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German criminal finds a lucrative life as federal informant (cont.) Gathering evidence
Rico Toro was the first to hire McDaniel to learn more about Groebe. Then von Schlieffen and Abuawad heard about his investigation of Groebe, although Abuawad had almost completed her prison time by the time McDaniel visited her. The information gathered by McDaniel, with the help of a London investigator named Jackie Williams, helped win Rico Toro his freedom and may soon free von Schlieffen. McDaniel amassed more than 3,000 pages of documents about Groebe, detailing his criminal past and government payoffs, facts that were hidden from defense attorneys. The judge who sentenced von Schlieffen reviewed the affidavits provided by McDaniel and reversed von Schlieffen’s conviction, sending it back to the government to decide whether to schedule a new trial. Von Schlieffen waits in a Texas prison cell for an answer to his lawyer’s latest petition requesting that he be released on bond. Abuawad was released from prison in 1996 and returned to South America. Before she left the United States, she gave McDaniel permission to release a tape recorded interview that followed her release. "I was in love," she said. "I wanted to get married, and I wanted to have a home again. If he asked me to do something, I was going to do it because I didn’t want to lose him." After her first lawyer died of a drug overdose, she hired Julio Ferrer. After learning the truth about Groebe, he lashed out at the government in an appeal his client later withdrew when she ran out of money. "It is difficult to imagine misconduct more egregious, more immoral, more unfair or more improper than that of the government using and paying an informant to falsely profess his love to a woman with no prior criminal record, to violate her person by making love to her ... under the pretense that he has romantic feelings for her, all for the purpose of inducing her to become involved in a criminal offense by playing on and with her emotions and taking advantage of her psychological vulnerability." The government’s response: Abuawad was guilty and all of her arguments were self-serving. The government would not comment about its relationship with Groebe. Last January, a Post Gazette reporter approached Groebe as he loaded restaurant supplies into his gold Mercedes 500 convertible on a Friday evening outside his restaurant in Miami Beach. Groebe said government officials knew about his past when they hired him as an informant. Asked about the complaints from people he’d set up, Groebe said their stories were filled with "lies and half-truths." Finally, he said he could discuss the issues in more detail later and gave the reporter a telephone number. He never returned calls. A month later, Groebe sold his restaurant and disappeared. The new owners have since sued him for $150,000 on various fraud claims. Last summer, Groebe was arrested in Austria on an outstanding German perjury warrant related to his escape from prison. He has posted bond and German legislators — who’ve been made aware of his frauds by his victims — are demanding a full accounting from the German government. His story played prominently in the German media. Groebe was the subject of a German documentary last year. Its title: "King Rat."
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