I love a good spy story, and I enjoyed this tale of two agents in the early days of the FBI. It was a decent story, but I wished there was more action packed into it.

Chasing Phil is an account of one of the FBI's earliest long-term undercover operations, undertaken when the Bureau's culture was still very much against undercover work. The other hurdle was that financial fraud was also not considered to be a crime damaging enough to warrant big FBI investigations. Despite these roadblocks, two young FBI agents persevered and cobbled together an undercover investigation of an incredibly prolific con man named Phil Kitzer.
While it is clearly well-researched and the investigation is an impressive one, the book is somewhat slow and has many abrupt transitions that don't seem to lead anywhere. It may be due to the piecemeal nature of the materials the agents were able to gather, as audio recording back then was difficult to do undetected. The book is interesting but not a page turner.

CHASING PHIL

f ever a story of true crime deserved the adjective "riveting" it would have to be that told by David Howard in his book, Chasing Phil.

The "Phil" in question is one Phil Kitzer, perhaps one of the most talented con men of his time. Essentially, the book is the story of how a couple of FBI agents went undercover to gain his trust, embed themselves in his inner circle, and understand the extent of his operation, all with the end in mind of putting an end to his fraudulent activities.

Either side of the story makes for compelling reading. On Kitzer's side, the brazenness of his schemes–such as, for instance, defrauding and taking control of an offshore bank–are captivating in and of themselves, especially when one considers how easy it can be to be taken for a similar ride. Kitzer's schemes took place in the 1960's and 1970's and succeeded by exploiting inefficiencies in telecommunication (aside from the gullibility of his marks, which is a given). While anyone would be hard pressed to pull off similar stunts today, it's not difficult to see how analogous schemes could still apply. But really it's the scale of fraud perpetuated by Kitzer both in monetary value (millions of dollars) and the stature of his victims (politicians, banks, possibly entire economies) that genuinely command attention.

Where the FBI is concerned, it's worth pointing out that the effort to capture Kitzer–eventually dubbed "Operation Fountain Pen"–was unorthodox in many respects. To begin with, this was one of the first undercover operations sanctioned by the FBI; in fact, it almost wasn't sanctioned at all. Second, the agents who took on the case, Jack Brennan and J.J. Wedick, were probably the most ill-equipped to handle such an assignment, lacking the requisite training to go undercover and doing so while using their real names. In fact, one of the reasons the FBI wound up Operation Fountain Pen when it did with the arrest of Kitzer and many of his associates was because Kitzer's schemes were beginning to defraud the Mafia, thereby putting the agents' lives truly at risk.

In that sense, the ultimate con was played on Kitzer: he was completely blindsided by the fact that Brennan and Wedick were FBI agents. What's interesting, however, is that there was a genuine friendship that formed between the agents and Kitzer nonetheless, with Kitzer eventually working with Brennan and Wedick on the right side of the law.

It would be overly simplistic to summarize Chasing Phil as another Catch Me If You Can, although one would not be faulted for noting similarities. But the common themes–a con man, the FBI, the arrest, and the reformed convict ultimately using his talents to aid law enforcement–exist only in broad strokes. The best parts of Chasing Phil are when author David Howard dissects how Kitzer set up his various cons and why they were effective. The story even intersects with the real-life events depicted in American Hustle, which goes to show that it really is a small world, especially where con men and the FBI are involved.

One gets the impression from reading Chasing Phil that this is a story that would make a great film. It turns out that a movie has already been optioned, with Robert Downey Jr. slated to play Kitzer–an inspired choice if ever there was one that hopefully will truly bring the book to life on the big screen.

This is a good story about a couple of young hotshot agents starting out in the early days of the FBI (1970's) who go undercover to bring down a con man named Phil Kitzer and end up taking down a large ring of loosely associated grifters, 130 cases in all. They would fly to meet Phil in one state and never know where he would talk them into going next, making it hard for them to let their FBI handlers know where they would end up going. Many times they'd end up flying to another state on one of Phil's whims to put together a deal or meet with other grifters. Once they even ended up in another country without being able to notify the handlers what was going on, causing them all kinds of headaches with the bosses at the FBI. This would be a good read for most true crime readers. I was given an ARC by NetGalley and the publisher for review.

Too dry for my tastes. Very well written and a great incite into FBI operations and operatives, but at the end of the day, this just didn't hold me interest more than 4 or 5 naps.

I did not get a chance to finish. It was a good story, for as far as I got,

Phil Kitzer was a con artist. He specialized in taking control of small, often troubled, banks and using them to generate worthless CD’s, which he then sold to other swindlers who used them to appear to control large amounts of capital. In 1977, two junior FBI agents picked up Kitzer’s trail, almost by accident, and spent the next two years chasing Phil around the world and trying to bring him to justice.

=== The Good Stuff ===

* David Howard does a nice job of telling the tale. The financial schemes are somewhat complex, but it is easy to understand what is going on, along with the many subplots and cons within the cons. There is a fair amount of quoted dialog, and all of the major characters come to life.

* The book is as much a history of the FBI as it is one specific group of criminals. A few years before these incidents take place, the FBI concentrated on a narrow range of crimes, and expected agents to follow a narrow set of rules, never leave their home city, and comply with a rigid bureaucracy. In this case, Special Agents JJ Wedick and Jack Brennan break rules by the dozens. The book doesn’t dwell on it, but you can imagine the firestorm that developed when two agents turn up in Europe without official permission. And David Howard captures the FBI’s struggle as it realizes the types of cases Wedick and Brennan are building-and decides to support the agents and forces itself to modernize.

* The lives of Kitzer and his fellow con men are exciting reading. As usual, you can’t help but wonder how successful they would have been as legitimate businessmen. It was amazing to watch their ability to build a fortune on paper, and use it to con people out of real assets. And they were not above conning each other, either out of the dinner check or $200K in cash.

* There was a good amount of subtle humor. For example, near the end of the book, there is a quotation from Kitzer explaining why his crimes are below the radar of the FBI, why the FBI would never spend the resources to investigate him even if they knew of his crimes, and how prosecutors and juries would be uninterested. The only problem was that he was giving this speech to two FBI undercover agents who had spent two years as his junior associates.


=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* If you are not a true crime fan, I suspect the story would begin to drag and become repetitive. While I enjoyed the explanations of the relatively complex scams, I do have an innate interest in this type of material. Readers with a more casual interest may find it repetitive and dry.

* There are quite a few named characters in the book, and it was sometimes tough to keep them all straight. The author also switches between calling them by first or last name, furthering the confusion.


=== Summary ===

I enjoyed the book. It was a great look at the actions of a group of con men, and their struggles to run a (criminal) business and deal with many of the same problems as legitimate businessmen. The growth of the FBI, from a glorified local police force into a global law-enforcement organization, also is a great part of the book. But the star of the book is Phil Kitzer, a slippery but charismatic figure that you can’t help but like. There is plenty of sadness and struggle in the book, although it does come to a somewhat happy ending.

In 1976-77, the FBI became aware of Phil Kitzer, who had parlayed his family's bail bonds business into crooked insurance companies, then larger scams involving busting out distressed hotels, buying into banks and issuing fake letters of credit, all intertwined with other international con-artists and previous targets, and dependent on a world where information moved by telex and a check's float might be a week or more. The FBI, unused to white collar undercover work, and not too thrilled about picking up the tab for impulsive trips to Hawaii, reluctantly allowed its agents to spend a year under the wing of Phil, eventually tracking a vast network of financial crime involving mobsters, inside men at legit banks, Caribbean havens and suckers.