Transcript of Business Stuff | 3

Wndri Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Criminal Attorney early and ad-free. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast. There was nothing discrete about the inside of 79worth Street. The massive Manhattan loft was decorated like a Moroccan caspa, lots of sofas, pillows on the floor, and 18-foot ceilings. This was the home of New York Confidential, a very exclusive, very expensive, very illegal escort service. It was 2004, and Ron Sperling was seated at a big oak table underneath a crystal chandelier. A petite woman with glossy dark brown hair sat on his lap.

And I go, Look, we have some points we need to cover. First of all, I got to get everybody in here to sign off.

But Ron wasn't a client. He was trying to make a deal. Ron had come by to hammer out the logistics for a reality show he wanted to make about the inner workings of New York Confidential. The woman sitting on his lap was its star escort, Natalia. Ron had gotten a meeting because of Natalia. He knew her when she was a struggling actress before she was charging clients $2,000 an hour. The negotiation seemed to be going well. Jason Itzler, the owner of this establishment, and Natalia's boyfriend, seemed to really crave the spotlight. He referred to himself as King of the Pimps. He was a flashy guy with thick black eyebrows and accustomed for a coat. He wanted to grant Ron all kinds of access to the fancy law and to its clientele.

There were a couple of presidents of networks that I knew very well. A couple of guys from the NBA, maybe whoever was in town playing the Knicks that night. The list goes on and on.

But Ron had plenty of experience in television and film. He knew he'd never get any of the customers to agree to appear on camera.

I said, now, it's not the first reality show I've done. It's very simple. If you don't sign a release, I can't put you on camera.

Ron had a lot riding on this. He was self-financing the production, and he didn't want to take unnecessary risks. Besides, he wasn't aiming for a splashy gossipy exposé. He wanted to paint a more intimate picture.

I said, The story that I want to tell is really the relationship between you and Natalia. And he goes, Oh, yeah. You have to make Natalia's got to be the star of the show. So he's blowing himself up by saying, That's why I'm going to let you do this.

And Jason went a step further. Signed releases be damned. Why not just show everyone in everything at New York Confidential. Jason wanted to completely open up the operation to Ron's cameras. There was a fourth person at the table with them, Jason's lawyer, Paul Bergrin. During this conversation, he was mostly holding back and listening. After a while, he chimed in to back Ron's vision of telling a love story.

When Paul heard my plan, he was like, Okay, Jason, if you want to do this, if you want to do this, then Well, yeah, I think it's a good idea. But not Jason's version. Be clear, when he heard Jason's version, he was like, This is fucking nuts.

Ron was glad for the support, but he would come to understand just how much power this lawyer held.

Paul was a scary dude. He wasn't forced to be recognized. Let's put it this way. If Paul asked you to do something, it wasn't a request. It was an order. From WNDYR, I'm Brandon James-Jinkes, and this is Criminal Return. You got crooked politicians looking over shoulders in opposite positions.

Run, better run, better run. Run from the bogeyman. This is episode three, Business Stuff. Ron Sperling was back in New York Confidential, but this time with his crew. They were getting ready to film, but he made sure to keep the client out of the frame.

There was a big Wall Street guy there, and I had to put the camera down on the coffee table but aimed at where Jason was talking to the guy. I just let it roll. Just let it roll. Leave it on and walk away.

For a TV producer, staking your own project is a huge gamble, especially if you haven't got a buyer. But this was the era when explicit TV shows like HBO's Real Sex and Cat House were shooting up the ratings charts. Ron's New York Confidential Project would have Everything those had, plus a lead character who really liked to talk.

The game is to the first hour, who cares? It's bullshit.

Get extra hours off these people, okay?

Divide and conquer. Pull them away from their friends and get them to keep you.

This is from the sizzle video from Ron's reality show. By this point, Ron has shot a ton of hours of Jason Itzler talking to the camera, laying out the details of his business. In some scenes, he looks professional. He's wearing a suit jacket and a white T-shirt. Other times, he's wearing a shirt that says, You're a girlfriend's pimp, or he's shirtless, and he's always on.

We're exceptional. We're the best. One out of 50 girls are of high enough quality superficially in their brains to work for New York Confidential.

The only way to pull that off is for me to hire girls that have no experience being escorts, being strippers. Girls have to be fresh, new.

According to Jason, they were offering their clients the Girlfriend Experience.

This is like, Oh, let's order some of our room service. Sure. You want to have champagne? They'll make out with you. They'll just cuddle and put their arms all over you. That's the Girlfriend Experience.

The more Ron filmed, the more he began to understand how New York Confidential operated. There were two sides of the organization conversation. Jason was a showboat in the LiveWire. He did things to get attention.

Jason had these business card maids. They were made out of titanium, and they were engraved, and they said, New York Confidential, rocket fuel for winners. There's a shot of them cutting cocaine with it. It was great for that. That's why everybody loved them. Not that I've ever done that, but I've watched and shot many people doing it.

But Jason couldn't just do whatever he wanted. There were limits and parameters in place at New York Confidential. For one, there was actually very little sex happening at the loft. The escorts were sent out to meet clients in hotel rooms and apartments across the city.

I did some cool shit with the camera, like following Natalia into the hotel lobby. Then it would cut to Natalia in the limo on the way back to the loft after two or three or four hours saying, Oh, wow.

As for the bill?

So when you went to New York Confidential and used it on your credit card, your credit card bill came back as New York Steakhouse.

It was actually called Gotham Steak, which is equally ridiculous. But nonetheless, it was a pretty tight ship. There was a level of organization and discretion that didn't seem to fit the owner's profile. Profile, but it did fit the profile of Jason's lawyer, Paul Begrin, the other side of New York Confidential. Paul and Jason met after Jason had been caught in the Newark International Airport after smuggling ecstasy from Amsterdam. Jason was on parole and had to wear an ankle monitor, which meant he was required to report back to his New Jersey apartment every night at 09:00 PM. He had heard that Paul could fix any problem, so Jason met up with him and fixed the problem he did. Paul claimed that Jason was working for him as a paralegal, which got him out of the curfew. Now, Jason did attend law school, the same one as Paul, as a matter of fact, but obviously, he didn't do any real legal work. The reality was, the late hours that Jason claimed he worked for Paul, he was running New York Confidential and enjoying the life that came with it. But Paul kept his distance from the titanium business cards and the snorting.

Paul wasn't there heard that often, or as often as you think he would be.

Paul would typically call ahead to see if they were filming. If Ron was there with the cameras, then Paul would usually avoid the loft. Ron had agreed not to film or record Paul. But one day, Paul came by to talk with the star escort, Natalia.

And we were there shooting, and all took her in her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

Ron and Natalia were good friends, and she often confided in them. Ron knew full well she was afraid of Paul, who she was now alone in a room with. This all happened so fast that Ron didn't have time to remove Natalia's mic pack. She was still miced up, and everything that was said was being recorded.

I thought about going and knocking on the door and then go, You know what? I'm going to shut up. Let's just see where this goes. Now, listen, as much as the next guy, I'm going to listen. Not like I turned the level down on the mixer.

What Ron heard was Paul telling Natalia she needed to go out on a job.

And he wanted her to go and work and do something, and she wasn't up for it.

Natalia pushed back. She told Paul she didn't want to do it. Typically, she was asked if she wanted to work before jobs were booked. But Paul was not asking.

You knew whenever Paul talked to you that there was an agenda beyond the agenda he was presenting to you. Trial attorneys have a distinct ability to lead you down a deceptive path for their own benefit.

Natalia tried to argue a case with Jason later.

He was just like, be ready at midnight or whatever. And he's like, you got to get your shit together and go take care of this.

So she left and did the job Paul had insisted on.

He was using the girls to take care of other business stuff that he was doing. He would call Jason and say, I need two girls to go see these two New Jersey state troopers to make a problem go away. There was a lot of that shit that went on.

It was never clear exactly what this business stuff was, according to Ron, but it was obvious that Paul was using his connections at New York Confidential to influence powerful people, the people who could keep his clients out of jail.

Let's just say from time to time, as far as I knew it, mostly on Paul's behalf, there were people who got serviced and did not have to pay for it. And some of those people may have been involved in law enforcement, government, whatever.

During his time filming at New York Confidential, Ron came to realize that Paul was a bully who was used to getting his way. Ron didn't capture much of this on tape, but that's no surprise.

That was absolutely forbade. He was smart because he knew if my footage ever got subpoenaed, he didn't want to be on any of Paul was getting pretty good at staying in the shadows and using other people to do his dirty work.

A few weeks after chemo got made, Sean got some bad news. She learned that chemo hadn't been totally straight with her. Chemo had helped Sean make multiple arrests. One in particular involved Richard Hostin, the man who ended up in a cell talking with Will Baskervilles. Richard was arrested with another man when they were charged with conspiracy to sell drugs because presumably, they were working together. Only there was a problem.

After we had arrested both individuals, they were adamant that they just weren't working together.

But on the recording Chemo made for the FBI.

He was manufacturing that conversation to make it sound like a conspiracy when it was not a conspiracy, and we did not know then.

Conspiracy to sell drugs is a way worse charge than just individual drug dealing. Was he trying to jam them up? Sean went and got chemo and brought him into the office. Where she confronted him with the evidence.

We sat him in the arrest room and he wrote a statement out. And I'll never forget it because he was extremely apologetic. He felt like he let us down. It was almost like it was personal. And he wrote out this one-page confession. He hand-wrote it. He signed it. I signed it.

Chemo admitted he had wanted them in on the recording money. That's why he made it look like a conspiracy. If the guy was in jail, he didn't have to pay him. After he signed this confession and gave it to Sean, she delivered some hard news.

I said, This is it. You've lied. Your word is no longer credible. Make no mistake, you can be arrested for this.

Sean gathered up the team that had been working with chemo. There was a couple of other agents, a task force officer, and a couple of assistant US attorneys.

We went back and huddled with the prosecutors. Hey, where do we go from here? What do we do? And ultimately, We decided not to charge chemo, but we also decided that he could no longer work for us as an informant.

They were terminating him. He would no longer be a confidential informant for the FBI. He'd betrayed a dangerous crew running his neighborhood, and now he had lost the trust of the FBI. Chemo was running out of allies, running out of options, and soon, he'd be running out of time. Even though Kimo McCray was no longer a confidential informant, the threat against his life remained very real. Sean Brokos knew she and the FBI still had a responsibility to keep him safe. She wanted to get him out of town as far as he was willing to go.

We had talked about him going to Florida, down to Georgia, just different areas.

A couple of years back, standing in front of his mother, Sean had offered chemo a devil's bargain with two options, either become a confidential informant and go to work for the FBI or go to jail. Now, she offered chemo a choice that was just as impossible. Give up his friends, his kids, his family, and his life as he knew it to enter witness protection, or stay in Newark knowing his life was in danger.

I think he was torn between leaving his family and everything he knew and starting over. Look, Witzek is a very regimened, serious program. You have to cut all ties. You're by yourself. You're not talking to your mom. You're not talking to your kids. You are sent somewhere. New name, new identity, no ties with your old life.

If he went with the first option, he'd be all alone in a brand new place. But if he stayed in Newark, he'd have a target on his back. This risk had always been right there in the fine print. Whether or not chemo had truly understood that becoming if coming as CI could lead him here, and whether Sean had tried her absolute hardest to make it clear for him, did not matter now. It had never been a simple or easy choice, and this next one was even more difficult.

He was close to his family. He had been born and raised in Newark, and for him to go to elsewhere was just not something he was open to doing. And he wasn't going to leave. He just was not going to leave this area.

So Sean pivoted. If Kima wasn't willing to move to Florida, Maybe he'd at least go a few towns over.

We gave him money to relocate, and he relocated, I believe, to West Orange.

That's a town about eight miles west of Newark.

That was not great, but he told us, Look, I'm off the street. I'm doing my own thing. I'm working odd jobs. And it wasn't great, but it was good enough. It was as good as it was going to get.

And it worked for a time, but eventually, chemo ran out of money, and then he'd get spoofed. Maybe he saw a car following him, and he called Sean for help.

At first, it was very much, Okay, this is a real threat. This is a real threat. But then it became, All right, we paid him a little bit more just to keep him away or keep him out of sight.

But this kept going on.

So this is where the lines get blurred. Because chemo had lied about that conspiracy, it was really hard to trust him. And when he would call me and say, Hey, the lines get blurred. Because chemo had lied about that conspiracy, it was really hard to trust him. And when he would call me and say, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, followed or, Hey, I think this is happening. The cynical part of me took that as, He's looking for more money.

Maybe Kimo wasn't wrong to ask for that money. Sure, he lied and got caught by the FBI, but they had put him in a dangerous situation. He was playing the game to the best of his ability. But the FBI made the rules, and chemo wasn't playing by them.

And we had told him, This is what you get. It's a lump sum. Be smart with what you're doing. And the money ran out. And of course, he came back home, came back to Irvington, and was doing odd jobs.

On March second, 2004, Kimo's work in construction a auction job in Newark with his stepfather. They were tearing down drywall inside a house. Kimo was about five years old when his stepfather married his mom, so he had always thought of him as his dad. They were close. According to his stepfather, Kimo would go over and have Sunday dinner with him every week. In a recent conversation, Kimo had mentioned he wanted to learn how to renovate houses like his stepfather. He thought this could be a potential career path, a chance to get away from selling drugs, and a way to stay clear from the danger. He knew that Hakeem Curry's crew was out to get him. He said to his stepfather, Daddy, they're going to kill me. There was talk on the streets about another informant who was supposed to testify in a Curry-related case. Who had been killed just two days before. So his stepfather brought Kimo on this job with them. It was their first time working together. They spent the morning demoing the interior of the house. It was chemo's job to run the pieces of wall and flooring out to the dumpster.

He had on a face mask and gloves to protect himself from any dust and debris. Around lunchtime, chemo's stepfather wanted to treat him to lunch for all his hard work. They walked to Cooper's, a little sandwich shop down the street from the house. According to chemo's stepfather, father. They were just laughing with each other, talking about this, that, and the other. After his stepfather got the sandwiches, Kimo told him he didn't have any cigarettes on him. Could they walk down the streets to buy some? They headed over one more block to a corner store. Chemo's stepfather ran inside and bought some Lucies. He came back out and handed chemo the cigarettes. Then, they walked about a block towards the house when someone who had been watching chemo. Stepped up behind them. Sean was sitting down in the Newark FBI office.

I had a desk right in front of the window, looking out at the river. And we always had the radio on because we were always monitoring what was happening. So we had the radio on, and somebody said, There's been a shooting.

Shootings weren't rare in Newark, but Sean had a bad feeling about this one.

Simultaneously, I'm getting a call from Switchboard, so our main number, coming down to my desk phone saying, Sean, there's a woman crying, hysterically crying. She needs to talk to you immediately. And I said, Well, who is it? What's happening?

It was chemo's mom.

She's screaming, They killed chemo. They killed chemo. He's dead. They've shot him. He's dead.

Sean was in shock.

She's screaming at me. And I said, What are you talking about? What are you talking about? And then right there, I was able to piece together that the call I had heard on the radio was the execution of chemo.

Just days before his 33rd birthday, chemo had been shot dead on a busy street in broad daylight. He was shot three times in the back of the head. Sean got in her car and raced down to the crime scene as quickly as she could.

By the time we got out there, they had already taken the body, but there was blood in the street. And there's just the markings of shell casings and that thing.

The police were still milling around the crime scene. Sean looked around for any potential witnesses.

Vacant, eerie, not a soul around, because That's what happens in Newark. If there's a shooting, everybody scatters. It was almost as if nothing had happened, which was the craziest feeling.

She told one of the Newark detectives on the scene that chemo had been her informant. As the consequences of that fact started to creep up on her.

The first lot I had is, what could I have done? Is it my fault? If you become an informant, we'll do everything in our power to protect you forever. Could I have protected him better? I'm responsible. You start having that conversation with yourself that I'm responsible for his death.

When Sean saw there was nothing she could do at the crime scene, her next stop was chemo step by this house. Where his family was waiting.

And I got to his father's house, and they let me in, but they didn't want me there. They were very accusatory of me that I'm the one who got him killed. This is all because of you. He worked for you. You couldn't protect him. He's dead.

Sean stood there and took it. She promised chemo's mother that she would do everything in her power to keep chemo safe. But apparently, her power did not extend that far. The man in front of Sean had just seen his stepson murdered. There was nothing she could say.

They're yelling, screaming, crying. And his father was just berated me. And talk about feeling awful. I said, I know he was a good person. I want you to know that because he was trying to do the right thing, and he was a good person. And they just weren't open to hearing anything I had to say.

They had just lost their son. I mean, what could you expect?

So I remember being in the house for a couple of minutes and just them yelling and crying and screaming and blaming it on me. And I thought, All right, this This is not going to be. It's not a good place to be right now.

Sean was asked to leave. We reached out to chemo's family, but they declined to participate. All these years later, Kimo's death still weighs heavy. In the days that followed, she kept thinking about chemo and his death, kept turning it over in her head.

That was a defining moment in my life, made me step back and really think, Am I the right person for this job? Am I really the person who's cut out to do this? Because I just put somebody in the crosshairs, and they were brutally murdered in broad daylight.

Sean was feeling a bit lost, but she knew one thing. She wanted to find chemo's killer and bring them to justice. Even though the shooting happened in Newark City Center, there was no camera coverage. Kimo's stepfather didn't get a good look at the shooter. The getaway was clean. Sean knew that whoever pulled the trigger was acting on behalf of Hakeem Curry. But after that, she had nothing. No one was talking. No one saw anything.

The Curry organization had people killed. They had people murdered. Those murders went unsolved. They were good at what they did. I was somewhat resolved to the fact that we know this group was behind it, but will we ever get to the shooter? I honestly, I didn't have much hope that we would.

Turning chemo, getting Seeing people who had committed crimes, civilians, anyone to talk to her about what they've seen, about what goes on in their world, that was central to Sean Brokos' work. The irony was She now needed someone else to risk her life, as chemo had done, to help her get to the bottom of his death. And while Sean Brokos was enduring the lowest point in her career, Paul Bergrin was rising to his highest. Run from the Bogey Man. Paul was far from Newark, where he represented drug kingpins, and murderers, even farther from the Manhattan Escort Agency, where he was on retainer, leaning on frightened escorts and babysitting a shirtless pimp. In 2004, Harbor Grin was standing in a military courtroom in Fort hood, Texas, representing a soldier named Javel Davis. On October 22nd, 2004, motion hearings were held for the cases of Sergeant Javel Davis and Specialist Charles Grainer. Two military police soldiers accused of abusing detainees at the Baghdad Correction Facility Abu Ghair. The defendant's name may not ring a bell, but the charges might. Javel was one of the American soldiers accused of torturing detainees at Abu Ghair Prison in Iraq. It was a shocking human tragedy and a global public relations nightmare for the US, with American military being exposed for committing human rights violations and war crimes, Ja'Val was named as one of the torturers.

He had five charges, including maltreatment of detainees. Detainees and assault. He was accused of stepping on the hands and feet of a group of handcuffed detainees, as well as falling on top of them with his full 220 pound weight. Paul had been contacted by JaVal's family. He said when he met with them, he felt a duty as someone who had been in the military himself to protect and defend his fellow soldier. And JaVal was a hometown boy. He'd grown up in Roselle, New Jersey, not that far from Newark.

He would start off every single time with, It is my honor and privilege, he would say, booming voice to defend JaVal Davis.

Stiepon Mastrovich was an expert witness for Paul Begrin. He's a professor of sociology at Texas A&M, and his main area of study is war crimes.

It's unusual to be doing war crimes. It's not a common theme in sociology.

Steeple and watched Paul present his case. He hit on the severity of what JaVal was charged with, or more accurately, how not severe it was.

He was guilty of dereliction of duty, conspiracy, maltreatment, but it ended up being a few seconds, less than a minute of stomping on some prisoner's toes. That was it. He didn't hit anybody. He didn't torture anybody. That was they had on him.

For Paul, it wasn't about the degree of the assault, but what could have driven JaVal to it. And for that, Paul turned to stay upon. Paul had brought him there to give a deposition about the conditions at Abu Ghraib, how a place like that could get someone like JaVal to do the things he did.

Look, this is the atmosphere, a very stressful, hellish environment where everyone is in constant fear. Nerves are on edge. People have PTSD. This is the context in which you have to look at JaVal Davis.

When he took the case, Paul actually traveled to Iraq to meet him, and he'd been digging around, and that led him to setting his sights much higher. According to Paul, almost immediately after speaking with JaVal, he knew he would have to reveal the White House and United States government's involvement. He didn't believe that JaVal should be held accountable for what he did at Appugreib. Paul thought JaVal was being scapegoated, that there were people at the top who gave the orders.

And he just wanted to go for jugular. He wanted to bring up the CIA presence and the interrogation rules and how they came from Donald Rumsfeld. And he was dropping these names. He wanted to bring him on the witness stand.

Not only Donald Rumsfeld, who was the Secretary of Defense at the time, he also wanted to force the top military commanders to testify. He even wanted to subpoena President George W. Bush. Paul Bergrin was taking his fight to the very top of the federal government.

He was like, Out of that movie, a few good men, Tom Cruise.

Paul argued his case in both the courtroom and the press.

I thought that I unequivocally proved beyond any shadow of a doubt whatsoever that Rumsfeld had knowledge of the interrogation techniques in this case.

When they were breaks in the action, Paul would go out and monolog to the reporters shoving mics in his face.

I think that JaVal Davis will be acquitted. I think that he'll be vindicated and that the individuals who are responsible for what happened in this particular case, that's high-level individuals within the United States government, hopefully will be brought to justice.

For someone who had beeniced out of the Assistant US Attorney's office and then indicted by that very office, this had to feel good. It was like that moment in a breakup where he got to show his ex exactly what they had given up. Paul was wrong about the outcome, though. Javal Davis was not vindicated, but Paul helped him get an incredibly light punishment. Javal pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and making false statements. He was given six months in military prison and given a bad conduct discharge. Nobody in the higher levels of government was prosecuted or held accountable. Paul would have to wait until another opportunity to expose the administration. While Paul Bergrin was talking loudly to reporters about military justice, Sean Brokers was sitting in relative silence. No one who knew anything valuable would talk to her about who had killed her informant.

Because nobody cooperated. They didn't cooperate against Curry or any of those folks because they knew if they did, they'd get killed. So I knew it was going to be a high hurdle finding the killer.

Months and months passed with no progress. As Sean came to grips with her new membership in a very exclusive but undistinguished club.

I mean, if you go through the history of cases, how many agents have lost their sources, there's probably not many of us. It's not a badge of honor, let me tell you that. It's an awful, awful, awful feeling that never goes away.

That feeling might never go away. But one day, Sean did get some good news. She was at the office when she got a phone call from the agent who was assigned to answer the phones.

He said, Hey, somebody wants to talk about chemo's murder.

He asked her if she wanted to talk to the guy. Sean said, Yes, absolutely.

So I take the call and he says, I know who killed chemo. And I'm thinking, Here we go. This is another bullshit rumor.

Sean was skeptical at first, but she was already reeling from having lost one informant. So what the caller said next made her snap to attention.

He goes, I know who did it. I know where it happened. I need to talk to you about it, but I am in danger. And I'm thinking, okay, all of a sudden, this got very real for me.

That's on the next episode of Criminal Attorney. Follow Criminal Attorney on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wndri. Com/survey. From WNDRI, this is episode 3 of 6 of Criminal Attorney. Criminal Attorney is hosted by me, Brandon James-Jinkins. This series is reported and written by Matthew Nelson. Senior producers are Chris Siegel and Stephanie Waukneam. Senior Story Editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Associate Producer is Malik Highway. Consulting Producer is David Fox, with additional writing from Neil Drumming. Fact Checking by Anika Robbins. Sound Design and Mixing by Jeff Smith. Audio Assistance by Daniel William-Gonzales. Sound Supervisor is Marcelino Villapondo. Music Supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Friesen Sync. Senior managing producer is Lata Pandia. Managing producer is Heather Baloga. Development producer is Olivia Webber. Executive producer is Matthew Nelson. Executive producers are Najri Eton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for WNDYRI. Wndyri.