Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, they said it was the deal of a lifetime.

Put money in God's hand, and God gives it back to you double. And thousands of

people put their faith and money into the ministry.

They said, we'll double your money in 17 months. That was the pitch.

But it was a fraud, and all in the name of God.

I've seen more money stolen in the name of God than any other way.

And later, he was one of the most successful jewel thieves of all time.

I could make a million dollars one night and start looking for another one the

next day.

Bill Mason made it look easy, hobnobbing with the rich and famous and taking

their diamonds.

Bill had no desire to rob celebrities.

But as Willie Sutton once said about robbing, why did you rob banks? He said,

because that's where the money is.

Every time it's the same routine.

Somebody say hallelujah.

Singing.

Praying. And Lord, we just offer up ourselves as a living sacrifice tonight.

And preaching.

How many know what you see from God is real?

But then comes the sales pitch.

God never intended for his church to be poor.

He said, blessed are the poor in heart, not pocketbook.

Gerald Payne, seen here, is the founder of a church called Greater Ministries

International. He was a blue -collar guy. He was a painter. He, I think, ran

warehouse at one point.

Payne is the next con.

But in the late 80s, he changed his ways and found God.

He bought an old bank building in Tampa and started Greater Ministries

International.

He did have a friend in Don Hall who certainly knew scripture and was able to

put together this sort of team that made a very compelling pitch to people.

Throughout the 90s, Payne and his fellow ministers traveled the country,

spreading their message and asking audiences to put money into the church.

It's just as simple as this.

Put money in God's hand and God gives it back to you, Doug.

Payne's brainchild is an unorthodox money doubling program, ultimately

Faith Promises. The plan is simple. Gift the church, and that money will be

doubled within 17 months.

The story he told most of the time on the road was that he was awakened one

night by God, who pointed out the scripture of Luke to him and said, you

think I meant that just for back then, you can use this today.

Through divine inspiration, Payne says God has given him a plan.

God said this plan will be around until he comes again. Praise God. Hallelujah.

And the secret is in the Bible.

And Gerald took this passage of Luke, which was mostly about compassion and

forgiveness, and applied that financially.

Given it shall be given unto you.

Deal, and it shall be given to you.

In city after city, Payne and his ministers pitch their program and

millions of dollars.

So if you want to start receiving, then start giving. They would urge people,

max out your credit cards. Get a new mortgage on your house. Don't worry

18 % interest. We're giving you 100%. And pointing to all of their friends and

family who were in the audience who received those envelopes full of cash

month.

For many people, that became too much to resist.

We have a lot of folks realizing now, after they put the $250 in and it

to $500, they put it in and went to $1 ,000, put it in and went to $2 ,000, put

it in and went to $4 ,000. And tens of thousands of people jump in, handing

their hard -earned cash.

This is my favorite picture of you.

People like Mary Coy and Nancy Ross, who have been friends for more than three

decades. I think it was in 1974 when I came to Orlando.

I met Nancy at the time, and she immediately became my best friend.

It's a friendship that is firmly rooted in faith.

It is. It is our life, I think. Not religion, but our faith and belief in

In 1996, Nancy Ross is hoping to raise money for a charity when a stockbroker

recommends investing in Greater Ministries. She hopes it is the answer

prayers. And he fully convinced me that this was a safe way to take my money out

of the stock and put it into Greater Ministries.

Nancy learns that the church is making a killing in diamond mines and offshore

investments. And I believe there was a diamond mine in Africa, but they were

offshore gem investments.

So I went into it full bore.

Nancy cleans out her savings and hands over $100 ,000.

And just like clockwork, the 15th of the month, we'd go to this house and we'd

pick up cash, whatever we wanted.

With the money rolling in, Nancy encourages Mary to get in on the action.

They had scripture that they used to back up what they were doing, and we

that they were feeding the poor and housing the homeless.

We've got 1 ,500 children in one home over in Haiti, and we've got 1 ,400

in Ocala we fed last week.

This sort of interplay between a message from the pulpit based in scripture.

with seeing everyone around you getting paid, and that becomes a little

difficult to resist.

You drop a lot of your defenses when all your friends and family can show you

the envelopes full of cash.

This is a form that was used when we first got involved.

Coy mortgages her house and hands over $80 ,000 to Greater Ministries.

Which to me was a huge amount, because I had been a single mother for years.

Immediately, the cash comes in.

Every month I would go and could pick up several thousand dollars in cash. I

mean, that would just boggle my mind that I would be given cash.

And like that, the word spreads.

And you kind of trust people in your own church.

Audrey Wharton hears about greater ministries in her church in Port

Florida. Well, any time you can make money and put a contribution or a

or... In any way, help the religious mission field. That's what Christians

called to do.

So it was almost a win -win.

Audrey and her husband, David, buy in. This one's $50 ,500.

This says $25 ,000.

They send in more than $100 ,000.

And, as promised, the program pays.

It was right on time, right on schedule.

No reason to question it.

By the late 90s, Greater Ministries is pulling in cash from people all across

the country.

We heard about vaults full of cash. It was a bank building, and there were at

least two vaults, and that when the money would come in every month, it

literally fill the floor. You would sort of wade through this room full of

bills.

And just like that, new investors are hooked.

Dizzying returns, wads of cash, and all in the name of God.

It seems almost too good to be true.

Turns out, it was.

I just thought, well, it sounds good. And maybe this one really is good. Even

though it looks too good to be true, maybe this time it is.

But I was wrong.

You folks have got a lot.

invested into God's kingdom.

Gerald Payne is a preacher in a league of his own.

How many of you realize you are blessed people?

Amen. Hallelujah.

Give God the glory.

He runs a church out of an old bank building and travels the country touting

money doubling program.

By 1995, Greater Ministries is pulling in millions of dollars every month.

There was something, at a very minimum, very suspicious going on.

But a church with that kind of cash flow catches the attention of the IRS.

Yes, over a period of two years, they withdrew approximately $9 million from

various banks in the Tampa Bay area.

Special Agent Angelo Troncoso digs into Greater Ministries' banking records and

discovers huge sums of money passing through the church.

This one, for example, shows that there was a cash out of $18 ,000.

Why a church would need that volume of cash to run its operations was a red

for me.

Troncoso suspects Greater Ministries is up to no good.

Takes his suspicions to U .S. Attorney Bob Moszkowski.

We found they were bringing in an awful lot of money.

So where is the money coming from?

According to Greater Ministries, the church pulls in millions from lucrative

investments in diamond mines, gold mines, and offshore trading.

What we do is take the monies that you give and we ship it overseas. We do what

we call world trades with world banks.

And we make 30 to 40 percent return on our money each trade.

Records indicate that Greater Ministries poured millions into the African nation

of Liberia.

buying heavy machinery and land for mining.

But

investigators

don't buy those claims.

These things don't exist.

They talked about their lucrative mining operations in Africa and other places.

They tried to make those things real. They never took a dime out of the

No matter how much we looked, we couldn't find any income -generating

other than more investors putting more money into the program.

They had the gifting forms on their website.

Angelo Troncoso believes it is all a facade, that there are no gold mines or

overseas trades, just millions and millions of dollars of cash trading

It was predominantly a fraud.

Oh, by the six, seven months into the investigation, I was certain that it was

Ponzi scheme.

In a Ponzi scheme, money from new investors is used to pay out old

What they were doing was putting on a facade of money -making activities,

bringing in investors' money, and then paying the earlier investors off with

money coming in from the later investors.

The program collapses when there aren't enough new investors to keep it afloat.

You have to keep expanding the investor base, or once that dries up, people are

going to lose their money.

While Troncoso and Mosokowski build their case, church leaders continue to

their program, and word spreads like wildfire.

I'm going to head on down towards downtown.

Making its way to Bill Smith in Birmingham, Alabama.

Of course, being in the Bible Belt.

Birmingham in particular has been a very spiritual city.

I had heard about Greater Tampa Ministries for six or seven years.

And so I thought, well, we ought to look into it, see what they're really doing.

Smith talks it over with another investor who shows him two years of

He said that Greater Ministries had allowed him to set up trust college

for his grandchildren.

and that he was getting a 5 % return on his money every month.

Like so many before him, Smith buys into the dream.

They would send me paperwork every month showing, you know, what it had grown

to.

And I would put different amounts in every month.

Ultimately, Smith sends nearly $80 ,000.

But after four months, his faith will be put to the test.

And I thought, no, this is not right. Something's wrong.

In July 1998, regulators shut down Best Bank in Boulder, Colorado.

With the bank's collapse, Greater Ministries loses $20 million in

deposits. And with that, the glass house begins to crack.

Sometimes you just have to wonder, well, Lord, what really is happening?

Three months later, the cash stops flowing.

So they lose about $20 million there, and there is, from that day forward in

July of 1998, this sort of desperate search for new money so they can

to pay out the old investors.

And I ask that you get in the plan and get in it with great gusto.

If you give up on us now, you're going to lose in the end when God really

blesses us.

In lieu of cash, some investors receive promissory notes.

One of the things they did was to give us these greater trust non -transferable

certificates, which was supposed to have been redeemed in gold, as I recall.

Yes. Gold bars or something.

Greater Ministries tells investors to hold on and keep the faith.

But many start to wonder if they've been duped. I thought, what am I going to

do? What about all that money? I have a house payment.

Uh -oh.

What now?

We'll just have to trust in the Lord, you know. And, well, I was hanging on

my fingernails, trusting in the Lord, but the money wasn't coming.

When American greed returns, could the investor's faith pay off?

And later, a master jewel thief tells all.

I've had the boxes from the greater ministry case brought up and put in

and you can see there are about 80 of them. Tom Krebs is an Alabama attorney

former securities regulator.

What's mostly said is that these files represent, you know, broken dreams.

That's what makes me mad.

These are the depositions of Gerald Payne.

In 1999, Krebs takes up a case against greater ministries after an investor

named Bill Smith suspects he has been defrauded.

If I can find one here.

Krebs discovers that Bill Smith is not alone.

These are names of people who were victimized in the state of Georgia.

just got the computer printouts on the list of victims, and there are just

thousands, tens of thousands of them. The main thing was shutting them down.

That's right.

Greater Ministries has been operating a Ponzi scheme under the cloak of religion

for eight years.

And now the money is running out, and investors like Smith are about to pay

price.

All these people know them as thieves.

It was a scam that was particularly successful amongst a targeted group of

people who wanted to believe it.

And they were the sheep ready for shearing.

The religious fraud is probably the most insidious.

Krebs brings his case to Joe Borg, the director of the Alabama Securities

Commission. I've seen more money stolen in the name of God than any other way.

It's the worst form of con artistry that you can imagine.

Borg says religious scams are so pervasive because the message comes from

pulpit. But think about ministers and those that are in the religious order.

These are the folks you look up to and trust.

Krebs and Borg start building their case, piece by piece.

After we were gathering as much information as we can, tons of bank

trying to figure out where money was going, verifying that, no, the church

didn't own any cargo ships. They weren't engaged in foreign currency

transaction, and we found no evidence of gold or silver or, you know, mines in

Africa. The pair concludes it was all a sham.

The only source of the revenues was from the investors.

But in greater ministries, there was no product.

It was money going from the left hand to the right hand, to the next left hand,

to the next right hand.

But for eight years, greater ministries get away with it because they argue that

the cash was a gift to the church and not an investment.

But people forget that these are investments, and they are looking to get

something back.

This is not a gift.

Call it what you will, but if you're promised double your money in 17 months,

you're getting a payment back.

And selling investments requires a license, a license that Gerald Payne

have. They were breaking securities laws in my state. The securities had to be

licensed, and the persons who sold them had to be licensed.

As Alabama authorities build their civil case, IRS agent Angelo Troncoso is

closing in on Greater Ministries back in Tampa.

After a four -year investigation, a grand jury hands down a 20 -count

charging Gerald Payne and six church elders with conspiracy.

money laundering, and mail fraud.

This is the residence of Gerald Payne. On March 12, 1999,

Angelo Troncoso moves in on Payne and his wife Betty as they leave their

They were arrested on that driveway.

There was intelligence that we had that Mr. Payne always carried a weapon in his

car and a weapon in his boot.

We found no weapon on Mr. Payne. We found no weapon in the car.

We did, however, find a .25 caliber pistol in Betty Payne's purse.

The church leaders are cuffed and booked, and word travels quickly to

Kittay, the legal advisor for Greater Ministries.

You can't raise that kind of money without the government sticking their

into it.

Kittay says the government's case is weak at best.

I say talk's cheap.

Show me your proof, because I can prove otherwise.

Just like they wanted to say that Greater Ministries was a pyramid or

scheme.

It wasn't.

Gerald Payne made his money by doing international trades.

Gattay heads to jail and bonds out the church leaders.

Almost immediately, they're back at it, urging people to hand over their money

despite a pending criminal trial.

We're on our eighth year now. We don't know if anybody's lost a dollar in our

program. But it's not ours. It's God's.

Well, they didn't care.

Their spiel was, we're a religious organization. We can do whatever it is

want to do.

I have nothing to hide. We're not doing anything wrong.

But the Bible says, cast not your pearl before slime.

They knew the end was near, and they continued to take people's money at that

point because somehow they thought the rules didn't count.

We saw it expanding. They were pulling $18 million to $16 million down a month.

And so it was growing like crazy, and we had to shut it down quick in order to

protect the people who were being defrauded.

A federal indictment isn't enough to stop Gerald Payne.

Krebs and Borg decide they need to shut Greater Ministries down before more

investors are fleeced.

We actually convinced a federal judge that we needed to stop the hemorrhaging.

and he gave us the injunctions necessary to take control of that building and

those records.

But this came after the Waco, Texas, shootout, and the federal marshals were

little bit apprehensive.

They were concerned because it was a bank building, and there was suspicion

these folks were armed.

The U .S. marshals called in reinforcements.

Around 7 p .m., an arsenal rolls down Bird Street, and investigators storm

Greater Ministries.

So they stormed it basically with a SWAT team and a tank.

So it was a fairly dramatic entry.

The team makes its way inside Greater Ministries and begins a room -by -room

search. They find heavy security and a stash of weapons, postal boxes full of

letters to investors, and a tape library documenting more than 100 meetings.

Altogether, it is an operation much larger than investigators had

Well, we ultimately found about $450 million taken from people from all over

this country.

The amazing thing to me today still is how much money they made. $16

million in August and $15 million in September of 1997.

Investigators find cash stashed throughout the building.

I, for example, opened a secretary's desk, pulled it open, and there was

$14 ,000 in cash, $100 bills.

you know, tied up in a bundle in a little bag.

But when they crack open the vaults, investigators discover that most of the

money is gone.

$1 ,100, $1 ,200, $1 ,300.

They count just $40 ,000 in total.

Internal records detail where much of the money went, including millions of

dollars in kickbacks paid to insiders listed in the files as gas money.

It is money to you for having brought people into the faith promise plan.

It's a commission.

A 5 % commission that adds up to more than $20 million.

There's some people here who were pulling down $161 ,000 in one month for

commissions. The board of directors were getting paid huge amounts of money.

And a lot of money was squandered in bad investments.

To put it quite frankly, the con men came out of the woodwork trying to

funds from Gerald Payne to invest in every scam imaginable.

Greater ministries lost $20 million in the best bank collapse and more than $12

million in failed mining efforts in Liberia. Con men are not exempt from

conned, you know. And when the cash began to run out... Greater Ministries

trying to issue bonds and sell gold coins and jewelry, anything to keep the

money flowing.

These are greater trust in God bonds, guaranteed by God if you listen to them.

Now, these are $100 and $500, $1 ,000, all the way up to $50 ,000,

which, of course, had absolutely no value. We found where they had been

gold coins and gold rings.

You know, the greater trust in God logo on the back.

For weeks, investigators sift through the wreckage until they uncover a set of

documents, a possible escape plan.

This is a package of documents that we found inside the building dealing with

their attempt to buy an island and make it their own sovereign country. They

called it Greater Royal Island.

And this video, obtained by American Greed, shows church leaders scouting an

island off the coast of Honduras, just days after the indictment was handed

down. They wanted to create what they called the ecclesiastical domain,

to the Vatican, its own freestanding state.

Here are the things they would need. They'd need some jeeps. They'd need some

fuel tanks.

A 22 -page plan details the setup and operations of the land.

You order the tools and equipment, order security equipment, and then sixth

step, import Filipinos, as you see right here.

Thirty Filipinos would be needed to staff the island.

That was going to be their labor pool. They were going to import Filipino

laborers to help them build all this so they could have places to live.

And then there is the security detail.

The most disturbing part was the security registry that they had.

10 M16 rifles, 10 9mm machine pistols with silencers, for obvious reasons,

sniper rifles with scopes, 10 night vision helmets.

Investigators suspect Gerald Payne was trying to flee before the scheme came

crashing down.

But now, he isn't going anywhere.

When American Greed returns, will Payne's next sermon be in federal

For more information and special web exclusives, log on to americangreed

.com.

By 1999, the demise of Greater Ministries International

is making news around the nation.

They invested on faith in a house of worship by a man who claims to have God

his side.

The church pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars from people all

country. But on August 6th, the feds shut it down.

That was the end of greater ministries, no question about that. We shut it at

that point.

It's news that is hard to take for many who believe in Gerald Payne.

We weren't the most popular people in that community for a while.

At that time, they still believed the program.

Outside the headquarters, crowds protest and pray.

I remember looking out the window and somebody raising his fist, you know,

pointing at us, and they were wearing the God Squad shirts.

But investigators can prove it was all a fraud and continue to uncover evidence

of heartbreaking losses.

These are letters from victims to greater ministries.

He says, I gifted twice in 1998, $20 ,500.

And it so happens it was for me everything I had.

I'm 74 years old. I don't have rent money or a place to live or food money.

am I to do?

I want these guys in a special place in hell.

I want to go to the hottest fire.

They destroy dreams. They destroy lives.

And remember, they did it in the name of God.

In January of 2001, Gerald Payne and four church elders stand trial.

Well, we're basically telling them it was a Ponzi scheme, that they took in

of investors' money, they made a lot of false promises, and when the money dried

up, the scheme collapsed.

But according to the defense, there was no fraud, because the money was a gift

and not an investment.

You see, this was a gifting program.

You signed a form when you became a member of Greater Ministries that any

you gave was a gift.

You had no expectations of a return except how the Lord

provided. They understood, but people are greedy.

Of course, you talk to everybody. No, we were looking to get our, you know,

twice our money back as promised by God in the church.

And perhaps the best evidence came from Greater Ministries recordings.

They videotaped every meeting they had. It was great evidence.

I mean, we did not have to worry about proving what it is they told people in

order to induce them to give their money. It was very clear. You're getting

double your money back in 17 months.

The evidence is overwhelming.

After seven weeks of trial, the verdict is in.

Guilty. At sentencing, Gerald Payne receives 27 years behind bars.

His co -defendants receive sentences ranging from 11 years to 20 years.

Gerald Payne now serves his time in a federal prison in Minnesota.

He has suffered five strokes and is in poor health.

But in a phone interview, he told American Greed that he stands behind his

program.

We did nothing wrong, and we were relying on the deity of God to take

back. We did a good job of it for nine or nine and a half years.

But that's not enough for the victims who gave to the church and lost so much.

I put in $79 ,850.

Around $150 ,000. About $66 ,000.

Think about that half a billion dollars in one scam.

And when the dust settles, investors are left to pick up the pieces.

My seed money for the future was gone, and that's what was so heartbreaking.

I had to start from scratch.

Mary Coy and Nancy Ross are both forced out of retirement to go back to work.

I began working at Wycliffe Bible Translators.

At that time, I was 73 years old.

And Audrey Wharton lost her son's college fund.

all of his college fund, which would have given him plenty of education money

for whatever he needed to do.

But we lost it, and there was not a thing we can do.

Greater Ministries wasn't the first scam cloaked in religion, and it certainly

won't be the last.

Because wherever the money's around, you're going to have thieves.

If it's too good to be true, it is.

Whoever says that you're going to double your money in 17 months, turn around

and walk away. It's just not going to happen.

For these victims, their lives will forever be altered, but one thing

unchanged,

their faith.

God will take care of that, and he's seen that we get through most

so we just keep believing.

I've only become stronger, so it has not destroyed my faith at all. I think this

has been the testing that has brought a deeper faith, a deeper understanding,

and so my faith in him is really much greater.

Coming up next on American Greed.

Bill may have been the most successful jewel thief ever. I love the thrill of

it. I love the adrenaline rush.

He robbed the rich and famous.

He was driven to do this. This was in his blood. He literally got high off of

what he did.

It's after midnight on Florida's Gold Coast.

Fifteen stories above the beach, a man clings to the side of a building,

along the ledge.

I was standing, and I shimmied along, holding on to the back of the ledge as

best I could.

Why is this man risking his life?

He knows that if he can make it to the balcony at the end of the ledge, he'll

inside the apartment of one of the world's richest men.

That's where all the Jews were.

They are now elsewhere.

His name is Bill Mason.

After a life in the shadows, he's now come clean as one of the world's most

successful jewel thieves.

With little more than a rope and nerves of steel, the cat burglar took in more

than $10 million worth of jewels.

I loved the thrill of it. I loved the adrenaline rush, and I got addicted

to it.

I could make a million dollars one night.

and start looking for another one the next day.

His targets are like a Hollywood's who's who.

Bill had no desire to rob celebrities.

Lee Gruenfeld co -wrote Mason's autobiography.

But as Willie Sutton once said about robbing, why did you rob banks? He said,

because that's where the money is.

As Mason sees it, greed runs the jewelry trade.

Mason says he fenced millions of dollars of jewels through a respected jeweler.

who knew exactly what Mason was up to.

Oh, yeah, yeah, he knew what was up. I mean, you know, he was, yes, he

definitely knew what was up.

And, you know, we could work out a pretty good price.

Bill Mason says he has gone straight, and he wants to teach others not to be

lulled into a false sense of security.

Everybody gets complacent. A lot of times I would get up and rappel down to

various patios. I like patios.

People leave them open all the time. People don't think that anybody can get

there, so, you know, they're just careless.

These are some of the buildings that we used to manage here. In Cleveland, Ohio,

where the story begins, Mason lives a double life.

By night, a jewel thief.

By day, an apartment manager.

This was my day job.

And in Florida, I had another group down there.

I learned a lot about people's...

security thoughts. I learned a lot about locks. I learned about buildings and

how they work and how cameras work.

All the while, Mason is secretly on the lookout for new victims.

It's easy to pick probably 10 prospects out of this page here.

I mean, this woman's got a $200 ,000 necklace on.

We were in Palm Beach once, and there were about a dozen pictures of women at

some big gala. And he said, which one of these do you think is worth going

after? And there were all these women with just fabulous jewels. And then

was this gorgeous woman with one elegant strand of pearls.

She was about, I don't know, 22 or 23, and she was with a guy who was about 130

years old. And I picked everybody else, and Bill said, that's the one you want.

I said, why?

He said, because you think that she's with him for love?

This guy is showering her with jewels, and she's got enough elegance to only

wear a little bit while she's out at this party. I guarantee you there's a

a million dollars worth of stuff back at home. And that's the way he thought.

This kind of prospecting leads Mason to his first big score.

She was on Mike Douglas in Cleveland years and years ago, and she just had

of jewelry on.

She is the comedian Phyllis Diller.

Thank you, thank you very much. I'm so glad you came here today.

I love jewelry.

Big.

I had a 90 -carat star sapphire ring.

That's a biggie.

And then I had a lot of big, big rings. I love big rings.

After a gig in Cleveland, Miss Diller goes back to her hotel room.

She turns on the lights and sees that all her jewels are gone.

It was like a quarter of a million, all white.

We're talking diamonds.

I made it so easy. How dumb this is. In a cheap motel, in a top drawer, on a

towel, all lying there.

We're talking Robbie Dummy.

The heist is big news in Cleveland.

And the pressure is on police to find the thief. The trail quickly grows cold.

They never could figure out how I got in.

Now that he's outlived the statute of limitations, Bill Mason is willing to

about it.

Well, I hung up on the other building's roof and watched with two binoculars,

you know, trying to see some movement through the curtains.

Miss Diller is staying in a motel.

Mason simply rappels down the roof onto her balcony.

To Mason's surprise...

The patio door is open.

I was in and out of there about five minutes with, you know, walked out the

front door.

He took a gold watch that was inscribed from Bob Hope to me.

That was probably the thing I missed the most.

Unfortunately, it was a Cartier watch, and the

only thing I could do was melt down the back.

I took the back off, got a new back, and melt down the back, and then sold it

from there.

It was easy, and Mason was hooked.

When we returned, his heists get much bigger, more daring, and more dangerous.

For cat burglar Bill Mason, the high -rises of South Florida are giant jewel

boxes. waiting to be pried open.

The building behind me is where Armand Hammer lived on the 15th floor.

Armand Hammer is an oil baron.

Mason wants his girlfriend's diamonds, so he decides to do what's worked for

in the past, getting in through the back door.

I wanted to go in through the balcony because I assumed the locks were locked

the front door and the alarms were set.

But how can he get to the balcony?

The answer comes to him in a flash.

A ledge runs all around the building.

It's the green one up there.

And it connects Hammer's apartment with a vacant apartment next door.

The empty apartment has no alarm and a cheap lock, which Mason easily picks

open. The apartment is now Mason's base of operations.

I came out of the 15th floor unit facing south and walked around the ledge

over to the patio.

There was no safety precautions I could take.

Really, because there wasn't anything to hang on to. I just sort of hung on to

the wall the best I could.

Finally, Mason gets to the patio where fortune smiles upon him.

It was a great relief.

And it was even a greater relief when I found the door open.

The patio door is unlocked and opened a crack.

Mason walks in and makes his way to the master bedroom.

Almost everybody leaves them in their bedroom.

I figured there might be a safe in there or something, some kind of security.

I mean, when you see that many jewels, you know there's no safe around.

She's just laying them out on the dressing table in a box, a jewelry box.

Walked out the front door, walked down the driveway, and found the beach.

Mason is made off with an estimated $600 ,000 in jewels, and the police have no

suspects.

Mason thinks he's gotten away scot -free.

But he's wrong.

A short time later, Mason is caught casing a Fort Lauderdale hotel.

They pounced on him. At the time, David Damore is an assistant state's attorney.

And, of course, he had this large set of keys and burglary tools with him, not

just the master keys, but he had some pliers and he had some screwdrivers and

several other things that normally a guy walking around in shorts and a Hawaiian

shirt is not going to carry if he's on his day to the beach.

They came over and searched my house, and they found $40 ,000 worth of

stolen jewelry, in the house.

At the time, police think Mason is small potatoes.

They really didn't have any idea who they had.

The police just want to know where Mason got the jewels.

He said, you know, if you tell us where the jewels came from, we'll give you

immunity.

They wanted to clean their books up and at least be able to say, well, this is

who did that burglary and not have another suspect necessarily on their

Mason can hardly believe his luck.

So I got it in writing, and I thought, boy, I'm home free.

Mason takes a driving tour with the police and begins to point out his

And I think by the time he finished, you know, there were dozens, maybe more

than dozens of locations which Bill had pointed out, and he was immunized.

You know, he had what was known as transactional immunity, could not be

prosecuted. I ran a list off on him, about 13 jobs, and they about

got a coronary.

The list of jobs for which Mason takes credit or blame includes the Arm and

Hammer heist.

Mason has played his cards well. He's sentenced to a mere 90 days in county

and seven years of probation.

I did 90 days in jail. I did 77 of the 90 days.

Mason gets off easy, but a tiger can't change his stripes.

Two years later, he's picked up on suspicion of another burglary.

Now he's looking at several years in prison.

This time, on the eve of trial, Mason jumps Bond and flees into the night.

I was just fed up. I was fighting with my wife all the time, and I just had it,

you know, and I...

It sounded like a good idea at the time. I thought I'd move up to someplace and

bring my family along and we'd start a new life. Well, it doesn't quite work

like that.

He was a federal fugitive.

For five years, Mason is on the run until he runs into FBI Special Agent Art

Krinsky. I developed some informant information that Bill Mason was in

Cleveland.

Mason is ratted out.

A tipster says exactly where he is. And the cops catch up with Mason at

Cleveland's airport.

So that's how we physically arrested him.

Cornered and with plenty of manpower.

Mason pleads guilty to one count of grand larceny and is sentenced to five

in prison.

It may seem like a light sentence considering all the people Bill Mason

victimized, but Mason feels his is a cautionary tale.

If I'd have stayed on with the real estate business and buying buildings

was, I'd probably have a couple hundred units now bringing in a tremendous

amount of money. I wouldn't have lost my first wife. I wouldn't have spent three

years in the joint, plus spent a lot of money on lawyers and so on and so forth.

And I'd be much more of a content guy, I guess.

Very little of the stolen lewd is returned to victims.

The lion's share of the jewelry was broken apart into loose stones and

through jewelers in New York and Cleveland.

To potential victims, the jewel thief says, you're not as safe as you think.

If you're going to flaunt a lot of jewelry, somebody's going to see you

while. And, you know, maybe they won't be as nuts as I used to be, but maybe

they will, too.

As for Mason's victims...

One of his most famous now has second thoughts about investing too much money

jewels. I've learned about money recently, just recently, like yesterday.

Like, in other words, put your money where it makes money, not where it's

in the drawer waiting for Bill Mason.