As a young agent, I had a perspective-changing conversation with a defense attorney on an island.
I’ve mentioned before that I moved from IRS Criminal Investigation to ATF when I was still in my early 20s. (https://lnkd.in/g3AZdxb9)
At IRS-CI, I frequently found myself in nice houses. That’s the nature of white collar criminal investigations. But at ATF, the houses I went into were rarely nice. That’s the nature of violent crime investigations.
That changed one day when a colleague in New England asked me to track down a witness in south Florida. It was related to a series of robberies committed with a short-barreled shotgun in his jurisdiction, and the person (an accomplice) had fled to the warmer climes of Miami.
I went to the address where he suggested I start looking for the person but when I pulled up I thought, “This can’t be right.” It was a luxury high-rise condo.
Sure enough, it was the right place. Despite the wrong turns in life the witness had taken, the person came from a well-to-do family. I spoke to the rich patriarch and he agreed to bring the witness—his adult child—in for an interview.
“But,” he said, “I want my lawyer present.”
The lawyer was about to leave town, so the interview was arranged at the attorney’s house, rather than his office. He lived on an island.
To be fair, it was a small island, connected to mainland Miami by a bridge. But still an island.
The attorney lived in a corner unit near the top of (another) luxury high-rise condo. As I stepped through the front door of his condo, I was stunned by the view. Both outer walls of the corner unit were just windows, giving an expansive view of Biscayne Bay. It was a gorgeous day. I just stared.
I chatted casually with the attorney before the interview began. His very fancy wife was a gracious host and offered everyone drinks before retreating to another part of the villa.
I complimented the attorney on his apparent success and asked about his law practice. He, gracious like his wife, said that besides defense work, he also represented whistleblowers to the IRS. Niche gig.
Through a provision in the law, whistleblowers can share in the proceeds that IRS recovers based on their information. He then took a cut of that.
At that stage in my life, I still had the notion that I myself could never be a defense attorney. I just wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
But perhaps I was wrong. If ever I couldn’t sleep, I thought, maybe I could just come stare out my window-walls…of my island home…at my open view of the ocean. That would make me feel better.
Anyway, I thought about that as I read this opinion from the D.C. Circuit, telling the IRS to pay up to a whistleblower: https://lnkd.in/gfrRz4jX.
And there’s an attorney on the other end who gets a cut. I’ll bet the attorney has a nice house.