capacity,” he said. “But I like to care about people. I think that’s where we had our biggest differences: He didn’t care about any- one.” Perhaps he was just desperate, with the DEA closing in on his online operations. Or maybe it was the opposite, as the GISE agents suspected: Le Roux felt safe in Brazil, and just got compla- cent.

Whatever the explanation, Le Roux wanted too much, too quickly—just as he always had. “He had the security. He had the safety measures—always was able to keep himself out of the pic- ture,” Klaussen said. “Even when he was in the picture he was able to get out. It was all very well organized. It was very well pro- tected. It was all laid out to be the most perfect criminal empire ever. But he didn’t have the patience.”

After the visit to Rio, the fake deal Klaussen was setting up for Le Roux progressed as planned. Le Roux sent Klaussen his bank account number a week later, and the Colombians wired payment for a twenty-four-gram sample of methamphetamine, to be shipped to Liberia and destined for New York. Le Roux ordered the sam- ple sent from Manila out of his North Korean stock, and supplied them with a tracking number. A few weeks later, Klaussen reported back that the Colombians had tested the meth and found that it was clean, nearly 100 percent pure. Le Roux proposed a trade: one hundred kilos of meth in exchange for one hundred kilos of co- caine. The Colombians readily agreed. To Le Roux, it appeared he was the one controlling the direction of the deal.

In midsummer, Le Roux left Brazil and returned to the Philip- pines. Even with the law enforcement attention he knew was fo- cused there, he told Klaussen, he had unfinished business before finalizing his move to Brazil. In late summer he would be returning to Brazil for good, and he could pass through Liberia on the way, meet the Colombians, and complete the deal.

In the weeks before Le Roux left Rio, GISE caught him on the wire making final arrangements for a real transaction, a shipment of