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Written by Jim Cavanaugh – This crew had wormed their way into Helms’ confidence and proceeded to use his name to scam banks for millions. Any time a bank balked or seemed suspicious, Roggio or one of his underlings would drop the CIA story on them. A lot of the bank officials knowingly allowed false signature cards to be placed on file. In the case in Palm Beach, George Wilde hand carried the signature card out to Roggio’s yacht. One of the underlings took the card and disappeared below deck. He came back minutes later with the card showing Helms had signed it. Mr. Helms wasn’t even in the country that day.
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The investigation took several years to complete, because Roggio had some high-priced legal help from Washington, DC. Since he never paid them, they kept being recused from the case and a new attorney would step in and ask for more time because of the complexity. We finally got before a District Court in 1987 and Roggio asked for even more time.
Unfortunately for him, this judge knew Roggio. He had handled one of his bankruptcy lawsuits several years earlier. One of the counts I charged in the indictment happened on a certain date and Roggio had submitted an “Affidavit of Non-Identity” to the bank saying he had never filed for bankruptcy. The date of that affidavit was the same date Roggio was in court, before this same judge on a bankruptcy. It was a totally false statement by Roggio to the bank and as a result of it he obtained $25,000,000 that he never repaid.
As a last ditch ploy to delay the case once again, Roggio stood and fired his attorney right there in court; said he wanted to represent himself and asked to go pro se. Why not? He had been arrested for impersonating an attorney in the past. The judge said fine and we went to trial. It lasted almost three months, and I lived in a hotel in Miami during the entire event. I drove home on weekends to take care of family, but I lived the trial every day for that three month period.
The jury was only out a few hours and came back with guilty verdicts on every count. The judge was so ticked that he remanded Roggio to the custody of the US Marshall immediately and sentenced him to a total of 17 years in federal prison.
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Jim Cavanaugh graduated from Lamar Tech in Beaumont in 1967, and is a graduate of Sam Houston, South Texas College of Law, and the University of Virginia. Cavanaugh was a Texas police officer before joining the FBI under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover in 1971 through 1996. He served as a contractor for the Bureau and a number of Federal Agencies post 9/11. Jim Cavanaugh has served as the Justice of the Peace for Precinct 4 in Brown County since 2007.
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