a connected guy, but also as a hard worker. He declares in one video that he'll work until he's one hundred and fifty years old if God allows. One thing Massimo has worked hard at is spinning his conviction and imprisonment. On a recent resume, he lists his employment from twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen, the time he was incarcerated, as a teacher at federal detention facilities. Massimo also self published
a book written in Italian titled An Innocent Trapped. In it, Massimo claims that he's innocent of all the charges resulting from quote the conspiracy of the Romanians Flavio Georgescu and Christian Ventilla, of which I was the victim.
Being innocent to his da injurious because you have no alibis, someone wrote, and I actually had the feeling of not being able to acconerate myself with any proof and with any concrete argument.
This is a translated passage from Masimo's book.
Because when one is truly innocent, only the candor and clarity of one's confession are the true proof, the true, infallible evidence of the loathfulness of one's sections.
And Massimo's campaign to rehabilitate his image seems to have worked. He's now running a lobbying and consulting firm in Brussels, and he's the president of the Freedom Movement, a political organization that promotes Italian workers, culture and products throughout Europe. Massimo, of course, refused to do an interview. Here's what he emailed to me, his words, again voiced by an actor.
I don't want to risk to have any problem or get mixed up with mister Flavia. He already destroyed my life one time and it's enough, so please respect my will.
When Massimo and Christian both agreed to testify against Flavio, they created something of a partnership, a partnership that apparently hasn't ended. Like Massimo, Christian has publicly downplayed his time in prison on his LinkedIn profile. Christian List's employment from twenty fifteen to twenty eighteen, the period he was incarcerated as a quote external partner at a US government agency. I mean, yeah, that's not inaccurate, I guess, but it's
definitely a strange way to say you are a federal inmate. Christian, also on LinkedIn, lists himself as a consultant to Massimo's firm at business meetings. I suspect they don't advertise that they were introduced by a mister Flavio Georgescu, international arms trafficker.
I am a hero. The Americans made me a hero, so I don't have to clean my name.
Christian, like Massimo, refused to be interviewed. Here's what he wrote to me.
This is the last conversation with you. Any other message from you, I will take it as harassment.
What Christian appears to mean, nearest I can tell, is that he's a hero because he testified against Flavio. So yeah, Massimo and Christian heroes who refuse to be interviewed about their apparent acts of heroism. I don't think Massimo and Christian are villains. They're just patsies like Flavio, and they flipped to save themselves at various times during our conversations. Flavio has expressed real anxiety about participating in the story, has even considered backing out entirely.
Do you imagine what's happened with my leg right now? Do you know I don't have a place to go? Do you know I'm afraid when I get off from the Southway, so I look like I'm parano, I'm looking twenty directions and everywhere, just to you know, be sure I'm not gonna get killed.
Flavio says he's concerned about Massimo and Christian and what they might do if they hear all this. We're having this conversation by phone. Flavio isn't his halfway house in New York. He's been there a few months now.
Massimo has a lot of money, a lot of power. He hates me because of me. He lost his family, He lost his three kids, which one of so little at that time, was like probably four or five years old, and the wife she divorced him. And if he has the chance to put me on the ground, he's gonna kill me with no problems, not him directed, not him directly in Romania, extremely powerful and extremely connected and everywhere.
Flavio worries about extreme, if highly unlikely scenarios like those, because he doesn't know what he will do with his life. He's got nothing now, no wife, no home, no money, and he doesn't know if you should stay in the States or return to Europe.
Please understand me to travel about what I'm gonna do in my life. I'm fifty years old. What I was supposed to do just outside? Did you show myself in the head just because I was an idiot, just because I was believing in.
Your country, just because I believe on.
An oak which I took in front of your nation.
Making problems worse is the fact that Flavio's attempts to find a job while living in the halfway House have been discouraging. Given his conviction on terrorism related charges, Employers automatically assume he's some sort of super villain.
I tried to get a job a traveler. I call probably twenty companies. She said, what was the charges? What did the government charge you with? And when I said the charges, she said, surely, see you have boss and she hang up the phone. At least ten people they cursed me out so bad that means it's no way for me to have a chance to find the job.
When I'm sucking this halfway.
House Flavio situation. It's bleak. There's an absurdity to it as well. The crime Flavia was convicted of providing material support to terrorists wouldn't hold up if he committed it today. That's because the supposed terrorist that Flavio supported, the FARC, aren't actually terrorists any longer, at least not according to
the US government. In November twenty twenty one, the Biden administration removed FARC from the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist groups in order to encourage peace between the Colombian government and the rebels. The DEA's narco terrorism stings they are pretty much.
Over now as a result.
Guys like Wan they can't pull off these cases now that they can no longer pretend to be FARK agents. This whole story is about pretending. Juan was pretending to be a FARK guy. Juan's colleagues were pretending to be Colombian revolutionaries. Flavia was pretending to be an arms dealer, you know who. Throughout the deal wasn't pretending Christian and
Massimo unlike Flavio, they didn't have a cover story. They didn't call the CIA, so what they were doing helping Flavio broke her that arms deal for wand there's no indication that they were doing anything but that. And yet the prison sentences they received were far less than what Flavio received because the government needed their testimony to convict Flavio.
Is that fair?
Christian and Massimo they're back in Europe living a good life. Flavio he's living in a halfway house in New York. I've been talking over the phone with Flavio for several years, dozens and dozens of calls. I've often felt like his therapist, but I've never met him in person. But finally Flavio and I have a chance to meet, So let's go to New York.
That's after the break.
That's why we're here.
I'm in a hotel room in New York with Flavio. My colleague Eleanor Knight, who's helping me with production and research, is with us.
And if I was taking some money, what you can say, oh, Flavio is honest guy. Why he took a little bit of money because he was having to pay his rent.
I'm not gonna work like that.
I start my recorder as Flavio being Flavio is midway through a monologue. He's talking to Eleanor, whom he just met a couple of hours ago, explaining from his perspective why he's been talking to me on the phone these past few years.
That's why he's okay. But I tried to explain to him a long time ago. You know, this is your chance to prove they are wrong, they do wrong things. This is this is my point of view right now.
Flavio tells Eleanor that his case is my chance to prove a point that aggressive sting operations like the one that targeted him can result in the prosecution of people who are innocent, people who, to use Flavio's words, don't bite the bait.
We cannot send people to instigate people to commit crime. To teach them, you let them know things which some people they don't know to do it. They don't know how to put those things together. A crime is like a puzzle. Myself never selling guns. Never I see movies with arm dealers on TV, but hold on from the movie to myself. Going to talk about those things was a big, big challenge, and I have to learn.
I have to.
Create a mindset. Okay, I'm going there for say, but I'm gonna die.
I was happy we came to New York because Flavio had been uncertain about continuing to cooperate with me. It's not that Flavio didn't want a story told suddenly. It was just that his life had become so uncertain once he got to the halfway House that he wasn't sure which way was up and which I was down? Could my telling a story just make things worse? So we traveled here to talk through his concerns. We walked to a sushi restaurant. Flavio's choice sushi reminds him of the
affluent life he once had in Europe. He asked us not to record during our meal, and Flavio lays out his concerns. Flavio says that because he lives in a halfway House, he has limited control over his day to day life, and he also feels like he's losing control of his story because I, as the journal list, have taken control of it. But I think more than anything, Flavio just wants someone to talk to about his feelings
of uncertainty in life. Bringing me into this mess doing all these interviews just came to represent another thing.
Flavio lost control over.
In the end, Flavio agrees to sit down for our first recorded interview face to face. We have limited time because Flavio is halfway house has a curfew. His room isn't much, but unless he wants to return to prison, he has to get back before curfew.
I live in a room with no window.
It is a window and is a wall that much distance between my window and the world. I'm on the second floor. This sky is somewhere or no. I don't see light. I don't see nothing.
About an hour and a half into our interview, I look at the time. I'd like to keep talking about anyone whose six point thirty you need to go on time? Let me see what Flavio pulls out his phone. It's an enormous thing with a screen that folds in half like a book. I'd never seen someone use such an unwieldy phone.
That's a cool phone. So it flips, it flips out to create like a large screen.
Has one over here?
Is it drain battery quickly or is it the batteries?
Okad right now you ask me like this. I want to drive a Ferrari. How many miles per gallow I can make.
It's a very good point driving.
You don't care about yes, my list, Let's be honest.
Yeah, is it?
I mean we can always if you if you're running late, we could get a car for you.
Did that get you there faster? Or is that slower at this time of day?
No, it's not a.
Flavio and I both look up the travel time.
It looks like it's about.
Forty minute drive.
Yeah, and uh we do a train, I make sixty the same thing, the same thing. Okay, I'm going to take the train. I can spend five six four minutes.
Flavio's scheduled for release from the Halfway House in the summer of twenty twenty three. He'll have to stick around the US for at least another year to complete his term of probation. If Lavio can't find a place to live, he'll be forced to move into a homeless shelter in New York in order to establish an address for his probation record, and that may be the likely scenario. Being convicted on terrorism related charges, it's one of the worst labels to have.
Flavio can't get rid of it.
This is this is me. I'm afraid, I'm scared to leave. I don't know a place to go. And if this is this is what I'm struggling day, this is sometimes when you call me, I don't feel to talk and I don't feel And like I said, I understand your work. I understand what you try to do, but what I'm gonna do myself, I have questions, which doesn't let me to sleep.
Flavio is hoping that maybe when it's halfway house term ends, he can find someone who needs a caretaker, an elderly or disabled person who could offer a room in exchange for assistance, cooking, cleaning, running errands, something anything to keep him out of a homeless shelter. By now, Flavio admits he's learned his lesson helping the US government, the FBI, the CIA, or maybe another agency that's no longer a hobby for Flavio Georgescu.
Next time see something, turn your head, don't say nothing. Just keep walking, because it was not fine. Ten years in prison was not a joke.
See something, say nothing. That's Flavio's new motto. The tragedy of Flavio's story, in my view, is rooted in its futility. Flavio lost everything and for what his case became nothing more than the very strange story you've heard here, involving three government agencies, the CIA, the DEA, and the FBI.
When the DEA arrested Flavio, Christian and Massimo, agents could have used them to go after other people, such as the guys in Germany who helped obtain the end user certificate or the oligarch in Bulgaria who was willing to sell the weapons, but federal agents didn't do that work. They just charged the lower level guys, Flavio, Christian and Massimo.
And when Flavio got his hands on recordings of his calls to the CIA, recordings that raised doubts about the government's claim that Flavio was a real armsbroker, the Justice Department cut deals with Christian and Massimo to secure Flavio's conviction. In the end, the DEA and the Justice Department got what they wanted, another stat another conviction, another case made, and then with Flavio sent to prison, agents and prosecutors just moved on to the next case.
And the only mental justification I have is that he knew or should have known the rules.
Mark Pinto, Flavio's former FBI handler thinks he could have helped Flavio, maybe even prevented him from going to prison, but he didn't. Mark is haunted by that. But at the same time he thinks Flavio really should have known better.
And you can't trust the bad guys even if you're a bad guy because of role on you and say you did things you didn't and the bad guys will do that. And if it's benefiting of a government organization, they'll do it. And if you put your complete faith and trust in a government organization with the expectation that it's gonna meet what your expectations are, your high expectations, I mean more America, you have the highest ideals we do. It doesn't always work that way. The reality is all
this stuff is stat driven. How many prosecutions you get, how many people get arrested, how many search warrants? And I can guarantee you one thing. Whoever the case agent on that case was easily got a promotion.
Mark studies theology now in his retirement. In Judeo Christian thought, there's the idea that we are rewarded for our good deeds. In more recent history, we developed a cynical twist on that idea, no good deed goes unpunished, and that, in Mark's view, seems to sum up what happened to Flavio.
As distasteful as as it is. Things happen. That's I mean, that sounds so basic. Things happen, but it's an unfortunate turn of events. I'm not making line of it because it's not fair, but life isn't fair, and he should have known.
What Flavio couldn't have known because he believed too much in the idea of America, was that sometimes the people who claim to be the good guys desperately need foils. They desperately need bad guys, so much so that they'll create them. Even out of Flavio Georgescu.
His problem was he was too ideal. He believed he's a true believer, and he he paid dearly for that dose of reality. So that's it. I wish we could have ended up on a higher note.
This was up in arms season two of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is a production of Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. It's reported, written and hosted by me. Trevor Aronson, Ben Adare and I are the executive producers. Colin McNulty is our showrunner. The producer is Nicole McNulty. Original composition by Alex mckinnis, sound design by Tyler Hill. The show is mixed by Victoria Schifflett. Eleanor Knight is our production assistant
and researcher Sam Pearson designed our cover art. Executive producers for iHeart Podcasts are Nick Stump, Bethan Mcalousa, and Lindsay Hoffmann. For more information about this series or to drop us a tip, head to our website, Alphabet Boys dot xyz. You can contact me on Twitter or Instagram at Trevor Aronson. The show's instagram is Alphabetboys dot pod. If you're enjoying Alphabet Boys, tell your friends about the show. Personal recommendations
are the best recommendations. And if you want to see an illegal arms deal from the inside again, it's Alphabet Boys dot xyz. You'll find undercover recordings and documents related to Flavio's case. Finally, you can help us ride the algorithms by leaving a rating or a review on your favorite podcast app that helps other people find us.
And finally, thanks so much for listening.