Angeles, and when Bailey called he sprang into action, persuading the Brazilian federal police to open their own investigation, com- plete with extensive surveillance of Le Roux. The Brazilian team would operate in secrecy, and consist of agents pulled from other divisions into a central one called the Sensitive Information Group, known as GISE by its Portuguese initials. They called the investi- gation, simply, “Operação America.”

The GISE agents discovered that back in April 2011 Le Roux had established a company in Brazil, Rainbow Force Technologies. Registered to a local Brazilian woman, it supposedly employed ten people and provided “custom computer programming services.” Le Roux had then made a three-week trip to Rio de Janeiro in October 2011. Now Brill drafted an affidavit that would provide the basis for a wiretap, and the Brazilian agents prepared to wrap Le Roux in surveillance from the moment he reentered the coun- try.

On February 16, 2012, he arrived on a flight to Galeão Interna- tional Airport outside of Rio and stepped up to immigration con- trol. He was traveling with his visibly pregnant Filipina girlfriend, a former employee named Cindy Cayanan, and their young daugh- ter. Le Roux was still married to Lilian Cheung Yuen Pui, the mother of his two older children, who now lived in the Nether- lands. But on immigration forms he claimed Cayanan as his wife. Agents tailed them to Avenida Lúcio Costa, a wide boulevard along the beach in an upscale neighborhood southwest of Rio known as Barra da Tijuca. There they were joined by a nanny, in a condo that Le Roux had purchased through an intermediary in a gated community called The Waterways. The GISE agents set up around the complex, and tailed Le Roux on his rare forays out of it.

His support network in the country appeared to be directed by Zion Fadlon, a dark-haired Israeli operating under the name “John Brown.” He supplied Le Roux with a pair of cellphones registered to a local Brazilian dummy, which GISE quickly obtained a court order to monitor. The agents also began following Fadlon, who,