Two FBI agents walk into a coffee shop.
They meet with a woman they think can give them the inside scoop on whether a high-ranking Hollywood official might be engaged in corruption.
The woman, then a confidential informant, tells them they’re looking at the wrong guy.
“The one you really need to look at is Alan Koslow,” she says.
And so began the takedown of one of South Florida’s most prominent and brash lobbyist attorneys, targeted by the FBI to help ferret out public corruption across Broward County.
The investigation — dubbed Operation Red Chip — would span several years and net only one fish: Joy Cooper, the mayor of Hallandale Beach from 2005 until her arrest in January 2018. She has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, official misconduct and campaign finance violations.
Statements taken from the FBI agents who worked on the case bring to light for the first time the full story of years of undercover work featuring a flashy attorney who routinely wore a wire around town and accepted a Dunkin’ Donuts bag stashed with cash.
It’s a real-life case worthy of a movie script, with Koslow caught at the center as an unwitting pawn.
Seeking out corruption
It all started with that coffee house chat in July 2011, according to records recently obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Agents got their tip from an unlikely source: A woman with whom Koslow, 64, had an on-again, off-again romantic relationship for years. The FBI set up the meeting to inquire about a Hollywood official. She directed them to her ex-lover instead.
By October 2011, Operation Red Chip was born, according to depositions given by three FBI agents assigned to the agency’s public corruption squad. The three agents did not go undercover, but supervised those who did.
The Red Chip probe required approvals from the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Two undercover FBI agents posing as out-of-town developers involved in organized crime hired Koslow to represent them.
In turn, he offered to introduce them to elected officials who might be susceptible to taking bribes, said Jerry Hester, initially the lead agent on the case.
“Koslow was introduced to the undercover agents under the premise that [they] were big-money developers who wanted to develop properties in South Florida and we were willing to pay to play,” Hester, who retired from the agency last year, said in his deposition.
“We’re dirty. We’re crooked. We’re organized crime associates. That’s what he was led to believe,” Hester said. “So he embraced it. He seemed comfortable around us and seemed to like that game.”
Hester said the undercover agents told Koslow they needed help finding people willing to help them in their pay-to-play scheme.
Cooper’s name was one of the first he mentioned.
At the time, Cooper was in the middle of a heated mayoral race against her longtime foe, Keith London.
The agents, who went by the names Jack and Joey, made a deal with Koslow to funnel campaign money to Cooper through him.
At one point, they showed up at Koslow’s home with $8,000 in cash stashed inside a Dunkin’ Donuts bag.
Koslow met with Cooper and the faux developers several times, entirely unaware that their entire conversations were being secretly recorded.
By July 26, 2012, Cooper became a target in the FBI’s investigation.
Koslow told Cooper she would receive $10,000 in the form of two $5,000 contributions — one before the August 2012 primary and one after, records show.
Authorities said Cooper accepted $5,000 in campaign donations from the pretend developers, not realizing they were undercover agents.
Her arrest report provides more detail.
“Alan Koslow showed Mayor Cooper a number representing a proposed contribution and asked her if it was a good number. She replied ‘No. Add a zero.’ Koslow confirmed ‘three zeros, is that fine?’ and Mayor Cooper replied, ‘Yes,’” the records say.
In October 2012, during a meeting with the pretend developers at Gulfstream’s Yard House restaurant, Koslow pushed Cooper to vote for their 20-story project. But Cooper would give no guarantee.
Koslow told his new clients she was spooked by a recent news article that accused her of being “in bed” with developers.
Offering ‘dirty money’
In the meantime, Hester was worried things were progressing too slowly in snaring corrupt public officials, according to his deposition. So the FBI took another approach to make Koslow a key player in their public corruption probe.
At Hester’s direction, the undercover agents asked Koslow to help them launder their “dirty money” in exchange for a 5 percent commission.
If Koslow took the bait, the FBI could use that as leverage and turn him into a confidential informant to help take down corrupt public officials.
And that’s exactly what happened, Hester said.
But first, they had to set the stage.
In November 2012, the pretend developers wined and dined Koslow on a business trip to New Orleans. Koslow got a tour of their fake headquarters, which Hester described as a “make-believe office” filled with employees who actually worked for the FBI.
“We wanted to show him that we were big players and we had lots of resources and lots of individuals who worked for us in our development business,” Hester said in the deposition.
During that trip, they pitched him on the money laundering idea.
“It was just a way to obtain criminal charges on him that we could put in our back pocket to use later on, if need be,” Hester said.
On Dec. 21, 2012, Koslow made his first pickup, meeting with Jack and Joey at a bagel shop in Fort Lauderdale to retrieve $10,000 in cash.
Over the next eight months, Koslow accepted a total of $220,000 in cash he was led to think was linked to illegal gambling and drug dealing.
But there came a day when Koslow got the gut-churning news that the guys he knew as Jack and Joey weren’t really who they said they were.
He met them in a Fort Lauderdale hotel room on Aug. 22, 2013, this time to pick up $50,000 in cash to launder.
It would be the first time he would come face to face with the agents running the operation: Jerry Hester and Marco Rodriguez.
When Hester and Rodriguez walked in, the undercover agents left the room, leaving Koslow alone with two strangers in suits brandishing FBI badges.
“He was not happy,” Hester testified in his deposition.
“I remember telling him that Jack and Joey, the guys you’ve been dealing with, are undercover FBI agents and you have been involved in money-laundering transactions with them, and we have lots of evidence to prove it and it’s in your best interests to cooperate,” Hester said.
And cooperate he did.
Using his clout
For more than two decades Koslow served as a go-to guy for developers, building a reputation as an expert who gets things done in government dealings. Over the years, big-time developers and gaming interests hired Koslow to represent them. People knew him as brilliant and charming, but also cocksure and arrogant.
Once Koslow became an informant, the FBI gave him a code name: Rooster.
Agents came up with that name because it best reflected Koslow’s “cocky and arrogant” qualities, agent Rodriguez said in his deposition.
Agent E. Heath Graves, who joined the case after the hotel room takedown, had another word to describe Koslow: Flashy.
For nearly three years, Koslow wore a wire to record conversations with public officials in an attempt to obtain evidence of corruption, according to depositions.
Agents sent Koslow to meet with Cooper two more times after he was flipped into an informant. Both times he wore a wire.
With the case not going as planned, the FBI ultimately pulled the plug on Koslow’s role as an informant.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office went on to charge him in a federal money-laundering conspiracy case in May 2016. His sentencing came six months later.
Koslow could have been hit with a five-year prison sentence and $250,000 fine. He got a much better deal courtesy of his cooperation as an informant: One year and a day in prison followed by three years of probation. He also was ordered to pay a $7,500 fine and $8,500 in restitution.
On Dec. 13, 2016, one month after Koslow’s sentencing, Rodriguez and Graves knocked on Mayor Cooper’s door.
Her husband answered.
The mayor was home. Rodriguez and Graves played her a recording of one of her meetings in 2012 with Koslow and the two undercover agents posing as developers.
“We basically came in and said, ‘Look, we need to talk to you about some corruption in Hallandale,’” Graves recalled in his deposition. “We were soliciting her cooperation against corruption in Hallandale and other places.”
Cooper declined to talk.
“I told her at the time, ‘We can argue about what this is, but to me this appears to be illegal conduct, but that’s for another day,’” Graves said. “What we’re here to do is see if you’re willing to cooperate in corruption investigations.”
On Jan. 25, 2018, Cooper turned herself in to face criminal charges.
In addition to recording his conversations with Cooper, Koslow wore a wire with a “handful” of other public officials, Graves said, declining to specify how many.
After Koslow was flipped into an informant, he dropped the names of other elected officials he claimed might be open to taking a bribe.
The FBI chose which public officials they wanted Koslow to meet while wearing a wire, agents said.
The investigation spanned five years, but Cooper was the only public official charged with a crime.
The feds handed it over to the state because they had no proof of bribery.
“When we obtained the campaign violations, that’s what that was for,” Hester said. “Later down the road if we weren’t successful in our pursuit of federal public corruption charges that we would have that in our back pocket, so to speak.”
Moving forward
Koslow was released from federal prison in 2017 and is still on probation.
He was disbarred after his conviction on federal charges, so can never work again as an attorney. These days, he’s working as a mediator and development consultant.
Koslow, who now lives in Boca Raton, declined to comment for this story.
Cooper’s case is heading to trial this summer.
As the star witness for the prosecution, Koslow is expected to take the stand.
Larry Davis, Cooper’s attorney, asked Rodriguez during his deposition whether Koslow ever bribed a public official.
“We could never prove it and he denied it, even after we flipped him,” Rodriguez said.
Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4554. Find her on Twitter @Susannah_Bryan.