The betrayal The true story of my brush with death in the world of narcos and launderers

Robert Baldasare is an adept money launderer whose clientele includes the Cali cartel. He is concerned about a scheduled meeting with a man named LaTorre; they had some previous business together, some of which ended with law-enforcement raids and seizures. Plus, Baldasare is hiding something from LaTorre, which is his true identity: Baldasare is really Mazur, an undercover DEA agent infiltrating the Cali cartel. The helter-skelter of underworld treachery is not new to Mazur. His previous distinguished service was in customs, where he successfully infiltrated the MedellÍn cartel. Bureaucratic squabbles led to the early conclusion of a huge case, much to his chagrin. He hopes his new case will go off without a hitch; however, the fallout from his customs work, along with duplicitous colleagues, threaten not only a career case, but his life as well. Mazur's latest true-crime thriller will leave readers on the edge of their seats. The inherent danger of undercover life--all guts and little glamour--is portrayed vividly. A transfixing read.

Mazur (The Infiltrator), a former agent in several federal agencies, recounts the challenges of working undercover to bring down drug kingpins in this engrossing if overly dramatized narrative. Following his first memoir--which detailed his efforts aimed at Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel while a U.S. Customs agent--he recounts another covert operation he conducted in the 1990s. After transferring to the DEA, Mazur infiltrated Colombia's Cali drug cartel posing as Robert Baldasare, the owner of a financial company, and amassed damning evidence against corrupt Colombian and Panamanian bankers and businessmen who were "tripping over one another to help Baldasare enhance the veils of secrecy that sheltered his movement of cocaine fortunes." With the narrative verve of a thriller, Mazur chronicles the looming threat of sudden, violent death--his operation was compromised repeatedly by corruption within the DEA--pulling readers in from the outset with a vivid description of almost being gunned down by thugs working for Cali Cartel money launderer Luis Latorre. However, his penchant for florid prose--guns are called "death machines;" another launderer's "pounding heart felt about to burst"--gives an unfortunately schlocky sheen to things. Still, admirers of his previous book will appreciate this thrilling real-life sequel. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Apr.)

Suspenseful memoir of undercover narcotics work. "That motherfucker Baldasare is a fucking DEA agent. I know it, but I can't say why." So grumbled a narcotics kingpin in 1993 about the man who laundered his money for five years: Mazur, working in the guise of someone whose name he picked from an Italian American graveyard on Staten Island. The author, working for the Drug Enforcement Agency, had earned certification as a mortgage broker and then made it known to the members of the Colombian cartel that he was open for business. One of his targets, that kingpin, took the bait. His organization, writes Mazur, moved millions of dollars per year in cocaine, laundering the cash by means of an army of "Smurfs" who would fan out across South Florida, New York City, and other venues to buy money orders, traveler's checks, and the like with increments of cash that never exceeded a few thousand dollars, thereby allowing them to avoid suspicion. A typical bad guy then "had weekly FedEx boxes containing hundreds of these negotiable instruments shipped to me so I could deposit them and then send him the total of each shipment in one wire transfer." Mazur's narrative has its longueurs, but it picks up speed and intensity when he becomes increasingly aware that the cartel has figured out who his real boss is--a development made possible largely because a fellow cop went over to the enemy, fully aware that the cartel had posted a $300,000 bounty "to anyone who killed a DEA agent." The bad cop is now in prison, but, Mazur observes, the drug trade continues unabated. Long since retired, he ventures that cracking down on launderers--most of them otherwise respectable members of the financial community for whom the job is a feature and not a bug--and establishing "zero tolerance for corruption at all levels" would be a start. An eye-opening insider's look at the financial aspects of the international drug trade. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.