The Mastermind - Book 2 Post 2

The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.

There are some stories that just seem too implause, too far-fetched to ever have actually happened. Such is the story of Paul Calder Le Roux. In The Mastermind, Evan Ratliff details how Le Roux started as a harmless and talented programmer, before creating a vertically integrated online prescription drug service with hundreds of millions in revenue, and finally building his own international cartel that dealt in virtually every imaginable field of crime. And this entire ascent happened in just five years, between 2007 and 2012. Among many other activities, he smuggled massive amounts of methamphetamine out of North Korea, sold illegal technology to the Iranian government, and held warehouses full of thousands of gold bars under constant armed guard. Ratliff goes through the decade-long investigation that took Le Roux down, triggered by a DEA agent’s spontaneous look into a local pharmacy’s shipping records. This innocuous action revealed a staggering amount of drug shipments going out of just the one location, and pulling on the various threads of evidence eventually uncovered Le Roux and the sheer scope of his organization. The Mastermind seems more like a fictional movie than an actual case, and is a remarkable study of one of the largest cartels in history.

I initially heard about Paul Le Roux’s story from a family member who read about him in a New York Times article. I was entirely fascinated by the idea that in today’s world of surveillance and connectivity, someone with enough ingenuity could still avoid detection and create an online-based criminal empire. And although he was ultimately captured, it wasn’t really due to a fault of his own; a DEA agent’s lucky hunch revealed irregular amount of drug prescriptions, and it was a frustrating decade before they could untangle the web that led to Le Roux. He was already in the process of wiping any trace of his involvement when he was arrested, and the DEA believes that just another few months would have made finding him impossible. I’m always attracted to these types of stories because they show how you don’t have to be a tough mobster to be a criminal nowadays. All it takes is some creative strategy and a general lack of morals. I started reading The Mastermind soon after I was told about it, and Professor Hansen allowed me to select it as my second book to read for class.  

The Mastermind is exceptionally captivating because of the effort Ratliff went through to get the entire story. Despite the danger it might have put him in, he spoke with every law enforcement agent and shady criminal he could that was willing to talk about Le Roux. Ratliff goes into tremendous detail on the backstories and actions of everyone involved. And although the sheer amount of information can often be difficult to process, it puts into perspective how hard it must have been for the investigating DEA agents to work through the case one thread at a time. 

Besides how quickly Le Roux went from programmer to ruthless crime boss, one of the most fascinating parts of the book covers what he did after he got arrested. He was captured in a sting operation in Liberia, and before he had even landed in the United States, Le Roux had signed an agreement to cooperate fully in all aspects of the investigation. The government kept his arrest out of the news for over a year, and he spent that time working as an informant and systematically dismantling his empire piece by piece. By the time he was done, nearly everyone he had done business with was either in jail or cooperating with the government. This truly reveals the type of man Le Roux was; solely concerned about his own self-benefit, he was willing to do whatever it took to keep himself in a position of power. As a free man, this meant expanding into any area of crime that was profitable, but while in custody, he had no problem accepting that destroying his business was the only way to maintain leverage. The Mastermind is a gripping look into the unique, fascinating, and utterly implausible story of Paul Le Roux, and I’m guessing it’ll be a long time before I find another subject as interesting as the online kingpin.