Michael Raymond, the undercover informant in a federal investigation of Chicago corruption, once plotted to steal money from Rev. Jesse Jackson`s presidential campaign by posing as a high-rolling political fundraiser, a former accomplice says.
That was only one of the schemes that the portly swindler and murder suspect tried to pull off in the time between his release from federal prison in late 1983 and the beginning of his Chicago work for the FBI in mid-1984, according to the accomplice, Vernon Frazier.
The 34-year-old Frazier, an admitted puppet of the more experienced Raymond, recounted a seven-month whirlwind of shady activity from Chicago to Cincinnati to New York as they attempted to steal from banks, defraud businesses, sweet-talk the president of Chicago`s Columbia College and promote a fight between boxers Aaron Pryor and Ray ”Boom Boom” Mancini.
Their association ended in Nashville on July 11, 1984, when Raymond–who had tricked countless victims during more than 30 years of crime–was himself caught in a trap set by Frazier and the FBI.
Arrested while preparing to rob the home of a wealthy businessman, Raymond offered to lead the FBI to corrupt public officials. The investigation has led to the indictment of 11 people in New York and a grand jury investigation of at least 10 in Chicago.
Frazier`s story, told in a series of interviews in a California jail and independently confirmed, adds a new chapter to Raymond`s criminal biography. Though his past frauds and swindles on three continents have been widely reported, little had been known about his activities in the months before the FBI wired him for sound to record his financial dealings with Chicago politicians. The exact circumstances leading to his Nashville arrest had been unknown, as well.
Raymond`s attorney, William Aronwald, said: ”Frazier is obviously a person of dubious credibility. Whether what Mr. Frazier says is true or not has absolutely no bearing on what Mr. Raymond has done for the federal government.”
Three months before Raymond`s arrest, Frazier said, he and Raymond marched into Jackson`s presidential campaign office in Nashville and boasted that they could raise $1 millon to $2 million in only 30 days through a nationwide telephone solicitation.
Actually, Frazier said, they planned to keep most of the money.
Lorna Harris, the office manager, recalled in a telephone interview that she set up a meeting of Frazier and a man matching Raymond`s description with Dr. Michael D`Andrea, state coordinator of the Jackson campaign, in April, 1984.
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”They wanted us to do something bizzare like install 200 phones,” said Harris, who remembered the promised proceeds as closer to $250,000 than $2 million.
D`Andrea wasn`t impressed. His reaction, Harris said, was, ”Where did you find these people? They are full of it.”
Frazier said the campaign ripoff was one of several crimes he and Raymond concocted the previous year while in the federal penetentiary in Texarkana, Tex. Frazier, who was doing time for a small-time credit card scam, said he was impressed as Raymond, 23 years his senior, bragged of committing several murders and multimillion-dollar stock swindles.
”He never worked at all in prison,” Frazier said. ”All he did was read the Wall Street Journal.”
Frazier said Raymond taught him to read the stock market tables and offered to take him on as a junior partner in crime.
”He wanted to work with a black guy,” recalled Frazier, who is black.
”He figured a lot of whites would give money to a black because they think we`re all uneducated.”
Raymond left Texarkana Dec. 16, 1983–in a limousine, Frazier says. Frazier left a month later. He immediately called Raymond, who put him on a $600-a-week retainer and sent him to Nashville, where Frazier had relatives, to look for people to con and rob.
”I was almost like a puppet,” Frazier said. ”He`d call me and say,
`There`s a plane ticket waiting for you. Get going.` I was a puppet on a string.”
In February, Frazier recounted, Raymond flew him to New York and bought him a new wardrobe at an exclusive haberdasher. He then sent his spruced-up pupil to Nashville and Chicago to drum up government business for his company, Systematic Recovery Service Inc., a New York bill-collection agency.
In Nashville, Frazier set up an interview with city personnel director Beverly Cleckner, who remembers Raymond as ”Michael Burnett,” an alias he used frequently. Raymond asked for a contract collecting overdue parking tickets, but Cleckner told him she wasn`t interested, Cleckner recalled.
In Chicago, Frazier called on people he`d known when he worked for the Chicago Public Library as a community relations aide in the late 1970s. One of them was John Moore, who had become associate dean of student affairs at Columbia College.
”Vernon came by one day with someone he said was a businessman,” Moore recalled. ”I believe he said his name was Michael, and when I saw Raymond`s picture in the papers a few months ago, it did look like the same guy.
”He said they wanted to know who to see if you wanted to do business with the city. I told him anyone who reads the newspapers knows that the person with clout in City Hall is Clarence McClain.”
McClain had resigned the previous December as a top aide to Mayor Harold Washington, but, by many accounts, he continued to wield influence in the administration. McClain reportedly is a target of the grand jury investigation Raymond inspired.
Moore then introduced the pair to the college`s president, Mike Alexandroff.
”They asked about my relationship with the mayor,” said Alexandroff,
”and I remember replying that I had no relationship other than a sympathetic one.”
Frazier said he and Raymond also met with Tom Blackwell, the library`s director of transportation. Blackwell said he met with Frazier but not with Raymond.
”Vernon told me he was working for this big guy in New York who wanted to meet McClain because he wanted to get a contract collecting parking tickets,” Blackwell said. ”He didn`t come right out and say what he wanted to do was illegal, but he didn`t say it was legal, either. I told him I don`t get involved in that.”
Frazier claimed he and Raymond flew to Cincinnati in June, 1984, to try to promote a fight between Pryor, then the International Boxing Federation`s junior welterweight champion, and Mancini, who had just been dethroned as the World Boxing Association`s lightweight champ.
Pryor`s manager, Buddy LaRosa, could not be reached for comment and Mancini`s manager, David Wolf, said he doesn`t remember the two.
During their six-month partnership, Frazier said, he and Raymond planned a number of crimes: a jewelry store robbery in a Chicago suburb, a stock theft from a Chicago bank, a swindle of an eyeglass company in Dallas. In some cases, Frazier`s allegations were denied by people he identified as participants in the schemes. In others, there was no evidence to back up his story.
But law enforcement authorities in Nashville do confirm that Frazier provided the tip that led to Raymond`s arrest there in July, 1984–an arrest that led to his undercover activity in Chicago.
After working for Raymond for a few months, Frazier said, he began to get scared. ”I was in too deep, and I decided to come out of the water,” he said.
So he called the FBI and offered to help nail his mentor.
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According to authorities, an undercover agent offered to sell Raymond stolen securities. Frazier`s story is somewhat different: He says the sting was robbing a Nashville bank with the help of an insider who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
Whatever the case, Raymond needed cash–either to pay for the stolen bonds or to pay the phony bank insider. Frazier said he suggested robbing a home where his mother worked as a maid.
On the day of the robbery attempt, Frazier said, he, Raymond and Alan Varley, a young friend from their prison days, loaded a rented van with guns and parked it at a shopping center near the house they intended to rob.
Raymond sent Frazier to check on the house, Frazier said. Instead, Frazier said, he went to the police who were staking out the area. They nabbed Raymond and Varley in the van.
Varley was sent back to prison. Frazier went free, but later was imprisoned on a bad-check charge.
Only Raymond managed to stay out of jail.