THE MASTERMIND 45

I read on your site that this partner filling is 100% legal and we follow all the rules of the fillers state. I hope that is true. IS IT?"

"Of course it is 100% legal, we are in this business for 4 years," Oz replied. "WE ARE NOT FILLING CONTROLLED. Please stop sending so many emails."

While Brill and Holdren were knee deep in IP addresses and do- main registrars, Kent Bailey had continued chasing down interna- tional leads from SOD headquarters in Virginia. Now, with Brill and Holdren firmly establishing Paul Le Roux as the target atop the organization, he started trying to build a profile of the kingpin they were dealing with. Bailey turned to a DEA analyst based in South America whom he had come to trust on other cases, asking her to assemble a portrait of the mysterious man behind RX Lim- ited.

Despite the breadth of his operation, Le Roux had managed to remain something of a ghost. Not so much as a single photo of him could be easily found on the Internet. But Bailey's analyst discov- ered that Le Roux had surfaced publicly, just over a year before, in the strangest of circumstances: a July 2007 article in the American political newspaper The Hill. The story mentioned Le Roux in a brief anecdote illustrating how individuals, not just organizations, were lobbying Congress for their own causes. After describing an American businessman's lobbying to avoid government regulation on his Texas property, the reporters turned to Le Roux: "Another wealthy businessman is close to securing government land," they wrote. "But this real estate is in Zimbabwe, and the case possesses elements of international intrigue." Le Roux had reportedly hired Dickens & Madson, a Montreal-based political consulting and lobbying firm, to pressure the American government into helping him obtain a ninety-nine-year lease on farmland in Zimbabwe. "Le Roux is a wealthy businessman who was born in the nation when it was called Rhodesia," they wrote. "He now holds Austra-