Opinion ID: 1212404
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Attempted Murder of Herman Tabak

Text: In 1991, Kaplan was also involved in a scheme involving stolen checks, collaborating with some of his co-participants in the earlier stolen Treasury bill scheme, see Part I.A.1. above. When cash was not forthcoming from the stolen checks as expected, one of Kaplan's collaborators said he thought one of the other participants, Herman Tabak, might be cooperating with the authorities. Kaplan then solicited Eppolito and Caracappa to kill Tabak. Kaplan testified that Eppolito, after consulting with Caracappa, came back to me and he told me that he would take care of it for me, and I told him good, go ahead and do it. And he says, I have one problem with this. He says, I don't have any place to put him. We don't havewe don't have a problem shooting him but of [ sic ] no place to put the body. And I said, come over to my warehouse in Staten Island and I had another warehouse a block away and I took Louie over there and showed him. There was a garage pull up door there and I said just bring the body to me and pull into this garage and I'll take care of it from that point. (Tr. 753.) However, the attempt to kill Tabak failed. When Eppolito and Caracappa accosted him, telling him he was under arrest, Tabak escaped into the street, screaming that they were trying to kill him. Eppolito and Caracappa quickly departed. Thereafter, Kaplan abandoned the plan to kill Tabak, being persuaded that Tabak was sufficiently terrified that he would no longer consider cooperating with the government.