Hunting LeRoux: The Inside Story of the DEA Takedown of a Criminal Genius and His Empire

by Elaine Shannon

Overview

"Paul LeRoux, a former cybersecurity entrepreneur, transformed transnational organized crime. He was Netflix to Blockbuster, Spotify to Tower Records. His criminal empire stretched from Southeast Asia to Brazil and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales of arms, drugs, chemicals, bombs, missile technology, and assassinations. Initially, LeRoux was a ghost, but he gained the attention of a band of DEA agents who used undercover informants to penetrate LeRoux's inner circle and bring him down. For five years Elaine Shannon immersed herself in LeRoux's shadowy world. She gained exclusive access to the agents and players, and takes us on a shocking tour of this dark frontier, putting you in the room with these people and their jeopardy, frustration, anger, and small victories, creating a narrative with a breathtaking edge, immediacy, and a stranger-than-fiction reality. Remarkable, disturbing, and utterly engrossing, Hunting LeRoux introduces a new breed of criminal--and a new kind of true crime story. It is a look into the future--a future that is dark"--Back cover.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062930514
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Elaine Shannon, acclaimed veteran correspondent for Time and Newsweek, is the author of the New York Times bestseller Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win, which served as the basis for Michael Mann’s Emmy-winning NBC miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story, and its Emmy-nominated sequel, Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel. Shannon is a highly respected investigative reporter, trusted by law enforcement and intelligence organizations, and an expert on terrorism, organized crime, and espionage. She is the author of No Heroes: Inside the FBI’s Secret Counter-Terror Force and The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen. She lives in Washington, D.C. You can contact her at [e-mail].

Table of Contents

Foreword Michael Mann xi

Introduction: Malign Actor 1

1 September 25, 2013 9

2 Murphy's Law 30

3 The Rhodesian 59

4 Black Cloud 82

5 Magic! 96

6 Invisible City 116

7 Pac-Man and Ironman 142

8 "We're Way Beyond Birthdays" 158

9 Dazzle Him 173

10 "I Just Don't Want to Get on the Plane" 198

11 Queen for a Day 216

12 All the Pieces on the Chessboard 243

13 Hunting Rambo 270

14 Ninja Stuff 294

15 Burning It Down 323

Note to Readers 333

Notes 335

Index 343

Acknowledgments 353

Editorial Reviews

An investigative masterpiece...fascinating look...LeRoux is...one of the most intriguing and frightening criminals I’ve ever read about.... A stunning work by a master investigative journalist.

Don Winslow

An amazing story, a triumph of investigative reporting and storytelling, Elaine Shannon’s Hunting LeRoux inhabits a global world of crime and policing that very few people have even heard of, much less understand. It reveals not just the newest methods, but a cast of characters who could only exist in modern times, equally proficient with weapons and computers. There’s nothing else quite like it.

Mark Bowden

★ 03/18/2019

Journalist Shannon (The Spy Next Door) delivers an exceptional account of the outlaw career of Paul LeRoux, who here emerges as perhaps the most significant contemporary criminal not known to the general public for his having “introduced the principles of twenty-first century entrepreneurship to the dark side of the global economy.” LeRoux, who grew up in South Africa, used his sophisticated computer skills to create an online pharmaceutical business in 2004 that yielded him millions. Carefully constructed to appear on the up-and-up, RX Limited linked pill-buying consumers with a network of physicians and pharmacies, randomly assigning repeat customers to different providers to allow them to make as many purchases as they wanted without raising any red flags. LeRoux moved on to create a “digitally powered, high-volume warehousing and delivery operation for drugs and arms” or, put another way, a “black-market Amazon.” Unlike Evan Ratliff’s recent book on LeRoux, The Mastermind, which focuses on the lower-level DEA investigators who first found evidence that RX Limited was a criminal scheme, Shannon starts with the DEA’s 960 Group, an elite unit of undercover agents whose efforts led to LeRoux’s arrest in 2012. True crime fans will want to read both to get the full story. Agent: Shane Salerno, Story Factory. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

An investigative masterpiece...fascinating look...LeRoux is...one of the most intriguing and frightening criminals I’ve ever read about.... A stunning work by a master investigative journalist.” — Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of The Cartel and The Power of the Dog

“The New Now of transnational crime. Elaine Shannon’s incisive, you-are-there account of cyber-crime syndicate godfather Paul Calder LeRoux is a scorching, hair-raising glimpse into a new kind of criminal who’s altogether terrifying because he’s altogether real. — Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestsellingauthor of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone

From the Publisher

The New Now of transnational crime. Elaine Shannon’s incisive, you-are-there account of cyber-crime syndicate godfather Paul Calder LeRoux is a scorching, hair-raising glimpse into a new kind of criminal who’s altogether terrifying because he’s altogether real.

Dennis Lehane

2019-02-06

A methodical history of a pioneer of cybercrime who founded an international empire based on the sales of drugs, armaments, and technology and on the currency of fear and murder.

It's unfortunate that Shannon's (Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win, 1988, etc.) account of the criminal genius Paul Le Roux appears in the same season as Evan Ratliff's Mastermind, which covers just the same ground and is the more vigorously written of the two. Still, Shannon opens on a smart note given current events: She contrasts the old-school criminal empire of Joaquin Guzmán, aka "El Chapo," with the new one of Le Roux, who "has introduced the principles of twenty-first century entrepreneurship to the dark side of the global economy"—and, in the process, "is changing everything." Transnational in nature—for Le Roux was born in what was then Rhodesia and has lived, it seems, just about everywhere since—the postmodern, postindustrial criminal empire Le Roux founded resisted law enforcement simply by not having a country of its own: a murder in Manila here, a drug deal in Hong Kong or Pyongyang there, bank transfers in Dubai and London and Jerusalem there, and it all made it difficult to keep tabs on. Le Roux's model wasn't one of loyal Mafia foot soldiers but of disposable—literally—contractors, whether renegade bikers or well-trained mercenaries or mild-mannered accountants. Shannon is very good on procedural matters and especially on how the American Drug Enforcement Administration pieced together its multiagency, multigovernmental case against Le Roux. Among her sources are undercover DEA agents and informants, including one who "posed as a Colombian cartel representative in order to bring Le Roux to justice." That story is fascinating, especially as government agents figure out how to lure their target—or, failing that, arrange for him to be dispatched in some distant place, even if "U.S. military and NATO rules of engagement forbade summary executions of noncombatants." For sizzle, then, one wants to read Ratliff's book first, but there's plenty of steak here.

A painstaking, fascinating account of crime and punishment.

Kirkus Reviews