Lucifer's Banker Read online

  And I was right about that, but wrong about the Department of Jackasses. Gratitude wasn’t in their DNA. They charged Olenicoff with tax fraud and me along with him as a coconspirator! And just to make sure I went to prison, they claimed I hadn’t turned his name over until after I was indicted.

  It was unfuckingbelievable. I hadn’t given the DOJ the name—and they knew why. But I’d already testified under oath after being subpoenaed before the US Senate, and detailed my extensive dealings with Olenicoff. But at my sentencing hearing, Kevin Downing looked the judge in the eye and said I’d held that name back. Poker-faced and sincere as Satan, Downing claimed I was covering up for a rich client and hoping to make a buck later for being a good boy.

  Bang went the judge’s gavel. Prison for Birkenfeld.

  I’ll never forget that feeling, or the sound of that gavel smacking mahogany. It was my Lee Harvey Oswald moment. Somebody just got killed, and guess what? You’re the fall guy.

  Olenicoff, on the other hand, had made a deal with the devil and gotten off with two years’ probation and a fine for back taxes. The fine amounted to $52 million, which sounds like a lot, but it was pocket change for him. But what happened after that was the poisoned icing on the cake. Olenicoff then sued UBS, me, and more than thirty other individuals and business entities, claiming that we were responsible for his failure to pay his taxes! Talk about balls. You cheat on the government for decades, somebody turns you in, and that’s the guy you go after, the one who’s going to jail while you go back to your champagne orgies. By that time my legal fees had wiped me out and my lawyers had quit. I’d soon be in lockup, defenseless, while Olenicoff partied on and trashed me in court.

  What a country, right? Land of the Free, if you can afford the price of liberty.

  But stick with me for one last tagline on the whole affair. Olenicoff had a beloved son, Andrei, a guy I liked much more than his father. He was a classy young man, handsome and hardworking. I’d even attended his wedding in Newport Beach, California, to a sweet young woman named Kim. And then one day Andrei was driving his jeep on Route 1 along the coast, and for some reason the brakes failed and he wound up dead. I was shocked and genuinely saddened. Kim was devastated, and Igor Olenicoff has been forever heartbroken.

  I guess the real moral of that story is no matter how much money you have, or how clever you think you are, you can’t fix dead. As the old saying goes, nothing is certain except death and taxes; and ironically Igor got a big fat taste of both.

  I turned my attention back to Doug, who now had a smirk on his lips. I could tell he’d been thinking about Olenicoff’s twist of fate too.

  That’s the thing about us Birkenfeld Boys; we’re a tough, fiercely competitive bunch, fighters by nature. Our dad is a well-known neurosurgeon, and the three of us brothers grew up playing hockey and football and working odd jobs from pretty much from the time we could walk. We were comfortable, but never spoiled. Our name means “field of birches” in German. That was us, tall and hard, sometimes bending in the wind, but never breaking. If you wanted to cut us down, you’d better show up with something bigger than a butter knife.

  We turned a bend in the pounding storm, cruised down a long slim road, and then I saw it: Schuylkill (pronounced “school-kill,” which made it sound like you wouldn’t learn a damn thing there). It was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forests and sprawled over an open pitch the size of ten football fields. The main entrance was a low concrete rectangle with smoked black windows and rows of razor wire coiling across the roof. An American flag whipped in the wind, its rope pulleys banging on the pole. My stomach tightened up. Time to pay the piper.

  Outside on the street I saw a bunch of television news vans and a line of journalists’ cars at the curb. Camera crews and reporters from all over the world were milling around in down jackets and slapping their arms in the cold. When they saw our car, they tossed their coffee cups away and flicked on their lights and microphones. They were there because they’d been tipped off, by me. I was determined to call a press conference and tell the US government just what I thought of their bullshit lies as they locked me up.

  If you haven’t gotten the gist of me yet, I’m a hammer, looking for nails.

  “Here we go,” Doug said as he parked at the back of the line. I got out and looked up at the sky, the snow coming down in big fat flakes, my last look at the free world before they put me away for three years. I was dressed like a regular dude, in a lumberjack flannel shirt, a red ski jacket, and a black baseball cap. Then I spotted one friendly face.

  The only lawyer still on my side was Stephen Kohn, and he wasn’t getting paid. A diminutive guy with wiry gray hair, glasses, and always an optimistic grin, he was as smart as they come and feisty as a pit bull. He was also chief counsel for the National Whistleblower Center in Washington, DC. Steve was convinced the government owed me a fat reward, and he was going to get it, or die trying. I loved the guy, but thought he was a dreamer. I gave him a nod as I started that long last walk, with Doug walking shotgun beside me.

  The reporters crowded around and then I saw two prison guards in black parkas, slinging pistols and batons, stomping over from the main entrance. One of them waved his gloved hands in a panic.

  “You can’t have a press conference here!” he shouted. “This is private property!”

  I shot my finger down at the road and gave him a blast of my New England accent. “This road belongs to the American people, not you. This is federal property. Are you going to deny me my First Amendment rights?”

  The guards mumbled to each other, cursed, and backed off. A small female reporter looked up at me and stuck her microphone in my face.

  “Mr. Birkenfeld, you’re here to surrender yourself to federal authorities for conspiracy to commit tax fraud,” she said as she posed for her cameraman. “Do you have anything to say?”

  I gave her my best Clint Eastwood.

  “I would like to say how proud I am to be courageous enough to come forward and do what I did to expose the largest tax fraud in the world.” The reporters worked their recorders and scribbled notes. “And this is what I’m getting.” I cocked my chin at the prison. “An indictment from the Department of Justice.” Then I gave them all my steeliest stare. “You can draw your own conclusions.”

  A jumble of questions spat from the crowd, but I’d already fired my shot across the government’s bow. Steve Kohn pushed past me and let his raw emotions fly.

  “To take a whistle-blower who was responsible for the single largest recovery to American taxpayers and put him in jail? It’s a travesty of justice! A miscarriage of justice! It’s grotesque.”

  With that, I patted Steve on the shoulder, shook my brother’s hand, broke from the crowd, and walked up the concrete slabs to the entrance. The two guards cranked my arms behind my back and slapped cuffs on me. Claangg.

  They marched me inside and slammed the doors. The din of the reporters outside went dead; no sound but the snowmelt hitting my shoes. We walked through a reception area of whitewashed walls hung with portraits of jowly wardens. The linoleum floor smelled like a high school gymnasium, an odor I happen to like. At the end of it a portly blonde woman sat at a high desk, looking about as pleased as the Wizard of Oz. She already knew who I was, but I snapped to attention anyway.

  “Birkenfeld, Bradley C.,” I reported.

  She didn’t appreciate my snide side. “Miss-terr Birkenfeld, do you have anything on your person?”

  I took off my watch, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore T3, the same model worn by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 3.

  “Just this,” I said as I handed it to her. “Don’t lose it. It’s worth twenty-five thousand bucks.”

  She blinked at me, picked it up like it was a hissing cobra, and dropped it in a manila envelope.

  The guards walked me into “Processing,” an empty room with steel lockers that stank like dirty socks. They stood me up in front of a wall and took my prison photograph. I
grinned as the camera flashed.

  “Why the hell are you smiling?” one of them sneered.

  “Because I’m here to have fun,” I said.

  The guards stiffened and shot each other a look. The other one jabbed a finger at my foot.

  “Where’s your ankle monitor?”

  “I cut it off last night with a knife. Gave it back to probation.”

  After that, they took off my cuffs and watched me like a pair of kittens trapped in a cage with a jackal as I stripped and gave them my clothes.

  A few minutes later, I was wearing tighty-whities, a gray T-shirt, an olive drab prison uniform, and lace-up work boots. The outfit didn’t faze me; I’d done my research. I knew I was supposed to be going into the minimum-security wing, something like an army barracks where the white-collar perps did their time.

  A doctor in a white lab coat came in, checked my blood pressure, and pronounced me fit to be tied. The guards cuffed me again and marched me back out to Ms. Happy Face. She was stamping down on some forms.

  “So, where’s the dormitory?” I asked her. “I’d hate to miss lunch.”

  She glared at me over her glasses. “You’re not going there today, Mr. Birkenfeld.”

  “Oh? Where am I going?”

  “Solitary.” She pointed up at the ceiling. “Orders from upstairs.”

  I got it. The warden was probably pissed that I’d turned his prison into a public spectacle at the front gate. So, he’d decided to throw me in the cooler. But I knew if I asked for how long, it would come off as fear, so I just gave her my Birkenfeld grin.

  “Works for me,” I said. “I like my alone-time.”

  One of the guards wrenched my elbow and led me through a buzz-lock door. I heard the other one mutter to Ms. Happy Face, “First time I’ve ever heard that.”

  It was a long, silent corridor leading to one heavy door at the end with a small bulletproof window and a monster-sized lock. The guard pulled it open, took off my cuffs, shoved me inside, and slammed the door. I turned to the window as he was cranking the key, gave him a wink, and said, “Have a nice weekend.”

  He flinched a little and walked away, quickly.

  I’d learned something important a long time ago, long before I got into business and banking. And I’d learned it on the ice, playing high school hockey in Massachusetts. Let folks know who you are right away: a guy who seems friendly, but totally unpredictable. Look down at them and give them that leopard smile that doesn’t touch your eyes, and they’ll know not to fuck with you.

  Sure, throw me in prison. Pretend you’re the law of the land, protector of the people, doing what’s right and true. Invite me in with all my secrets that I’m giving up of my own accord, risking my entire career, not to mention my life. Then betray me, tell me I’m a dirtbag, while you make under-the-table deals with the Big Dogs and let all the real sharks swim away. Go ahead, toss me in solitary and throw away the key.

  But just remember one thing, boys. I’ll be out someday.

  And you’re going to pay.

  PART I

  CHAPTER I

  MAKING THE CUT

  “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

  —GORDON GEKKO, WALL STREET

  YOU DON’T REALLY WANT to know about my childhood. But I’m going to tell you anyway, so just hang in for a few pages while I wax poetic.

  I grew up in a castle.

  That probably got your attention, but it wasn’t a real fortress of knights and damsels; it was just what everyone in our small town of Hingham, Massachusetts, called it—“The Castle” (Exhibit 1). The house was a sprawling six-bedroom edifice of stone with gables, turrets, and lead-paned glass windows, built in the early twentieth century by a wealthy industrial baron. It was perched on five acres of manicured lawns, surrounded by additional acres of undeveloped conservation land with a three hundred-foot driveway almost abutting the quaint Hingham harbor. If you drove by it today, you’d think, “rich folk, spoiled kids,” but in truth it became “Schloss Birkenfeld” in the late 1960s for less than the current price of a Jeep Wrangler. And the reason I remember the acreage so well is that my brothers and I mowed the lawn, every week, every spring, summer, and fall.

  As I mentioned previously, my dad was a well-respected neurosurgeon in Boston, a man who believed in studying hard, working harder, and only enjoying your downtime if you deserved it. He’d gone to a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania as a child (which seemed a bit odd to me, since he hailed from Russian Jews), and that’s where he acquired a “You’re not going to learn much if your gums are flapping” viewpoint on education. My mom was a beautiful former fashion model and a registered nurse, raised as a Protestant, but she’d given up all that haute couture stuff to be a stay-at-home mother, which wasn’t a disgrace back in the day, though some folks think so today.

  The other figure in my young life was my mom’s brother, Major General E. Donald Walsh, a man I respected and loved very much. We didn’t see Uncle Don that often, because he was the Adjutant General of Connecticut, but his influence was powerful. The man was a legend, a highly decorated combat veteran of the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and I suppose it was from him that I acquired a thirst for adrenaline and adventure.

  So, when you’ve got a full-time mother with manners and class, a brilliant neurosurgeon father with an ironclad work ethic, and an Iwo Jima/Okinawa war hero uncle, you wind up with some interesting kids.

  My older brothers, Dave and Doug, were good boys, with heads on their shoulders and senses of purpose. I was the one with a glint in my eye, which was good for me because the third child often gets more of a pass (Exhibit 2). But none of us were slackers. We had to mow that golf-course-sized lawn and shovel that runway-length driveway. In the summers we worked odd jobs, such as mowing other people’s lawns and hauling furniture with the Teamsters union. Dad expected us to bring home good grades and encouraged us to play hockey and football to develop competitive spirits, which certainly worked in my case. We knew how to tie a tie, say “Ma’am” and “Sir” at Mom’s cocktail parties, and get into trouble discreetly so Dad wouldn’t find out. If he did, there’d be hell to pay.

  When high school came, I begged my dad to let me go to a private academy. It wasn’t a Harry Potter thing (those books hadn’t been written back then), just something I thought would be cool. Dad’s medical expertise was in high demand, so I knew the tuition wouldn’t pinch his wallet. He sighed and complied, and I went off to Thayer Academy to don jackets and ties and snicker through chapel masses on Mondays. I got decent grades, knocked heads in hockey and football games, caroused with the girls on the weekends, and drank plenty of beer with my close cadre of friends.

  By now you’re getting the picture that I always had an itch for adventure and independence, despite the careful sculpting of my erstwhile elders. Nothing was ever enough for me. By eighteen, I was an avid marksman and had purchased my own Colt .45-caliber pistol, just like the one on Uncle Don’s garrison belt. I was parachuting out of airplanes in New York and dragging my groaning buddies off to three-day treks in the Vermont mountains, where we’d camp, fish, hunt, and plot which girls we were going to bag next. Normal, lusty, Tom Sawyer–Huck Finn–type stuff.

  However, I’d also gotten serious about my future. My oldest brother, Dave, was pursuing medicine, and Doug was going to be a lawyer. What about me? Well, I decided to explore a military career, and not just being some grunt with a rifle. I was going to be a fighter pilot and circle the globe as a “zipper-suited sun god.” So, I filled out applications to military academies and landed a great one.

  Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, is the oldest private military academy in the nation. As you’d expect, it’s nestled in a lush valley surrounded by mountains, and the buildings are solid brick and granite with a beautiful white chapel as a centerpiece and plenty of thick woods and rivers in which to play soldier. All branches of the service are represented at Norwich, so I came aboard as an Air Force ROTC candi
date. But for the first full year, I was nothing but a “Rook,” which basically means you’re on probation until your advisor (a real military officer) decides you’re worthy of the title “Cadet.”

  “Rook! That sun’s been up for a full minute. Why the hell aren’t you?!”

  “Rook! Those boots should be shined like a mirror. If I can’t use ’em to shave, then you can’t use ’em to fight!”

  “Rook! What the hell are you lookin’ at? Get your ruck and your rifle and be back here in thirty seconds! We’re going for a walk.”

  Needless to say, those “walks” were often in knee-deep snow, and nobody told us how long they would be, but they were rarely less than ten miles. We learned how to wear our uniforms, both combat fatigues and snappy dress grays, and how to shoot, move, navigate in the field, keep our living quarters spotless, and be ready to spit back regulations like robots on speed. The push-ups, sit-ups, and runs were endless, but that didn’t faze me much. As a former high school athlete, I could do PT till the cows came home, which they never did.

  The classes were challenging; there were some military subjects, but mostly the standards of math, English, history, and languages. All you had to do was to study hard, but that came with a caveat, a catch-22. You couldn’t hit the books until all your soldierly duties were squared away, but you couldn’t focus on your buckles and rifles if you weren’t making the grades. So every day bled off past midnight, and then you were up again five hours later, no bitching allowed. “Hit the parade ground! Hit the books!”

  Well, by the end of that first year, I had made Cadet, and then the real work began. I chose economics as my major, but as we swung into sophomore classes, guess what? I was already bored. The classes were interesting enough and I enjoyed learning about finance, statistics, the stock market, and so forth; but it was all just theory unless it was fun, and fun to me always means risk.