Amazing Investigation: How a Real Life James Bond Got Whacked by a Bag Lady Assassin

In 1962, for example, Deak warned the CIA that China was planning to invade India after his company’s Hong Kong branch was swamped with Chinese orders for Indian rupees intended for advance soldiers. Deak’s offices were more than observation posts. His company played a crucial role in executing some of the United States’ most infamous covert ops. In 1953, CIA director Alan Dulles tasked Deak with smuggling $1 million into Iran through his offices in Lebanon and Switzerland. The cash went to the street thugs and opposition groups that helped overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in favor of the U.S.-approved shah. Deak’s network also financed the CIA-assisted coups in Guatemala and the Congo.

Meanwhile, the sunny side of Deak’s business thrived. Its retail foreign currency operation, now reconstituted under new ownership and known to the world as Thomas Cooke, became a staple at airports, its multi-packs of francs and marks symbols of every American family’s European vacation. Deak’s retail precious metals business dominated the market after the legalization of gold sales. After a series of sales and reconstitutions, it is today known as Goldline, a major sponsor of Glenn Beck and  subject of a recent fraud settlement.

Sen. Frank Church inflicted the first hit on Deak’s public image in 1975. During the Idaho senator’s famous hearings into CIA black ops, it was revealed that Deak’s Hong Kong branch helped the agency funnel millions in  Lockheed bribe money  to a Japanese yakuza don, political power broker, and former “Class A” war criminal named Yoshio Kodama. One of the most bizarre details involved a priest-turned-bagman who carried over 20 pounds of cash hidden under baskets of oranges on flights between Hong Kong and Tokyo, where he delivered the cash to Lockheed representatives.

Deak’s firm was not penalized for its role in the scandal — bribing foreign officials wasn’t yet illegal in the U.S. — but the damage to his firm’s image was real. The scandal brought down Japan’s government and governments in Western Europe; it also led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the first serious attempt to criminalize overseas bribery. The damage to Deak’s public image was real. It was also quickly compounded by a subsequent New Republic expose that outlined Deak’s role in the Iran, Guatemala and Congo coups. According to those who worked with him at the time, by the late 1970s Deak understood the CIA had begun to see his high profile — matched with a growing business laundering underworld money — as a liability.

If his name was no longer synonymous with the all-American vacation, Deak emerged during the 1970s as a hero in an emergent libertarian gold-bug subculture. As Doomsday-obsessed gold hoarders built financial bomb shelters in the shadow of stagflation, Deak emerged as among the first proto-Libertarian gurus. A fawning profile in Reason magazine compared Deak to “Midas Mulligan or any other character ever conceived of by Ayn Rand.” A font of public lectures and provocative quotes for journalists, Deak drew admiration from fellow gold-circuit riders Ron Paul and Alan Greenspan. He corresponded with Friedrich Hayek. At one gold conference featuring George Will and Louis Rukeyser, the suave banker with the thick Transylvanian accent drew wild applause when he blamed inflation on “welfare” and declared, “I don’t see why the recipient of welfare should be able to vote, because obviously he can vote for more welfare.” Deak also embraced apartheid-era South Africa. “I love to deal with South Africa,” he once said. “Without the white population, the black people there would be in the same shape as west and east Africa.” The media was enthralled. Time tagged him “the James Bond of Money.” Merv Griffin interviewed him with barely concealed awe.