lian and South African citizenship but says he wants 'to set down roots' in Zimbabwe."

Le Roux's stated aim, according to the article, was to bring white farmers back to Zimbabwe to work land they had been driven off by the administration of Robert Mugabe. A brief quote from Le Roux framed the effort as a kind of reverse reparations effort for white farmers. "We want recognition that injustice was done in the past and that the land reform program corrects that," Le Roux told the reporters. The lobbyist at Dickens & Madson was a man named Ari Ben-Menashe, described as "a former Israeli intelligence agent with personal ties to Mugabe." He planned to lobby Congress and "possibly the White House" in an effort to bring Le Roux's plans to fruition. What had come of the land ef- fort wasn't clear, but the article at least provided Bailey and his analyst with some basic background on their target.

When Bailey's analyst finally unearthed a photo of Le Roux, they weren't sure what to make of him. He had been captured by a camera while passing through U.S. Customs on the island of Guam, making a flight connection. He didn't exactly look the part of an international criminal mogul: a heavyset man with dyed- blond hair, traveling in a T-shirt and shorts. The DEA analyst eventually turned up a second photo, buried in the newsletter of the exclusive Manila Polo Club, patronized by the city's wealthy and powerful. Pictured with his wife, a Dutch woman of Chinese descent named Lilian, he was identified in the caption as an "on- line commerce entrepreneur."

Beyond that, Le Roux remained a cipher.

In mid-2008, however, Bailey lucked into a tip. An employee inside a major bank in Hong Kong happened to notice a series of suspicious bank transfers between generic-sounding companies— with names like GX Port, Vischnu Ltd., East Asia Escrow, South- ern Ace, Ajax Technology, and Quantcom Commerce—and ten pharmacies inside the United States. The tipster passed the infor- mation to the Hong Kong drug enforcement division, which for- warded it to the Hong Kong office of the American DEA. Eventually