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Mike Levin The private investigator pleaded guilty Monday in the buying and selling of FBI files

Friday, June 29, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: Informant was key to stings

Officials mum on whether deal was cut

Just as fast as he bought and sold classified FBI documents, FBI agent-turned-private-investigator Mike Levin sold his customers and government moles down the river in a blitz of sting operations immediately after his arrest, according to court documents.

The FBI and prosecutors would not say whether they cut him a deal for his cooperation, but FBI agent Joseph Valiquette said Thursday that Levin's participation was essential in stings that netted the arrests of Levin's nine co-conspirators. Among them were a Las Vegas FBI employee, a Nevada attorney's general office investigator and a Las Vegas Municipal Court worker.

"We can't underestimate how important to the case it was," Valiquette said. "His cooperation was critical."

The criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in New York federal court details the sting operations and reveals that some of the suspects feared the law could be closing in on them.

Levin pleaded guilty Monday to paying government employees for secret FBI files and selling them to organized and white-collar crime figures for more than $100,000. He was arrested June 14 shortly after an FBI surveillance caught him selling documents in Long Island, according to the complaint.

Levin cooperated with federal agents by making recorded phone calls and visits with the people he had bought the documents from and sold them to.

Maria Emeterio, an attorney general's office investigator, and Mary Ellen Weeks, an employee with the Municipal Court Intake Services Office, implicated themselves in the scandal within an hour of each other June 18 after each getting one of the calls, the complaint said.

With FBI agents listening in, Levin called Weeks at her office about 3:15 p.m. He asked her to fax him the criminal background of a person who is the subject of a grand jury investigation in New York, the complaint said.

Levin said he would pay her when he returned to New York, it said.

To which Weeks responded, "Sounds like a plan," according to the complaint.

Weeks used her position with her office to get the criminal background from the National Crime Information Center, a classified database maintained by the FBI, the complaint said. She faxed the document to awaiting FBI agents in New York, the complaint said.

Levin told agents he had obtained more than 100 NCIC files from Weeks since 1999 at $100 apiece, according to the complaint.

Emeterio, who had access to the NCIC database, was called at 3:44 p.m. She initially resisted sending Levin a fax and told him he still owed her money for previous information she gave him, the complaint said.

The incriminating fax arrived shortly after Levin assured her he would pay her more money when he returned to Nevada, the complaint said.

Levin called Emeterio back, thanked her, and said he would "take care" of her, the complaint said.

Emeterio responded, "No problem," according to the complaint.

James J. Hill, a communications security manager at the FBI's Las Vegas office, is suspected by the FBI to have sent Levin the majority of his classified files, including investigative reports of organized and white-collar crime suspects under investigation, court documents said.

He was arrested when Levin placed a recorded call to him June 14.

FBI agents targeted six people Levin said he had sold documents to. Five of them were the subjects of federal criminal investigations, and one was an attorney for one of the subjects. They wanted FBI investigative reports to help their cases, the bureau alleged.

Levin, equipped with a wire and furnished with a bogus FBI report, met June 16 with New York attorney Herbert Jacobi at Jacobi's home. Jacobi represents Las Vegan Robert Potter, a defendant in a federal securities fraud case.

Potter has been named by Levin as a recipient of classified documents from Levin and has been arrested, the complaint said.

Jacobi agreed to buy the bogus document from Levin while the two met at his house in Long Island, the complaint said.

During the meeting, Jacobi expressed concern that the FBI would realize someone got the classified information if he ever tried to use it in a case, the complaint said.

"Just say, 'Hey yo, a little bird told me,' " Levin advised Jacobi in the recorded conversation.

Jacobi later did just that: He called an FBI supervisor to inform him of a "very bad leak" at the FBI, the complaint said.

Jacobi told the supervisor that he received a document in the mail in an anonymous envelope but that he planned to use the information, the complaint said.

Michael Santosus, the subject of a grand jury investigation in a mortgage fraud case, bought bogus documents for $2,000 from Levin on June 15 in another FBI operation, according to the complaint.

Also arrested with the New York stings was Robert Monaco, Sandra Marino and her husband, Bill Marino, all subjects of federal mortgage fraud investigations by a grand jury.

The Marinos declined to meet Levin when he called them June 18 and told him he had no information they could use, according to the complaint.

Before FBI agents had confirmed the leak of FBI information, they had interviewed the Marinos to see whether they knew where it was coming from, according the complaint.

But Levin ferreted out incriminating statements in his phone conversation with the couple, as the FBI reports in its complaint:

"I dealt with you guys once. You paid me once," Levin told them.

"Yeah, well, the thing is, we are in the thick of things," Sandra Marino replied.

Levin later told them, "We did our business that one time, and I hope I was of service that one time."

"Yeah," Sandra Marino responded.

The Marinos ended the conversation telling Levin they were a good distance from New York and would not be returning for several months.