Brazil’s Leading Criminal Mastermind

Luiz Fernando da Costa’s workday is a short one, beginning well after lunch and ending just before dinner.

But, during those short business hours he’s able to plan and supervise the purchase, sale and distribution of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and marijuana. And not only that: he often orders the murder of officials, competitors, and wayward subordinates before being returned to his cell.

That’s right, his cell.

Luiz Fernando da Costa better-known to most Brazilians as Fernadinho Beira-Mar (Little Fernando Seaside – because he’s short in stature and comes from Rio de Janeiro) is one of the country’s most dangerous criminals. 

And he’s been living in a (so-called) maximum security prison for the last ten years.

Every country has prisons designed to incarcerate and neutralize people like him.

If he was in the United States, living in an equivalent institution (a supermax) he wouldn’t even be able to manage a business the size of this:

But here, in Brazil, Fernandinho is The Man, the mastermind behind an extensive criminal network.

And every time the authorities try to checkmate him, he comes up with another solution for getting his orders out of the six square meter cell in which he lives and onto the street.

First, it was by way of cell phones, obtained by bribing his guards.

In 2002, he used one to organize the largest prison riot in the history of Bangu 1, the place he was imprisoned at the time. To make sure it didn’t happen again, he was constantly moved from prison to prison, and his guards were constantly changed.

But it did happen again. In 2006, while at the Federal Police Jail in Brasilia, he was caught using another cell phone, this time to pass text messages.

So they moved him here:

to “cellphone proof” quarters at the new Catanduvas Prison in Paraná.

And, since he’s been sentenced to 120 years behind bars, and he’s never again going to be able to use a cell phone, that should have been the end of him, right?

Wrong.

He started passing instructions verbally. At the time, legislation didn’t permit monitoring the conversations of visitors.

So they changed the law.

Fernandinho countered by getting married. Could he do that from jail? Yes, he could. Why would he want to? Because prisoners in Brazil are entitled to (unmonitored) conjugal visits twice a month.

 But the authorities caught his new wife supervising, under Fernandinho’s orders, the traffic of drugs from Paraguay to Rio. They imprisoned her in 2007. That put an end to conjugal visits.

So Fernandinho switched to giving instructions by mail. How could he do that? Well, because, in Brazil, the mail of prisoners can only be opened through judicial intervention.

So the authorities got judicial intervention.

And that fixed him, didn’t it? Well…no.

He’s still permitted to take exercise and visit with other prisoners for two hours a day.

And he spends most of that time talking.

But the law prohibits his minders from listening in on those conversations.

Video surveillance, however is permitted. So cameras were installed and lip-readers put in place.

It didn’t help.

These days, Fernandinho only talks to other prisoners with a hand in front of his mouth.

And, he uses those other prisoners, and their visitors, as intermediaries between him and his henchmen in Rio.

All of which goes to prove that, in Brazil at least, you can’t keep a bad man down.

If I were to write all of this in one of my novels, you wouldn’t believe me, would you?

Stay tuned for further developments.


Leighton - Monday