28. The Sting (Abscam)

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One time I dealt with an attorney down Miami who was related to a guy, I forgot his name, Tony Something, I didn't know who he was.

I took this attorney and his uncle came up and went to throw me out the window.

And

I started mentioning names of people I knew and I was hoping I get the right name.

I couldn't back down and say I swindled him and he would have thrown me out.

I had to keep fluffing my way through.

And I had one foot through the window.

I was fighting like mad and I must have hit the right name because they held up and they just threatened me.

Melvin Weinberg made a career out of conning people.

Although there had been a few close calls, like the time the mobster uncle of a Miami lawyer dangled him out of an open window of a high-rise hotel.

For the most part, it had been easy money.

Easy, for Mel Weinberg, at least.

Weinberg was a quick thinker and a fast talker that could outwit even the most formally educated or classically trained.

He was a heavyset, cigar-smoking, tackily dressed, brash New Yorker with questionable morals and a taste for the finer things in life.

The type of villainous character from TV and movies that you might accuse of being a bit too on the nose.

Mel Weinberg was the living embodiment of a stereotype.

But Mel Weinberg's appearance and behavior and taste were all part of the package.

The package of hope that Weinberg would sell to a mark to assure them that good things would soon follow, even if they were too good to be true.

And when Mel Weinberg was involved, it was always too good to be true.

Mel Weinberg was an artist, and like any true artist, his technique and skill had evolved over time.

His earliest scale involved stealing gold stars from his teacher's desk and delivering them to his mother, proof that he had been a well-behaved boy in school that day.

When Mel did not pass first grade, his mother met with his teacher and his ruse was up.

That's when Mel learned the lesson that, as a con man, it's imperative that your marks never meet.

Mel Weinberg was arrested for the first time when he was caught shooting birds with a BB gun after he had already ditched high school for the day.

His latest brush with trouble was the final straw.

Mel's mother had become sick of his anthics, and much to Mel's delight, forced him to drop out of school and get a job.

Finally, he could make some real money.

But since the world was currently at war for a second time in the early 40s, there was very little real money to be made.

So Mel Weinberg joined the Navy, where he continued to hone his craft of con artistry by intercepting supplies bound for other units of the military and sometimes going AWOL for hours at a time in search of the local whorehouse of wherever he found himself stationed.

Weinberg returned home from the war in 1944 and settled down in Long Island.

He married a woman named Mary O'Connor, with whom he would have three children, and he started working with his father in the family business, installing glass windows.

To generate business for the company, Mel would ride along with a member of the local glazers union and slingshot metal bolts through storefronts.

Breaking windows made the job fun, and plus, the union paid him to do it.

Nothing wrong with a little extra money on the side.

But if there was anything that Mel Weinberg loved more than money, it was women.

Mel has claimed that he required at least two women in his life at all times.

One to go home to and another to have fun with.

But Mel seemed to spend far more time having fun than playing house.

One time, during a one-night stand at the LaGuardia Motel, where Mel would use a stolen police badge to receive a discounted rate, he had to make a quick exit when a staff member sought his assistance during an armed robbery.

Mel's date was left alone in the room.

Another time, Mel fell through the ceiling of his own house when his wife returned home unexpectedly.

He told Mary that he was naked because it was hot outside, and he had been in the attic opening the air vents.

Mel got dressed and hurried his wife off to dinner so that his mistress could escape undetected.

Eventually, Mary became suspicious of Mel's fornicating ways.

When she confronted him about it, he admitted to everything, including the fact that he had been renting an apartment across town for Marie Reagan, his secretary that he had been dating for months.

The divorce was final in 1962, and Mel married Marie shortly thereafter.

Up to his neck and gambling debt, Mel, with Marie in tow, packed his bags and took his talents to South Beach in 1965.

After wearing out his welcome in Florida in just a few short years, the Weinbergs then relocated to California.

Mel had some connections to Glazer humans out there, so work was easy to find, and he was able to pocket some extra change by selling defected socks to factory workers.

The socks were footless, but Mel taped them together in a way that by the time they were opened and discovered, he would be long gone.

It was also in California where Mel Weinberg thought he had finally landed his big break.

He scored an exclusive contract to gold mines controlled by the Yaki Indian tribe in Mexico, just south of the Arizona border.

The Yaki, who at the time were defending their land against the Mexican government, wanted guns and ammunition in exchange for the gold.

Weinberg arranged for the guns to be delivered via airplane, and Mel arrived at the same time in the jeep with the partner to collect the proceeds.

However, things did not go according to plan.

Every con may get swindled.

I mean, that's standard.

I went down there to buy gold.

I bought a contract, which I should have known wasn't right, because where the hell would they get a type by the type on?

As soon as the plane landed with the guns, the Yaki ambushed them.

Bullets were whizzing by the heads of Weinberg and his partner as they sped away in their jeep towards Arizona.

The con man had been conned.

There was no gold.

The guns were gone.

But all was not lost.

On the way back to California, Weinberg came up with a way to recover the $7,000 that he had been ripped off.

But it actually didn't take me.

I got copies of the contract, and on the way back to the West Coast, I sold about 30 of them, at 1,000 apiece, so I came out ahead.

By 1970, Mel Weinberg had returned to New York.

He had returned to the glass business, which, with the help of a crooked insurance agent, had expanded to include a chain of dry cleaning fronts used to launder all of the extra money.

But nothing good lasts forever.

The glass business was drying up, and Mel Weinberg had no interest in finding a real job.

Mel Weinberg needed a new scam.

And he found one in the form of what is called an advanced fee scam.

Weinberg would pose as a businessman with ties to offshore banks banks, and people that were desperate for money and for whatever reason could not qualify for a loan from a legitimate bank would come to him for help.

For an upfront or advanced processing fee that ranged from $2,000 to $50,000 depending on the size of the loan, Mel would use his connections to the offshore banks to get his clients approved.

Except the clients were never approved.

because the offshore banks that Mel Weinberg claimed to have connections to only existed on paper.

Instead, Weinberg would stall and make excuses as to why the approval of the loan application was taking so long.

He would point to economic or geopolitical events that he read about in the newspaper as the reason for the delays.

Eventually, when he could no longer buy extra time, Mel would present the client with a rejection letter from the bank on official letterhead.

Better luck next time.

Of course, the advanced processing fee the client had paid to Weinberg was non-refundable.

We used to average sometimes 100 people a month.

And a lot of people we took a second time.

Told we're going to put them with another bank.

People, they want to be taken.

They sure do.

And Mel Weinberg was happy to take them.

Oh, I would say I must average, the company I have must average a half a million to a million a year or more.

In the three years that Mel Weinberg ran the advanced fee scam, he raked in almost $10 million

from lawyers, from doctors, from other con conmen, from Wayne Newton, the Vegas entertainer.

Mel Weinberg got over on all of them, and he planned to do it forever.

But in 1977, Mel Weinberg got caught.

A Pennsylvania state agent named Elise Slagg had given Mel an advance fee of $3,500 to secure a $2 million loan.

By the time Mel printed the rejection letter, Mr.

Slagg had already alerted the FBI.

Mel Weinberg was charged with fraud, male fraud, and conspiracy.

And so had his new girlfriend, Evelyn Knight.

Evelyn, who was born in England, had unknowingly been an accomplice to Mel's scheme.

Mel thought that Evelyn's English accent added a touch of class and legitimacy to his scam.

And he wasn't wrong.

Those silly Americans fall for it every time.

Well, almost every time.

Mel was crazy about Evelyn Knight, whom he had met five years after marrying his second wife, Marie.

Mel wanted to ensure that Evelyn was spared from serving time, so he turned himself in and pled guilty, and he was sentenced to three years in prison.

But before he spent a day behind bars, it was Mel Weinberg who was offered a deal that was too good to be true.

The FBI was planning a sting operation, and they needed someone with Mel's expertise and connections.

If Mel agreed to cooperate and become an informant in this sting, his prison sentence would be forgiven, and he would be released on probation.

Mel would be allowed to return home to his wife and children and multiple girlfriends and multiple apartments that were all decorated the same.

That's actually true, even though wallpaper matched.

Mel chalked it up to being a creature of habit.

He loved familiar surroundings and he loved easy money.

And this little sting operation the FBI was proposing seemed like easy money.

However, what Mel Weinberg did not anticipate is what this little sting operation would ultimately develop into.

A career con man employed by the FBI serves as the mastermind and key witness of a sting operation that unleashes the biggest political corruption scandal since Watergate on this episode of Swindled.

They bribed government officials to find accounting career violations of decades they lost earlier on African pay to pay

tens of millions of dollars.

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President Carter and other Western leaders agreed in Tokyo to limit oil imports to try to reduce dependence on OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

In Geneva yesterday, OPEC slapped another large increase on crude oil prices, an increase the Tokyo Summit leaders deplored.

In response, President Carter pledged the United States to limit oil imports to 8.5 million barrels a day until 1985.

It was the spring of 1978, and the Middle East was a powder keg of civil unrest and uncertainty.

The Iranian Revolution was right around the corner, so were record-high gas prices, which were a result of the 1979 oil crisis.

The writing had been on the wall and in the newspapers for a while, and it was perfect fodder for what Mel Weinberg was hired to do.

The FBI had recruited Mel Weinberg to help conduct a sting operation focused on white-collar crime.

The agency was in search of fraudulent securities, forgeries, and stolen art, and they knew that Mel Weinberg, a lifelong con artist, could put them in touch with the right people.

But it wasn't as simple as making a few phone calls.

Weinberg would need bait to draw the rats out of the cellar.

Weinberg proposed that he and undercover FBI agent Anthony Amoroso pose as the representatives of Kambir Abdul Rahman and Yasir Habib, two fictitious Arab sheiks who, according to Weinberg's imagination, were interested in transferring their oil billions out of their unstable home countries.

As the story goes, the sheikhs had ties to royalty that was on the verge of being overthrown and banished.

They needed a way to protect their wealth and to obtain asylum on the friendly shores of the USA, but they needed help.

Actually, two sheiks, okay, that we work for.

And these guys want to guarantee that they're going to be able to come into this country and that they're going to be able to stay here.

I mean,

that's where Mel Weinberg came in.

Weinberg would put the word out about the billions up for grabs and meet with all of the hopeful suitors on the sheikh's behalf to discover a possible deal that could benefit everybody involved.

Once a deal was made, which would be captured surreptitiously on audio and video recording equipment for undeniable proof, the FBI would eventually swoop in and make an arrest.

For credibility, Mel Weinberg instructed the FBI to fund a bank account with $1 million that he could use for down payments and deposits, and he set up a dummy corporation named Abdul Enterprises to control the funds.

Thus, the Sting became known as the Abdul Scam, or ABSCAM for short.

But ABSCAM got off to a rocky start.

The recording equipment was old and faulty.

The undercover agents were dressed in cheap suits, and the staged meeting places were sparsely decorated with cheap furniture.

Mel Weinberg complained to the FBI officials in charge of the investigation that the sting required luxury for it to be believable.

Unfortunately, government budgets do not allow for luxury.

Mel would just have to make do with what they had.

In addition to Mel Weinberg and Anthony Almoroso, another FBI agent named Mike Dinnehy was present for the initial meetings.

Dinnehy, who wore a child's headdress purchased from a local costume shop, played the role of one of the sheiks even though he was a terrible actor who could not speak a single word of Arabic.

Dennehy's role was discontinued in future meetings.

Yet, despite all of these limitations, those initial stings were successful and fruitful.

Mel Weinberg, the con man, would book meetings with the crooks so that Anthony Amoroso, the undercover FBI agent, could ask the right questions to carefully establish a federal crime.

In a matter of months, the operation had prevented the sale of $600 million worth of fraudulent securities and recovered two stolen paintings worth $1 million.

The investigation took an unexpected turn when a Long Island businessman named William Rosenberg walked through the door.

Weinberg and Amaroso floated the idea of using $100 million of the Sheikh's money to build a hotel and casino in Atlantic City.

They promised Rosenberg a commission of $7 million if he could help make it happen.

The process of obtaining a gambling license in the state of New Jersey was notoriously difficult and risky, unless you knew the right people.

Luckily for the Sheiks, William Rosenberg knew the right people.

He was on a first-name basis with the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, a man named Angelo Eric Heddy, a man who took corruption to the next level.

He would get into any crooked deal you want.

He would bring up some real crazy deals to us.

I mean, he wanted to get into counterfeit money.

He wanted to give us support of Canada for narcotics.

Anything that was designers he wanted to do.

I mean, he was a likable guy.

I mean, out of all the people that we dealt with, he was the most likable one now.

During his first meeting with the ABSCEM team, Mayor Ericetty told them he would, quote, give them Atlantic City.

that he could recruit other government officials and even U.S.

congressmen to make sure everything ran smoothly.

Of course, in return, Eric expected a handsome reward.

Agent Amarasso shook Eriketti's hand and gave him a briefcase containing $50,000 in cash.

At a follow-up meeting, Weinberg presented Eriketti with a tribal dagger from the Sheikh's personal collection as a token of appreciation.

In reality, Mel Weinberg had purchased that dagger years earlier at a flea market for $2.75.

Mayor Eriketti was none the wiser, but he delivered on his promises.

Within weeks, Ericketty had arranged for the vice chairman of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to meet with the ABSCAM team.

And through his Pennsylvania-based lawyer, who served as the middleman between the mayor of Camden and numerous United States congressmen, the groundwork had been laid for one of the most shocking political scandals the United States of America has ever seen.

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You set a crook to catch a crook.

All right?

We put the big honeypot out there and all the flies came to us.

You don't think you're going to walk up to a Congress and say, I want to bribe you.

You have to give them a reason why you want to bribe.

What can they do for you?

Every one of these congressmen were told one thing only.

If you can do us a favor for these Arabs, all right, that you'll sponsor them.

We're willing to pay.

If you can't do it, then we don't want to pay you.

Since the ABSCAM investigation had expanded to include public officials, the logistics and surveillance of the operation had to expand with it.

The FBI rented a townhouse in Washington, D.C.

and installed hidden cameras everywhere, including the television.

They booked hotel rooms in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey.

They even utilized a confiscated yacht in Florida to host a party where the criminals could mingle with the sheiks.

Every phone call, every meeting, every conversation was recorded.

The simple white-collar crime sting operation that was pitched to Mel Weinberg had morphed into a full-blown political corruption probe.

According to Weinberg, the first two politicians that Eric Heddy's lawyer unwittingly delivered to the FBI were two of the easiest to bribe.

Michael Ozzie Myers, a Democratic U.S.

House member from Pennsylvania, tagged along with Mayor Ericketti to one meeting with the ABSCAM crew and brazenly advertised his ability to be compromised.

I got a ninth-grade education, he told the undercover agents.

How do you think I got to Congress?

Ausnie Myers also delivered maybe the most infamous line of the entire investigation when he commended the representatives of the Sheiks on their approach.

Let me just say this to you.

You're going about it the right way.

I'm going to tell you something real simple and short.

When the money talks in this business, it bullshit.

It works the same way down in Washington.

Myers eagerly accepted a payment of $50,000 in exchange for the promise to use his political power to help the Sheiks obtain permanent residency in the United States.

He was the first congressman to accept the bribe, and he had no problem leaving with the briefcase of cash in his own hands.

Raymond Lederer, another Democratic member of the House from Pennsylvania, met with the investigators at a hotel in Queens, where he admitted that he was, quote, no Boy Scout.

Lederer also accepted the $50,000 payment for immigration assistance.

Lederer, Raymond Lederer came in and he picked the money away.

He was nervous because when he went out of the hotel room he went left instead of right and I had to show him where the elevator was.

He was nervous.

And the hits kept coming.

When John Jarrett, a congressman from South Carolina, was asked if he was willing to make a deal to help the Sheiks obtain citizenship, he jumped at the opportunity.

I've got larceny in my blood, he told them.

I'll take it in a goddamn minute.

Even long-serving and well-loved members of Congress like Frank Thompson from New York were not immune to the allure of cold hard cash.

He too accepted the bribe to help the Sheikhs skirt immigration laws.

And he brought Representatives John Murphy of New York and John Murtha of Pennsylvania into the fold as well.

Murphy was suspicious.

He would never talk money.

Very careful what he said.

He thought every word what he said.

When we had the meeting there, when we were dividing up the shares for the shipping company we were going to buy, and I said, what's your share?

He says, I don't want none, but he waits.

John Murphy was the chairman of the now-defunct committee on the merchant marine and fisheries.

He agreed to accept 50 grand in exchange for his resources.

Murphy was not filmed taking the money, but he was recorded arguing with Philadelphia lawyer Howard Cryden about who would collect it for him.

Congressman John Murtha, on the other hand, wanted to do business a little bit differently.

Hi, Connie.

This This is Special Agent Anthony Amaroso Jr., Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Today's date is January 7th, 1980.

Location, the townhouse in Washington, D.C.

In a short while, I'm expecting a meeting between myself, Mel Weinberg, Howard Cryden, and U.S.

Congressman John Mertha.

In front of me is $50,000

in five packets.

Each packet contains $10,000 in $100 bills.

I am placing this money in the desk drawer directly in front of me.

This money will remain in such a position until the termination of my meeting.

which is to take place later on this morning.

Instead of accepting cash directly, Merthy preferred that the money be invested into businesses in this Pennsylvania district.

In return, Mertha would use that investment as a prop to obtain citizenship for the men who invested it.

I honestly don't think you have any problem.

I mean, I'm going to lay it out to you.

Well, you're the man.

Let me see.

You're the man that's going to have to introduce some kind of legislation to keep this guy in.

You may not have to.

That you have to leave to us.

Well, I have to know what he's going to do.

I mean, I know.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Because I have to go back and tell these people.

I think you're absolutely right.

I think that in order to introduce legislation, you have to have a real tie to the district.

And one of the things that a lot of guys have gotten in trouble with is that type of thing.

Now,

I haven't seen any

problem with anybody coming into the country at all that's got money.

The only guys having trouble coming into the country are the ones that don't have money.

The only guys that have any trouble coming into the country are the ones that don't have any money.

Thanks for saying out loud what everybody already knew.

I've got as much influence in that goddamn Congress with leadership and the White House as anybody in Congress.

You're not going to have any trouble.

And there's no use me telling you are going to have any trouble.

And I'm not trying to be flippant about the song, but you're not going to have any trouble.

Now, to introduce legislation would be the

last thing that you'd want done.

I want this guy to spend money in my district.

I want this connection in my goddamn district.

I'm delighted to do business with the guy and do any goddamn thing I can within

bounds, you know, as I'll get myself in jail in order to get him into the country or whatever needs to be done.

But I've got to know

the details.

Congressman John Murthy did not want to engage in a cash bribe.

Not yet, anyway.

After we've done some business, you know, then I might change my mind.

But right now, that's all I'm interested in.

And I'm going to tell you this: if anybody can do it, and I'm not bullshitting you fellas, I can get it done my way.

There's no question about it.

For what you're telling me, okay?

You're telling me that that's not what you, you know, that's not what you're doing.

I'm not interested.

Okay.

At this point.

Okay.

You know, we do business for a while.

Maybe I'll be interested.

Maybe I won't.

You know, okay.

Mertha left the DC townhouse that morning without accepting any money, but he was definitely open for business.

However, not everyone Weinberg and Amaroso met with was for sale.

50,000 is no, you know, is no problem.

It would not be proper for me to promise to do anything in return for campaign contributions.

When Republican Congressman Larry Pressler from South Dakota was offered a bribe, he told the undercover agents that what they were offering was illegal, and he immediately left the room and reported the incident to the FBI.

I sensed that there was something very much wrong, and I stood up and started toward the door and said, look, I came here

under the understanding that we were going to talk about business and a political action committee and my presidential campaign.

And this could be illegal, I said.

And I repeated the word illegal two or three times.

Legendary news anchorman Walter Cronkite would later refer to Representative Larry Pressler as a hero, to which Pressler responded, quote, I turned down an illegal contribution.

Whatever have we come to, if that's considered heroic.

Adhering to the Cronkite standard, Bob Guccione, the publisher of Penthouse magazine, should also be considered a hero, and not for obvious reasons.

Mel Weinberg had found out that Guccione was in the process of constructing the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City and was looking for additional financing.

Weinberg, on behalf of Abdul Enterprises, offered to invest $150 million into the project if the magazine Mogul was willing to bribe New Jersey gaming officials into giving the Sheiks a license for their own casino.

Gucci only responded to the offer with, quote, are you out of your mind?

That's right.

Even a peddler of smut has better ethics than the average United States congressman.

Probably more intelligent too.

Congressman Richard Kelly, a Republican from Florida, was probably the dumbest person who fell for the trap.

Relax.

Those are Mel Weinberg's words, not mine.

And the other easy one, the dumbest, well, you could say, is Kelly.

I mean, his thing was, if you knew how poor I was, you'd cry for me.

He was pitiful.

I mean, I mean.

As soon as Agent Amoroso handed Representative Kelly the bribe money, he began stuffing it into his pockets.

He's on tape telling his new best friends, quote, I am so damn poor, you couldn't believe it.

I mean, if I told you how poor I am, you'd cry.

I mean, the tears would roll down your eyes.

But it's hard to feel sorry for Richard Kelly and his financial woes.

During his three terms as a U.S.

Representative, Kelly was very vocal about his strong opposition to the food stamps program.

The largest fish pulled from the cesspool of corrupt legislators was not a member of the U.S.

House of Representatives.

He was a member of the U.S.

Senate, Harrison Pete Williams, Democrat from New Jersey.

Senator Williams met repeatedly with the undercover FBI agents, trying to work out a deal where the Sheiks would buy $100 million worth of stock in a titanium mine in Virginia, a titanium mine in which Senator Williams also secretly owned shares.

Williams told the agents that he planned to use his political clout to steer government contracts towards the mine, which would result in significant profits for the stockholders, including himself.

In exchange for the investment, Senator Williams would introduce a bill in Congress to grant permanent residence for the Sheiks.

Everybody wins.

Almost.

On a cold February day in 1980, Senator Williams received an unexpected knock on his door.

Just a few minutes ago, two members of the FBI were here,

and for the first time, I learned about this this and really don't know

any of the facts of anything and therefore I'm in no position to comment about

what I'm not, what I don't know is

happening at the department, but the department evidently has told you a lot more than they've told me.

You're not the target of an investigation, Senator?

Can you say that you're not the target of an investigation?

Right.

Now it appears that I am and that that's about all for now.

The FBI has rocked the nation's capital with a potential new scandal.

A U.S.

senator and seven congressmen are under investigation, along with newspapers.

Good evening.

NBC News has learned of an extraordinary story of political corruption involving 20 public officials, all who accepted bribes from FBI providers.

For almost a year now, this house in an expensive residential section of Washington, D.C., has been a center of an elaborate FBI undercover investigation of political corruption, codenamed Operation ABSCAM.

The members of Congress involved in this investigation are Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey and Representatives John Murphy of New York, Frank Thompson of New Jersey, Michael Myers of Pennsylvania, Raymond Lederer of Pennsylvania, John Murthy of Pennsylvania, John Jinrett of South Carolina, and Richard Kelly of Florida.

All but Kelly are Democrats.

Investigators are already calling Operation ABSCAM the most important investigation of political corruption since Watergate.

On February 3rd, 1980, details of the ABSCAM sting littered the front pages of newspapers all across America.

The prosecution memo, which outlined the entire two-year investigation, including names and evidence, had been leaked to the press.

Everybody, including the subjects of the investigation, were hearing about it for the first time.

The majority of Americans were in disbelief over how seemingly easy it was for a foreign agent to bribe a public official, while for others, Abscalem only confirmed their long-held suspicions.

The FBI had been forced to pull the plug on the sting earlier than anticipated because rumors about a secret operation involving an Arab sheikh had circulating in D.C.

for months and were only getting louder.

One could only imagine how many politicians would have been ensnared if it had been allowed to continue.

When indictments were handed down in October, the accused prepared for battle.

I had no intent, never had intent, to sell my office as a member of Congress.

I have denied all the allegations from the outset, and I do so today also.

I will say that I stated before that I had done nothing illegal.

I still believe that.

I was told that if I would go to meet with some people that there would be major investments for the poor to Philadelphia.

And that's what I talked about over there.

And if there are indeed tapes, you'll find Ray Letteriffs all in the city in the Port of Philadelphia.

And I'm proud of that.

All

of the events and activities that are known as ABSCAM that present legal questions, we will now raise

and we will present.

Well, there's no question of that in anyone's mind.

And in fact, these tapes will clearly clearly show that

I resisted the seduction, as I just stated, and lectured the agents on what responsibility is.

You think I'm going to let a Mel Weinberg deprive me of running for re-election?

I'm sure that the American people will not stand still for what the FBI did to me and what the Justice Department has done to this country.

Political fallout from Abscalem was immense.

With the presidential election on the horizon, the Democrats Democrats accused the Justice Department of conducting a political witch hunt to flip the momentum.

And some members of Congress on both sides of the aisle took issue with the methods used in the investigation.

They expressed concern about the possibility of damaging the reputations of those who were tangentially involved.

And they accused the FBI of privacy violations and entrapment.

Both houses of Congress went their own investigations into this scandal, but they might not get any help from the Justice Department until it's through with the court cases.

And the U.S.

Attorney General says he'd also like to put the heat on people in his own department who leaked all the stories to reporters.

In fact, entrapment was one of the main defense arguments used by the men on trial.

A defense argument that proved ineffective against the video and audio recordings.

Every single person that was indicted in the AB scam investigation was convicted of bribery and conspiracy, except John Murphy.

He was convicted of conflict of interest and accepting illegal gratuity, gratuity, and all of their future appeals would be denied.

Other members, like Richard Kelly, the sole Republican, took an unorthodox approach to his defense.

Kelly claimed that he had been conducting his own bribery investigation, which led him to the Sheiks, and that the FBI ruined it with their own investigation.

Ozzie Myers tried something similar.

He claimed that he was planning to scam the scammers.

He said he was going to take the money and run and not fulfill his part of the deal, As if that makes him a better person somehow.

All of the men were sentenced anywhere from one to three years in prison.

After Myers became the first member to be expelled from the House of Representatives since the Civil War, most of the other convicted representatives could predict their fate and resigned.

Although a few chose to run for re-election.

Raymond Lederer, even one.

Explain yourself, Pennsylvania.

The only senator in the group, Pete Williams, resigned amid pressure from his colleagues.

He maintained his innocence until his dying day.

Williams claimed that the titanium shares he was planning to sell to the Sheiks were not real, which made them worthless.

Therefore, no crime was committed since nothing of value was being exchanged.

After being released from prison, Most of the disgraced public officials lived quiet lives outside of the spotlight.

Others, like Frank Thompson, returned to Washington to become political consultants and lobbyists.

As for Mel Weinberg, his days as a con artist were over.

His name and face had been plastered all over the news.

He had served as the key witness in the trials.

All of his misdeeds and past scams became public record as high-priced defense attorneys attempted to assassinate his character and have the cases thrown out of court.

It's not like Mel Weinberg had performed his role in the sting out of patriotic duty.

He was saving his own ass to avoid a three-year prison sentence, and he was paid $150,000 by the FBI in doing so.

But even the best defense attorneys in the country proved to be no match for Mel Weinberg, one of the best talkers in the world.

He had an answer for every question, and for the first time in his life, he simply told the truth.

Although his career as a con man was coming to an end, Mel Weinberg may have pulled off his final scam right under the noses of the FBI.

On the microwave and three TV sets, without serial numbers, it's virtually impossible to trace where they came from.

But 2020 did find the serial numbers still on that expensive stereo set and the Genesis speaker cabinets.

Using those identification numbers, we traced them to the very store in New Jersey where another of Mel Weinberg's accusers, under oath, said he had bought them for Mel to give to the Sheik.

Instead, the very items Mel Weinberg testified he had not received have turned up in his home.

Even Marie Weinberg, Mel's soon-to-be ex-wife, accused her husband of lying under oath.

She said that Mel accepted gifts and at least $45,000 in cash from Abscim defendants.

And to hide those facts, she said that he intentionally failed to turn over all of his recorded conversations to the FBI.

And I said to him one word when we came back home.

I said, Mel, what you did.

I loved you.

I trusted you.

I said, you turned around and you took that love and trust.

You lost me.

One day, you're going to want me.

Or you're going to miss what you had.

Like everyone else, Marie Weinberg had discovered that Mel cooperated in the investigation partly to get his mistress, Evelyn Knight, off the hook.

Mel said that Marie had become extremely bitter when she found out about the affair.

Marie demanded a divorce and even testified against Mel during Representative Richard Kelly's appeal hearing.

Marie Weinberg was devastated.

She couldn't believe that the man she loved had been secretly sharing an apartment with another woman, even though Mel had done the exact same thing with Marie and his first wife.

Nevertheless, it broke her, and she never recovered.

Today, Marie Weinberg was found dead in a neighboring apartment in Stewart, Florida, an apparent suicide.

In a note, she stated that everything she had said about APSCAM and her husband is true, and that she could no longer stand what she described as threats and harassment from her husband.

On January 29th, 1982, Marie Weinberg hanged herself.

She left a note that read, quote, My sin was wanting to love and to be loved, but a campaign is being made by Mel to discredit me.

I haven't the strength to fight him anymore.

After Marie's suicide, Mel Weinberg was asked how he felt about his ex-wife.

He responded with, quote, she was a cuckoo.

Mel Weinberg married Evelyn Knight a few months later.

They divorced in 1998.

After the Abscam trials, Mel Weinberg found work as a private investigator for a law firm who was hired by the likes of Louis Vuitton and Gucci to track down counterfeiters, an operation that was lovingly referred to as Bag Scam.

Mel retired after 15 years and bought a house in Florida where he lived alone.

In 2013, a Hollywood production studio paid Mel Weinberg for the rights to his story, which eventually became the 10-time Oscar-nominated film American Hustle, starring Christian Bell.

Weinberg said he liked Bell's depiction of him in the movie, but he had issues with the wife, who was played by Jennifer Lawrence.

He told ABC News, quote, In the movie, the wife was hotter than the girlfriend.

I mean, it should have been the other way around.

The mistress should always be hotter than your wife.

Either way, Weinberg had had pocketed $250,000 from the movie.

Now that's easy money.

In one of his final interviews with David Howard for the Hollywood Reporter, Weinberg claimed to have no regrets for his role in the stink or how his life had turned out.

Quote, getting caught was the best thing that ever happened to me.

All the con men in those days died young.

On May 30th, 2018, Mel Weinberg died at a nursing home in West Palm Beach, Florida.

He was 93 years old.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen.

Original music for Swindled is written and performed by Trevor Howard.

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