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KINGPIN

hear that Giannone was in town. He had her put Giannone on the phone. "So, you take my girls out to party now?" he demanded, angry that Giannone was forging a relationship with one of his people—perhaps courting her for a cashing crew of his own.

"No, I just happen to be here and I looked her up," Giannone said a little defensively.

It would be Chris's and Giannone's last phone conversation. Giannone flew home. He kept in touch with Tea, and a few months later, he warned her that he might not be a good person to be associating with. He was pretty sure he'd been followed on his trip to the Bay Area.

"I got some heat on me right now," Giannone said.

"What kind of heat?" Tea asked. Giannone liked to affect an air of danger.

"I go to trial next week."

Federal criminal trials are rare. Faced with the long prison terms recommended by rigid sentencing guidelines, most defendants opt to take a plea deal in exchange for a slightly shortened sentence or limit their exposure by becoming an informant. Some 87 percent of prosecutions were resolved in this manner in 2006, the year of Giannone's trial. In another 9 percent of the cases, charges were dismissed before reaching a trial, the government preferring to drop a marginal case rather than risk a loss. Once a jury is seated, a defendant's chances for acquittal are about one in ten.

But Giannone liked his odds. Most cases don't hinge on the undercover work performed by an active computer criminal. Soon after he'd snitched on Giannone, Brett "Gollumfun" Johnson had gone on a four-month cross-country crime spree, pulling his IRS scam in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Las Vegas, California, and Florida, where he was finally nabbed in Orlando with nearly $200,000 stuffed in backpacks in his bedroom. He wouldn't make a very good witness for the prosecution.