How an FBI informant took down a crooked city politician

The word “informant” conjures up equal amounts of pride and angst in law enforcement officers. Frequently referred to as the lifeblood of investigations, an informant is a vital resource for investigators at every level. 

I saw many different types of informants during my 25-year tenure as a Special Agent with the FBI. I was fortunate to deal with informants who made cases for me or my fellow agents. But I also saw how informants can be clever, ruthless people who can walk between raindrops and not get wet.

The key idea about informants taught to my FBI Academy class for new agents in 1979 was to identify an “informant in place” and convince him to cooperate secretly with the FBI. The “informant in place” knows the who, what, where and when of criminal activity because he or she is involved in it.

My best example of an “informant in place” came in the 1982 public corruption case against Walter Orlinsky, the president of the Baltimore City Council. “Wally” was being paid off by a Philadelphia-area company that was interested in a multimillion-dollar sludge hauling contract with the city.

Unfortunately for Orlinsky and the sludge company, an FBI informant was picked as the cash courier or “bagman” to deliver the payoffs to Orlinsky. The informant had been convicted of a crime early in his career. Years later he was approached to buy stolen postal money orders, but he was afraid of repeating his earlier mistake and called the FBI.

An undercover FBI agent was introduced by the informant to the seller of the stolen money orders. The agent bought the money orders but, to preserve the secret relationship between the informant and the FBI, the case was never prosecuted.

The agent responsible for the informant was required to have an alternate agent assigned to the case. As a new agent assigned to white-collar crime who needed the experience, I was assigned as the alternate contact. 

The informant knew an individual I had under investigation for minority business fraud involving the Small Business Administration. The case agent and I would meet with the informant every two to four weeks to discuss that investigation. We would give the informant instructions on what to do and look for. This practice went on for six months to a year. 

We started discussing how the informant knew Orlinsky and the CEO and key managers of the sludge company. As it turned out, the informant had no additional information about the minority business fraud. He just wanted to complain about how his “commission” for winning the Baltimore sludge contract was being reduced.

The informant became increasingly agitated about the sludge company. He had a big problem: He needed money. I remember him telling us how he was going to Philadelphia to “pick up his check” from the sludge company.

The case agent and I left the meeting laughing about how he was probably picking up a payoff for Orlinsky. Shortly after this the informant contacted the case agent and urgently requested a meeting. The agent was unavailable so I met the informant with another agent. 

The informant finally admitted that he was the sludge company bagman to Orlinsky, and he agreed to cooperate when making future payoffs to him. He wore a recording device in meetings with Orlinsky and the sludge company and agreed to testify.

In return the informant was not prosecuted. In fact, the FBI paid him a lot of money for his cooperation. With the informant “wearing the wire,” Orlinsky and the sludge company executives talked themselves into jail.

Orlinsky pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to felony bribery charges and lost his office. He served 4½ months of a six-month prison sentence. Two sludge company employees were either convicted or pleaded guilty.

And it all happened because of an FBI “informant in place.

Dan Dreibelbis is a retired FBI Special Agent who is teaching fraud investigation and investigative interviewing in Stevenson University’s graduate forensic program.