In New Jersey's check-cashing businesses, money order outlets, and burgeoning money wire franchises, they find ready conduits to move millions of dollars around the world. There, they are liquidated monthly with the bang of a gavel. Twelve, now 13. On a clear day in October, the spoils of Victor Matos' career in the drug trade are snapped up fast. Curiosity seekers in baseball caps jostle for room in front of the podium.
Middlemen whisper into cell phones for bidding instructions from clients.
Car collectors convene around a customized 1934 Chevy coupe, beholding its thunderous 1,000-horsepower engine. Along the way, his flamboyance became the stuff of legend among federal agents. He was known to pace the grounds of his Saddle River estate with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Three years later, as the U.S. Marshals office in Newark was continuing to trace and inventory his holdings, Matos died in prison. Today, his six-bedroom mansion in Saddle River, just down the block from the former home of President Richard M. Nixon, sits boarded up and plastered with red, white, and blue marshals' signs.