Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Maybe you'll find inspiration in the incredible true story of black female mathematicians at NASA in Hidden Figures, or the fantasy world of Throne of Glass. There's more to imagine when you listen. As an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog,
New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. This is sort of one of those stories that, you know, is so intriguing. It's kind of unbelievable. What sort of pulled you into it?
I think what pulls any good investigative journalist into a story about the Vatican and corruption and money laundering and offshore accounts and possible murder is just that.
This is Gerald Posner, the writer we met in the last episode. It's a great mix of a story that you follow in an institution that is built on privacy, doesn't have the word transparency in its language, and therefore you know there's always something to discover that hasn't been revealed yet that will be shocking and hopefully be a big story.
Can you describe the counterfeiting scandal a little bit for us? So the FBI is investigating these mobsters that they're looking into to try to make a case against them. For his book, God's Bankers, Posner interviewed a retired FBI agent about an investigation into a made member of the Genovese crime family.
They don't know what they're going to find. You know, it's a great thing if you're following a made member of one of the five mafia families. It may be about extortion. It may be a murder for hire. It could be something else. And this time what the FBI stumbles into is what appears to be a deal with some very sketchy characters. The FBI agent told Posner that in 1972, he flew from New York City to Vienna, Austria to visit a prisoner awaiting trial, an international con man named Leopold Lettel.
This fellow, Liddell, is this very shady operator with a past of having been involved with everything from narcotics to gun smuggling. The agent is here because a snitch in his mafia investigation ratted Liddell out. The snitch told the agent that Liddell was the mastermind behind an international counterfeiting ring.
But Lettel insists that he was just a small part of something much bigger. He says, I'll tell you what's really happening. And so Lettel comes up with this great story. And the question becomes whether it's true or not, which is more difficult to figure out. Leopold Lettel's story begins a year earlier in the mountains of northern Italy. He's in touch with this cardinal in the Vatican, and he arranges to go down to Italy to meet with another person from the Vatican at a desolate monastery near Turin.
And this Mercedes drives up, and this tall priest in a black robe gets out, and that's Marcinkus. As in Paul Marcinkus from our last episode, the cigar-smoking American archbishop who was head of the Vatican Bank. Everybody said, that must be him. Even the feds believe that. He's tall. Oh, yeah, and he's involved in the bank.
Lettel tells the FBI agent that he followed this man they believed to be Marcinkas into the monastery, where Lettel placed a suitcase on a table and opened it. He has sort of a suitcase, $14.5 million worth of these high-quality corporate bonds, like Pan Am, AT&T, and everything else, maybe even some treasury bonds and that. And Marcinkas is the one who wants to see the documents and look at them and get a firsthand feel for them. So Marcinkas says, I can use these and more.
Leopold Lettel tells the FBI agent that Marcinkis wanted a lot more than just $14.5 million worth of these stocks. Lettel directs the agent to where he can find letters on Vatican letterhead, committing to buying almost a billion dollars worth of these stocks for only $600 million. Why so cheap? Because of what everybody in the room knows, their counterfeits.
After talking to Leopold Lettel, the FBI agent joins up with a federal prosecutor from New York City and the head of the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Division. They fly to the Vatican. They're not there to see the sites. They're there to talk to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. Because they're suspecting that it was Marcinkus who met at the Turin Monastery and did the actual eyes on the documents.
The meeting is a lot of schmoozing and talking and exactly what you would expect from Paul Marcinkis, who they find, by the way, incredibly charming. Having drinks with them and a little bit of scotch and what about the golf game and how are you guys doing? And then all of a sudden they get to the questions of the stolen counterfeit bonds and he changes his nature. Marcinkis becomes much more guarded.
The federal prosecutor asks Marcinkas if he ever met Leopold Lettel. Now all of a sudden he's sort of hemming and hawing, and no, I don't remember that. That's very unusual for him. Then the federal prosecutor pulls out a copy of the agreement on Vatican letterhead he got from Lettel, ordering almost a billion dollars in counterfeit stocks. He points to the signature at the bottom and asks, is this yours? He denied everything, almost lawyer-like. He denied everything.
Having anything to do with it said it was madness to think the Vatican, the Vatican Bank, or he would ever get involved in securities of this type with scurrilous characters. The FBI today announced nine persons have been arrested and seven are being sought on charges of attempting to dispose of $18 million in stolen and counterfeit securities. Among the men arrested was the alleged mastermind of the operation, 44-year-old Peter Raya of North Bergen, New Jersey.
This guy, Peter Raya, was a Genovese associate and a person you should remember because he's important later in this episode. In 1973, he was indicted alongside 15 others, including more Genovese gangsters, a few mafia-connected guys from Italy, Leopold Lettel, and even the son of a British lord. But the Vatican proved impenetrable, and the FBI never got another chance to speak with Paul Marcinkus again.
The FBI investigators that I spoke to, the Department of Justice people, clearly said we did not give him a clean bill of health. We believed that he was dirty. We thought that we should have gotten an indictment against him, but we could never get the evidence to prove it. I'm Mark Smerling, and these are the confessions of Anthony Raimondi.
Archbishop Paul Martinkas, the former Cicero, Illinois parish priest, became the confidant of popes and the president of the Vatican Bank. When is a central bank not a central bank? When is a private bank public and a public bank private? Sound mysterious and full of secrets? Well, that's the Vatican Bank. My father says you gotta call. This is a move. He goes, "From Italy."
He's calling me for Italy. The Vatican Bank over the last hundred years or so has not been without scandal, you know, certain dirty dealings, certainly money laundering. Anthony wanted so much to be part of it. Mac took him under his wing and he just started to get wiser and wiser and doing more and more and more. They were bringing him a ton of money. And what we're doing, we're sending the money overseas to Italy.
The Pope, Luciani, was contemplating cleaning up the Vatican Bank. Well, obviously, he passed away before he was able to do it. He only lasted 33 days. You don't mask for the mafia. Mark, how are you? Nice to meet you. Joe Palumbo. Joe Palumbo is an old friend of Anthony Raimondi's. I knew his cousin.
You might remember Mac as Hugh McIntosh, the notorious Colombo enforcer. And, you know, he talked about Anthony, and he said, you know, would you like to meet my cousin? And I said, sure, why not? Why did Mac think you should meet Anthony? Well, I guess they knew about what was going on with the stocks, and they knew that I worked on Wall Street. So maybe they were trying to hook something up. That was my thought. There were a lot of wise guys on the floor. ♪
They had brokers under their arm, you know, and brokers were making trades for them. And at that time, in the late 70s and early 80s, a lot of brokers were able to do a lot of things and make a lot of money. I knew brokers, every trade that they did for somebody, they got a piece of it because they were all money hungry at the time.
One time, like in the movie Goodfellas when they had all those mink coats in the summertime, well the same thing happened with me. Two full length mink coats and one silver fox, three quarters. And I went to a couple of brokers who I knew had money and they bought them all for their girlfriends, not their wives, but they bought them for their girlfriends. Anything that was sellable, I would sell on the floor. And then the drugs ran rampant. I mean, you've seen the Wolf of Wall Street.
It doesn't get any truer than that. There was a guy who was the head of security, and they made a deal with him. They offered him $1,500 a week to use his office to snore coke. Everybody was making moves. Everybody was making moves all over the place. And it just so happened that in 1975, Anthony Raimondi was looking for someone who could make some moves on Wall Street. I'm going to say it was in June that he called me. How you doing? It's Anthony Raimondi.
And he told me about the scam with the Vatican and the stocks, which I never heard of before. And he was telling me, you know...
This is what we could do. Like I say, I'll give a say. Stock's worth $100. Give us 50 feet stock. It's worth 100. You make a 50 on it. And I says, well, listen, I got somebody, a broker on the floor who's like a little bit of a shyster. He was a big shot on the floor, but he had a different side also. And I told him, I says, I can probably get rid of them for you. Yeah, we'll make a ton of money.
Next, Anthony says he drove to New Jersey to see a guy who knows a guy. I'll never forget the jade fountain that when you're on the highway, you was able to see it at a Chinese restaurant. The old man Rayo, that was his, I guess you'll call it his hangout because they had a bar in there also and he would be sitting there. And I went out to Jersey to see the old man and he said, my nephew deals with stocks and bonds. It turns out that old man Rayo's nephew was Peter Raya, the
the guy you needed to remember from the top of the episode. Among the men arrested was the alleged mastermind of the operation, 44-year-old Peter Raya of North Bergen, New Jersey. Pete was out of jail. So I met him to his uncle. He says, hey, give me the stocks you had the Jersey Stock Exchange. And according to Anthony, Peter Raya was a man of many aliases. Petey Rayo. He went by the name Pete Martell. I mean, Pete Martell. I was giving him like...
Fuck, 2,000 shares a week. He's getting rid of the big stuff, $300 a share, $400 a share. I'm giving him the stock. He sells it, gives me the money. Every time I would go to pick up the money or bring stocks, I would go to the Jade Fountain. Go there, we would eat also, of course. I mean, I ain't gonna walk in there without eating. I mean, the food was delicious in this joint. ♪
Let's recap. At the top of this episode, we learn that in 1972, the FBI suspected the Vatican Bank of trying to purchase almost a billion dollars of counterfeit stocks. But they were never able to prove it. Nevertheless, they arrested a guy named Peter Raya, a.k.a. Pete Martell. And now three years later, Anthony says that Martell is selling counterfeit stocks again. For him, the ones he got from the Vatican.
They were in denominations of 100 and 500. And that's how I got them. And that's how I gave them to the gentleman on Wall Street. And two or three days later, five days later, sack of money. Anthony, come on over. When you got the stocks...
Was there any evidence that they were from the Vatican? Everything was in envelopes, and I never looked to open them, or I never touched them. It wasn't my business. My business was to bring them to whoever I had to bring them to, and then wait to see if everything was okay with the person, and then that was it. I didn't want to look. He didn't open them up in front of you and say, take a look at them? Nothing, nothing. I never saw them. And the guy in the stock market, was he happy? No.
Was he happy? Of course he was happy. He was one of the big shots, too. But he was so well-respected that nobody could ever think that he would do something like that. Everything was fine until October. He calls me up one day and he says, do me a favor, get some clothes together, we're going to the Vatican. I says, we're going to the Vatican? What are we going to the Vatican for?
The FBI is looking for us. He mentioned the guy's name, Pete Martell. Anthony had gotten another call from the Vatican. Pete got busted. I said, what happened? What did he get picked up for? They said, drugs. Goodbye. Got everybody together. Joey Pierce said, we got to get out of town. What's the matter? We're going to get fucking pinched. We're going to get pinched. So he picks me up in a limo. There was some young kid sitting.
Driving the car. Back then, you could go to the airport and you could buy tickets to go anywhere. You didn't have to show ID. You didn't have metal detectors. What do we got going to Rome? Okay, well, give me seven tickets. We got on the plane. Who picks us up is Marcinkis, Paul Jacob Marcinkis. Anthony says that Paul Marcinkis drove them from the airport to the Vatican. He puts Joey Palumbo in a hotel that was near St. Peter's Square.
Me, he puts me in the hotel in St. Peter's Basilica. So when you go through, like, the gates of the Vatican, what's going through your mind? I figured in my life that I would never experience anything like this. And again, I didn't know what was coming. I'm trying to think. I'm here, but I don't believe I'm here. And what's going to happen now that I'm here, you know? And then they separated us. Why are we all separated?
I don't know if we were in the same hotel or they were in a different place. I don't know. And they said, you could have anything you want. You could have women, food, whatever you want, but you can't leave the apartment. What are the scenarios you're thinking? The what ifs? There's a possibility that I may get whacked.
They say opposites attract. That's why the Sleep Number smart bed is the best bed for couples. You can each choose what's right for you, whenever you like. You like a bed that feels firm, but they want soft? Sleep Number does that. You want to sleep cooler while they like to feel warm? Sleep Number does that too. Sleep Number smart beds also learn how you sleep and provide you with personalized insights to help you sleep even better. You have to feel it to believe it. Find the bed that's for both of you, only at a Sleep Number store.
Nine out of ten couples say they sleep better on a Sleep Number smart bed. Time to catch some Zs. J.D. Power ranks Sleep Number number one in customer satisfaction with mattresses purchased in-store. And now during Sleep Number's biggest sale of the year, save 50% on the Sleep Number limited edition smart bed, plus special financing for a limited time. For J.D. Power 2023 award information, visit jdpower.com slash awards. Only at a Sleep Number store or sleepnumber.com. See store for details.
Can you just say your name and also just describe where we are right now? My name is Doris, and I am presently sitting in the party room beneath the chapels of my funeral home in Brooklyn, New York. This is Doris Amon. Today, she's a funeral director. But back in 1975, she was just 19 years old, and she hung out with wise guys like Anthony Raimondi.
Tell me about me. When did you first meet Pluto? Oh, I met through personal friends, early 70s. He was a tough guy. What did he look like? He was good looking back then. Sorry, Pluto. We always had cash, which never impressed me. I pretty much always paid my way. I was one of the girls that didn't need the ride home. Very, very independent. I guess that's what he liked about me too. Is that the attraction, the mystery man?
Always is. I always liked the bad boy, but not bad murderer or, you know, robber or drug dealer. I wasn't getting involved with that. If I knew about it, it would be, I'm out of here. But if that bad boy happened to buy her a ticket to Rome, Doris wasn't the type to say no. Doris explains to us that back in the late 70s, she went to meet Anthony for a date, and he never showed up. A week later, she got a call from Italy.
It was Anthony, and he wanted her to fly over. And it was just like, what the heck? This is a one-shot opportunity. So I took it. Told my parents I was going to be at my girlfriend's house for a couple of weeks, and there I was. Can you describe just going to the Vatican from the airport and seeing the Vatican for the first time? It's amazing. Amazing. It's one mile by one mile. Most people would just go as tourists. But what's within those walls, no one would believe it.
What was the most impressive thing when you were there that you saw? Cleanliness. Extravagance. Everything was pristine. Nothing out of place. Immaculate. You don't understand until you're there and you see. What was the hotel like? Was it a nice hotel? I mean, there was no Super 8. Let's put it that way. It was inside the Vatican. Yes. What were you up to every day there? Typical. Typical. I don't recollect leaving.
The Vatican. I don't recollect going into Rome. And that one, no. Don't recollect. You've got to remember, this is 40-some odd years ago. Did you meet Paul Marcinkus when you were there? Jacob? Didn't meet anybody. No. Do you know why he was there? Nope. And that was okay. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I think that he did also, in retrospect, probably to protect me. But, you know...
It was a couple of weeks, and that was it. So, yeah, totally oblivious, not asking questions. I'm not a curious person. Anthony came by in November, and he told me that the feds were looking for us and that they were trying to make a deal. They were trying to make some kind of move where we wouldn't get in any kind of trouble. And I'm thinking, how could that be possible? They got us red-handed.
How are they going to make a move where nothing's going to happen to us? And Anthony says, don't worry about it. It's going to happen. He's going to make a deal for us and we're going to be okay. So I took him for his word because Anthony would never lie to me. Anthony says that he and Paul Marcinkas met with the FBI in an office in the Vatican Bank. Who's there? I'm there. Marcinkas is there. And the FBI agents are there. They started their nonsense. We're going to arrest you. We're going to do this. We're going to do that.
You're going to do at least a minimum 20 years on each count. But according to Anthony, Marcinkas is unfazed by the FBI's threats. He reminds the agents that the Vatican is its own country, which means there's no chance of them extraditing anybody to the United States. Paul Jacob Marcinkas, he says, you know what? Let me see the copy of the forgeries. At this point, Anthony says that an FBI agent shows Marcinkas some of the counterfeit stocks.
Marcinkus sends for the real stock certificates from the Vatican Bank. He places the two certificates side by side on the table. Would you tell me which one is which? The guy is looking at them. They're perfect copies, can't tell the difference. Marcinkus says, what do you think would happen if in the United States it was told that all these stocks that people bought...
from the stock markets that they're all forgeries. It was maybe a recession, but I think more or less a depression. He goes, let's make a deal. According to Anthony, the deal Marcink has offered was simple. The Vatican Bank would pay a fine, and the FBI would agree to drop the whole thing. It was supposed to be $500 million they were supposed to give back. He says, you know what, now it's time for us to go home. So everybody's going home. I mean, we're looking at everybody on the planes now.
"He look like an agent. Does he look like an agent? Does he look like an agent? We're gonna get arrested." "No, we're not gonna get arrested." I'm telling them, "We're not gonna get arrested." Meanwhile, inside, I'm saying to myself, "I think we're gonna get fucking arrested when we go home." But then I said, "But no, but we got the deal." I'm saying to myself, Joey P was like, it was like a fucking basket case. So I got him drunk on the plane. We landed, walked off the plane, went like this. He says, "There's nobody around us." He says, "No, they're gonna grab us when we walk out of the airport."
When I'm walking out of the airport, I'm looking up, I'm looking down, we're all looking around. There's nobody there. Nobody bothering us. Grabbed a cab. I got a cab. Joey got a cab. Went home. Calling each other at night. How you doing? Good. Don't talk about nothing on the phone. How you doing? All right. Anything? No, nothing. Good. Anything? No, nothing. Good. This went on up until Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving Day is when we all relax and says, if they were going to come for us, they would have took us already.
They didn't take us, and that's how we walked away from it. They didn't take us. I don't know how it happened, but they must have had some connections. For us to get away with that? Unheard of. Unheard of. Another unheard of story from Anthony Rimondi. Before we break for the day, I want to ask Joe about all of Anthony's unheard of stories, especially the story that I know comes next in Anthony's life, when he was called back to the Vatican one last time to help murder a pope.
Did Anthony ever tell you about the second trip he took to the Vatican? After the first trip? I don't know anything about that. Like I said, there were years that went by that we didn't see each other. I mean, what was your impression of him that way? Was he sort of a fabulator? Let me put it to you this way. Not with me. Maybe with other people. I don't really know. I wasn't around him 24 hours a day. But I didn't...
Know him to be like a, what do you call it? A sluffer. I never knew him to be a sluffer. But again, again, that's just me. So I heard these stories many years. And some I know, some I know from other people. But he, you know, repeats himself. And I got to tell you something. He don't waver one bit from the story he told me 40 years ago.
This is Billy Goonan, the guy from episode two who used to be Anthony's driver. Do you ever think, oh, is this true, what Anthony's telling me? Did you ever, or you just took it at face value? Some of the stories are just so crazy. I think most of it was true. Maybe you exaggerate a little. But like I said, then he would tell me this. I mean, like he'll tell me a story and it'll be right on the money.
Every once in a while, you'll hear someone else say something and it kind of coincides with some things I know about. Whether I know it happened 100% or I know he was obviously there or put two and two together. So I just look at him and I take it as 100% true. I really honestly do. Now it's Billy's turn to tell me another unbelievable story. One that kind of blows my mind. I was only like 16 or 17 years old when he called me up and says, listen, tomorrow night you got to come pick me up.
Got in the car and I drove down. And he gets in the car and says, go to JFK. I said, okay. So anyway, we get to the airport. He tells me he's going to the Vatican. And I say, okay, you know, whatever. He says, go see my father, Frank, and hang out with him until I get back. No problem. And, you know, off he went. Then you heard the news that the Pope died in his sleep. The Pope died in his sleep. Anthony's there. I don't know. I don't know.
Then Billy got a call to pick Anthony up at the airport. That's when he had that look on his face. He gets in a car and I'm like, what's wrong? He just looked at me and says, they're fucking crazy down there. They killed the fucking Pope. He went just like that. I said, what? He goes, yeah. Next time on The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi.
To my mind, if there is a plausible motive for his assassination, the most likely one is an intention to clean up the Vatican's embarrassing financial connections, which could have upset a lot of powerful people. MUSIC
The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi is a USG audio and truth media podcast in partnership with Clockwork Films. The show is produced by Alexa Burke, Kenny Kusiak, and Kevin Shepard. Zach St. Louis is our senior producer. Mark Smerling, that's me, is your host and story editor.
Executive producers are Josh Block from USG Audio, Jamie Cohen, Naomi Harvey, and Rob Huxley from Clockwork Films, and me, Mark Smerling. Scott Curtis is our production manager. Production support from Josh Lalongi at USG Audio. Fact-checking by Dania Salami. Sound design and mixing by Kenny Kusiak. Music by Universal Production Music, Marmoset, and Kenny Kusiak.
Our title track is Big Fish by Kenny Kuzia. Legal review by Linda Steinman and Abigail Overdale at Davis Wright Tremaine. If you've enjoyed The Confessions of Anthony Ramondi, leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps other people find the show. And thanks for listening.