Date: July 6–8, 2005
Location: Portland
On July 6, 2005, Portland simmered under a sticky 82°F, a faint breeze kicking up dust along the quiet streets of Sellwood. This family-friendly suburb, with its wooden porches and small parks, exuded a lazy summer calm. In 2005, Sellwood was known for its Saturday Farmers Market, where locals flocked for fresh berries and artisanal bread. But beneath the surface, trouble brewed—the Portland Police Bureau reported 40 fraud cases in the area that year, often tied to financial schemes.
James Crowe, the 38-year-old private detective, sat in his 2003 Ford Taurus, parked a block from Richard Mason’s new residence—a two-story home with white stucco and a red-tiled roof, its pristine exterior almost too perfect for a man supposedly “starting fresh.” Crowe’s binoculars rested on the dashboard, his notebook open to a page detailing Mason’s recent movements. After seeing Mason with Eric Wolfe, the accountant tied to money laundering, and discovering the absence of Mason’s “family,” Crowe’s suspicions had solidified into a theory: Mason was part of something much larger than a single bank heist.
Crowe spent the morning tailing Mason, employing his “360 Method” to observe every detail. Mason no longer wore the security guard uniform from Lloyd Center; instead, he was dressed casually in a polo shirt and jeans, his demeanor a mix of relaxed confidence and subtle caution. At 10:00 a.m., Mason stepped out, climbed into a new 2005 gray Chevrolet Impala, and drove toward Downtown Portland. Crowe followed, keeping a safe distance, passing a group of cyclists in bright helmets pedaling along a bike path by the Willamette River. One, a 25-year-old woman with red hair, waved at him, shouting, “Careful, mister, don’t run us over!”
“Don’t worry, I’m better at chasing crooks than cyclists,” Crowe called back with a faint grin, though his focus stayed on Mason’s car.
Mason pulled into the parking lot of Stumptown Coffee Roasters on 3rd Avenue, a bustling spot filled with hipsters in flannel shirts and office workers grabbing their morning fix. Crowe parked a block away, slipped inside, and took a corner seat where he could watch unnoticed. Mason sat at a table with a 35-year-old blonde woman in a light summer dress and a 10-year-old boy clutching a toy airplane. They looked like a picture-perfect family: the woman laughed at something the boy said, and Mason ruffled the kid’s hair. But Crowe noticed the cracks—Mason’s eyes darted around the room, and the woman checked her phone every few minutes, her smile too forced.
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Crowe snapped a photo with his Canon PowerShot, hiding behind a copy of The Oregonian. The front page boasted a story about Portland’s thriving small businesses, but Crowe’s attention was on the barista, a 28-year-old named Dylan with a dragon tattoo on his forearm, steaming milk for an espresso. Crowe approached, keeping his voice low.
“You see that family often?” he asked, nodding toward Mason’s table.
Dylan shrugged, wiping his hands on a towel. “They’ve been coming in for a few days. Always the same order—two coffees, hot chocolate for the kid. But they’re… off. They don’t talk like a real family. More like they’re reading from a script.”
Crowe returned to his seat, his suspicions confirmed: this was another “role” for Mason, a new “family” to replace the one he’d fabricated in Seattle. He followed them to Tom McCall Waterfront Park, where they strolled along the river, the boy skipping stones while the woman held Mason’s arm. Crowe stayed out of sight, blending in with a group of tourists snapping photos of the Steel Bridge. He watched as Mason slipped an envelope to a 40-year-old man with a gray beard and dark sunglasses—Eric Wolfe, the same man Crowe had seen with Mason before.
The next day, July 7, Crowe shifted his focus to Wolfe. He tracked him to Wolf & Associates, an accounting firm in a Downtown high-rise on 5th Avenue. From his parked car, Crowe used his binoculars to watch the 10th-floor office, its panoramic view of the city glinting in the sunlight. Wolfe, the 42-year-old accountant in a crisp suit, was meeting with a 60-year-old woman in an elegant coat and a 15-year-old girl with a school backpack. They looked like a grandmother and granddaughter, but Crowe overheard Wolfe call the woman his “partner,” not “mother,” their conversation too formal for family.
Over the next day, Crowe dug deeper into Wolfe’s connections, finding discarded rental contracts in a dumpster near the office—documents signed under different names but in the same handwriting. He also traced Wolfe’s calls to numbers in Chicago, London, and Paris. The pieces clicked: this was a global network spanning generations, from children to the elderly, who formed “temporary families” for specific jobs. Mason’s “family” in Seattle had been one such unit, created for the 2004 Alaskan Way robbery. Once the job was done, they dissolved, and Mason was reassigned a new role in Portland with a new “family.”
“Well, looks like I’ve stumbled onto a whole theater troupe,” Crowe muttered, a self-deprecating smirk tugging at his lips as he jotted down his thoughts. “Only instead of plays, they’re staging heists and scams. I should’ve brought popcorn.”
In 2005, Portland thrived as a cultural hub: Stumptown Coffee Roasters symbolized the city’s coffee obsession, and the Portland Rose Festival had drawn thousands earlier that summer. But for Crowe, those details were background noise—his next step was clear: Chicago, where Wolfe’s calls pointed to the network’s deeper roots.
