Tax accounting trio unsung heroes in region's public corruption fight
Post-Tribune (IN)
July 21, 2008
If you follow Northwest Indiana's colorful, larcenous political history, you know the names: Operation Bar-Tab, Operation Lights Out, Operation Restore Public Integrity.
By one name or another, federal investigators have taken down elected officials and political players for decades: judges who fixed tickets for cash, mayors who took kickbacks on municipal projects, insiders who took money for the judicious use of clout.
The common thread that binds them, and the one that hung them out to dry, are a trio of tax accountants you've never heard of: Harry Bigda, Paul Drapac and Al Johnson.
For a combined 120 years, the three IRS revenue agents have burrowed through reams of documents like moles in a flower bed, looking for the ill-gotten gains of public officials and their cronies.
Bigda retired in January, Drapac earlier this month, and Johnson -- the senior member of the trio with 42 years -- will wind up his career in August.
"It's a tremendous loss. These three guys have been with me since the first day," said U.S. Attorney David Capp, who led Operation Lights Out in the 1980s and took over Restore Public Integrity this year when he was appointed to replace Joseph Van Bokkelen.
"To me they are the heart of our public corruption efforts, these behind-the-scenes guys, doing the heavy lifting."
Behind-the-scenes doesn't begin to describe the workplace the three shared in the basement of the Hammond federal building, a windowless room stacked with over-stuffed banker's boxes.
The boxes are provided by the more high-profile IRS and FBI special agents, who haul them out of their targets' offices based on tips that are strong enough to get a search warrant from a grand jury. To make a criminal case, revenue agents Johnson, Drapac and Bigda have to sift through mounds of bank statements, canceled checks, tax returns and ledger books to find the evidence.
"With white-collar crime, your case is paper," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bernie Van Wormer, who worked with all three preparing the fraud case against Gary trucking contractor Jewell Harris Sr.
"Witnesses can testify to what was said and who did what, but a defense attorney can't cross examine a document."
In the days before computer spreadsheets, Bigda recalls hunching over his desk filling in ledger sheets into the wee hours at the old Hammond federal building.
"The only things in there most nights was me and the little rodents," he said.
Among Drapac's final assignments for the IRS was meticulously tabulating data from 10,000 index cards detailing fees paid improperly to political insider Robert Cantrell, who was convicted on 11 counts of fraud and filing false tax returns. The charges that will send Cantrell to prison are fairly benign when compared to the litany of crimes his political rivals have accused him of committing, but they stuck.
"It's just like Al Capone," Drapac said. "Everything he did, and it was taxes that sent him to prison."
While the investigative work might be less dangerous than chasing down mobsters with tommy guns, it can be pure drudgery for some.
"I could not do what they do," said Van Wormer, who began his career as an IRS agent before going to law school. "These guys just really love it. You just put the records in front of them and let them go."
Over the decades, the three suspect there are few schemes to hide illegal income they haven't seen: Swiss bank accounts, shell companies, coffee cans of cash.
"It's solving a puzzle, a financial puzzle," Drapac said.
Drapac and his two fellow agents are difficult to shake on the witness stand, said Bryan Truitt, who cross-examined Drapac at length during the trial of East Chicago Controller Ed Maldonado.
"We went after Paul pretty (good), and he just has such great respect for the system," Truitt said. "He doesn't take it personally, he understands it's just the attorneys doing the best job they can.
"He's a pro, and I have great respect for him, though I may not agree with the underlying figures he uses to come up with his numbers, I don't doubt that he is scrupulous when he adds them up."
Johnson's first corruption case was the investigation of an East Chicago sewer project in the 1970s that led to the indictment of then-Mayor John Nicosia.
The scam's participants laundered their kickbacks through a phony Swiss company, with a contractor making regular trips from Europe with bundles of cash strapped into a vest underneath his clothes.
"Very few people get access to a lot of cash and don't spend it. They're going to get a car, take a trip," Johnson said.
"And they almost always tell someone about it, and those people will talk to us. Girlfriends get mad at you, people get indicted."
The three have lived comfortably on their IRS salaries -- all three confessed to using TurboTax software to do their own taxes -- and they seldom envy the lives of those who have resorted to crime to live beyond their means. Often, a careful review of financial records let's them know their targets better than the targets' own wives.
"If you play by the rules, you only have to tell one version: the truth," Drapac said while sitting with Johnson and Bigda at his retirement party. "The flaw in our character is that we stay on track and stick through it, like a bloodhound.
"I'm going to miss working with these guys."
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