War Stories with Jim Cavanaugh: Roggio Part One

Written by Jim Cavanaugh – I got a phone call one day from a retired cop that was working as Security Director for one of our large banks in Palm Beach. He had an incident reported to him that seemed to indicate a major drug laundering operation, and he wanted to pass the information on because it might involve one of the officers of the bank. We met and he related an odd story that complicated my life for about four years.

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The Security Director had been alerted by a teller at one of the bank’s branches when a scruffy male came in and made a deposit to an account that had a balance of just $3.00. The deposit was for $1,000,000. The account had been opened just days before and had been approved by one of the higher-up executives at the main office. The teller had attempted to elicit information from the man making the deposit, but his answers were evasive, and he declined to identify himself.

The Security man went to check on the signature cards for the account and found the names Vincent Roggio and J Lynn Helms with a Pennsylvania address. He then spoke with the employee that opened the account and he was told that the woman really knew nothing about it. The executive, George Wilde, had ordered her to do it, and she had never even met the people. To complicate matters more, the million dollars was moved 24-hours later to another account at a nearby bank with a wire transfer. The lady then mentioned something that caused the Security Director to call me. Wilde had told her to ignore any transactions in the account because Helms was “CIA” and this was a covert operation.

The name of Helms meant something, but not with the CIA. He was the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington and had been appointed by President Reagan. There was no way that he would be involved in any covert operation using his own name. The information was sufficient for the Bureau to open an investigation and I did.

I sent a teletype to our Washington office requesting that Helms be contacted to determine if he had any knowledge of the Florida bank account and the large sum of money running through it. He didn’t. The signature on the account card that the $1,000,000 was deposited into, was a forgery.

To Be Continued…