The Alphabet Boys | CIA
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in their position. This is True Spies. What's interesting about Flavio's case is that prior to engaging in the arms deal to arm the FARC, he calls the CIA and he offers his services to provide information about that very arms deal. And so the question that ultimately is raised in his case, and that really is, you know, one that's hard to answer, is whether he was truly working for the CIA

I'm Daisy Ridley and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios. The Alphabet Boys. It's 2014 and we're inside a hotel room in Montenegro, a Balkan country that shares a border with Croatia. A group of men are huddled together. They're there to make a deal. An arms deal. Some of the men represent a Colombian guerrilla organization named FARC.

Another man, a Romanian named Flavio, is the arms dealer. He's going to set the rebels up with everything they want: AK-47s, M4 carbines, sniper rifles, ground-to-air missiles and more. In total, the rebels want $17 million worth of weapons. And here, inside this hotel room, the deal is about to be done. But all is not what it seems.

Because none of these men are who they say they are. And that's about to become clear when Juan, the man in charge of the rebels, doesn't sign the deal immediately. And he says, "Well, wait, I need to call my people back in Colombia just to confirm, you know, to make sure the money can get transferred before I sign this document." And so Juan leaves the hotel room. Things are tense. There's a lot of money on the line. And it goes without saying that this is all very illegal.

The supposed arms dealer, Flavio, is left anxiously waiting for Juan to return and for this $17 million deal to close. But Juan never does return because Juan is not really a Colombian rebel. He's a DEA informant. And this happens. Immediately after the DEA storms in, guns drawn.

and arrests Flavio. Flavio, you know, handcuffed, kind of makes a motion with his head to one of the DEA agents, and he says, "I have to use the bathroom." And so the DEA agent escorts Flavio into the hotel bathroom, closes the door, and Flavio kind of head nods again to come closer. And then an already strange situation takes another bizarre turn, because it turns out that Flavio isn't who he says he is either.

No. He tells the agents that he's undercover too. And that's when he tells the DEA agent, "I work for the CIA. I'm collecting information for the CIA. This is all part of a CIA operation." And the DEA agent just practically laughs at this and says, "There's no way that's true. We know who you are. You're an arms dealer. You're busted. That's all there is."

Flavio Georgescu is the full name of the alleged arms dealer. And, taken at face value, his story doesn't sound very believable. In fact, it sounds like a terrible excuse. But if you really dig deep into Flavio's story, you'll start to wonder whether he might be telling the truth. And you'll also start to wonder: is it possible that Flavio was never really a serious arms dealer and was set up by law enforcement?

that maybe he's not a criminal, but a victim of entrapment. Trevor Aronson is an investigative journalist, and he'll take us inside the topsy-turvy world of arms dealers and informants. Trevor specializes in telling complicated stories like this, stories that focus on U.S. law enforcement. He hosts a podcast called Alphabet Boys that looks inside the shadowy world of agencies like the FBI, the CIA, and the DEA.

For the last 15 or so years, I've covered the FBI, and I'm particularly interested in federal law enforcement's use of sting operations, where a federal agency will use an undercover agent or an informant and pose as some sort of criminal actor, like a terrorist or an organized crime figure, and then create the trappings that allow someone to

commit a crime. And a focus of my work is this question of whether through the FBI and other federal law enforcement's sting operations, these federal agencies are creating criminals rather than catching them. Trevor first heard about Flavio's case when he saw a press release about it. He says that he didn't think too deeply about the story, but remembers that the deal was for a large amount of money.

But Flavio was about to come back into his life. And about a year after receiving that press release, I ended up getting a call from Andra Georgescu, who was Flavio's wife at the time, and she found some of my previous work and reached out to me and basically told me, from her perspective and from Flavio's, what had happened in the case. Trevor was intrigued and decided to hear Andrea out.

And what Andra tells me is that, look, Flavio was arrested for brokering this arms deal for the FARC, and he wasn't actually doing that. He was working for the CIA. Initially, Trevor was skeptical. The whole story just seemed so far-fetched. But Andrea had his attention, and he decided to look into it further. Trevor needed to find out who this man really was, and that meant going back to the beginning, to his childhood.

Flavio lived in Romania during the communist era when Nicolae Ceausescu was the president and dictator of Romania. Ceausescu was Romania's president from 1967 to 1989. And in that period, he led an oppressive regime that was upheld by a network of spies.

He had created this secret internal security force called the Securitate. And they had amassed at the time, and it may still be among the largest, but at the time it was the largest human intelligence network ever to exist. That, you know, basically your neighbors were spies, your boss might be a spy.

in the whole culture of Romania under Ceausescu was that you didn't want to oppose the government in any way for fear that your neighbor might say something to the Securitate and then you're whisked off and thrown into this horrible dungeon of a prison. And so Flavio grew up at this time under this kind of secret surveillance state. According to Flavio, because his father was a prominent engineer, the security forces were regular visitors to their childhood home.

Flavio says they even went as far as policing how much alcohol his father drank. Romania wasn't technically part of the Soviet Union, but they were closely aligned with their Eastern Bloc allies. So the same anti-American sentiments were an intrinsic part of Ceausescu's regime. Growing up behind the Iron Curtain, Flavio got few glimpses into life in the West. Everything that the West represented was at odds with Ceausescu's regime.

But what Flavio was able to discover fascinated him. He describes a friend showing him how to listen to Radio Free Europe and Voice of America on his radio. And so he would go into his room and listen and hear about the West, and he was intrigued by America. Nikolai Ceaușescu was overthrown in 1989. After a short trial, he was found guilty of genocide. On Christmas Day, he was executed by a firing squad.

After that, things began to change in Romania. The network of secret spies dissolved and the country began to open up to the West. Which meant that, when he was in his 20s, Flavio headed straight for America. By now, it's the early 2000s. Flavio's cousin owned a gym in Las Vegas, so he was able to secure a visa.

Here he is coming from really drab and dreary Eastern Europe, and here he gets to Las Vegas, this bright, shiny city that only has been built in recent decades. And he describes taking jet skis on the Hoover Dam and just being amazed at this place, and seeing it as this kind of carnivalesque atmosphere in the sense that, I think one of the lines he told me is that, "What I loved about Las Vegas was that everybody was happy in Las Vegas. If you lost money, you were happy. If you won money, you were happy.

And to him, that was really an enormous contrast from the Romania he grew up in, where life was hard and people weren't happy and they were fearful of their neighbors and the government. And so, in Las Vegas, Flavio started to build a new life for himself. And to do this, he had to rely on his biggest talent: his gift of the gab. Like, he's someone who can meet someone and right off the bat, you know, talk to them for hours and in an engaging way.

Flavio was able to talk to anyone about almost anything, which was perfect for his new career as a fixer. He knew a lot of people, made a lot of connections. And so, when wealthy Eastern Europeans came to Las Vegas, Flavio could get them whatever they needed.

So if they wanted to buy an expensive car, you know, Flavio knew the contacts. If they wanted to get into an exclusive club, you know, Flavio knew who to call. Flavio was finally living the dream. The American dream. It was all such a far cry from the paranoia and dread of living under the oppressive regime of Nikolai Ceausescu. Flavio was proud of his new country, and he wanted to help to protect it.

even if that meant turning on his fellow Romanians. One of the things he was seeing was that the Romanian community, through organized crime organizations, was committing fraud, committing crime. And to Flavio, this was something that he just couldn't tolerate. Through his connections in Las Vegas, Flavio became aware of a Romanian crime ring that was operating a credit card scam.

The gang would steal credit card information from gym lockers, then send people into casinos to pick up cash advances. The operation was slick and effective, and could rack up tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of hours. In that kind of situation, a lot of people would probably turn a blind eye, look the other way. These gangs are dangerous, after all. But not Flavio. He wanted to protect his new country.

And he'd internalized the "see something, say something" mantra that was popularized after 9/11. Flavio had seen something, and he was going to say something to the FBI. Flavio approaches the FBI and tells them he has information on these Romanian crime gangs. And when his information checks out, he becomes an informant.

And so the FBI effectively signs him up. And the paperwork confirms this. We have FBI documents showing that around 2002 he had become an FBI informant, a registered informant, and the FBI parlance a confidential human source. But it turns out that Flavio had a problem with that parlance because he hated the word "informant." When Flavio was growing up in Romania, informants were the lowest of the low.

They were upholding a brutal communist regime, keeping a dictator in power. Flavio saw himself as the opposite. He wasn't harming his new country. He was helping it. And so what Flavio would tell me and tell the FBI agents was that I'm not an informant. I'm a friend.

And he insisted on this use of the term friend, that when the FBI agents would talk to him, they wouldn't refer to him as a CHS or an informant, that he was a friend. And that was an important kind of distinction for Flavio. Friend or informant, Flavio was now working with the FBI. His role was to bring sources who were hesitant to come forward to meet with law enforcement. Just as he made money as a fixer, he was performing a similar role here, bringing people together.

But it turns out that some FBI agents were a little thrown off when they started working with Flavio the Fixer. Flavio was not the typical informant. In many cases, informants are providing information in exchange for leniency on a prison sentence. So, they tend to be criminals. Flavio was different. He wasn't trying to get out of jail. He was doing this of his own volition.

Those differences became clear when, at one of his first meetings, Flavio presented an FBI agent with a case of wine. The agent refused. It's against the rules to accept gifts from informants. And that upset Flavio. And Flavio is just insistent. Like, he's not going to go forward with any more conversation unless you take this wine. Because I'm your friend, here's some wine.

And it turns into this argument and the other agent in the room calls downstairs where this FBI agent named Mark Pinto is waiting. Mark Pinto was, according to Trevor, the kind of agent who was willing to bend the rules a little to get the job done. He accepted Flavio's wine and the pair formed a close friendship.

The relationship that Marc and Flavio end up developing isn't just, "Hey, let's meet in this parking lot and exchange information." You know, they're going out to dinner, they're, you know, getting together for drinks and getting to know each other, to the point that, you know, a kind of friendship is created between them. Together, Marc and Flavio successfully infiltrate the Romanian crime ring and start to build a case against them. Flavio is doing what he set out to do.

He's protecting his new country. He's a friend to law enforcement. But these actions had consequences. The Romanians discovered it was Flavio who was providing information to the FBI, and they put out a hit. And Flavio, you know, is concerned about his own safety, and as a result, flees the United States. After all of his efforts to protect America, Flavio ends up having to leave the country he loves.

Ultimately, Flavio was successful. The Romanian crime ring was brought to justice. But Flavio, due to his role as a confidential informant, was never credited for his part in taking it down. He'd have to start all over again in Romania for fear of reprisals. But Flavio is resourceful. He's still got the gift of the gab.

So he starts to spin up various new businesses. He sells food rations, he sells ankle bracelet monitors, he hustles, and he finds ways to make money. And so he was going back and forth as a bit of an international businessman. He lived part of the time in London, part of the time in Romania, and would return from time to time to the United States as part of his business work. According to Flavio, he continues to work as an informant during this time period. There's no paperwork to confirm that.

But it's what he says.

and a larger-than-life character or two. You can find all of those things in abundance in June's Journey. In the game, you'll play as June Parker, a plucky amateur detective trying to get to the bottom of her sister's murder. It's all set during the roaring 1920s.

And I absolutely love all the little period details packed into this world. I don't want to give too much away because the real fun of June's journey is seeing where this adventure will take you. But I've just reached a part of the story that's set in Paris.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast What Should I Read Next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast What Should I Read Next?

They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page-turner to help them escape the stresses of work, or a book that they've been reading for years.

school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for What Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more. Around the same time Flavio got started as an informant, someone else was getting their start, but he isn't with the FBI.

He's connected to another agency, the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency. He's known as Juan, but his real name is Alex Diaz. And, as we saw in the arms deal that opened this story, he's on a collision course with Flavio Georgescu.

So Juan was born in Colombia and came to the US as a young man. And among his first jobs was working in New York at SkyChef. And SkyChef is kind of the division of American Airlines that provides catering and food on the airplanes. And so Juan eventually transfers to Miami International Airport, where American Airlines has this enormous hub that's a gateway to Latin America.

During his time in Miami, Kwan starts to develop a sideline for himself: smuggling drugs through Miami airport. He's arrested by the DEA and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

And after he's done about two, Juan decides he's had enough. And so he goes to the DEA and says, "I need to get out of here and I can offer something." And so what Juan offers is to be an informant for the DEA. After Juan gets himself out of prison, he starts infiltrating smuggling rings operating out of Miami airport.

He's part of a large sting, codenamed Operation Ramp Rats, that leads to almost 60 arrests and the seizure of heroin, cocaine and weapons. Juan, like Flavio, had proven himself a valuable asset. He ends up getting leniency on his prison sentence. He doesn't do the final eight years of his term and instead becomes a career informant. A career informant.

What Trevor means here is that, after working off his sentence, Juan began to take on assignments for money. And it turned out to be very lucrative for him. Juan would later estimate that he'd been paid more than $4 million by the DEA and other law enforcement agencies. It sounds astonishing, doesn't it? The amount of cash someone can make as an informant. Especially considering that the DEA of the time wasn't exactly rolling in it.

And this is a good place to pause and think about how law enforcement agencies operate.

Because, as Trevor explains, the DEA are under immense pressure to seek funding and keep money flowing into their offices. And I don't think we often think of it that way, that Congress allocates X amount of money every year and divides it up how it sees fit. And so these various agencies are competing for that money, and they're going to Congress and saying, "We need money for X, we need money for Y." And they're making a case for why they need more and more money, because that's just the way of government, right?

Back in the 80s and 90s, the DEA was flush with cash. The war on drugs was at its peak. But after the September 11 terror attacks, things shifted.

The war on terror was now the priority. And so the DEA, which traditionally focused on drugs, needed new ways to get funding. And they said that, you know, basically there's this issue called narco-terrorism. And there are these groups that fund their activity through the sale of drugs. And then they use the proceeds from those drugs to commit terrorism. And we want to travel the world and investigate this. And it worked.

And that's how Juan and Flavio's paths collide. Because Juan transitions from infiltrating drug rings to setting up arms dealers. But before we circle back to where we began, to Montenegro, the hotel room, and Flavio's bust, a few things have to happen. First, in around 2012, Juan starts posing as a member of FARC.

FARC are a Colombian anti-imperialist group that supports the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor. They were classified as a narco-terrorist group because FARC used the sale of drugs to fund their activities. That's why they were on the DEA's radar. Once he's established his FARC cover, Juan needs to find an arms dealer to set up. That's where Andy Georgescu comes in.

Andy is a good friend of Flavio. He's also Romanian, and the pair met when Flavio lived in Las Vegas. Andy is, by all accounts, a dubious character. He operates a shipping company and has a reputation for not asking many questions about the cargo he transports. Turns out that Juan has a connection to Andy.

And so Juan goes to Andy and says, "Hey, I represent this group in Colombia, the FARC, and we are looking to buy millions of dollars in weapons. Do you think you can make that happen?" And Andy calls Flavio.

Because Flavio, as far as Andy is concerned, is a guy who knows people, he's a fixer, maybe Flavio can make this happen. So Andy goes to Flavio the fixer to make this arms deal happen. Even though Flavio is usually the kind of guy who sets up luxury cars and jewellery. Not rocket launchers. But on that fateful call with Andy, Flavio says he's on board. And this is what happens next. Flavio picks up the phone.

And he calls the CIA. Flavio goes online, and as absurd as it sounds, he goes to CIA.gov, and he finds that there's a phone number that you can call. And so he picks up the phone in Bucharest and calls the CIA in Virginia and says, "Hey!" Quite literally. "I have some information for you." As absurd as it sounds, it's not that far away from how Flavio first connected with the FBI all those years ago.

But this time, things don't go as smoothly for Flavio, and the CIA don't want to be friends. It quite literally is an operator who essentially answers first, and it's a woman who is quite disinterested initially in Flavio. And Flavio says, you know, my name is Flavio Ceaușescu, I'm a U.S. citizen, I'm in Romania, and I have some information for you.

And he's claiming that, you know, he knows this guy who wants to buy all these weapons and that this could be a national security concern for the US. And do you want more information? And the CIA agent who's on the phone is like deeply skeptical of Flavio, almost kind of annoyed by him. And she says, you need to go to the US embassy in Bucharest. That first call ends with Flavio frustrated. It doesn't seem like the operator is taking him seriously.

But a short while later, Flavio's phone rings. On the other end of the line, a CIA officer. And this agent is a little more interested in what Flavio is telling. And in this conversation, Flavio basically lays out

The entire arms deal that he will later put together, he tells them pretty much everything. He says that his friend Andy put him in touch with this guy named Juan. Juan's with the FARC. Juan wants to buy surface-to-air missiles, AK-47s, all sorts of very powerful military-grade hardware.

And, you know, do you want this information? It seems like something the CIA would be interested in. And he mentions almost in passing that: I've worked with you guys before. I'm a known person to the U.S. government. From Flavio's perspective, this second call is going much better. He's being taken seriously, and it looks like he's going to be able to again prove himself to be a good friend to law enforcement, just like he was for the FBI.

And so the agent asks a number of questions and says, you know, effectively, you know, if what you're telling me is true, this is something that we should look into. And what Flavio does is point specifically to that line. To Flavio, English is a second language. Flavio claims that when he heard, this is something we should look into, that wasn't just like,

the royal we, this is something the CIA should look into. To him, this included him. This was like something we should look into, something including Flavio. And so Flavio takes this as a bit of a mandate and thinks, okay, I need to find more information about this arms deal and provide it back to the CIA. And this is where the story gets ambiguous. Because two distinct competing realities emerge.

One where Flavio is acting in good faith and trying to infiltrate an arms deal and help the CIA. But there's another perspective, one that casts doubt on Flavio's noble intentions. Because there are some in law enforcement who believe that Flavio only placed this call so that he could have a get-out-of-jail-free card if anything went wrong. According to that version of events, Flavio isn't an informant. He's a criminal.

There's a long time between those calls between Flavio and the CIA and the bust. Two full years. In that time, Juan keeps pestering Andy, pushing for this arms deal to happen. And so two years pass until finally in 2014, Flavio is put in touch with Juan. And I think most people in that situation might assume that given the passage of time, the two years pass,

that Flavio would call back the CIA and say, "Hey, remember me? We talked two years ago, that arms deal? It's going forward." But Flavio doesn't do that. He never calls the CIA back, and the CIA never calls him back. The way Flavio tells it, the long wait didn't matter. He was still on the case. But when it came time to actually make the deal happen, Flavio had a few obstacles to overcome.

Flavio has a couple of problems, and they're significant if you're a supposed arms dealer. One is that he doesn't have any connections to actual arms factories. He has no one who can provide weapons. And the second one is that he doesn't have what's known as an end-user certificate. An end-user certificate is the paperwork that needs to be completed to transfer weapons.

Even in shady circumstances like this, there's still bureaucracy. And there's still admin to be done. Feeling way out of his depth, Flavio needs to bring in two men to help him get this deal done.

The first is Cristian Ventilla. And Cristian is a government minister in Romania whose job is essentially to liaise between the Romanian government and the NATO alliance based in Brussels. And so Cristian knows weapons. And Flavio brings Cristian into the deal as a contact who can help them facilitate the contact with arms manufacturers. The next person Flavio loops in is an Italian politician named Massimo Romagnoli.

Massimo was a former member of Italy's parliament and also very well connected. Massimo has a contact in Germany who can effectively provide a fake end-user certificate. It would be an end-user certificate for the nation of Ethiopia, but then, you know, would allow the weapons to be diverted to Colombia under that certificate. And so these are the two kind of key people that Flavio needs to make this deal happen.

It's important to clarify here: everyone involved knew that this was an illegal arms deal and that they were committing a crime. Between Flavio, Massimo and Christian, the group had all the connections they needed to make the deal happen. But they were not a slick criminal organization. Far from it. In fact, it's reported that Flavio was a particularly flaky arms dealer.

He missed meetings, he wasn't communicative, and he didn't really seem to know what he was doing. And so in many ways this whole arms deal is not in any way kind of a well-oiled machine, is not something that you think of as like, this is really how international arms brokers work. It's a bit of a clown show at times. But they're kind of like, fake it till you make it, right?

When the deal finally starts to progress, the group think they have secured the weapons that Juan, posing as Farc, has asked for. They're in a factory in Albania. But when Flavio and co travel there to see the goods, it's a complete failure. It turns out it's bare, like it's totally empty. The only weapons they have are rifles that aren't even the type that the Colombians want. And so

Flavio, Christian and Massimo had essentially told the Colombians they'd be back in touch within two weeks and have all the weapons ready to go. Here they are in this factory in Albania with no weapons to buy.

Flavio and the group feared that the deal was over and that they'd have to deal with a disappointed Colombian terrorist organization. However, their luck seemed to change when Massimo got a lead on a new source of weapons. Massimo gets this tip that this factory in Bulgaria has the weapons that they can buy. It's run by an oligarch named Peter Manchukov.

And so they, you know, on a whim, kind of desperate, drive eight hours from the Albanian capital to the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, to meet with this Peter Manchukov guy. With the sale of the weapons agreed, Flavio has succeeded. Succeeded no matter what his intentions are.

Either he's cracked the case and set up a terrorist group for the CIA to bust, or he's a criminal who stands to make a lot of money from a successful arms deal. — And Flavio is holding this contract that he has from the Bulgarian manufacturer. And in Flavio's telling,

He feels like he's at the end of the line, like he's figured out the entire supply network that he promised to deliver back to the CIA. If he can get Juan to sign this contract, he can go back to the CIA and kind of present gift-wrapped the entire conspiracy. And so in Flavio's mind, in Flavio's telling, he's waiting for Juan to sign this, and that's the end of the deal. Everything's good. He'll be able to go back to the CIA. With everything in place, Flavio goes to Montenegro to meet with Juan and Farke.

All that's left to do is sign the paperwork and get the money. We're finally back inside that hotel room where our story began. Remember, Juan takes the contract and exits the hotel room, and the DEA bursts in and arrests everyone.

Which is when Flavio tells the agent who arrested him: I work for the CIA. I'm collecting information for the CIA. This is all part of a CIA operation. And the DEA agent just, you know, practically laughs at this and says, like, there's no way that's true. You know, what Flavio claims is that DEA agent told him, you watch way too many James Bond movies. There's no way you work for the CIA. We know who you are. You're an arms dealer. You're busted. That's all there is.

According to the DEA, Flavio is a crook. He set up this arms deal to make money, nothing more. But according to Flavio, he was just being a good friend to law enforcement. He pointed to his long association with the FBI as proof of that, and there was someone who could vouch for him. Remember Mark Pinto, the FBI agent who, along with Flavio, brought down the Romanian credit card ring?

Mark was asked to meet with the DEA to give his opinion on Flavio's story. And they lay out the whole case for him, the calls to the CIA, you know, what Flavio did in orchestrating the arms deal for Juan. And at the end of the meeting, Mark was kind of like, I don't know for sure, but unless Flavio has fundamentally changed since when I knew him, he's getting screwed here.

Mark seemed to believe that however strange the story was, he didn't think Flavio was capable of committing this crime, and that Flavio was a true believer. He was a true believer in the American promise, and that he really thought he was helping America in this way. That was the only way Mark could explain it. In 2016, Flavio Georgescu stood trial, accused of being an arms dealer.

And while his case was complicated and convoluted and full of different characters and law enforcement agencies and terrorist organizations, it all hinged on a very simple question. Who do you believe?

Do you believe that Flavio made these calls to the CIA as an insurance policy? Or do you believe that Flavio earnestly thought he was working for the CIA in some capacity? In his favor, Flavio had the recordings of his calls with the CIA. The calls where he made contact with an operator and an officer and told them about the deal, all of which were released and entered into evidence.

When that happened, it seemed that Flavio might have a shot at beating the case. But those hopes were soon dashed when Flavio's partners in the deal, the Romanian government minister and Massimo, the Italian politician, turn against him.

So prosecutors' answer for that is to cut a deal with Christian. And Christian becomes a cooperating witness for the government and then approaches Massimo, who is ultimately assigned to the same jail cell as Christian, and says, "You need to cooperate too. You should cooperate." And Massimo eventually agrees as well. Massimo and Christian's testimony sunk Flavio. And ultimately, the jury didn't buy Flavio's story. He was found guilty.

The man who was so proud of his past as a friend of law enforcement was now a convicted felon. Flavio was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his crimes, which included conspiring to kill officers and employees of the United States. At the verdict, he said to the judge: "It's hard to believe I'm standing before you for sentencing. It's embarrassing to be in this situation."

Perhaps no one understands Flavio's case better than Trevor Aronson. Trevor completed a 10-part podcast about Flavio called Alphabet Boys Up in Arms. It's out now and you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

But when asked what the truth of the situation is, Trevor isn't sure either. There are times I think it's quite possible that Flavio really thought he was doing good and got too deep and he's paying the price. And then there's the part of me that's like, is Flavio just a really great actor? And, you know, he...

intended for this arms deal to go through. He intended to make millions and millions of dollars. And when it didn't go through, he had this kind of elaborate cover story. A cover story so elaborate that, you know, its ambiguities are, you know, the stuff of stories that we tell now. Earlier this year, Flavio Georgescu was released on probation. He still maintains his innocence. I'm Daisy Ridley.

Next time on True Spies, you'll hear all about the Soviet agent who had a direct link to Stalin, the Japanese Prime Minister and Adolf Hitler.