CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

October 26, 1999

 

By the time the sun rose across the sweeping horse country of central New Jersey’s Monmouth County, there were enough cop cars in the driveway of the house to open a Crown Victoria used car dealership. There were the locals from Colts Neck and the state troopers and the unmarked variety that signaled the feds. Lights red and blue revolved in the growing autumn light, making clear to the waking neighbors that this would not just be another Tuesday in suburbia.

The house was of the classic New Jersey striver variety, an enormous beige stucco McMansion with crushed white clamshell driveway encircling a pseudo-Venetian fountain. It practically shrieked, “Look at me! I have arrived!” It sat in the middle of a horse farm subdivided when the housing market got hot. There were probably two dozen just like it, each with two acres of open space parceled out of what was once rolling green farmland, far enough apart that if you needed to borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor you’d have to get in your car and drive over. No way you’d hear what was going on next door from that distance. Even the sound of gunshots didn’t carry that far.

When the cops arrived, they viewed what would appear to be a typical upper-middle-class new-money New Jersey neighborhood a few days before Halloween. There were pumpkins on doorsteps and fake scarecrows propped against lampposts. When they approached the house, they were greeted by two workmen who had done jobs for the owner and were there to pick up his two pugs while he went to Florida on a quick trip. They had found the front door open and entered, calling out the name of the owner, Albert Alain Chalem. They found the two dogs upstairs in a closed bedroom and a good reason to call the cops lying on the floor of the dining room.

Investigators first noted that the door was unlocked. Inside they entered a grand vestibule with a fifteen-foot ceiling and a wraparound staircase leading to the upper floors. A massive crystal chandelier that would look great in a casino hung overhead. There was very little furniture and almost nothing hanging on the gleaming white walls. They walked through the living room and straight to the back of the house, where a huge, thick wood dining table dominated a room that looked out on the backyard. The table was covered with papers spread out in a way that indicated work was under way when events were suddenly interrupted. They noted that the back door was slightly ajar. On the floor of the dining room they found what they were looking for.

There were two men, blood pooling beneath both. One was the owner of the house, Chalem. He lay sprawled on the floor, the baseball cap he always wore next to him. The other was a friend of Chalem’s, Maier Lehmann. He still had his cell phone in his hand.

At first it was just the locals and the state police, but within a couple of hours the FBI showed up. It was clear right away that Chalem was anything but a stranger to the Bureau. In fact, Chalem had long been involved in multiple over-the-counter stock scams and had tangential connections with multiple Mafia families and was involved with a platoon of corrupt stockbrokers and promoters. It was believed he’d been involved in shorting the house stock of a mob-run boiler room and driving the price down before they could unload and make a profit. He was also a sometime informant for the Bureau, tipping them off occasionally to the comings and goings of his criminal brethren. There were many reasons why he would wind up lying on the floor of his own expensive home. The other guy, Lehmann, appeared to be just a guy who had really bad timing. He was a computer whiz who worked for Chalem. When they began to look into the matter, they started with Chalem.

Lehmann was helping Chalem with a penny stock Internet site he’d started called stockinvestor.com. Chalem had been sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his role in penny stock manipulation, and his name had come up as a conspirator in a major arrest by the Manhattan district attorney of a boiler room known as A.S. Goldmen. They learned that he was supposed to be driving down to the Carolinas to meet a business associate, then flying the rest of the way to Fort Lauderdale to meet up with his girlfriend, Kim, at a condo he owned there. He called her around 5 p.m. to say Lehmann would be joining him on the trip to Florida. His last phone call had come at 8 p.m. Monday night, to a business associate. Whatever had happened, happened sometime between that call and the early hours of Tuesday when the two workmen showed up to get the dogs.

There was a quite a bit of blood, but it appeared that there had not been much of a struggle. It must have occurred quickly, and investigators theorized that Chalem and Lehmann were shot almost at the same time. This indicated more than one shooter. There was no sign that anything was missing, and the papers on the table appeared to have been left alone. It seemed that Chalem, at least, knew whoever had killed him, and that after they were done, they merely walked out of the house and drove away.

Chalem’s girlfriend, Kim, learned what had happened when she awoke around 7 a.m. She had seventeen messages on her cell phone, all from their neighbor in Colts Neck. She called back, and the woman said there were about one hundred cop cars outside Kim’s house and two dead people inside. She got a ticket back to Newark Airport right away, and when she stepped off the plane two FBI agents were waiting at the gate.

The appearance of the FBI was not exactly shocking to the girlfriend. She was vaguely aware of Al’s involvement with criminals and those who wanted to be criminals. She’d been with him when they hung out with Allie Boy Persico, the acting boss of the Colombo family, in the Hamptons, and had once attended the wedding of one of Persico’s relatives. She was vaguely aware that a guy named Phil Abramo who Al said was “connected” was involved in some of Al’s business deals. Al was not your average businessman. The house in Colts Neck was in her name; the Florida condo was in the name of one of Al’s employees. Al had made it clear he had certain credit issues, but it was also clear he wasn’t crazy about having too many known assets.

The FBI was very interested in everything she had to say about when Al had planned to be in Florida and why that hadn’t worked out. They asked about his friends, his family, his business associates. She didn’t really get into Allie Boy Persico and Phil Abramo. They asked about his work habits. He would disappear into his office inside the house in the morning and emerge after the closing bell on Wall Street, having spent all the hours day trading. She would write down each trade to help him track his money. As far as she knew they were all real companies. She was happy to have the money, and didn’t ask a lot of questions.

The story hit the papers in a big way. This was not your usual Wall Street tale of merger and acquisition. This was more America’s Most Wanted than the Wall Street Journal. Here were two stock pickers murdered by the mob. There were no gambling wire rooms, no corrupt union leaders, no tainted captains of the carting industry. This was the mob on Wall Street. Although the cops and the FBI really had no idea who specifically to blame for Chalem and Lehmann, and certainly could not say that it was a mob hit, it sure looked like one, and that was the way it got written. The manner of killing—no robbery, no big mess—made it obvious this was just business. This was clear evidence that the gangsters of New York had, like millions of law-abiding Americans, decided to get their slice of the Wall Street boom. They just did it a little differently than everyone else.

 

 

A day or two after the Colts Neck murders hit the papers, Frank Persico called up DMN. Pokross took the call. All Frank would say was “I want to talk.” Pokross met with Frank, and Frank asked a lot of questions about what Chalem did for DMN and what kind of records there were to connect Chalem to Frank. It was Frank, after all, who had introduced Chalem to DMN three years earlier.

The FBI knew all about this call and had no reason to think Frank Persico was involved in the murder of Al Chalem any more than about a dozen other gangsters across New York. Chalem had been into so many schemes with so many different organized crime families it was hard to tell who wouldn’t want to kill the guy. Besides Persico they quickly saw connections with Phil Abramo, the self-proclaimed father of pump and dump. But Abramo himself was sitting in a prison cell in Tampa, Florida, where he faced charges that had nothing to do with DMN. Instead the FBI began pulling together information on the exact whereabouts of some of Abramo’s mob cohorts during the evening of October 25, 1999. They’d found blood at the scene that did not belong to either Chalem or Lehmann, and while they awaited the test results they took blood and hair samples from several members of the DeCavalcante crime family, to which Abramo belonged. Nothing came of any of it.

 

 

Francis Warrington Gillet III didn’t really care who killed the two guys in New Jersey. He didn’t know them. He’d never even met them. Whoever put a bullet into them probably had his reasons, and Warrington was not in a position to know those reasons. He was simply upset that such a thing could occur to guys who were, in a way, just like him.

Two years after the FBI had come to his apartment and taken him away, Warrington’s world was continuing its downward spiral into the abyss. Nothing was going as it should. He’d split from his wife. His mother wouldn’t talk to him. His father didn’t return his calls. His half-brother made fun of him every chance he could. He’d been forced to quit Wall Street and couldn’t go near the securities industry. These days he was working around the stables at his mother’s home in Maryland, living there in a converted barn. He had just turned forty-one. He was the father of a three-year-old. He was supposed to be a responsible member of society, contributing to the tax base and participating as an able-bodied consumer of goods and services. Instead he was struggling to get control of his life, and now there was this awful thing in New Jersey.

What caught his eye was the mention of a possible theory in the deaths of the two guys in Colts Neck. One of them, Chalem, was believed to have been an informant. The word jumped off the page like a hand to the throat.

For months, Warrington had been spending long hours in anonymous government offices, sitting and talking with Special Agent D. True Brown of the FBI. He had been telling Brown everything he could remember about all of his former friends in the underworld and nearby environs. It hadn’t been easy. He’d gone back and forth, trying to decide for himself whether he was a victim or a conspirator.

Sometimes he blamed others. For a time, he launched a lawsuit against a Florida law firm that had been involved in helping him set up the Discovery Studios model search debacle. He’d alleged fraud and assorted skullduggery, claiming that the law firm he’d hired had a conflict of interest that ultimately blew up the deal. In a newspaper story in the Palm Beach Post, Warrington didn’t mention his arrest by the FBI but instead whined that he was just another working man stiffed by greedy lawyers.

“Even though I have had well-off family in Palm Beach, I’ve had to struggle and work my way up like everyone else,” he told the reporter. “I’m a regular guy just trying to make it.”

Sometimes he felt sorry for himself.

“I was an actor turned stockbroker and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”

The more he thought about it, though, the more he felt he had no choice but to cooperate with the government. None of these guys were his friends, not even Cary Cimino, his former best friend. What sealed the deal for Warrington was the realization one morning that Cary would turn on him in a heartbeat if he were faced with the possibility of going to prison. And if Cary turned, Warrington was sunk.

In the room with Special Agent True Brown, Warrington told all about Cary Cimino—especially about Cary. He also told about Jimmy Labate and his guns and Sal Piazza and Jeffrey Pokross (whom he referred to as “the militant angry little gangster”) and about all the stockbrokers and stock promoters involved in all the schemes. He told about the rinky-dink amusement park that was behind Spaceplex Amusement Centers International and the ridiculous roofing shingle recycling outfit in Tampa called Reclaim Inc. Then there was the ludicrous ice skating venture, Beachport Entertainment Corp. They already knew about his goofy modeling agency idea that had been Discovery Studios Inc. He’d even had to admit to his embarrassing nom de guerre, Johnny Casablanca, scribbled on all the bribe checks he’d cashed.

The idea was to stay out of jail at all costs. If they could use what he told them to make other cases and put other people in jail, Warrington might not have to join his former friends behind bars. He was inspired. He’d even tried to bolster his position by taping phone calls with Cary Cimino, the only one of his fellow co-conspirators who would talk to him after his arrest. He would call up Cary and complain about money and lawyers, and Cary would tell him to sell the Ferrari and as many horses on his family farm as he could ride out of the stable. All the tapes he made went straight to D. True Brown of the FBI, potential currency in Warrington’s bid for redemption.

For months this had gone on. Warrington would take the train up to New York City, submit to one of these all-day sessions with the FBI and various assistant United States attorneys, unburdening himself of all that he had done. That was important. They made it clear he had to tell them everything. He even mentioned the tickets he’d gotten for running a red light and talking on his cell phone while driving. Nothing was hidden. In the white light of truth, Warrington was—perhaps for the first time—as vulnerable as a child.

He had still not signed an actual plea agreement. He had yet to testify in open court. He and his lawyers were trying to work out the details. The prosecutors told him little and made few promises, except to say they’d ask the judge not to make Warrington do time. The prosecutors needed him to take some form of punishment, and they’d more or less agreed that would be monetary. He would have to join his fellow conspirators in coming up with some form of restitution for all the old ladies in Wisconsin they’d ripped off. The figure being kicked around was $1 million, plus a $75,000 fine payable to the United States government for all their hard work. The prosecutors were certainly not Warrington’s friends.

Clause by clause they were working it out. They’d hoped to sign a final plea agreement within a few months, if all went as planned.

Now there was this business in New Jersey. Warrington was vaguely aware that what he was doing was dangerous. Although he’d made a point to never ask too many questions of Jimmy Labate and Sal Piazza and Jeffrey Pokross, their inclinations were certainly obvious to him.

“Finally when they got around to paying you, you’d look at the people who were paying your commission and you knew. They’re all proud that they’re from Brooklyn. They get their nails done, they walk the walk and talk the talk. They’re all John Gotti wannabes. That’s what they aspire to. Do you know why Monitor was called Monitor? If you get beaten, you get put on a life support system. You’re on a monitor. That’s why it was called Monitor.”

Somehow after he was arrested and the FBI offered to keep him out of jail if only he would help out a little, he’d felt the risk was worth it. As far as he knew, nobody was absolutely sure that he was cooperating. Now there were two guys dead in Colts Neck, New Jersey. If they were willing to do that, why wouldn’t they come after him? When he’d been arrested, he’d thought that was pretty bad. When he was told he might have to cough up a million dollars in restitution, that was pretty bad. When he lost his ability to earn a living on Wall Street, that was as lousy as it could get. Or so he thought. Now Warrington found himself with two options, both lousy. He could pull out of his deal with the government and face the possibility of going to federal prison. Or he could continue in his role as a secret FBI informant knowing that soon enough, that role would be anything but secret. Soon enough Sal would know, Jimmy would know, Jeffrey would know, and Cary would know.

Once again, Warrington found himself unable to choose between bad and worse.