Transcript of No Witness No Case | 4

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Sean Brokos was in the FBI restroom, sitting across from Anthony Young. Anthony was a stocky black guy in his early 30s with a shaved head. And that day, he seemed on edge.

And we're sitting down in the arrest room, and he's saying, I know who did it. I was there.

Sean had waited 10 months for any information about chemo McCrae's murder. But before Anthony was willing to go any further, before he was willing to give Sean information she could act on, Anthony wanted something in return.

He said, Look, the group is trying to out me. They're going to kill me, and I want to cooperate with you. So here's the irony, right? So you can make me safe.

Sean agreed that she'd keep Anthony safe, but she needed more details. She needed to know exactly what went down. Sean had been skeptical when Anthony Young first called in. But as Anthony talked, she quickly realized he was for real.

And he's giving us a very graphic description to the point where we knew he was really there. He wasn't just bullshitting us. This wasn't just a story. We could tell that he was on scene in some capacity. He diagramed it, gave us so many tidbits that the general public wouldn't know.

But Anthony did. He said that he knew all of this because he was the one driving the getaway car.

He said, Yeah, I remember making sure he was dead and we stood over his body, and he's laying there with a cigarette still between his fingers and his desk mask. And if you look at the crime scene photos, that's exactly what it was.

The kinds of details coming from Anthony were astounding. Sean and her team all had the same thought.

He's our shooter. We all knew there was no way you have that level of detail. He said he was the getaway driver. Obviously, he was the shooter. He got into the getaway car.

Later on, Jihas informants confirmed Sean's hunch that Anthony Young was the killer. He'd eventually confessed and even give her a motive. He said part of the reason he agreed to the hit was because he wanted to use the money to go to Los Angeles for the NBA All our game that year. You're sat a matter of feet away from the man who put a bullet in his head. That's our reporter, Matthew Nelson. Yes. What is that like for you?

Yeah, it's like a bit of climbing into bed with the devil.

So now, Sean Hadam, the guy who killed chemo.

I'm grateful for Anthony coming forward for telling the story, but also just at at some point, looking at him across the table with absolute pure hatred and disdain for everything he stood for. I think that was the hardest part because this was business.

But that day when Anthony Young first came into the FBI office, he had a lot to say about the lead up to Kimo's murder. In November of 2003, the week after Thanksgiving, Hakeem Curry assembled his crew. He told everyone that there was a problem. They had a snitch. It It was a low-level guy named Kimo McCrae. As they stood there, a Mercedes pulled up and out-hopped Paul Bergrin. He told them that with the information Kimo had, if he testified against Will Baskerville, He was never coming home. He told the gang how they should solve this problem. No chemo, no case. Paul pointed his finger in the air, walked back to his luxury car, and drove off. In this moment, everything about her investigation into chemo's murder changed.

We knew that this now is a Bergen investigation.

In giving the gang their marching orders, Paul Bergrin had given Sean and her team theirs. She had a new big fish to catch. From WNDYR. I'm Brandon Jinks-Jinkins, and this is Criminal Attorneys. We got crooked politicians looking over shoulders in opposite position. Run, better run, better run, run from the bogeyman. This is episode four. No Witness, No Case. Around the time, Anthony Young came into the FBI office and confessed to shooting chemo. Ron Sperling was deep in the production of his reality TV show about New York Confidential. Ron had been filming for months. He had hours and hours of tape. He was sitting on gold, and he knew it. He set up meetings with interested television networks.

And I showed them that sizzle reel. I'm watching the executives watching the sizzle reel. I'll never forget. Three minutes in, they were like, Are you kidding? This is insane. This is great. This is priceless.

Ron was getting exactly the reaction he'd hoped for. From where he sat, it looked like his show was going to be a hit. He'd make back the money he spent funding it out of his own pocket and more. One of the execs asked Ron to share the first six episodes once he put them together. After that, they would make their decision.

I was like, Let me just explain something to you guys. I've been in this place from day one. If you want to put money on the table, I'm more than happy to listen. But this This isn't going to be around for years.

He didn't want to waste time putting cuts together when the clock was ticking.

Just by the drugs, the personalities, the Paul Bergrin's of the world, the Jason Hills of the world, it's going to implode. The only question is when.

That when came sooner than Ron expected. He and his crew showed up to New York Confidential to shoot some night scenes. As they were grabbing their gear and loading in, Ron noticed something on the block.

There's the old fake Con Edison truck, which is the power company in New York, Con Edison. So the fake truck, they're right outside the door.

Ron and his crew knew exactly what the truck was doing there.

My crew guys were like, Oh, that's the cops right there.

Ron headed inside and let the owners know what was waiting for them.

And I'm like, You do know the cops are right outside your front door. Like, literally right outside your front door.

Ron could tell the party was coming to an end at New York Confidential. Jason Itzler and the others inside running the joint had considerably more at stake, and that included Hobard Waldrup.

It was a lot of fun. It was sexy, sexy, sexy girl.

He didn't have an official job title. He was the guy who made sure that all the escorts were safe, everyone paid up, and things ran smoothly. Hobard was a fixer. He was the muscle. He was also an accomplished artist. He painted one of the murals at New York Confidential. Confidential, and he was Jason Itzler's right-hand man. To look the part, Paul and Jason put Hobart in a new suit. It was custom-made, well-fitting, ideal for that polish, classic New York Confidential vibe. Hobard was with a coworker when one of them got a call. The person calling said nobody at New York Confidential was picking up. Hobard knew this was not a good sign. According to an article in New York magazine, he logged on to a webcam security camera that Jason had installed, and he saw them. The police officers were going through the place, tearing it apart. They were gathering the ledgers and files on all the clients. He saw a handful of people sitting on the couch waiting to be taken down to the station. And when the police came for Hobart- You know, some of the inmates were making jokes that somebody's attorney had gotten arrested.

They thought I was an attorney. There's not many people go to jail wearing a suit and tie. You know what I mean?

Jason Itzler was arrested. Arrested. Natalia was arrested as well. They were all facing serious charges and the potential for a lot of jail time. Still, Hobart had one good reason not to panic. After a night in the cells, he was taken across town to the courthouse. Knowing that he had the best defense attorney on his side.

You know, at my arrangement thinking, okay, Paul Begrin is going to come in the door at any moment.

Hobard knew Paul was on retainer for this exact situation. To make troubles like this go away. But Holbert waited and waited. He says Paul Begrin never showed. Holbert had his girlfriend call Paul up to find out what the hell was going on.

He wants 10 grand to defend me to start with. And I said, Hell, no, because he still won't come. You cannot trust this guy. Thirty days go past, still no one shows up. Judge postpones, Okay, well, give him another 30 days. You have counsel? Yes, of course.

No one ever showed up. Hobart sat in Rikers Island for eight months. During that time, a narrative solidified in his mind about how he'd been thrown under the bus.

I felt serious, like I'm being set up to take the fall, and they're going to point their fingers and say, It was all the Black dudes idea. That Black guy in his expensive suit, he's the one.

After the raid in the arrest, journalist Mark Jacobson was writing a story about New York Confidential. But the more he reported on it, the more he began to suspect that the better story might be the one about its increasingly infamous lawyer. So he put in an interview request with Paul. Paul was down to meet, but then he threw Mark a curveball.

I get this phone call from Paul Bergrin out of nowhere. He says, I'll meet with you, but I'm going to medical school now, so it's got to be up near Mount Sinai. Can you do that? I said, Yeah, whatever you want, man.

Mark thought, medical school? Weird. He wondered how Paul had the time to do all that work and also defend his clients. Mark drove up to meet Paul outside the pale brick campus of the famous New York hospital. When Paul showed, he wore a fancy blue suit and a bright red tie. His hair was slicked back and dye jet black.

He's a streetwise guy. He's really sharp. He's like Sam Spade or something like that.

But he didn't look like a med student. He looked more like the hardboiled private detective from the Maltese Falcon. At their meeting, Paul told Mark that he'd grown tired of law. He said that he could better help people in his community if he was a doctor.

The way he presented it was, it wasn't like his first semester. He'd been going to medical school for a period of time. You'd figured that people wouldn't... If he was a third-year medical student, he still had a law practice.

But Mark wasn't there to talk about med school or Paul's newfound commitment to the Hippocratic Oath. Mark wanted to know more about New York Confidential. Paul obliged.

And is talking about this, and he's giving me the telephone numbers of all the girls, if I want to talk to them.

Paul shared a few seedy stories.

This is boy talk, crap But he seemed distracted. We're having this conversation. He's looking at his watch because now he's got to get there in time for his class, his medical school class. And I said, Okay, man, we could talk again, blah, blah. It's fine. You have to go, go.

Paul hurried off to his class. Mark was left with very little to go on, journalistically speaking. But he kept reporting. And that's when he found out something surprising from a source. Paul Bergrin was never enrolled at Mount Sinai.

It was completely made up. Why would you make up a story like that?

Paul had lied to Mark about medical school, but maybe he was getting tired of law because Paul Bergrin's role at New York Confidential was not over. It was evolving. When Holbert Waldrup got out of jail, he got in touch with Jason Itzler. Jason told him the shocking news.

Paul Burgran is taking a soul New York Confidential from me.

New York Confidential was not shut down for good the day the cops came busting through the front doors and carting its employees off to jail. It was merely under new management. Just three days after the raid, Paul had taken the entire business, the escorts, the clients, the books, and set up shop at a new location in Kips Bay on Manhattan's East Side. They occupied three floors, and he had totally frozen Jason out of the business he had created.

It's not like he was going to give Jason the money when Jason got out of jail. No, no, no, no. It doesn't work like that.

Paul had barely bothered to tweak the name of the business. It was now called New York Confident Confidential, Escorts, Inc. One thing that I thought is that there's no honor among these.

There is none.

Something else was different. With Jason Itzler out of the way, Paul Bergrin couldn't help but become the de facto face of the outfit. Surely after he reopened New York Confidential, Excuse me, New York Confidential Escorts, Inc. A reporter for the The New York Post wrote a story with the headline Man of the Cat House Pim's Lawyer Takes Rains. The article notes that a revolving cast of characters could be seen buzzing around the new location at all hours. There were beautiful, glamorous women and guys who looked like they just stepped off the trading floor on Wall Street. So the clientele was similar, but the operation was notably less clandestine. One resident of the building complained about stumbling into a couple having sex in the hallway. Another says, It's a family building, not a red-like district building. And it's pretty obvious what's going on here. The new New York Confidential only lasted a matter of weeks before it folded. Business wasn't great, and the company dissolved, which makes sense with all the negative attention the place was getting. Paul Bergrin denied any involvement. That was, of course, a lie. And it wasn't just reporters from the New York Post who could see through it.

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Friends from the For Sean Brokos, chemo's death cast a shadow over every day and everything.

You start thinking, Am I doing everything I can? I thought, I've lost my ability to see things clearly. I no longer know what I'm doing. And it became a very helpless feeling. And that's not something you want to have on the job. And I really wrestled with that. Could I have done better? Should I have done better? What could I have done better?

But Sean didn't have a chance to stop. Not when she was in the middle of an investigation, because Sean was once again sitting across from someone who had information about Paul Begrin. This time, it was a woman.

As with all things married, it was never straightforward.

Mary is not her real name. She's still alive, so Sean can't talk about her in detail. We don't even know what she looks like. She had come to the FBI office because she had some information she thought the FBI could use about Paul Begrin. And his money laundering operation.

She initially told us that this was all through her boyfriend providing this information.

But Sean quickly learned that Mary was involved herself.

She also had some firsthand information and was able to tell us that Bergen was involved with selling drugs and helping to launder money.

As an FBI agent, Sean knew informants sometimes had secret or conflicting agendas of their own. Even chemo had lied to It was difficult to know who to trust.

I think the first rule of operating an informant is you never take anything they say at face value.

But Sean had to keep doing the job the way she knew how to do it. Trust was a big part of the hustle. So Sean asked her a couple questions about Mary's information.

Can you prove this? I mean, your word is not going to suffice. Can you wear a recording device? Can you go in and have these conversations? Can you try and launder money?

Turns out she could.

That's where she shined.

Just like chemo, Mary was wired up and given a set of instructions, like take this money to Paul Bergrin. Tell him it's drug money.

She was great. She was able to get into Bergrin. She could talk the talk. She has this drug money that she's making, and she needs to launder it, and we'd send her in the office.

Paul's actual legal office. The money she gave Paul there would get put through a shell company that he set up. When it came back, it was clean. No way to trace it. No way to tell it had been dirty.

And we laundered, I don't know how many thousands of dollars. We were laundering 5, 10, $20,000 at a time.

And this was absolutely huge for Sean's case. She was gathering on tape hard proof that Paul wasn't just a Newark lawyer. Sean was building a case against Paul using the RICO Act. Rico stands for Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. Prosecutors in the 1970s started using Riko to take down crime syndicates like the Gambino crime family and the Hell's Angels. But you might recognize it today from other big name trials like Young Thug and former President Donald Trump Essentially, they wanted to show that Paul was the boss. He ran an organization that was responsible for all the crimes, the drugs, witness tampering, and most importantly for Sean, murder. But this time around, with this confidential informant, Sean wasn't taking any chances. She wanted to avoid another chemo situation in many ways.

I would double-check everything. I would make sure that we didn't just have one recording device on her. We had two or three in case there was any confusion or one didn't work.

Some days, Mary would go in to see Paul on one of these FBI-rigged money laundering exchanges, and things wouldn't go as planned.

He would physically grab her.

Mary was wired, but Paul wasn't looking for a recording device. That's not why he was filling her up.

He would ask her to lift up her shirt. He wanted to see her chest. He was just very handsy with her.

Sean listened to see if Mary would use her safe word, if she'd have to barge in. But Mary played it cool. It was painful for Sean to listen to. She'd put Mary in this position. Sean felt her blood pressure rising.

He thinks he's entitled to just grope her and treat her like a piece of shit just because she's a female. He thought he was entitled to everything, and he thought he could do whatever he wanted and that the law didn't pertain to him.

Sean really wanted to nail Paul, and with the evidence she'd gotten through Mary, it seemed like she might be able to. Mary had even become friends with his longtime girlfriend, Yolanda Hauragui. Paul was still married to his wife, but shared a condo with Yolanda. Paula and Yolanda weren't just romantic and domestic partners. They owned a restaurant in Newark named Isabella's, a restaurant that was suspected of being a drug front. Yolanda ran the place. With Mary's help, Sean John hoped to flip Yolanda and get her to testify against her boyfriend. The plan was to send Mary to Yolanda with a pile of cash and see if she could get her to launder it through the restaurant.

Yolanda agreed, and we did a recording Mary set up a meeting with Yolanda at a local hair salon.

Yolanda got her hair done while they chatted about laundering $10,000 Mary had gotten from the FBI.

Yolanda will then turn around and write a check from the restaurant to Mary for, let's just say, cleaning expenses or equipment purchase, something that makes it look like clean money.

But the salon was noisy, and the recording of their conversation wasn't very clear.

My gut was telling me as soon as I heard the recording, there was obviously another piece of the conversation I had missed.

Listening back, Sean thought she caught Mary going off script. Mary had said, Hey, can you hold this money for me, Yolanda? I'll come back and get it in a couple of days. Yolanda was supposed to turn the dirty money into a check, but it never happened. Days went by, then weeks, no word, and no clean money. Sean didn't know what was taking so long. She finally decided to force the issue with Mary.

I'll never forget. We scooped her up. I said, You have a conversation with Yolanda right now.

She coached Mary to demand the money back from Yolanda. Sean wired Mary up and sent her back in. Sean listened while Mary and Yolanda talked, and then Mary asked the question, What is the clock time on that money?

The conversation caught Yolanda off guard. She was confused by it because it's Mary trying to to force a conversation for something that doesn't make sense. Yolanda said, I gave you that money back.

Sean realized she'd gotten played by her informant yet again.

She lied and actually pocketed the money. Not surprising, but it's gut-wrenching.

They drove Mary straight to the FBI offices.

We brought her right down to the arrest room. I said, You stole that money. And she admitted to it.

Sean wanted to arrest Mary on the spot. She was furious, but the team decided against Sean had gotten so much information from Mary. She was critical in their effort to build a money laundering case against Paul Begrin, which she figured would show that Paul was running a legal activity out of his office. But now, all that evidence was pretty much unusable. How could Mary ever be a credible witness?

I then had to tell the prosecutors, and it's like that almost negated everything else she did. And I thought, all these months and over a year of all this hard work, and it's all gone because she's no longer credible. And that was devastating.

Sean wouldn't be able to use anything she got from Mary in court. That angle was totally blown. Sean was still reeling from this massive setback when she got a surprising tip.

I'm on the phone in my squad area, FBI Newark. A detective with NYPD called me, and he said, We've got to talk about Paul Bergrin. I said, What do you mean? And I'm thinking, Who is this guy? And is this just a bunch of bullshit?

The New York Detective on the other end of the line wanted to talk to Sean about New York Confidential. The cop told her the whole story, Paul's involvement with Jason, the raid, and Paul taking the reins at New York Confidential.

But there were all kinds of crazy stories from this brothel. I mean, some of the things, just the craziest things I've ever heard. He would lock his office door, have sex right there in his office, not just occasionally, but very frequently. He was keeping the women in business. He kept it afloat. He was comping public officials. Well, who does that? What defense attorney takes over a brothel?

When she hung up the phone, Sean was re-energized. Running an illegal escort service, this was exactly what she needed to show that Paul was at the helm of a criminal empire. This could be the key to taking Paul down. It's sticking him with chemo's murder.

And so we were able to fold that into our investigation.

And pretty soon, that investigation would have Paul feeling the heat. Run from the bogeyman. Later that fall, John Edwards Tiffany said he was working when Paul Bergrin came into his office.

And he says, Hey, brother, you got a second?

Earlier that year, Paul had given John an office in the same building he worked in, the Robert Treat Center in downtown Newark. It was a beautiful building with murals on the walls. All he would have to do is help Paul out every once in a while, maybe cover a case or two, represent a co-defendant. Paul said John could use his staff and didn't have to pay rent. It was the thing you do for a friend, a very loyal friend. So when Paul requested to talk, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I said, Sure. We walked down the hall and he goes, Let's go up to the roof.

Now, that was unusual. Usually, the pair were talking in an office or a conference room.

He wants to be up on the roof because he wants to have ultimate privacy.

Clearly, something was up, and it was serious.

There's no furniture. It's a gravel-type roof. You're up there. I mean, you're having a conversation that it's going to be private. You got to discuss the situation. You're by yourself. You're free from scratch. There's no furniture out there. It's like driving out to a remote wooded place and meeting somebody.

The lights of the city shone beneath them, the office blocks, the red brick housing projects, and the Passaic River slowly snaking out to the New York Harbor.

He goes, Listen, I have a headache, and maybe you can help me out.

Paul explained that a New York police officer had been charged for soliciting a prostitute at New York Confidential.

And he had to appear in criminal court in New York next couple of days.

This was a problem for Paul. He was now much more than just a lawyer when it came to New York Confidential, and he could be implicated in the tangle of felonies that came with it. Paul wanted to make this go away before it turned into something bigger, but he couldn't represent the cop himself. His association with New York Confidential was already drawing too much attention. He needed someone else to take care of this case.

And Paul says, Do you know anybody we can send there? This really wouldn't be a good look.

John recommended a lawyer he'd worked with in the past. He was a good guy. John trusted him. When they left the roof that evening and went back downstairs, John called his friend who took over the case for Paul. John didn't hear about it again until a few months later, during the holidays. His lawyer friend called to give him some news. The case against a police officer was being dismissed.

I'm thinking this is the easiest appearance and easiest money I've ever made.

But then his friend told him what happened next.

As soon as they walked out of the courtroom, bang. The A Newark police officer was hit with a grand jury subpoena to testify for the grand jury on an ongoing investigation regarding New York Confidential.

Ongoing investigation? That did not sound good to John. It looked like the feds were involved in this case.

They're investing money, and it is likely that at some point down the road, some indictment is going to come down, and it may very well involve Paul.

The cop's testimony would presumably point to Paul as the real culprit.

That's when I knew the shit hit the fan in a a significant way.

The next time John got a chance to talk to Paul was at the office Christmas party. Paul at this party every year. This time, he'd reserved a restaurant in Little Italy, not too far from the New York Confidential off. People were milling about, having drinks, having a good time. The office staff had been invited, other local attorneys, and clients, too.

There were people that Paul mixed with that he had maybe represented, but we're not talking about gangbangers or former alleged unlicensed pharmacists. You know what I mean?

John saw Paul across the room. That night, he wasn't wearing one of his signature designer suits. Instead, he had on a brown leather biker jacket.

It was a little bit more cash, but certainly right and tight. That's Paul.

As soon as he got the chance, John pulled Paul to the side to tell him that the newer cop had been subpoenaed. A big case was coming.

Paul sitting there going, Well, maybe this, maybe that, trying to surmise. I said, No, no, no, no. This is a headache. He was trying to downplay it a little bit, and I was trying to explain to him, I don't think this is anything to downplay. This is problematic.

They kept getting interrupted by the partygoers.

And people are having a good time. Hey, Paul, how are you doing? Hey, thanks. Great. His outward demeanor is not one of panic. He certainly is serious, but he's not coming apart at the seams. And it was almost like he seemed unmoved. It was like there was no reaction. I mean, if the guy ever played poker, he'd probably be a world champion.

John left Paul with one last piece of advice.

I said, Listen, you may want to consult a lawyer to get some guidance.

Paul was vulnerable on both sides of the river. He was knee-deep in money laundering in Newark and promoting prostitution in Manhattan. The feds were at his heels. Loyalty was everything to Paul, but everyone has a price, even someone very, very close to him.

We were able to get her on board, and we learned from her how this really worked, who the individuals were that Bergen worked with. And then we got to see the world of how big this really was.

That's on the next episode of Criminal Attorney.

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From WNDRI, this is episode 4 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 Wachneam. Senior Story Editor is Rachel B. Doyle, Associate producer is Malikai Wade. Consulting producer is David Fox, with additional writing from Neil Drumming. Fact-checking by Anika Roberts. Sound Design and Mixing by Jeff Schmidt. Audio Assistance by Daniel William-Gonzales. Sound Supervisor is Marcelino Villapondo. Music Supervisor is Scott Velosquez for FreeSance Inc. Senior Managing producer is Lata Pandia. Managing producer is Heather Baloga. Development producer is Olivia Webber. Executive producer is Matthew Nelson. Executive The producers are Najri Eton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for WNDYRI.

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