Fuck him.
That's what Flavio says as he hangs up the phone with Massimo Romagnoli. Fuck him. After DEA agent's arrests Flavio, he agrees to help them lure Massimo to Montenegro.
He told me that the client had brought the money to Montenegro.
Here's Massimo, or rather the voice actor who's been reading Massimo's court testimony.
And so we found an agreement so that I would also go to Montenegro to collect the money. I informed him that I found a ticket for Podgorica, Montenegro, and we would meet there.
The next morning. Massimo flies into Montenegro.
Right after passport control, I was arrested by the police.
US authorities announced the arrests of Flavior Georgescu, Christian Vntilla, and Massimo Romagnoli on charges of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. The terrorists in this case were Juan and the other FARC guys, who were, of course not really terrorists but DEA informants. Under federal conspiracy law, a defendant doesn't have to help actual terrorists. The defendant just needs to think he's helping terrorists. Well, the arrest don't
get much attention in the US. They're big news in Romania.
As you are. Virgil, Flavio, Giorgesco farc Sant.
And in Italy. Flavio, Christian and Massimo are all about to be extradited to America to face federal criminal charges. If convicted, all three men could spend the rest of their lives in prison. I'm Trevor Aronson from Western Sound and iHeart Podcast. This is Alphabet Boys, Episode nine. Tomorrow, I'm going to rob the bank. Flavio, Christian and Massimo are thrown into holding cells in Montenegro until American officials can sort out their extradition to New York. At first,
Flavio isn't too concerned about any of this. He could have persuaded the DEA guys who arrested him that he's working with the CIA, but he helped them lure Massimo to Montenegro anyway, And besides, Flavia figures the DEA and the Justice Department will talk to their counterparts at the CIA and everything will be sorted out soon enough. They'll all realize that Flavio's on their team. How else could they explain the call to the CIA.
In twenty twelve, good afternoon.
How can I help you?
Hi, I reminded me, and I was.
Born in Roma.
Flavio, as you know, now tells the CIA agents everything about Andy, about Wan, about the arms deal, about the whole crime before he actually commits it.
He's like, U core Rhino nine one. You let them know. Tomorrow, I'm gonna rob the bank in fifth Avenue City Bank in the corner. This is my social security, my name, my plates on the car, my V number, and I have this shotgun and I have this one will be nine o'clock. You're gonna go tomorrow to rob that bank. You have to be nuts, totally nuts.
Flavio's analogy works. It's hard to argue that it doesn't. Honestly, who would be crazy enough to call the police tell them the entire plan to rob a bank and then go rob that bank. That's essentially what Flavio did, but with a much more serious crime. His was an international arms deal worth millions of dollars and involving the FARC at the time, a US designated foreign terrorist organization. To Flavio in the immediate days after his arrest, this all
just seems like a temporary misunderstanding. The CIA didn't know what the DEA was doing, and neither the CIA nor the DEA knows about Flavio's previous work for the FBI, So he's stuck temporarily in the muck of bureaucracy, but eventually he thinks the FEDS will figure it out. We're talking about Americans here.
Well.
Locked up in Montenegro, Flavio says he receives several visits from US officials. They're with the State Department, or so they say.
They was keep coming from Washington to interview me and the ward them from that prison. He was asking me who you are and I said nobody. I'm just a consulting businessman. And he said, no, you are not a consulting businessman. Because these people they come with a private JIT and it's the State Department private JIT and sometimes as they come escorted by US military jets, as I don't know who they are, and they came over there
for four or five times. I give them all the information about arms, laundry and everything, and they let me burn over there like an animal.
By left them over there like an animal. Flavio is referring to the conditions of a cell in Montenegro restayed for a little more than two months during the winter of twenty fifteen.
I was physically and shically torture over there. Like they opened the window from the cell and they keep it open day and night. There was so much snow outside, and I couldn't close it because it was so high, and I couldn't sleep. I couldn't do anything, and they keep the lights on all the time, and so much noise over there. I couldn't sleep. And when I was trying to use the bedroom one time, when I got there, I was seeing on the toilet and a rat jump
from the toilet on my butt. I started to scream so bad, and they came inside with a broomsick and they killed a rat over there in the toilet. They break the toilet to the ceramics toilet and the bailift.
To this day, Flavia tells me he can't sit on a toilet. He has to put his feet on a seat and squat so we can always keep an eye on the water below him. Another rat's never going to surprise him. Flavio says he couldn't understand why all this was happening to him, A good man thrown into a cold, dark cell in Eastern Europe. I've mentioned already that I struggle to determine what's true in Flavia's story. I really do.
I find myself wanting to believe his claim that he called the CIA because he felt a duty to help see something say something Flavio believed. And certainly there's evidence that appears to support this. Why else, as just one example, would Flavio have agreed to Lord Massimo to Montenegro no strings attached. The most reasonable explanation to me is that Flavio believed he was on the same team as the DEA.
But then there's something else that throws me to the other side questioning Flavio's story, and that is Christian Venttilla's account of what happens next. In late February twenty fifteen, following their detention in Montenegro, Flavio, Christian, and Massimo are flown to New York on a private jet. Flavio is seated next to Christian for the eight hour trip.
Told me that previously, during the activity in this deal, he called the CIA and informed them about this activity.
This is Christian from escort testimony.
He told me that the CIA's answer was not to get implicated and mind his own business. And he also told me that when we got arrested, he told the agent who arrested us the same thing. So during the eight hours he told me that based on this, we should build a story that we weren't trying to do a deal with them. We were just trying to collect information to give it to the government so we can use it as a defense.
Christian claims that Flavio on the plane tells him that he knew the CIA didn't want him to get involved. Christian suggests that Flavio's intent was to use the CIA call as a cover store in case he ever got caught. But christian story is suspicious too, because apparently he doesn't know that the CIA call is ambiguous. There are no clear cut don't do anything on this instructions from the CIA on the recordings. The call didn't happen the way
Christian claims Flavio described it. So if what Christian is saying is true, why would Flavio say this. It doesn't really make sense. So Christian's claim just raises more questions. Questions. I can't ask Christian because you won't talk to me.
I don't want to do this thing, and I only want to tell the truth. And actually that's what I told the agents in the plane.
In any case, Christian refuses to go along with Flavio's plan to sink their stories part of a joint defense.
He told me, if I don't agree to work with him in this way, he should. I should help him too, because he worked previously with higher agency than DEA, and his wife is running around trying to get in touch with those agencies. That agency he worked for is going to save him.
Christian is referring to the FBI. Flavio tells Christian that not only had he called the CIA, but that he had previously worked for the FBI, an agency with a much bigger stick than the DEA has, and that the FBI would help him out of this jam. Flavio tells Christian as they're on the flight that his wife Andre is burning up the phones as they speak, trying to enlist the FBI's help, and that last part I can say with certainty that part's true.
I was working for the Attorney Journal's office in New Mexico, and I get a phone call from Flavio's wife.
This is Mark Pinto, the FBI agent who is Flavio's handler in Las Vegas. By this time, Mar's left the bureau. He hasn't seen or talked to Flavio in a decade, and he doesn't even know that Flavio is now married.
I have a different telephone number, and Flavio didn't have a wife, so I'm institutionally paranoid, like, I can't talk to you. And she goes on and she's pleading, and I said, I'll have to think about this.
Right after that call, Mark, it's another from the US Attorney's office in New York. They want to talk to him about Flavio, and.
I'm like, I don't want to talk about Flavio. I don't want to talk about the old days. I don't want to talk about anything. I'm out. I'm out. I don't want my house burned down for whatever reasons, or
I don't want the ire of the US government. And he goes well, the US considers him a terrorist, and like, all the more reason I don't want to be the former FBI agent that's taking the stand in defense of a terrorist in some dea case because I don't have any of the details and I haven't seen Flavio in forever in a day, and they asked my opinion, I'm like, well, my opinion is if it's the same Flavio and nothing's
drastically changed in his life, he got railroaded. But that's my opinion, my uninformed opinion.
But as any good investigator would be, Marx intrigued. He wants to know more, so he flies to New York to meet with the prosecutors more after the break, Mark Pinto, Flavio's former FBI handler in Las Vegas, meets with the prosecutors assigned to Flavio's case. They lay out the whole case, how Flavio recruited Christian and Massimo and attempted to sell weapons to Wan and his colleagues, who Flavio believed were
agents for the FARC in Colombia. The prosecutors tell Mark about Flavio's call to the CIA and claim it was nothing more than Flavio creating a cover in case he was caught.
And when they laid out everything, my opinion hadn't changed. The Flavio was the same that he loves. The United States would have done anything for him. He would have sacrificed his life this country for what it stands for.
So you think it's credible the story that he says he called the CIA to not to I mean, the government says that was a cover right, but Flavio has maintained that he really thought he was reporting a crime and was helping the US government.
So you're putting me in a tough position as you sit there with your arms crossed the way for me to answer truthfully because I don't want to go contrary because I don't know what the prosecuting attorneys know, not really. And I was afraid when I heard that Flavio was going to be locked away forever and the key thrown away, because they're pretty serious charges. And I felt terrible because
there's nothing I can do about it. To be quite honest, there's nothing I can do about it without risking my lifestyle, in my wife's lifestyle.
What Mark means here is that he was fired from the FBI. Remember when Flavio first met his handlers, he brought some bottles of wine as a gift, and there was a big argument until Mark agreed to accept the wine. That was against FBI policy. Mark's willingness to break the FBI's small administrative rules eventually caught up with him, costing
him his job. He considers testifying in Flavio's trial to describe how Flavio worked with the Bureau in Vegas and how that might help explain his behavior with the CIA, But in the end Mark chooses not to come forward, fearing that he would open himself up to questions. But as FBI career, it's a decision that years later haunts Mark.
I'm retired, and what I do in retirement is I take my file the church and I go to Bible study, and I study the Bible, gnostic exegies of Paul and this kind of esoteric stuff they give people headaches that you drone on and on about academically that no one cares about. And what's common through all that is it's like people shouldn't be prosecuted unjustly. And I found myself standing outside with a lot of guilt on my shoulders
because I'm not the man I'd like to be. And it's easy to do the right thing when it doesn't cost you everything.
The end result of all this is that Flavio is on his own facing trial. Flavio doesn't get help from Mark or any one at the FBI. The bureau does the bare minimum handing over internal reports that support Flavio's claims of having been an informant, but the FBI does not offer anyone to testify about Flavio's substantial cooperation. But Flavio does get help from an unlikely group of FEDS. The CIA. Remarkably, and I want to emphasize how unusual this is, the CIA turns over two recordings the calls
from twenty twelve between Flavio and the agents. This is remarkable because the CIA rarely gets involved in US criminal prosecutions. The agency is a black hole, very little light escapes. The CIA could have reported that it didn't have recordings of the calls Flavio claims made, and that would have been the end of it. No one would have had the access and authority to prove the CIA wrong. So that fact that the CIA turns over the recordings voluntarily,
I've always interpreted as a kind of message. While the agency might not be taking ownership of Flavio, there's someone high up inside the CIA who's basically acknowledging, Hey, there might be something to Flavio's story.
Those transcripts in that call I think was saving my life.
Flavio takes this theory further. He thinks the CIA knows he's innocent, but the agency is hamstrung, so in Flavia's view, agents release the recordings as a way of helping him and his case. It's the best they can do.
Only obligation from CAA was just the moral obligation tours to me because they see me in the situation which I end up. You know, they say, you know what, probably he did his part less whatever he said he didn't. Let's prove.
But I can't prove this. All of this is speculation. The CIA declined to make anyone available for an interview and refused to comment about Flavio's case. For their part, prosecutors don't appear to see any message from the CIA's release of the recordings. Instead, they double down on Flavio. Flavio, Christian, and Massimo are detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a sand colored high rise federal detention facility in Lower Manhattan that looks like it popped out of the pages of
a dystopian comic book. Several famous people have been placed behind bars here, including mobster John Gotti and Ponti scheme artist Bernie made off. This is also the facility in which Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide while facing child sex trafficking charges. Inside the jail, Christian immediately cuts a deal to cooperate with the Justice Department, and then, amazingly, Christian and Massimo are assigned to the same cell. Massimo at the time is distraught.
He was often crying.
That's what Christian witnesses. Inside the cell, Massimo curled up in the corner sobbing. Christian suggests to Massimo that there's something he can do to get out of this situation.
I told him that I signed a cooperation agreement.
And Massimo confirms that he was telling me that he was cooperating. Christian encourages Massimo to join him in cooperating with the government. Around this time, Flavio approaches Massimo in detention.
As I was passing by the library. He saw me and he ran after me as I was going towards the infirmary, and he said, Massimo, I want to talk to you one minute, and I told him, tell me, what do you want, Massimo. We have to cooperate, our lawyers have to cooperate.
Flavio tells Massimo about the CIA, cause.
He told me that he was a cooperator with the CIA.
Massimo wouldn't commit to anything. Remember, Flavio is the guy who lord on the Montenegro to be arrested. So the next month Flavio makes an indirect appeal and.
He made by the name of Ash who worked in the library, told me that he had a message for me on behalf of Flavio Giorgesco. He was advising me to cooperate with him, not to accept any deal if it were to be offered to me, and not to accept or cooperate with the government if it were to be offered to me, and not to forget that I was the father of three children and that only my working together with them I could go back home.
In Massimo's view, Flavio's message is unambiguous.
A clear intimidation.
Flavio acknowledges that he asked another Detaine to deliver a message to Massimo, but he denies it was any kind of threat. Flavio says he was appealing to Massimo's desire to be reunited with his family, and he believed joining forces and a defense strategy was the best approach for both of them. He says, Masimo framed it as intimidation to make him look bad and.
Much more understanding because I tell him, Man, I worked for CAA, I helped them out. You didn't do anything wrong. I didn't elect you mass Most to get some money, and I didn't let him to get money from Juan. I didn't compromise him in any wish to put him in prison. And I said, man, you didn't do anything wrong. Just let me do the work and we present the facts, the evidence. We're gonna walk away. We're gonna be okay, don't worry. It be strong.
But Massimo doesn't go along with Flavio's proposal. He takes christians advice and sides with federal prosecutors. Massimo signs an agreement to plead guilty and testify against Flavio in exchange for leniency at sentencing, and in the spring of twenty sixteen, the Justice Department puts Flavio on trial. That's after the break. The government's case winds up being solely focused on Flavio. He's the only one on trial. Both Christian and Massimo
agree to plead guilty and testify against Flavio. The words you've heard from Christian and Massimo read by actors.
I was reading for Christian and I was reading for Massimo.
Come verbatim from this trial. None of the others involved in the case, including Massimo's German contact who arranged for the end user certificate, or Peter man Chukov, the Bulgarian who owned the weapons factory, none of these people are charged criminally or compelled to testify, and nothing happens with the other George Escu Andy on.
You're Killing.
Andy.
Georgescu was on hours of DEA recordings and he played an integral role in connecting Juan with Flavio.
Im record.
So then maybe he's a pion or something, but he's.
Supposed to maybe he's sleeping.
Why isn't Andy charged. It's a question that has long frustrated me because I can't get answers. Over the years. I called Andy and sent him emails and letters. I even left a note at his office near Los Angeles. He never responded, and in twenty twenty Andy passed away from lung cancer. Flavio's theory is that Andy was actually an informant for the FBI, something the DEA didn't know
during their investigation. So when the arrests happened. According to Flavio's theory, the FBI protects Andy and prevents his prosecution. If that's true, man, three informants thinking they're working for three agencies in one enormous Clusterfuck, You're certain that that Andy was working as an informant?
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Flavio has no evidence to support this claim, and neither do I, but I have to admit that it's the most plausible explanation for why Andy is neither charged nor call to testify in the case. Flavio has zero doubt that Andy was a snitch and that someone powerful protected him. Did you ever get proof of that or you just feel that, given the circumstances he had to have been.
I was one time. I mean, he's a office and the IFBA agents came over there, and you know, he was showing so much arrogance and so much power. You cannot do that if you don't have book back up.
It's impossible to verify Flavio's claim there, and I've accepted that I won't find the answers about Andy. George Escu at least not anytime soon. But there is one other George Escu Andre, Flavio's wife.
Hello Flo, She.
Three o'clock.
Andre is captured only briefly on the DEA's recordings. She answers one of Wan's calls to Flavio in September twenty fourteen.
Yeah, okay, okay, thank you very much. I APPRESHI okay.
Andra says she had no idea what Flavio was up to during the DEA sting. Flavio didn't tell her anything, and she assumed his travels with Christian and Massimo were business as usual, just Flavia being Flavio. But after Flavio's extradition, Andre moves to New York and helps him mount to defense, never doubting her husband's story that he was working with the CIA. In May twenty sixteen, just before Flavio's trial
is scheduled to begin, Andre sends me an email. The main reason for this email, Andre writes, is that I want to reveal the outrageous conduct of the US government and how a US citizen is treated after he helped this country so many times. Andre also reaches out to my colleague Mortaza Hussein. He and I write about Flavio's case for the Intercept. In twenty sixteen, and Mortaza attends Flavio's trial in Manhattan.
There was a deep sense of ambiguity around this entire case from beginning to end.
This is Mortaza Hussein.
So there was clearly a a kernel of doubt on both sides, and it just seemed to come down in the end to which doubt you saw as stronger.
At trial, Christian and Massimo both testify against Flavio as part of their deals for leniency, and they both claim that Flavio was the mastermind of the weapons deal and suggests that Flavio's calls with the CIA were nothing more than an insurance policy, a cover if he was ever caught. Flavio, attempting to counter that narrative, takes the stand in his own defense. His lawyer asked him, do you regret what you did?
No?
Never, and I will do it again. Flavio answers. What he means is that he doesn't regret trying to help the US government. If I walk, I will do it again. Flavio says he was.
Very insistent and emotional. Actually understand that. Yeah, he said, the entire time, I was doing this for the benef of the United States. I love America. I want to do something to help America. So on the stand, he very much appealed to his own patriotism and love for the United States, and I thought appealed to the court and to the jury as well too on that score.
And he seemed questions here, but there was no real way of substantiating it in great detail, because the only evidence that they really existed that this is what he was thinking was the one call he made to the CIA to try to report what was happening when he was being entrapped. So they played that tape in court.
His guns. They don't go in right to say they go to Columbia. No, No, you want me to day.
I understand what you're go ahead and passing to us, and I do appreciate why you're telling us. It's definitely something that, if we can verify, would be of interest to the agency to be aware of.
And that was the crux of his defense. I think it was enough to raise doubt about it, So it was with some doubt.
During cross examination, the prosecutor Elon Graf suggests that some of Flavio's behavior during the weapons deal, such as using encrypted messaging apps, indicated that he was trying to hide what he was doing from the CIA. Flavio raises his voice in protest. Bring the reports, Flavio barks back, referring to the transcripts of his calls with the CIA. You have the very report, mister Graff. Why don't you bring the report in front of the jury and show them.
Flavio reminds the jury that he had told the CIA about the entire crime before it happened.
And he got quite upset. He got quite emotional, but I remember he yelled a bit and use, you know, fighting for his life.
On May twenty fifth, twenty sixteen, the jury comes back with a verdict guilty. During Flavio's trial, I asked the DEA for a comment. A spokesman declined to comment specifically on Flavio's case, but defended the agency's narco terrorism stings in general. Quote, we go after folks that are drug traffickers, arms traffickers, whatever the case may be. They are predisposed to criminal acts. All we do is allow the means to give them the opportunity to commit these crimes they
would otherwise commit without us. These defendants have every opportunity to walk away. On December two, twenty sixteen, Flavio returns to court for his sentencing hearing. US District Judge Ronnie Abrams offers Flavio an opportunity to make a statement before he's sentenced. Flavio faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. My actions were to help the United States government and the citizens of the United States, Flavio tells the judge.
I have always maintained my innocence. Judge Abrahms sentences Flavio to ten years in prison, a fraction of the life sentence she could have given him, and what seems like an acknowledgment of ambiguities, if not some doubts in the government's case. So Flavio is sent to a prison in Maryland.
This college from an inmate at a prison, and that's when Flavio and I start talking.
This goes on sporadically for a few years, calls like this one, until Flavio is released in the summer of twenty twenty two to a halfway house in New York, where Flavio and I finally meet in person.
You know what, I pray every night to somebody to come to me, shake my hand, and said it was a misunderstanding. He's not your fault, is not our.
Fourth that's in the next episode. 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 Aaronson. 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 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 armsteel from the inside again, it's alphabet boy 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.