The follow-up to Mazur’s New York Times bestselling memoir The Infiltrator, of which the movie version came out in 2016 starring Bryan Cranston as Mazur.
THE BETRAYAL:
My Undercover Struggle With Deceit, Corruption & Death
by Robert Mazur
Amazon Publishing, Summer 2022
After the events of The Infiltrator, the story’s main character still wants more adrenaline. He’s come to realize the chase is like a drug for him when he’s recruited by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to be the lead undercover agent in another dangerous two-year covert operation. The offer to Special Agent Robert Mazur is to infiltrate the corrupt financial networks of Panama and Colombia in order to become embedded as a money launderer within Colombia’s notorious Cali Drug Cartel. He couldn’t say “No” because this was likely his last chance to resume his obsession—an addicted desire to expose more international banks and businesses laundering money and power into the heart of the underworld.
Robert Mazur was a federal agent for 27 years. During 5 years of his law enforcement career he was a long-term undercover agent, operating in deep cover within the underworld as a high-level money launderer for senior members of Colombian drug cartels. He not only dealt directly with cartel leaders, but also functioned as their counduit to corrupt international bankers around the world. He is court-certified in both the U.S. and Canada as an expert in money laundering. Mr. Mazur has been a significant contributor to news and media outlets, including the New York Times, PBS, ABC and NBC. His first book, The Infiltrator (also available) was made into a feature film starring Bryan Cranston.
Robert Mazur spent years undercover infiltrating the Medellín Cartel’s criminal hierarchy. The dirty bankers and businessmen he befriended – some of whom still shape power across the globe – knew him as Bob Musella, a wealthy, mob-connected big shot living the good life. Together they partied in $1,000-per-night hotel suites, drank bottles of the world’s finest champagne, drove Rolls-Royce convertibles, and flew in private jets. But under Mazur’s Armani suits and in his Renwick briefcase, recorders whirred silently, capturing the damning evidence of their crimes.
When Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a big birthday party at their home in Monrovia, Liberia, but all she can think about is how much she misses her mother, who is working and studying in faraway New York. Before she gets the reunion her father promised her, war breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot, walking and hiding for three weeks until they arrive in the village of Lai. Finally, a rebel soldier smuggles them across the border to Sierra Leone, reuniting the family and setting them off on yet another journey, this time to the United States. Spanning this harrowing journey in Moore’s early childhood, her years adjusting to life in Texas as a black woman and an immigrant, and her eventual return to Liberia, THE DRAGONS, THE GIANT, THE WOMEN is a deeply moving story of the search for home in the midst of upheaval. Moore has a novelist’s eye for suspense and emotional depth, and this unforgettable memoir is full of imaginative, lyrical flights and lush prose. In capturing both the hazy magic and the stark realities of what is becoming an increasingly pervasive experience, Moore shines a light on the great political and personal forces that continue to affect many migrants around the world, and calls us all to acknowledge the tenacious power of love and family.
When Sutanya Dacres married her French boyfriend and moved to Paris in 2013, she felt like she was living out her very own fairy tale. Jamaican-born and New York-raised, she had never entertained fantasies of living abroad, until her grad school days when she discovered the blogs of expat women living in Paris and began to dream of a different life in a different land. Then she met a French man in a bar, fell in love, and voilà, almost as if she willed it, she was living her Parisian fantasy, embarking on her own “happily ever after” … until her marriage fell apart. Sutanya looked back to her beloved bloggers for guidance, but realized their rosé-tinted reality didn’t match up to her own. For one thing, they weren’t writing about divorce. For another, they weren’t Black. While her marriage had ended and the façade of picture-perfect Paris had cracked, Sutanya wasn’t giving up on the City of Light. Instead, she decided to figure out for herself what happens after the Paris fairy tale ends, and to find a way to mend her broken heart and create a home for herself, beginning in her kitchen. Determined to share her genuine, candid perspective and offer a counter-narrative to the typical idealized expat story, Sutanya launched her podcast, Dinner for One, in February 2018. In each episode, she invites listeners into her Paris kitchen as she shares her experiences as a 30-something hopeless romantic embracing her post-divorce life and celebrating the joy of learning to love cooking for herself. This book grew out of the podcast.
