appointment to assess her fertility. When Fadlon's calls to another local woman also focused heavily on her fertility cycles, it dawned on the GISE agents what was happening: The young Brazilian women in Le Roux's employ were receiving a monthly salary to conceive his children.

Back in the United States, Brill and Bailey couldn't believe what they were hearing. "That was all on the wire," Bailey said. "It was crazy! 'You are coming into cycle next week?' Like you are breed- ing two dogs. And she would be saying she wants a big-screen TV, and he was like, 'I'll talk to the boss.'" They soon discovered that Le Roux had already succeeded in his plan, conceiving with a twenty-two-year-old Brazilian. Wiretapped conversations with Fadlon revealed that she'd gotten pregnant on Le Roux's previous trip to Brazil, in October 2011.

On top of it all, Le Roux's girlfriend Cayanan had also given birth in Rio within weeks of their arrival. When Fadlon was heard on the wire making arrangements to officially register Le Roux as the father, the agents finally understood the whole picture: with the babies, Le Roux was attempting to create a novel kind of legal shield. While Brazil maintained an extradition treaty with the United States, the process for extraditing Brazilian citizens was dif- ficult. And it was generally established that the law provided simi- lar protections to parents of Brazilian children. "He didn't come out and say that: 'We're here to have a baby so they won't extra- dite me,'" Bailey said. "But he was clearly working with this con- tact in Brazil who was trying to grease the skids." His child with Cayanan-born on Brazilian soil—might give him some protec- tion, but he had to be sure. "The first way wasn't foolproof, so what's another way?" Bailey said. "Impregnate a Brazilian."

Even years later, agents in both GISE and the DEA remained un- certain whether the citizenship gambit would have worked. But at a minimum they knew that his Brazilian connections could tie up the case in the courts for years. If they were going to capture Le