As FBI agent Mark Pinchot was investigating the credit card fraud ring run by Romanians in Las Vegas. He was invited to Romania to give lectures about organized crime to a group of the nation's law enforcement officials.
And so I said, Josh, here I'll go. It's a week. I've never been to Romania. I'm working Romanians. This would be a good opportunity.
Mark decided to fly in a week early to explore the country. Thankfully, he had a friend there waiting for him.
When I land, there's Flavio in a suit. I'd never seen him in a suit, and he's wearing a badge. It's like, follow me.
Flavio took Mark's passport and slammed it down along with the badge, in front of a customs agent, who then stamped Mark's passport, no questions.
Asked, and I'm like, ah, something's going on here. Then we walk over to immigration and the same thing happens. So I'm not asking anything yet because I don't know who's listening, and I don't know what's going on. I don't know if I'm gonna be led to some gray government building and never be seen again. Because this is completely just different than what I expected.
As they left the airport, mark'saff Flavio hand the badge to someone.
Basically what he did it appears to me he just borrowed the badge from somebody new a connection and just walked me through these things. I mean, he had the aura of someone that had done that before, complete faith and confidence in what you're doing, you know, not avoiding eye contact, and just this is a matter of fact.
Mark and Flavio then drove to the hotel. Not only did Flavio know which hotel Mark was staying in, but he already knew which room Mark had been assigned, and.
He goes, all those rooms are wired. He goes, We'll put you another room in another name. Like why I'm not doing anything here? He goes, It's just better. So you're ackles, rise up, Like what the heck is going on?
What was going on was Flavio was going out of his way to use his connections and help an American government official without even being asked. It wasn't the first time Flavio had done this, and it won't be the last. I'm Trevor Aronson from Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. This is Alphabet Boys episode four, something we might look into.
So to be clear, Flavio wasn't a Romanian official. He just borrowed a badge that belonged to a friend in Bucharest and walked into the airport like he owned the place. Play the part, fake it till you make it. Flavio was a master. That's the kind of mystery man Flavio was. He just knew people. He had access to things others didn't. He was just connected somehow.
We looked at Bucharest and we went to, you know, some public and government buildings, and he did talk to some people, then removed some ropes, and we walked into places that we weren't allowed to walk to, you know. The next week when the rest of the contingent arrived from the United States. But we just traveled around and went to different restaurants and met some people.
As Flavio saw it, he was a friend of the FBI. Mark was visiting Romania, so Flavio would show him around. That's what friends do.
Mark.
He's a Mark.
He's a person which I wish all the government employees to be like him. And he came with the approval from Washington to spend with me two weeks together as a vacation as a friends.
It was like one of those odd couple road trip movies.
And we have a lot of fun. We see the carpetin mountains, we see the Black Sea. We have a lot of fun.
Me and him.
I was really try to impress him with Romania from my eyes and from my point of view to see that country.
But the thing is, it was all spontaneous. Mark had simply told Flavio that he was going to Romania. He didn't even expect Flavio to be there.
It was so sort of a shock that he was there.
Flavio just went out of his way to take a whole week off to drive Mark around.
But you know, he asked, Hey, what do you want to do? I said, I want to eat what Romanians everyone has a tribe soup and it's like a short the burta is what it was. I like, tribe soup, need everything, and I went to a restaurant and that's what I ordered.
Mark also saw firsthand the business Flavia was helping to run, handling the internet infrastructure for Romanians running webcam channels.
I did see his chat room and it was up in some attic somewhere where there had three or four beds, and he provided that so they could sleep because a lot of the people they spoke with, his workers spoke with were Americans the Times of Difference, and there were just a number of tables with the computers in there, and there may have been a coffeemaker or tea or something like that.
But that was it.
It was pretty humble.
But there were some places in Romania where Flavio wouldn't go with Mark because those places had informants of their own.
I asked to go to a couple of casinos because I wanted to talk to the people that ran the casinos. He warned against it. He said, that's probably not a good idea. He goes, there's prostitutes in front. They're going to report on who's coming in, what they're driving, all this other stuff. That's why the prostitutes are arrested. He goes, if you go there, I'll have to drop you off and you'll have to walk.
Mark wanted to know how things worked in Romania, how the corruption went down, how the casinos were connected to organized crime. So Mark just walked in requested to speak to the casino's manager. And asked.
I said, hey, I'm just curious how things work here, And I asked about how you know they paid kickbacks and things like that. I mean, pretty pretty poored. I just wanted to know how things worked in Romania. It's professional curiosity.
But Mark didn't mention to the casino manager that he was an FBI agent.
No, no, no, that would that'd be sticking your neck out way too far.
The casino manager answered Mark's questions but kept her cards close.
She's not naming names, doesn't say, hey, this commissioner of this does that. She's just giving me the mechanics of how it works.
Mark was gaining a lot of insight that would prove helpful back in America, and he was also learning more about Flavio. Mark discovered that Flavio, who'd by then become a US citizen, wasn't drawn back to Romania only by his business interests. He had a romantic interest too.
It was funny because his big concern wasn't most of the time you hear about relationship issues. Ah, she won't let me do this, she won't let me do that. For him, it was like, she has to get her finances and she has to be responsible. You know, he's sort of like a parent, that's the way he was. Yeah, strange little guy.
Anyway, after this friendly trip together in Romania, Mark and Flavia returned to the United States and picked up their investigation of the Romanian credit card ring. That investigation was all consuming. Crime doesn't take a day off, right, or does it.
We didn't like to work on Wednesday. Why because we worked the weekends and everyone needed days off. So you're like, Tuesday Wednesday. We'll try to give everyone days off Tuesday Wednesday.
Mark, thanks to his travels and his obsession with his investigative targets, had learned a lot about Romanians and Romanian culture, and he was now using that knowledge to inform his investigation.
So it's things like you find a dead burden, you leave it on their porch on a Wednesday, or on their bump on a Wednesday, or an unfortunate event will happen for an informant on a Wednesday, and so they can say, I'm superstitious, I'm not going to do anything on a Wednesday, because that's when I got pulled over by the police and my car got towed. And that's part of learning, you know, about the culture.
Mark was able to subtly stage direct the Romanians to align their crime schedule with the FBI work schedule.
What's supers just for them, what's a bad omen, what's a because even if they don't believe it, someone in their culture may believe it and they have to respect that. So we used to work those things in.
By this time, Mark and the FBI had a full portrait of the criminal organization. They knew how it worked, and they knew the name of the man in charge.
Petri Drogoy. He recently died.
That was the big boss, Petrew Dragoy.
Petrick Durgoy was probably in his fifties, well mannered, incredibly smart.
At the time, Petrew was facing competition from an upstart, a younger guy who wanted to take control of the Las Vegas Crew. His name was Florin, but he went by Tony in honor of Tony Montana from Scarface.
What is the fascination with that movie in that character because they want to be some crime kingpin? Did they not watch the end of the movie.
You've probably seen Scarface, it's a classic. But for those who haven't, Tony Montana, played by a young al Pacino. That's a very brutal death in the end. Anyway, Mark had recruited an informant inside the Romanian organization, an older guy who had become trusted by both the big boss Petru and Florin or Tony.
But the thing that comes out of this is that we know Petru has some real stick, very well connected, very well connected back in Romania. You could cause some real problems. As I recall you a little bit arrogant, but you almost have to be to run these crews. Lack of confidence is death.
As Petru was fending off Florin slash Tony, he somehow discovered or became suspicious enough to believe that Flavio was a snit. Mark's insider in the Romanian group attended a meeting with Petrew and other high ranking members of the organization. Petrew expressed concerns about Flavio and recommended that he'd be killed. Mark's informant taking notes, wrote Petrew and others offering five thousand each for a hit on a guy named Flavio.
But the whole crime organization, they decide to everyone to put five thousand dollars each one to kill me to pay somebody to kill me and somebody should my cut and everything. And I didn't say one word to a FVA. I didn't go, I didn't try, I didn't claim, I didn't do anything. One day, I went to them in the FDA office in Las Vegas, and I said, it's done, we are finished.
Flavio, concerned about a safety, left Las Vegas and Rich turned to Europe more after the break. After Flavio heard about the supposed hit on him from the Romanian crime boss, he fled the US. Mark, Flavio's FBI handler, thought he was overreacting, that this was all just talk.
I mean, there was one against I don't want to talk about me, but.
Okay, Mark has his own experience with this kind of thing.
Yeah, it's not unusual. One of the guys that we arrested that's about the same level as Petru was in jail and he put out a hit on me. I'm not worried about it. I mean, I mean, that's how that's how I'm taking this. I'm not worried about it because he could put out a hit on me. But no, one's not this group, not the Romanians.
In Mark's view, that they were talking about the hit meant it wasn't serious five thousand bucks. There was no way Petro was paying someone five thousand bucks to kill Flavio. If Petru really wanted someone dead, he could have made that happen for a lot less money.
From my experience, streak guys, they'll do it for fifty bucks. They'll do a hit in Romania for fifty bucks. You know they don't care why. I mean, it's possible so here. Why would you pay someone wanted someone to do it just for status.
After Flavio skipped town, his FBI friend Mark never saw him again. In the end, Flavio's assistance resulted in a big federal case. The Justice Department in two thousand and four indicted twenty one people on federal racketeering and fraud charges. Flavio said he wanted to help America, and he did. Mark thinks Flavio deserves real credit recognition that he never received because he didn't want it and because by the time the arrest had occurred, Flavio was already out of
the country fearing for his life. The FBI's case struck at the heart of Romanian organized crime in Las Vegas, bringing down nearly the entire crew that Petro de Roy ran. Even Florin the scarface fan was indicted, but the case didn't stop the fraud in the long term. Prosecuting organized crime is a bit like playing whack a mole, hit one another pops up, and the Romanians are still popping up. In Las Vegas. This is from a local TV news report from twenty twenty two.
A Romanian citizen has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for an ATM skimming fraud scheme here in Las Vegas.
After the indictments came down, Flavio still felt he wasn't safe living in America, so he built a new life in Europe. He spent his time in London and Bucharest running multiple businesses. He was doing well.
I was living in London, I was living in a finnhouse, extremely nice in Sohopikabilli go to his sushi Tou Nobu, all the good life.
The FBI officially closed Flavio's file as a confidential human source after he left America in two thousand and three, but internal reports show that Flavio, while in Europe, continued to have periodic contact with agents through two thousand and nine. FBI agents can use information from registered informants in reports. Unregistered informants, often refer to as hip pocket informants, provide information, but agents can't attribute information to them. They're like off
the record sources. Flavio became one of these, a hip pocket informant. So we know from FBI documents that Flavio continued to provide information to federal agents through two thousand and nine, for approximately six years after he left Las Vegas. What we don't know from those documents is what information that was. But according to Flavio, he was helping agents with high level cases, including the investigation of a Romanian named Nikolai Popescu.
He's on the ABA first page, warrants and warnings and everything. They put a million dollars in is one which I know him very well, is close to me. They put a million dollars out of the reward.
Popescu is one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives. While his case has not received a lot of publicity in the United States, it's been big news in Romania.
Chervistis Nicolaesu de Trisi. She changed anion Exandrie der Mont.
The Justice Department accuses Popescu of running an international internet fraud scheme. Popescu and his colleagues tricked unsuspecting Americans and is sending online payments for expensive cars while pocketing millions of dollars as part of the con. Maybe Flavio was helping the FBI with these big cases, or maybe he wasn't. We can't be sure, but here's my understanding of Flavio's relationship with the FBI. Starting in two thousand and one,
he acts as an informant for about two years. His information leads to headline grabbing indictments, then, following the murder for higher scare, Flavio's relationship with the bureau becomes informal. Almost six years of so called hip pocket informat work, very much off the books, very much based on friendly contact with willing and eager federal agents. But now it's twenty twelve and Flavio gets a call from his old friend Andy in Los Angeles about a guy from Colombia
who's looking to purchase millions of dollars in weapons. Flavio is a seasoned hand for the US government, a longtime cooperator, informant and friend, so within minutes of hanging up the phone with Andy. Flavio makes that call to the CIA.
I said, I should not call it. Via Corsier, Good afternoon, How can I help you? Like Courtier in the fourth school, I spoke for fifteen minutes with the lady on the phone, and she was kept sending me to American embassy in Boucharist.
If you need to talk in person only, then you need to go to the empathy. No, I'm not going there because you know I was working and I know I'm not trusting people over seeing many other.
Times and I said, no, I want to go there because everybody knows me over there. And I said, I don't feel comfortable. I don't want to do that.
The first CIA agent, she hangs up on Flavia. Okay, well we can't help you.
Thank you the vice.
And after that I receive a call from like minutes later, I receive a call from a gentleman. He said, oh, hi, my name is whatever. I don't even remember his name.
As I understand it, I don't.
I don't think there was anything that the.
Agency could do to a sister facilitate what you're trying to accomplish.
If you remember, Flavio tells the second CIA agent everything the call from Andy and Los Angeles, how Andy knows this Colombian guy trying to buy weapons, and how and and the Colombian don't appear to have an ENDS user certificate valid for Colombia, suggesting that this deal is illegal and possibly a US national security concern.
I would.
Determination, I would districtive for the US government because all the time he said, thank you very much, thank you, thank you. Okay, okay, I'm so thankful, so grateful, so thankful, so grateful for everything, which I said, I'm gonna do for CAA and collect more intel to clarify this one, because you keep saying we need more information.
If you were force right with all the details, then we could verify your story.
That's something we might look into and pass to the right authorities.
That's something we might look into. Not I might look into, not you might look into, but we might look into.
And my understanding the English, we need more information like me and you, me and him, we need more information to collect them.
The agent uses what sometimes called the royal we, referring to yourself or your institution as we, just as monarchs of the past did. Any native English speaker would likely hear the cias we as just referring to them the CIA. We as in the CIA might look into this. But Flavio, for whom English is the second language and who has a history of cooperating with the US government, says he hears the WEI as he and the CIA.
And you just keep saying okay, ok okay. I always keep past me. You sure you really need those information, because if you don't need then I have some things to do in my life. Definitely something that if we can verify, I would be of interest, saying to be aware of.
If we can verify, meaning the way Flavio is hearing it, if Flavia can verify, he.
Said, okay, okay, okay, I said, okay. I took it like a year.
We have to protect each other. This is the way we have to work together, all right.
I totally understand what I want to do.
I will want to send this information to an internal desk here for inside purposes only so they can look at it for interest and begin to investigate.
And after that we finished the conversation. I was very excited about the conversation. If you if you have the chance to listen to conversations, you you kind of to see my excitement in my voice and the drive which I have to do that.
Flavio takes the call as affirmation an oral contract, to use Flavio's preferred term, that the CIA wants them to find out more in the.
Whole conversation, this gentleman from CIA, he's supposed to say one simple sentence, thank you very much for all the information. Please do not engage in any actions on behalf of our agency or behalf of the United States, because you're going to be fully prosecuted under the international laws of the United States. And do you understand what I'm telling you? Do you understand He's supposed to check with me because he see my drive, he see my excitement, he see
I don't speak English for me. In my mind that time was I was proved. If you see all the documents from a FBI and how professional I was, and how much honesty and dignity I have and never be charged or arrested, were interrogate word did something wrong to become as an informer or a confidential source. I never do anything wrong.
I've listened to Flavio's calls with the CIA over and over and over. It's true that the CIA agent does not explicitly tell Flavio not to engage with Andy in the Colombian on the CIA's behalf. And if you take that we to include Flavio, I can see how it could be taken as marching orders. But it's also true that the CIA agent doesn't enter into any kind of clear cut agreement with Flavio that would make him an informant or an agent of the CIA. At best, the
calls are ambiguous. The CIA agents are interested in the information. That much is clear. The second agent even says he'll pass the information up the chain of command and someone may contact Flavio.
But what is.
Flavio's role supposed to be in what happens next. That's never discussed On the calls. Flavio claims he didn't see any ambiguity. What he saw was this, the CIA engaged him to find more information, just as the FBI had been engaging him for almost a decade, so Flavio pushes things forward. That's after the break. After making that call to the CIA, Flavio says he believes that he's been signed up as an informant or a friend, to use his preferred term, just as he had been with the FBI.
I was so excited. I said, that's it. I'm going to right now. I'm going to prove myself why I am. I'm going to take you to a different level. A FBI was nothing. Just like I said. They was asking me questions and they put the put and I have to put the puzzle together for them. They was having pieces of information. They need somebody to put them together. But I said, this one, it's my thing, and I'm
gonna be so good. I'm gonna prepare so much. I didn't sleep with Andre four months in the same bed, four nights four months.
Andre is Flavio's wife. They were newly married at the time.
What you're doing in the night, I'm reading something you read one night, you read, two nights you read, but you never come to the bed. I was coming to the bed every night four to five o'clock in the morning because I know, I knew that time. If I engage in this thing and I met these real people, and I don't know an answer to a question which you asked me, I'm gonna die there you go, Houston
will have a problem. I said, you know what, better before I do something, I start to learn, and I took it myself, and I prove myself.
Flavio claims he didn't know much at all about the arms trade before and called him, so he spent the next month's researching how arms are sold and shipped throughout the world. Flavio is convincing and explaining it this way, and his previous work for the FBI over the course of years certainly suggests he's credible and would have had cause to think he might be recruited as some sort
of CIA asset. I want to believe this story. I think it explains a lot about Flavio's behavior in a way that is significantly more satisfying than other possible explanations. But I can't get past two problems with this story. The first problem is that when he calls the CIA, Flavio specifically mentions that Andy and Andy's Columbian friend do not have what's called an end user's certificate.
A mentionize and they said, I ask for the end user certificate.
You know what the end user certificated, No.
I'm not familiar with him. Oh, and us a certificate your user or faith or which has.
To prooved to this fact, Flavio claims he doesn't know much about international arms deals and needs to do so much research about the weapons trade that he stops sharing a bed with his new wife. But in the two short calls with the CIA, he appears to note exactly what an end user certificate is and why it's important. How would someone with such self proclaimed limited knowledge of the arms trade know about an end user certificate, let alone how crucial it is. And the second problem I
have with Flavia's story is this. While Flavio frames his initial interactions with the CIA as similar to those with the FBI, Flavio's relationship with the bureau started out in a very formal way. He signed papers, the FBI registered him as a confidential human source. It wasn't make a call in Abracadabra, you're working for us now. There was a bureaucratic process, and he went through that process. Flavio
didn't go through anything similar with the CIA. He simply had two phone calls, both on the same day, and he says he went to work. What Flavio says is this, when he got off the phone with the CIA, he believed he'd been tasked to gather more information about Andy about the Colombian wand and about whoever was willing to sell weapons to want. And here's yet another complication in Flavio's story. It takes two years from the time that Flavio calls the CIA to his very first conversation with
one the Colombian. Two years. During that time, Flavio doesn't speak to anyone at the CIA. He says he used that time to understand how an arms deal could be put together, so that he could put one together for Wan and secretly for the CIA.
How this whole thing works, because I didn't know anything. And the more I was digging, the more things I was starting to find. How they prepared, how they procude the documents, how they do The whole thing is nothing fake. Everything is real. It's no such a thing, fake a C E CU, fake paperwork. No, it's real. Everything is real.
It's not a lie.
It's not a fake.
It's not anything else.
During that entire hired two year period, Andy, Flavio's friend in Los Angeles, and Wan the Colombian are talking.
This is too much playing around. You tell me you're gonna make it, yes or no. I'll not be the end of it. Period.
Andy keeps telling Wan that he can make an arm steel happen. He knows people, he's got guys, but he keeps the laying and it's frustrating.
Wan.
Let me ask you this. Let me let's let's be sending to each other. Why is going on? Are you gonna comply with me? Man? Don't let me down, please, I'm.
Not letting you do.
Andy suggests that he and Wan fly to Italy to meet this guy, to meet Flavio. So in May twenty fourteen, Jan flies all the way from Colombia to Rome. Andy assures his guy f will be there. He gives one Flavia's number. It's all going to work out, and he tells him. So One calls Flavio over and over and Flavio isn't answering to scrub you.
I'm currently unable to take your call. You leave me the name, the phone number and the police message and I'll count at you as soon as possible.
Thank you, Flavier. Over morning is one. I'll have your message on your UK number. What and it says for me to call you on this number as well, Flavio, give me a call back.
Is now Wednesday?
Tank care right, One's inn for a big surprise.
You phone call to Flavio or the fourteenth day of May twenty fourteen at eight a m.
Immediately that's in the next episod. This is up in Arms, season two of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is a production of Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. The show is reported, written and hosted by me, Trevor Aronson. For more information about the 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 Aaronson. The show's instagram is alphabet Boys 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 review on your favorite podcast app that helps other people find us. And thanks for listening.