The $6 Billion Rogue

Call it Ponzi. Call it pyramid. Federal prosecutors call it ''the mother of all kiting schemes,'' a fraud six times greater than the scandal that brought down the venerable house of Baring. For his part, John McNamara, the polite, rumpled, 53-year-old Long Island car dealer who masterminded the world's largest con game, was pleading guilty as he stood before a federal district court judge in Brooklyn in September 1992.

''During the period of January 1, 1985 through December 31, 1991,'' Judge Edward Korman asked, ''you caused General Motors Acceptance Corp. to extend $6.256 billion in short-term loans for the financing of vehicles that, in fact, did not exist?''

Prosecutors stood across the courtroom as McNamara bent toward the table, his usual disarming smile replaced by a look of repentance.

Judge Korman went on: ''You used such funds to invest in real estate, gold mines, oil businesses, commodities trading and a mortgage financing company. And you paid bribes to a number of state, county, town and village elected and appointed officials for approval of real estate development projects. Do you understand the charges?''

As the Long Island car dealer offered a terse confession, it appeared that a $6 billion joyride had come to an end.

Three years later, however, the McNamara affair remains under a cloud. Those GMAC employees who had responsibility for the McNamara account have retired, been transferred or been reassigned--some of them under deals that would cut off their pensions if they were to talk publicly about the case. Federal prosecutors have granted McNamara's two chief accomplices immunity. The Long Island GOP stalwarts who helped ease McNamara's various real estate projects through zoning boards have pleaded not guilty to charges of political corruption--and juries have agreed. No one, it seems, did anything wrong.

Meanwhile, John McNamara continues to live in luxury. Since his arrest in 1992, he remains in his water-view home with indoor pool, and has been allowed to keep nearly $2 million in assets. It's a big step down from the reported $300 million real estate empire and private jet he owned at the height of his scam, and he may still do jail time. But for a man whose fraud dwarfs Michael Milken's, it's not exactly hard time.

The prosecutor who cut McNamara his current deal dismisses any criticism as ''ridiculous.'' An army of more than 100 accountants has begun working, under court order, to examine McNamara's financial empire. At the same time, McNamara and his associates have been forced to answer pointed questions at two political corruption trials.

As the story emerges, lawyers, creditors and business associates ask if McNamara's scam could still be going on. They wonder if McNamara has managed to turn the world's largest con game into a new scheme that now has bamboozled the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn.

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Outwardly, John Michael McNamara appears to be a harmless product of small-town America. He hails from Port Jefferson, New York, a quiet, seaside village on Long Island's marshy north shore.

The area is heavily and proudly Irish. Sweatshirts on sale near the harbor say FBI: Full-Blooded Irish or CIA: Certified Irish American. It is also heavily Republican, a part of the state where ponytail-wearing men are assumed to be Dole supporters.

In this community, the Republican McNamaras were born insiders. John's father, Thomas, had been a well-to-do car dealer and motel owner in the area for decades. Three of John's brothers went on to prominent careers. (Thomas Jr. became the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald of Fatal Vision fame.) But none remained closer to his roots than John, and there he developed his genius for working that ubiquitous American entity known as ''the system.''

After dropping out of Purdue University in the early Sixties, John came back to Port Jeff and entered the family business. He was 22 years old. When he said ''Trust me,'' people did.

Yet the father-and-son team proved anything but wholesome. After John joined the business, the U.S. Attorney's Office charged John, his father and four accomplices in connection with the beating of a contractor whose work the McNamaras were dissatisfied with. A jury convicted McNamara Sr. of extortion, but deadlocked as to John. The father's case was reversed on appeal for lack of jurisdiction, and quietly shelved. The charges against the son were dropped.

Significantly, all of Port Jefferson seemed to write off the entire ''embarrassment.'' The McNamaras, after all, were fixtures. They had done business with half the town. John himself was close to the town's charitable leader, the brown-robed Father Frank Pizzarelli. The charges of extortion became history.

Goodwill apparently extended all the way to Detroit. When John stepped up to become president of McNamara Buick-Pontiac in 1977, GM helped move the dealership to a five-acre site along the Nesconset-Port Jefferson Highway in nearby Brookhaven. For an up-and-coming dealer, it was a lesson learned: What was good for John McNamara could be good for GM.

''The public impression of John McNamara was that he was very successful, very affluent, very capable, very philanthropic,'' says Ray Perini, a Long Island defense lawyer who cross-examined McNamara in 1994. ''He was just terrific, a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. But we found out that everything he touched he either corrupted or destroyed.''

The corruption began with the family dealership. In its infancy, McNamara's scheme required only some basic knowledge of auto-dealer finance combined with a glad-hander's innate ability to schmooze. The new McNamara Buick-Pontiac looked as unprepossessing as any auto dealership in the U.S. Two red-white-and-blue signs sporting colored pennants towered above a rectangular glass showroom beside the highway. Inside a soundproof office on the dealership's second floor, however, McNamara recruited his accomplices and filled them in on the scheme: Under a deferred payment payment plan, General Motors Acceptance Corp.--the financing arm of GM--lent dealers cash to purchase new vehicles. Of course, GMAC had to be repaid with interest when the cars were sold. And if you borrow money only to repay it, where's the profit?

The answer lay in a classic Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme. Along with every real car financed by GMAC, McNamara planned to borrow additional money to finance a second, fictitious vehicle. Every few weeks he would report both that the cars had been sold, and that he needed more money to finance larger purchases. As each loan grew in size, McNamara Buick-Pontiac would be able to maintain a ''core'' of illegally borrowed money from GM. So long as GM never balked at upping the size of the next loan, McNamara could roll over the cash and repay GM with its own money.

The plan turned on a grasp of the Detroit mentality: GM wanted to sell cars and GMAC wanted to make loans. On paper, McNamara's dealership would be helping everybody to succeed brilliantly.

There was, however, one major obstacle. Every so often, a Detroit inspector would pay a surprise visit to ''touch metal,'' making sure the loans were used to buy vehicles. In a few hidden locations each vehicle bears a tag stating a unique 17-digit vehicle identification number, the automotive world's DNA. As long as inspectors ensured that each car had the proper VIN, GMAC would know its loans weren't being misappropriated.

But McNamara had an answer. Anyone who has gazed across a dealer's lot knows that, apart from the vehicle identification numbers, all new cars look alike. Certainly McNamara, with his five acres of new metal, knew it. A blue Camaro with whitewalls and a sunroof is a blue Camaro with white-walls and a sunroof.

By the time the inspectors came to touch metal, McNamara was ready. His crew waited until cars at one end of the lot had been inspected. Then, while the boss distracted the inspectors with paperwork inside the office, his employees scrambled into the vehicles, drove them around the block to change the odometer, attached fake VINs and parked the cars at the far end of the lot.

It worked like a charm, especially since McNamara said he lavished gifts on regional employees who told him about impending inspections. Anonymous sources within GM admit that ''a lot of the local people got too close to McNamara.''

By the early Eighties, John McNamara seemed to be on his way to becoming one of the hottest auto dealers on the East Coast.

But, of course, that was just the beginning.

Every con game ultimately depends on the greed of the mark. Offer someone a deal that's too good to be true and, if he has greed in his heart, you will get a hand in his pocket. And if anyone had a heart filled with bottom-less greed, the evidence suggests that it was GM.

McNamara knew exactly how eager GM and GMAC would be to nurture a growing empire that sold GM cars by the thousands. They were moving product, making interest, advancing their careers and helping the GM empire. What was good for McNamara was good for GM.

In the mid-Eighties, McNamara hit upon his great stroke of criminal inspiration. Why bother driving around the block and switching numbers? Why even bother with showing GM any real cars at all? Why not just make up all the VINs? GMAC dealt only with money and pieces of paper. So long as they had a stake in his success and he told them what they wanted to hear he could count on some willful ignorance. That series of insights catapulted McNamara into fraud's big leagues.

As it turned out, the means were right at hand. GMAC routinely helped dealers buy custom cars and vans, a subspecialty within the industry known as upfitting. Upfitted vans were perfect for expanding McNamara's scam because they carry two VINs. The nationally registered number goes on the chassis while the second number goes on the upfitted body.

Since the Fifties, McNamara Buick-Pontiac had also dabbled in foreign (continued on page 159) $6 Billion Rogue (continued from page 92) markets. And GM, it seems, had been lax about checking cargo.

In late 1984 or early 1985, McNamara called bookkeepers Laura Southard and Gail Humel into his office. Neither of the women had more than a year or two of college, yet they found themselves being asked to cook the books in an international con game. Like many of McNamara's accomplices, neither woman seems to have had more than a momentary pang of conscience about stealing billions of dollars from the world's Iargest manufacturer. But to assuage any future pangs, McNamara upped their salaries to $100,000.

Southard and Humel's main task was to make up vehicle identification numbers and type invoices for nonexistent, upfitted vans purportedly being shipped overseas. Each invoice would bring McNamara Buick-Pontiac a check from GMAC for $25,000. Southard and Humel typed reams of them.

But McNamara knew that GM would not hand over millions of dollars based on invoices alone. There had to be more paper.

First came the upfitter. McNamara used Kay Industries, a defunct upfitter in Indiana--home state of virtually every national upfitter. He kept the corporation as a shell: a telephone, a charter and a one-room office. When a paid employee wasn't in Indiana pretending to be Kay Industries, McNamara had calls forwarded to a private line in his Port Jeff office.

McNamara then worked with employee Ted Cavaliere to duplicate a bank's canceled-check stamp for checks allegedly used by McNamara Buick-Pontiac to pay for vans from Kay.

Finally, he formed a corporation in Cyprus called Cydohia Trading, Ltd., which claimed to be selling the vans in Lebanon.

In the words of a former GMAC vice president, the paper trail was ''impeccable'': Kay Industries had a corporate charter and a telephone. Canceled checks accounted for all the sales; bills of lading proved shipment to Cydonia. As the scam got rolling, GM's ignorance seemed boundless. According to General Motors itself, no one in Detroit even bothered to compare the number of vans GM manufactured with the number of vans that it was financing or shipping. Indeed, if General Motors had looked at anything more than the profits that McNamara seemed to be generating, the scam would probably have folded in the first year.

In 1985 McNamara ''borrowed'' $194 million of GMAC's money to buy nearly 8000 nonexistent vans. The next year, the figure swelled to $231 million for close to 10,000 vehicles. An endless Lebanese traffic jam should have been forming. But in an otherwise discordant period for the U.S. auto industry, McNamara was singing an upbeat song. And questioning McNamara raised worrisome issues: What if this college dropout from the burbs really had conned them? What would shareholders say?

Gus Sellitto, the assistant U.S. attorney currently overseeing the forfeiture of McNamara's assets, still laughs about GM's alleged tunnel vision: ''Of course they gave him money. On paper, he was becoming the largest consumer of GM vehicles in the world.''

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Meanwhile, back on Long Island, a new John McNamara emerged on the scene. The hometown car salesman made a name for himself as a political insider, openhanded philanthropist and shrewd entrepreneur. In one lucrative move, he used a million dollars (of stolen GM money) to buy a farm zoned exclasively for agricultural purposes. His connections on the local board rezoned the property for condominiums. McNamara sold, or ''flipped,'' the farm for $14 million. Soon, McNamara's housing developments, malls and shopping centers appeared throughout the area.

McNamara himself has since testified that most of these deals were greased by bribes to members of local boards (although no members have ever been convicted). With a few free auto repairs, part-time jobs and deals on trade-ins, McNamara said he could turn worthless corner lots into some of the most desirable business properties on the north shore.

Port Jeffersonians, for their part, loved their local big shot. When McNamara wasn't revitalizing the real estate market, he could be seen riding his bicycle to attend 6:15 Mass at the Infant Jesus Parish Church, or donating a million-dollar building for Father Pizzarelli's Hope House ministry.

His technique at home was the same as with GM. He made sure Port Jeff had a stake in his success, and he told people exactly what they wanted to hear.

A bartender at a Port Jeff tavern spoke warmly of his old pal, even as he acknowledged the criminal charges: ''John was the kind of guy who would walk in wearing a $120 suit, with his shirt all rumpled. I think it all just started to run away with him before he knew what was going on. He was really a Robin Hood, with all the good things he did for the community.''

McNamara aggressively worked the Long Island Republican circuit. A local GOP campaign manager recalls: ''John inserted himself into Republican politics overnight in 1986, spending money profligately to ingratiate himself. He would host fund-raisers or lunches, pay for the whole goddamn thing. Contribute to campaigns left and right, without batting an eye.''

Most notably he cultivated a circle of Republican board members who met for breakfast every Saturday at a local diner. The GOP breakfast club included Donald Zimmer, Anthony Losquadro and Buovodantona Aliperti. McNamara used the same gentle seductions that had worked before: free auto repairs, deep discounts on new cars, all coupled with a low-key demeanor. He also told the breakfast club members exactly what they wanted to hear: His projects were good for the community, first-class operations that would stimulate the economy.

Don Zimmer, in particular, was completely taken with the car dealer's charm, and McNamara showed no mercy in exploiting his susceptibility. When Zimmer was named man of the year of Suffolk County, McNamara took out a full-page ad in a journal that read: ''Don Zimmer: It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Guy.'' McNamara said he bought antiques from Zimmer at inflated prices. He hired Zimmer's sons. When Zimmer and his wife celebrated their wedding anniversary, McNamara was their honored guest.

Yet, behind the scenes, McNamara lived a life that seems a naive imitation of a Donald Trumpesque wheeler-dealer. By 1988, he was flying in his private jet to Nevada to inspect his two gold mines. He started building a huge golf and recreation complex in Florida. There was talk of starting his own mutual fund. ''He was immensely unsophisticated,'' said Dominic DiNapoli, the trustee from Price, Waterhouse who led a team of accountants through the defunct McNamara empire. ''There was no rhyme nor reason to his ventures. He owned a Mobil station, a heating-oil business in Hartford and hundreds of pieces of real estate--many in places that hurt their values. A classic example is in Florida. He owned a country club on a huge tract in Lady Lake. I think McNamara wanted this to be his monument. He spent tens of millions of dollars on it. The only problem was, it was two hours from the nearest major city. We finally had to sell it off for $10 million.''

In retrospect, John McNamara might have managed to turn a few more land deals, repay GM and walk away from the con a rich and respected man. But by then his ambitions were out of control.

''It was Disney World,'' said Maureen Hoerger, a defense attorney who represented one of the local politicians fingered by McNamara when he later cooperated with the government. ''But when Walt Disney borrowed the money to build his fantasyland, he paid it back.''

By the late Eighties, trouble loomed. A few friends asked how, with a newly declared trade embargo, McNamara could keep up his cash flow. McNamara laughed and credited his success to his gold mines. But the joyride was already getting rugged.

Real estate prices crashed in 1989 and McNamara began to borrow more heavily from GM. McNamara testified that he deeded one of his ventures, the Alka Corp., to his then-girlfriend, Diane Dangerfield. Alka's assets include the house where McNamara still resides.

Meanwhile, people at GMAC started to ask questions. One employee called McNamara to say his computer didn't recognize the vehicle identification numbers listed on McNamara's invoices. McNamara gambled that an accountant would hesitate to make life difficult for a billion-dollar client. He said h told the man: ''Whatever's easier for you.'' According to McNamara's testimony, the accountant said he would override the computer.

At another point, GMAC employees confronted him with the discovery that he had submitted a fraudulent letter of credit. McNamara somehow dodged that bullet and submitted a valid letter.

During 1991, when statistics from the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association showed total annual overseas sales of 1800 U.S. vans, McNamara claimed to have shipped 17,000 upfitted vans in one month. He ''borrowed'' more than $2.1 billion from GMAC in 1991. The paperwork had grown to such proportions that it had to be delivered by van to GM's regional headquarters, occasions known as ''Mac attacks.''

The game of musical chairs eventually had to end. And the denouement came in the person of Harry Yergey, a nowretired vice president of GMAC's East Coast operations.

According to reports from outsiders (Yergey has refused to be interviewed), the East Coast vice president developed a hunch that McNamara's high-volume business could not be legitimate. On December 10, 1991 he went to the dealership, looked at records and invoices and confronted McNamara with the fact that his books didn't balance.

McNamara reportedly countered with a threat to take his business elsewhere: ''I'll write you a check right now,'' he said. From the number one GM consumer in the world, a man who accounted for $2 billion a year in GMAC loans, the threat had considerable weight.

But Yergey called McNamara's bluff and offered to take payment on the spot for the outstanding debt of $436 million. McNamara crumbled. ''Then there's a problem,'' he said.

After Yergey's visit, GM began negotiating with McNamara. Throughout January and February 1992, McNamara continued to do what had always worked in the past. He told GM's attorneys exactly what they wanted to hear. He promised to pay down his debt with cash he had on hand. He promised to consolidate his assets and give GM a complete listing of his holdings plus a security interest. He promised to go to the Middle East to recover a huge debt he claimed to be owed from arms dealing. All he needed was time.

McNamara must have known that his offer presented GM with a dilemma. He could hide his assets and double-cross the company. GM could call in the FBI, but that could mean losing any hope of being paid back, especially since the government might seize McNamara's assets or exhaust his resources with huge fines. And there would be uncomfortable and very public questions about why GMAC didn't look more closely at a man who had submitted a fraudulent letter of credit, used unlisted vehicle identification numbers and ''sold'' more vans abroad in a month than the entire country exported in a year.

The promised list of assets and cash payments, however, never arrived. Kay Industries fled its lone office and McNamara returned from Lebanon empty-handed. In April 1992 GMAC attorneys filed a suit and a motion to seize McNamara's assets. They complained of being ''gravely concerned about the honesty and integrity of McNamara and [his] refusal even to disclose, much less discuss, the whereabouts of property financed by GM.'' They cited broken agreements, ''gross misstatements and misrepresentations.'' There were even allusions to more sinister activities: ''Former associates and employees of McNamara were fearful of bodily harm concerning candid disclosure of relationships with McNamara.''

GM also contacted the FBI, and in 1992 federal agents descended on the dealership with an arrest warrant. With characteristically disarming candor, McNamara told the arresting agent, ''I'm surprised you didn't catch me earlier.''

But the real disarming took place behind closed doors, when McNamara and his lawyer met with prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York. ''We were in a room discussing the case,'' former prosecutor Jonny Frank recalls. ''And McNamara's lawyer started to suggest that McNamara knew about local political corruption. So we agreed to work something out.''

Prosecutors, in fact, appear to have bought McNamara's assertions with no more than a cursory investigation. As part of the agreement, Southard and Humel--who committed thousands of frauds a year--received immunity. Humel continued to work with court-appointed accountants in unraveling the extent of McNamara's holdings. McNamara himself remained free on $300 million bail (though he was never required to post any money) and was allowed to keep slightly less than $2 million in assets and to continue living in the Alka Corp. house. With Justice Department blessings, he recently started two new auto businesses. One venture involves exporting vans, while the other required taking $300,000 from his daughter's trust fund to start an auto parts business.

Other signs of the government's trust in McNamara abounded. No one ever searched McNamara's, Southard's or Humel's homes. At the time, nobody bothered to value McNamara's holdings (which turned out to be worth less than half of what he represented to prosecutors). No one bothered to check his bizarre claims of Middle East arms dealing--even though prosecutors had McNamara testify in detail about an implausible $169 million commission for selling arms to Phalangists. In exchange for lenience, McNamara recorded conversations with his former lawyer, retired town officials and low-level political hacks.

Long after the bargain with McNamara was struck, Jonny Frank told me: ''Some people say McNamara got a good deal. That's ridiculous.'' Yet to those who have known McNamara over the years, what happened with the U.S. Attorney's Office hints at a classic McNamara con.

All along he told the U.S. Attorney's Office exactly what it wanted to hear: He would help break the Republican stranglehold on Long Island. It seemed that what was good for McNamara was good for the U.S. attorney.

But the plea bargain finally proved to be an expensive embarrassment. Despite the hours of tape, only three political-corruption indictments were ever filed and there have been no convictions.

The first two cases involved McNamara's old buddies Don ''Man of the Year'' Zimmer and Anthony Losquadro. McNamara was the government's key witness at their joint trial last year. From the stand, he savaged both Zimmer and Losquadro, accusing them of selling their votes for trifling sums of cash, home improvements and deals on cars. On tape, McNamara's efforts to hang his old friends sound at once brazen and inept.

''You knew stealing from GM was a crime?'' Losquadro's attorney, Benjamin Brafman, asked as the jury listened.

''Yes.''

''You weren't living in the street? You had a home to live in, correct?''

''Yes.''

''And you decided to steal from General Motors. Why? Because you were fundamentally corrupt?''

The court sustained an objection by the prosecution, but McNamara persisted: ''It's something that happened. It's not a secret.''

After the jury acquitted both Zimmer and Losquadro, one juror stated that she hoped the government would never use McNamara as a witness again, that ''we couldn't trust him as far as we could throw him.''

But by then the government was too invested in John McNamara to turn back. The second trial involved virtually the same facts in a case against planning-board member Buovodantona Aliperti. Even though prosecutors had the benefit of the cross-examination from the first case, the Aliperti trial ended in deadlock. Prosecutors took heart from the jury's 11-1 split to convict. But that is cold comfort, given that the entired investigation was built on a deal that leaves the largest swindler in history swimming in his indoor pool rather than working in a prison laundry.

McNamara's other creditors--a host of individuals from plumbers to tenants to local banks to whom he still owes millions--are even angrier than the jurors. McNamara's fall has put dozens of small businesses into Chapter 11, kept hopeful couples from moving into stalled housing projects and stiffed scores of laborers. They all share a sense that something is fundamentally wrong with a system that allows a white-collar criminal to walk away from a $6 billion fraud. And they are mad as hell that GMAC still may get repaid before they do.

In a class-action lawsuit, McNamara's creditors have argued that GMAC's employees knowingly played along with the pyramid scheme. GMAC, they conclude, should thus be precluded from recovering any of its money until innocent creditors get their share. GMAC, of course, disagrees. It insists that after a ''farreaching internal investigation'' it uncovered ''no criminal activity or self-dealing.'' GMAC has repeatedly said: ''We are the victim in this case.''

Seemingly at odds with that blanket denial, however, stands GMAC's own conduct. Many important employees, from the president and chief financial officer on down, were replaced after the McNamara investigation.

Harry Yergey, the now-retired GMAC executive who uncovered McNamara's fraud, told me simply: ''I want to put the whole affair behind me.'' Another former executive explained: ''I would like to tell you what really happened, but when I left GMAC I signed an agreement that my pension would be revoked if I talked about McNamara.''

Attorney John Ray is both lead counsel and a class member in the suit to disqualify GMAC from getting a piece of McNamara's empire. (Ray claims McNamara owes him $65,000 in fees.) Ray wonders what happened: ''The employees within GMAC had a self-interest in promoting loans and a lot of people moved up the ranks because of the loans they gave to John McNamara, and that includes the GMAC president.''

In particular, Ray claims to have analyzed GMAC's financial picture in the Eighties and found further reasons why they played along: ''GMAC's assets in the late Eighties amounted to $103 billion, and John McNamara represented a major percentage. After the automobile industry crashed, GMAC wanted its stockholders to believe it was on its way up rather than down, largely because of the investments in loans, good loans. And who were those loans to? McNamara. They had an interest in selling their stockholders a false story.''

If Ray is right, McNamara seems to have created a great, accelerating financial and political carousel, a ride where people hopped on and found themselves too scared to bring the great machine to a crashing halt.

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Possibly, some of the larger issues about GM's and the U.S. attorney's behavior may be resolved after a year or two of litigation. Were there payoffs to GMAC's moneylenders to hide McNamara's fraud? Did McNamara dupe prosecutors with false promises?

And federal prosecutors may want to rethink a value system that soft-pedals white-collar crimes like McNamara's, while demanding all-but-perfect morality from the lowest-level politicians.

Yet not everybody sees McNamara as a pariah. Around Port Jeff, John McNamara's self-created mythology still has a good segment of the population under a spell. People discount the thievery and the fraud as ''something that happened.'' Some love to retell the specious tale about his Middle East arms deals. For them, he remains citizen MCNamara, the prince of thieves. Others will tell you that GMAC stands for ''Give McNamara Another Car.''

It isn't all that surprising. Six billion dollars is an appallingly large sum to steal. But when it comes out of General Motors' pocket, the crime inspires an urge to clap a hand on McNamara's shoulder and buy him a drink. No wonder McNamara so easily found recruits for his con game.

In the end, all the systems--from GM to the GOP to the federal prosecutors-- seem to have justified the cynicism that made McNamara a local hero. McNamara simply took advantage of the forces that make us cynical in the first place: greed, careerism, bribery, cronyism. And when a little guy beats vast bureaucracies at their own games--well, all can be forgiven. No wonder folks around Port Jeff refuse to see the hometown con artist as anything other than a regular guy who got carried away; as a rogue, not a villain.

Attorney Ray Perini represented Don Zimmer at his trial. Perini still scratches his head over his client's attitude taward the man who tried to bring him down: ''One of the toughest things I had to do with Don was to convince him that McNarara was capable of lying,'' Perini said. ''He couldn't conceive of it. And he couldn't see an ulterior motive. We sat him down and said, 'You met with this man and he taped you and you don't think he's trading you for his own freedom?' And he couldn't buy it The last thing Don said before we got a not-guilty verdict was, 'I don't harbor any bad feelings toward John McNamara.'''