Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam Read Online Free PDF

called it a greed investment. His wake-up call came when the Feds raided their room, and they just rolled it up and moved across the street under another name. Once he could see through the illusion, his mojo evaporated. That moment might have come sooner if he hadn’t been in the throes of what he calls “a vicious drug addiction.” He worked three separate rooms in all, where he had a reputation for softening up the cold calls and getting them in a good mood for the handoff. Some of the rooms were tipped up with organized crime: one had ties to the Bonnano family in New York, and another one was affiliated with Sammy “The Bull” Gravano—after he brought down John Gotti and the Gambino family in New York, and right before he went down on ecstasy charges in Arizona. Mike estimates they made between $13 million and $20 million in about a year and a half; his take was a couple hundred thousand. When the third room blew up, he decided to set up his own shop—right when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission started issuing licenses, which of course he ignored. But by then, it was just a matter of time.
    He was spending every weekend holed up in a motel room in a dope haze, hoarding all his money in precious metals and seeing his bank accounts seized because his transactions were so suspect, the bank knew he wouldn’t challenge it. State authorities finally got him on trying to cash a bad check, but by that point, everyone he knew was in jail. When they came for him, all he really felt was relief. He sat in county for fourteen months, gained twenty pounds, gave up shaving, and was disgusted with himself and with life. His girlfriend, later his wife, sold her car to pay for his lawyer, who settled his case for two years in prison, minus time served, followed by twenty-eight years of probation, plus full restitution to his victims. According to Mike, the lawyer claimed that after five years they could negotiate a settlement of the amount of restitution he owed and be done with it, but that turned out to be all lies. The State considers a plea an enforceable contract and once a person has signed on the dotted line, the opportunity to negotiate is over. Mike pled guilty to “organized fraud, unlicensed telemarketing, and grandtheft.” His amount of restitution was set at $219,000. When he checked into Moore Haven in Glades County to serve the remaining ten months on his sentence, of which he did about eight and a half, the guards laughed at him for pulling such a ridiculous stretch of probation following his prison time.
    He got his GED while he was in prison and came out at age thirty-two—older and presumably wiser.

CHAPTER 2
The Spanish Prisoner
    T he way Mike describes it, the honeymoon with Dalia never really ended. The only thing that got in the way is what he calls “the money nonsense.” Dalia seemed to magically perceive whatever he needed and made sure he got it. She would pick up dinner or buy him things when they were out shopping, even if it was mostly with his money. And they always had fun: whenever he saw Colombians or Puerto Ricans on the street playing their music or celebrating a national holiday, he would tease her, saying, “Isn’t that the Peruvian flag? Aren’t those your people?”
    They constantly sent gushy notes back and forth, even kept a dry erase board on the refrigerator where they could leave spontaneous messages or cute pictures—“Miss you . . . Thinking of you . . . Love you so much.”
    One time Mike drew a smiley face, then the next day Dalia added stick-figure legs, then Mike added the hands, and back and forth until finally a penis and testicles had been added—an image he later had to painstakingly explain in court, much to the amusement of the assembled courtroom.
    Here is the card Dalia sent him for Valentine’s Day in 2009, handwritten in blue pen in a delicate script:
To my husband, love of my life, my soul mate, my best friend, my everything: You make me so