In 1979, Michael Raymond, a con man about to be sentenced for bilking some European investors out of $1 million, walked into the office of New York federal prosecutor John Siffert and offered to cut a deal.
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If Siffert would help him stay out of jail, Raymond would tell him about corruption in Chicago and elsewhere.
Siffert, offended by the brash suggestion from a man who had made a career of million-dollar swindles, ordered Raymond out of his office. Only a short time later did he learn that a colleague had bought Raymond`s pitch and helped him to get a reduced prison sentence.
”I was astonished that the office worked with him,” Siffert, now in private practice, said recently. ”He wanted to remain free and that`s dangerous. He has hurt many, many people.”
But many prosecutors have been willing to make deals with Raymond over the last 14 years.
Since the early 1970s, Raymond, alias Michael Burnett, has been playing both sides of the law–as a con man with a string of victims around the world and as a government informer skilled at winning the trust of crooked politicians and fellow con men.
While operating under the government`s protection, he has been linked to burglaries, massive fraud and theft schemes and even the mysterious disappearances of three people in Florida.
Today, Raymond, who has passed himself off as everything from a priest in Brazil to a securities dealer, is at the center of a major investigation into Chicago`s government.
Sources familiar with the case have portrayed him as the point man for a year-long FBI investigation that may lead to indictments of at least 12 local politicians and businessmen. The investigation focuses on allegations that Raymond paid bribes to officials who agreed to help him win contracts.
So far, four aldermen–Perry Hutchinson (9th), Clifford Kelley (20th), Wallace Davis Jr. (27th), William Beavers (7th)–reportedly have admitted that the FBI has questioned them about their relationships with Raymond and Systematic Recovery Service Inc., the collection agency he represented.
Davis has admitted taking $1,500 from Raymond, who used the name Burnett during at meeting in Raymond`s luxury apartment on the 15th floor of Lake Point Tower. Davis described the money as a campaign contribution.
Ald. Marian Humes (8th) said she believes she is a target of the investigation, but declined to discuss it.
During the investigation, sources said, Raymond wined and dined Chicago aldermen and other officials, ostensibly in an effort to win lucrative contracts to collect late parking ticket fines and other delinquent city fees. But Raymond was courting Chicago politicians before he began working with the FBI in July, 1984, sources close to the case said.
He went to work as a marketing representative for Systematic Recovery, a 16-year-old company headquartered in New York, in January, 1984, shortly after his release from a federal prison in New Jersey on fraud charges, one source said.
He convinced the company`s president and sole owner, Bernard Sandow, that he could win business in Chicago because he knew several politicians here and he began scouting out business in Chicago in late March, or early April, according to the source.
One of the first people he approached was businessman Clarence McClain, one of Mayor Harold Washington`s closest friends. Raymond flew McClain to New York in April, 1984, to visit Systematic`s offices, sources familiar with the incident said. Raymond also has claimed that he gave McClain money, which McClain denies.
In addition to McClain, Raymond was introduced around by other officials, including Michael Lambesis, a former Chicago police sergeant who heads the corruption unit of the Circuit Court of Cook County, the sources said.
In July, 1984, Raymond turned up in Nashville where he was arrested on gun charges after police there said he planned to burglarize the house of a wealthy businessman.
Though he was arrested by Nashville police, FBI agents quickly jumped into the case. And Raymond, who pleaded guilty, apparently offered information about his dealings in Chicago in exchange for a chance at a lenient sentence. Once Raymond agreed to become an informer in the case, he returned to Chicago and for the next year wore a tape-recorder seven days a week and recorded his discussions with city politicians, according to the sources.
Once again, as he did in 1979 in New York, Raymond had made a deal with the government.
Raymond`s career as a government informer dates back to 1971, when he appeared before a Senate committee wearing a cloth bag over his head to conceal his identity. Using the alias George White, he testified about his career as a con man. And after his testimony ended, the committee chairman commended him.
Shortly after the hearing, The New York Times and The Miami News revealed that White was really Raymond.
The government, to protect his life, placed Raymond in a witness protection program, and gave him a new name–Michael Burnett.
It is not clear if he remained in the program. But friends and associates say that over the next fews years he continued his career as a con man and he even attracted some publicity for his role in three unsolved murders in Florida.
In 1974 Raymond, then known as Burnett, began spending time with Adelaide Stiles, a wealthy, 66-year-old former Ft. Lauderdale newspaper columnist.
Stiles was last seen getting into a car with Raymond on July 21, 1975, headed, she had told friends, on a vacation to the Bahamas and Europe.
Before she had left, Stiles had withdrawn most of her checking and savings account money. Part of that money had been exchanged for a cashier`s check which subsequently was endorsed by a firm reportedly owned by Raymond.
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Though Stiles` body was never found, her suitcase was found in the Florida Keys and police in Ft. Lauderdale believe she is dead.
A 1976 book on the witness protection program, The Alias Program, by CBS correspondent Fred Graham, quoted Ft. Lauderdale police as saying Raymond, under his alias of Burnett, was their prime suspect.
The book, as well as other published accounts of Raymond`s career, have also raised questions about whether he had a role in the similar disappearance of Max Bussard, a former business partner, and of Ann Sessa, a former girlfriend.
Despite these reports, Raymond continued to be an informer for the FBI throughout the 1970s, though agents say they tried to keep a close watch on him.
”It`s like most informants,” one law enforcement official said. ”They help you out and then get involved in other criminal activities, and when they get in trouble, they say `hey, you owe me one.` ”
In 1974, Bernard Howard, of Yonkers, N.Y., approached Raymond and laid out a plan to steal $6 million from the city of Los Angeles by cashing forged city checks. Howard said the first batch of checks had already been stolen.
Raymond agreed to help launder the proceeds through banks in New York, Chicago, the Bahamas and Europe. Shortly after agreeing to become Howard`s partner, Raymond got in touch with Los Angeles officials.
Howard and another partner were arrested in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Raymond got a $45,000 reward from the city of Los Angeles.
In 1979, Raymond pleaded guilty to charges in New York that he sold $1.5 million in stolen securities and that he defrauded European investors through a complicated scheme involving cashier`s checks drawn on a phony bank in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean.
Earlier, on the day he was to go to trial in that case, he fled the U.S. on a flight to the Bahamas, where federal authorities say he was planning to meet with fugitive financier Robert Vesco. However, the FBI and Bahamian officials apprehended him at the airport and put him on a return flight to New York.
In that case, after agreeing to cooperate with federal prosecutors on corruption investigations, Raymond served only 16 months of an eight-year sentence.
During that prison stay, one of Raymond`s lawyers, Burton Levey, said he talked his way into an easy job as a prison official`s cook and would sometimes sleep in the official`s office.
Raymond began serving his sentence in August, 1982, and was released in December, 1983, just weeks before he went to work for Systematic Recovery.