Podcast - Dangers of Climbing the Ladder

Dan Small: For crimes done in secret, like corruption or drug dealing, sometimes the only way to get to the people at the top is to climb up the ladder, one rung, one defendant, at a time. Catch someone lower down and then pressure them to turn and testify against the next step up the ladder. George Collatos was a shining example of both the opportunities and the dangers of this approach. 

The key witness in our extortion trial against Ted Anzalone that we've been talking about in the past several episodes, Collatos was a character. Sometimes a con man, sometimes a city employee. He'd worked for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, or BRA, and was a fundraiser for the mayor and a friend of Anzalone. 

He was also a crook. The first step in his downfall was extorting cash from a building contractor wanting to do business with the BRA. Unfortunately for Collatos, the contractor was cooperating with the government. When the FBI moved in to arrest Collatos in the Dedham Motel parking lot where he had accepted the cash bribe, Collatos led them on a high-speed chase. The $12,500 in marked money was found in a ditch 10 feet from Collatos' car at the end of the chase. He pled guilty to extortion and went to jail.

But the culture of omertà — of silence — was strong in the corrupt Boston administration at the time. Corruption prosecutions were usually one-offs, where the government got its conviction and then moved on, moved elsewhere. If you kept your mouth shut, your friends in the government would take care of you. Collatos was a prime example. Even though he had pled guilty to corrupting his public office to extort money, the Boston Retirement Board allowed him to keep his public pension. Thank you for your good service. 

In the public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, we knew that we had to break that culture of silence. Corruption is rarely a one-time incident. We had no illusions that if we were lucky enough to catch someone taking a bribe or paying a bribee, that was the only time it had ever happened. So when we did catch someone and convict them, rather than move on and let them go their merry way when the case was done, we would subpoena them back to the grand jury and ask questions about other crimes and other defendants.

Some people criticize this as unduly harsh. After all, the person had been convicted and paid their dues, so why not just leave them alone? But generally, we weren't looking to revisit the conviction, nor were we looking for that defendant to incriminate themselves. We wanted to know what else they knew, who else they know, what other crimes or targets they could tell us about. If the defendant refused to answer based on their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, which often happened, we'd get an immunity order from the court and compel them to testify. 

What scared the corrupt officials the most was the next step: when the defendant testified under court order. If they lied, which they often did, particularly early on in the process, we would seek to prosecute them for perjury. In a later investigation, another former corrupt official was caught on tape complaining about this. He whined, "Those guys at the U.S. Attorney's Office, they just don't give up." To him, that was a complaint. To us, it was high praise.

George Collatos rode this process all the way through. After his conviction, we brought him back before the grand jury and asked him about illegal fundraising and other illegal activities. First, he refused to answer under his Fifth Amendment right. So we got a court order immunizing him and compelling his testimony. We brought him and again asked him about other illegal activities. This time he lied and denied everything. Much of what he had done in the past we didn't have hard evidence of, so we couldn't do anything about it. But we were able to pull together enough hard evidence to charge him with 12 counts of perjury. 

Eventually, Collatos pled guilty to four of the perjuring counts. So we brought him back again, and he finally started to tell us part of what he knew. Not everything, I suspect, but enough to be helpful. What he told us included facts related to Anzalone's extortion, so we moved forward to build that case. The grand jury indicted Anzalone on extortion and the money laundering schemes that we've talked about in the previous episodes. 

But the process of moving up the ladder was also a problem. By the time Collatos became our key witness, he was already a convicted extortionist and perjurer. He'd lied so much, even we weren't always sure whether he was telling the truth. So we had to corroborate his testimony as much as possible. We also had to be upfront with the jury that, yeah, Collatos was a bad guy, but he was Anzalone's bad guy: his friend, his collaborator and his fellow extortionist. As previously discussed, with that framework, it was particularly devastating when one of the legs of that corroboration, the money laundering, was severed from the trial. We went forward, but it put that much more weight on Collatos' testimony. Too much weight. 

When we prepared Collatos to testify, we pushed hard to find out if there's anything else we needed to know, anything he wasn't telling us. He assured us that all was well. It wasn't.

At trial, Collatos did reasonably well on direct, but he seemed unusually nervous. On cross, defense counsel got up and with great drama asked, "Did you meet with Mr. Anzalone at La Bella's coffee shop and demand $200,000 to change your testimony?" There was a long pause. And then Collatos said, "I don't recall."

Memory is a funny thing. We remember some things, but not others. When we prepare witnesses, we always tell them, if you don't remember, just say so. It's not a memory test. There are always things that witnesses forget, and that's OK. The jury understands. But this was not one of them. Sitting there at the government table, in shock on hearing the question, we knew, as soon as there was a long pause, not an outraged denial, that it was true. That it had happened. His "I don't recall" answer after the long pause sealed it.

It turned out the whole thing was a setup. Defense counsel set up the meeting at La Bella's and positioned several people around the coffee shop to listen to the conversation. Collatos walked right into it. It was clear that what he was offering was to change his testimony to a lie, which in a sense corroborated the truth of what he said. But it didn't matter. A convicted extortionist and perjurer was now lying about his attempt to get money to change his testimony. It was too much for the jury. Whatever credibility Collatos might have had was gone, and Anzalone was acquitted. 

Ironically, the only conviction that was upheld from the Anzalone case was that of Collatos. We simply could not let his attempt to sell his testimony and his subsequent "I don't recall" response stand. Collatos was indicted for perjury, went to trial, was convicted and his conviction was upheld on appeal. To this day, it remains the only criminal case I know of where someone was convicted of perjury for answering, "I don't recall." As the court said in upholding his conviction, the content of that conversation formed the crux of Anzalone's defense.

Ultimately, the case of George Collatos shows how perilous working up the ladder can be. Just when you think you've found a solid rung, it breaks under the weight of perjury. Some things you just don't forget.