I nodded. L.A.’s own. And a former defendant who faced down the machine on a murder charge and walked away. There was no better story of inspiration on the street.
“Earl?” I said. “Take the seven-ten. We’re running late.”
TWELVE
S am Scales was a Hollywood con man. He specialized in Internet schemes designed to gather credit card numbers and verification data that he would then turn and sell in the financial underworld. The first time we had worked together he had been arrested for selling six hundred card numbers and their attendant verification information—expiration dates and the addresses, social security numbers and passwords of the rightful owners of the cards—to an undercover sheriff’s deputy.
Scales had gotten the numbers and information by sending out an e-mail to five thousand people who were on the customer list of a Delaware-based company that sold a weight-loss product called TrimSlim6 over the Internet. The list had been stolen from the company’s computer by a hacker who did freelance work for Scales. Using a rent-by-the-hour computer in a Kinko’s and a temporary e-mail address, Scales then sent out a mass mailing to all those on the list. He identified himself as counsel for the federal Food and Drug Administration and told the recipients that their credit cards would be refunded the full amount of their purchases of TrimSlim6 following an FDA recall of the product. He said FDA testing of the product proved it to be ineffective in promoting weight loss. He said the makers of the product had agreed to refund all purchases in an effort to avoid fraud charges. He concluded the e-mail with instructions for confirming the refund. These included providing the credit card number, expiration date and all other pertinent verification data.
Of the five thousand recipients of the message, there were six hundred who bit. Scales then made an Internet contact in the underworld and set up a hand-to-hand sale, six hundred credit card numbers and vitals for ten thousand in cash. It meant that within days the numbers would be stamped on plastic blanks and then put to use. It was a fraud that would reach into the millions of dollars in losses.
But it was stunted in a West Hollywood coffee shop where Scales handed over a printout to his buyer and was given a thick envelope containing cash in return. When he walked out carrying the envelope and an iced decaf latte he was met by sheriff’s deputies. He had sold his numbers to an undercover.
Scales hired me to get him a deal. He was thirty-three years old at the time and had a clean record, even though there were indications and evidence that he had never held a lawful job. By focusing the prosecutor assigned to the case on the theft of card numbers rather than the potential losses of the fraud, I was able to get Scales a disposition to his liking. He pleaded guilty to one felony count of identity theft and received a one-year suspended sentence, sixty days of CalTrans work and four years of probation.
That was the first time. That was three years ago. Sam Scales did not take the opportunity afforded him by the no-jail sentence. He was now back in custody and I was defending him in a fraud case so reprehensible that it was clear from the start that it was going to be beyond my ability to keep him out of prison.
On December 28 of the previous year Scales used a front company to register a domain name of SunamiHelp.com on the World Wide Web. On the home page of the website he put photographs of the destruction and death left two days earlier when a tsunami in the Indian Ocean devastated parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. The site asked viewers to please help by making a donation to SunamiHelp which would then distribute it among the numerous agencies responding to the disaster. The site also carried the photograph of a handsome white man identified as Reverend Charles, who was engaged in the work of bringing Christianity to Indonesia. A personal note from Reverend Charles was posted on the site and it asked viewers to give from the heart.
Scales was smart but not that smart. He didn’t want to steal the donations made to the site. He only wanted to steal the credit card information used to make the donations. The investigation that followed his arrest showed that all contributions made through the site actually were forwarded to the American Red Cross and did go to efforts to help victims of the devastating tsunami.
But the numbers and information from the credit cards used to make those donations were also forwarded to the financial underworld. Scales was arrested when a detective with the LAPD’s fraud-by-trick unit named Roy Wunderlich found the website. Knowing that disasters always drew out the con artists in droves, Wunderlich had started typing in possible website names in which the word tsunami was misspelled. There were several legitimate tsunami donation sites on the web and he typed in variations of these, always misspelling the word. His thinking was that the con artists would misspell the word when they set up fraud sites in an effort to draw potential victims who were likely to be of a lower education level. SunamiHelp.com was among several questionable sites the detective found. Most of these he forwarded to an FBI task force looking at the problem on a nationwide scale. But when he checked the domain registration of SunamiHelp.com, he found a Los Angeles post office box. That gave Wunderlich jurisdiction. He was in business. He kept SunamiHelp.com for himself.
The PO box turned out to be a dead address but Wunderlich was undeterred. He floated a balloon, meaning he made a controlled purchase, or in this case a controlled donation.
The credit card number the detective provided while making a twenty-dollar donation would be monitored twenty-four hours a day by the Visa fraud unit and he would be informed instantly of any purchase made on the account. Within three days of the donation the credit card was used to purchase an eleven-dollar lunch at the Gumbo Pot restaurant in the Farmers Market at Fairfax and Third. Wunderlich knew that it had simply been a test purchase. Something small and easily coverable with cash if the user of the counterfeit credit card encountered a problem at the point of purchase.
The restaurant purchase was allowed to go through and Wunderlich and four other detectives from the trick unit were dispatched to the Farmers Market, a sprawling blend of old and new shops and restaurants that was always crowded and therefore a perfect place for credit card con artists to operate. The investigators would spread out in the complex and wait while Wunderlich continued to monitor the card’s use by phone.
Two hours after the first purchase the control number was used again to purchase a six-hundred-dollar leather jacket at the Nordstrom in the market. The credit card approval was delayed but not stopped. The detectives moved in and arrested a young woman as she was completing the purchase of the jacket. The case then became what is known as a “snitch chain,” the police following one suspect to the next as they snitched each other off and the arrests moved up the ladder.
Eventually they came to the man sitting at the top of that ladder, Sam Scales. When the story broke in the press Wunderlich referred to him as the Tsunami Svengali because so many victims of the scam turned out to be women who had wanted to help the handsome minister pictured on the website. The nickname angered Scales, and in my discussions with him he took to referring to the detective who had brought him down as Wunder Boy.
I got to Department 124 on the thirteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building by 10:45 but the courtroom was empty except for Marianne, the judge’s clerk. I went through the bar and approached her station.
“You guys still doing the calendar?” I asked.
“Just waiting on you. I’ll call everybody and tell the judge.”
“She mad at me?”
Marianne shrugged. She wouldn’t answer for the judge. Especially to a defense attorney. But in a way, she was telling me that the judge wasn’t happy.
“Is Scales still back there?”
“Should be. I don’t know where Joe went.”
I turned and went over to the defense table and sat down and waited. Eventually, the door to the lockup opened and Joe Frey, the bailiff assigned to 124, stepped out.
“You still got my guy back there?”
“Just barely. We thought you were a no-sho
w again. You want to go back?”
He held the steel door open for me and I stepped into a small room with a stairwell going up to the courthouse jail on the fourteenth floor and two doors leading to the smaller holding rooms for 124. One of the doors had a glass panel. It was for attorney-client meetings and I could see Sam Scales sitting by himself at a table behind the glass. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and had steel cuffs on his wrists. He was being held without bail because his latest arrest violated his probation on the TrimSlim6 conviction. The sweet deal I had gotten him on that was about to go down the tubes.
“Finally,” Scales said as I walked in.
“Like you’re going anywhere. You ready to do this?”
“If I have no choice.”
I sat down across from him.
“Sam, you always have a choice. But let me explain it again. They’ve got you cold on this, okay? You were caught ripping off people who wanted to help the people caught in one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. They’ve got three co-conspirators who took deals to testify against you. They have the list of card numbers found in your possession. What I am saying is that at the end of the day, you are going to get about as much sympathy from the judge and a jury—if it should come to that—as they would give a child raper. Maybe even less.”
“I know all of that but I am a useful asset to society. I could educate people. Put me in the schools. Put me in the country clubs. Put me on probation and I’ll tell people what to watch out for out there.”
“You are who they have to watch out for. You blew your chance with the last one and the prosecution said this is the final offer on this one. You don’t take it and they’re going to go to the wall on this. The one thing I can guarantee you is that there will be no mercy.”
So many of my clients are like Sam Scales. They hopelessly believe there is a light behind the door. And I’m the one who has to tell them the door is locked and that the bulb burned out long ago anyway.
“Then I guess I have to do it,” Scales said, looking at me with eyes that blamed me for not finding a way out for him.
“It’s your choice. You want a trial, we’ll go to trial. Your exposure will be ten years plus the one you’ve got left on the probation. You make ’em real mad and they can also ship you over to the FBI so the feds can take a swing at you on interstate wire fraud if they want.”
“Let me ask you something. If we go to trial, could we win?”
I almost laughed but I still had some sympathy left for him.
“No, Sam, we can’t win. Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been telling you for two months? They got you. You can’t win. But I’m here to do what you want. Like I said, if you want a trial we’ll go to trial. But I gotta tell you that if we go, you’ll have to get your mother to pay me again. I’m only good through today.”
“How much did she pay you already?”
“Eight thousand.”
“Eight grand! That’s her fucking retirement account money!”
“I’m surprised she has anything left in the account with you for a son.”
He looked at me sharply.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t have said that. From what she told me, you’re a good son.”
“Jesus Christ, I should have gone to fucking law school. You’re a con no different from me. You know that, Haller? Only that paper they give you makes you street legal, that’s all.”
They always blame the lawyer for making a living. As if it’s a crime to want to be paid for doing a day’s work. What Scales had just said to me would have brought a near violent reaction back when I was maybe a year or two out of law school. But I’d heard the same insult too many times by now to do anything but roll with it.
“What can I say, Sam? We’ve already had this conversation.”
He nodded and didn’t say anything. I took it to mean he would take the DA’s offer. Four years in the state penal system and a ten-thousand-dollar fine, followed by five years’ parole. He’d be out in two and a half but the parole would be a killer for a natural-born con man to make it through unscathed. After a few minutes I got up and left the room. I knocked on the outer door and Deputy Frey let me back into the courtroom.
“He’s good to go,” I said.
I took my seat at the defense table and soon Frey brought Scales out and sat him next to me. He still had the cuffs on. He said nothing to me. In another few minutes Glenn Bernasconi, the prosecutor who worked 124, came down from his office on the fifteenth floor and I told him we were ready to accept the case disposition.
At 11 A.M. Judge Judith Champagne came out of chambers and onto the bench and Frey called the courtroom to order. The judge was a diminutive, attractive blonde and ex-prosecutor who had been on the bench at least as long as I’d had my ticket. She was old school all the way, fair but tough, running her courtroom as a fiefdom. Sometimes she even brought her dog, a German shepherd named Justice, to work with her. If the judge had had any kind of discretion in the sentence when Sam Scales faced her, he would have gone down hard. That was what I did for Sam Scales, whether he knew it or not. With this deal I had saved him from that.
“Good morning,” the judge said. “I am glad you could make it today, Mr. Haller.”
“I apologize, Your Honor. I got held up in Judge Flynn’s court in Compton.”
That was all I had to say. The judge knew about Flynn. Everybody did.
“And on St. Patrick’s Day, no less,” she said.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“I understand we have a disposition in the Tsunami Svengali matter.”
She immediately looked over at her court reporter.
“Michelle, strike that.”
She looked back at the lawyers.
“I understand we have a disposition in the Scales case. Is that correct?”
“That is correct,” I said. “We’re ready to go on that.”
“Good.”
Bernasconi half read, half repeated from memory the legalese needed to take a plea from the defendant. Scales waived his rights and pleaded guilty to the charges. He said nothing other than the word. The judge accepted the disposition agreement and sentenced him accordingly.
“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Scales,” she said when it was over. “I believe Mr. Bernasconi was quite generous with you. I would not have been.”
“I don’t feel so lucky, Judge,” Scales said.
Deputy Frey tapped him on the shoulder from behind. Scales stood up and turned to me.
“I guess this is it,” he said.
“Good luck, Sam,” I said.
He was led off through the steel door and I watched it close behind them. I had not shaken his hand.
THIRTEEN
T he Van Nuys Civic Center is a long concrete plaza enclosed by government buildings. Anchoring one end is the Van Nuys Division of the LAPD. Along one side are two courthouses sitting opposite a public library and a city administration building. At the end of the concrete and glass channel is a federal administration building and post office. I waited for Louis Roulet in the plaza on one of the concrete benches near the library. The plaza was largely deserted despite the great weather. Not like the day before, when the place was overrun with cameras and the media and the gadflies, all crowding around Robert Blake and his lawyers as they tried to spin a not-guilty verdict into innocence.
It was a nice, quiet afternoon and I usually liked being outside. Most of my work is done in windowless courtrooms or the backseat of my Town Car, so I take it outside whenever I can. But I wasn’t feeling the breeze or noticing the fresh air this time. I was annoyed because Louis Roulet was late and because what Sam Scales had said to me about being a street-legal con was festering like cancer in my mind. When finally I saw Roulet crossing the plaza toward me I got up to meet him.
“Where’ve you been?” I said abruptly.
“I told you I’d get here as soon as I could. I was in the middle of a showing when you called.”
&nbs
p; “Let’s walk.”
I headed toward the federal building because it would give us the longest stretch before we would have to turn around to cross back. I had my meeting with Minton, the new prosecutor assigned to his case, in twenty-five minutes in the older of the two courthouses. I realized that we didn’t look like a lawyer and his client discussing a case. Maybe a lawyer and his realtor discussing a land grab. I was in my Hugo Boss and Roulet was in a tan suit over a green turtleneck. He had on loafers with small silver buckles.
“There won’t be any showings up in Pelican Bay,” I said to him.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Where’s that?”
“It’s a pretty name for a super max prison where they send violent sex offenders. You’re going to fit in there pretty good in your turtleneck and loafers.”
“Look, what’s the matter? What’s this about?”
“It’s about a lawyer who can’t have a client who lies to him. In twenty minutes I’m about to go up to see the guy who wants to send you to Pelican Bay. I need everything I can get my hands on to try to keep you out of there and it doesn’t help when I find out you’re lying to me.”
Roulet stopped and turned to me. He raised his hands out, palms open.
“I haven’t lied to you! I did not do this thing. I don’t know what that woman wants but I —”
“Let me ask you something, Louis. You and Dobbs said you took a year of law at UCLA, right? Did they teach you anything at all about the lawyer-client bond of trust?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I wasn’t there long enough.”
I took a step toward him, invading his space.
“You see? You are a fucking liar. You didn’t go to UCLA law school for a year. You didn’t even go for a goddamn day.”
He brought his hands down and slapped them against his sides.
“Is that what this is all about, Mickey?”
“Yeah, that’s right and from now on, don’t call me Mickey. My friends call me that. Not my lying clients.”