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EPISODE 3: THE ALREADY GOOEY PLOT THICKENS

Previously, on Dumb and Dumber…

I received a call, ostensibly from American Express, telling me an unauthorized purchase of firearms had been made on a card in my name that I didn’t know I had. Given the serious nature of this situation, I was connected to the New York Office of the FBI. There, an FBI Special Agent told me that a New York Chase bank account in my name had been receiving millions of dollars from fraudulent activities. I was told I was a suspect in the criminal network. I was given directions on how to cooperate with the ongoing investigation, with an implied “or else.”

Once again, I found myself in bed at the end of March, when I received a call from…American Express. Again. It was the same tune, slightly different lyrics. Did I make a large purchase of firearms from Midway.com on March 4th? On an American Express card that I didn’t know I had? No? Oh, that is serious, we are connecting you to our emergency line.

This time, I spoke with a Special Agent Steve Rodriguez. He rattled off his badge number. I explained that I was already dealing with another Special Agent on essentially the same case. Special Agent Rodriguez expressed concern. The first agent, Camilla Esparza, should not have been answering the emergency fraud line. She herself was, in fact, under suspicion of being a compromised law enforcement agent. From now on, Rodriguez told me, you are to work only through me. He had me do another non-disclosure agreement (ANOTHER ALARM BELL should have sounded in my muddled brain, as this agreement was different from the previous one I had seen from the first FBI Special Agent).

He recited the same requirements that were expected of me: regular check-ins, periodic safety check calls, and reporting of any suspicious calls or observations. Neither of the purported agents I had dealt with struck me as being very professional, in their demeanor or in the material they presented. In almost any other situation or circumstance, I would have called “bullshit” on the whole thing and walked away. But I must admit that the explicit statements of threat, not just to me but also implicitly to my loved ones, were sufficient motivation to continue playing the game—whatever it might be—for now.

To this point, that was the puzzling part of this charade. I could not figure out what the “end game” was for the operation, if it was indeed a scam. I had not been encouraged to give up any more personal information than had already been apparently accessed. There had been no extortion or forced actions. There certainly had been intimidation, but it was relatively subtle. For weeks, I had been living under a cloud. These people had successfully planted the seeds of suspicion and fear. I remember walking to a regular Wallyhood editors’ meeting, wondering if I or my residence was being watched. I have a little cabin in the San Juans, and I made a point of going up there frequently to remove myself from proximity to loved ones in the city. While there, I locked the door at night (which I’ve never done). It’s a pretty creepy feeling.

My interaction with Special Agent Rodriguez lasted for weeks. He upped the proverbial ante by imposing new requirements that didn’t make a lot of sense: he wanted a list of my accounts and assets. No numbers (which would have really set off the alarm bells), just general descriptions, to cross-reference against the list that the FBI (ostensibly, allegedly) had. He also told me to prepare a “statement of innocence,” as he called it, that would be submitted to the special prosecutor for the case. This would ostensibly provide background on my character. The request/requirement felt quite weird; he basically wanted my life story, told in my own words. Having done public oral histories for much more benign work-related reasons in the past, this, in practice, was not a huge deal for me. But it seemed quite odd in this context. I started to prepare a draft, but the deal-breaker was when Rodriguez told me it had to be handwritten. Despite my wary willingness to play along with this part of the bizarre game, I refused to waste my time scribbling my life story in a day and age when nearly every legal document can be prepared and accepted digitally. There was no pushback.

(Despite comments from Special Agent Rodriguez about meeting with the special prosecutor to discuss details and progress on the alleged investigation, I never received any substantive updates on the case itself or my involvement in it. Considering the detailed stories of the perpetrators and the victims that had been shared with me initially, the lack of information that would be important—for me personally—was a telling absence.)

HAND-OFF TO YET ANOTHER “SPECIAL AGENT”

In the latter half of April, after weeks of back-and-forth between Special Agent Rodriguez and myself, he informed me that my case was being turned over to Supervisory Special Agent Natalie Castro. Rodriguez said this was because he was being assigned to field work on the investigation. My interactions with the new Supervisory Special Agent were fairly perfunctory, mainly my mandated check-ins. One morning, I had a medical appointment and informed her that I would be out of pocket for a while. When I didn’t check in frequently enough for her taste, she sent the following message:

“This is a compliance notice regarding your conditional release. You were explicitly instructed to submit a safety status report every two hours as a non-negotiable condition of your freedom. You are currently in violation of that directive. This lapse is being formally documented. You are required to submit your report immediately upon receipt of this message and resume full compliance with the reporting schedule without further delay. Failure to do so will be interpreted as a breach of your release conditions and may result in immediate escalation, including revocation of your conditional freedom and potential apprehension. This is your opportunity to correct the situation. Do not ignore it.”

This angered me, and I shot back: “Good lord, I’ve been in a medical procedure and just returned to my residence. I informed you of this first thing this morning.” She did not respond.

I had one live conversation with Special Agent Castro. On that call, she made another strange request: that I log every website I visit. I balked at this. I told her I visit hundreds of websites every day and that I would not do what she asked. She told me it was because the bad people were potentially monitoring my web traffic. If that was the concern, I told her, I would begin using my VPN (virtual private network) every time I went online. She did not push the issue.

In mid-May, Special Agent Castro informed me that she was assigned to “field operations” and may not be able to respond for a time. Nevertheless, she said, the “Telecommunications Unit” would be monitoring my check-ins for compliance. “I am counting on you to be on time on your safety reports, Mr. Shigenaka”.

That was the last time I heard from Special Agent Castro. As I am (mostly) a good soldier, I continued to file regular safety check-ins for another month. Toward the end of that period, my reporting dwindled to twice a day: when I awakened for the day, and when I went to bed at night. However, there were no responses at all during that time.

In mid-June, I stopped doing these check-ins altogether. I also called the Seattle Office of the FBI to make an appointment to come in and speak to a live Special Agent. When all of this began back in March and April, I told the first ostensible Special Agent that I wanted to check in with the local FBI office to make sure that this was all on the up-and-up. That agent had said that the Seattle office would not have knowledge of cases in New York, and besides, I was under a non-disclosure agreement. I had become sufficiently dubious and fed up with the routine I had been subjected to that I decided to contact the Seattle FBI authorities. When I called, I was told that I could file a report online at IC3.gov, or the office had walk-in hours from 9 am to 4 pm. I commented to the person at the FBI that, given the nature of this case involving people who claimed they were FBI Agents, I wanted to meet someone in person. I decided to make my way downtown to the FBI office on Third Avenue between World Cup games.

TO BE CONTINUED…