Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, one crafty con man makes some serious green

in green energy.

Rodney Haley exploits a government program promoting biofuels. I think Mr.

was surprised at how easy it was to make an extraordinary amount of money.

by doing essentially nothing.

After selling fake energy credits, Haley takes spending into overdrive. On 6 -1

-2010, he gets a deposit from ConocoPhillips for Renzi cells for $231

The next week, he buys a Lamborghini for $230 ,000.

It's a wild shopping spree backed by stolen millions.

The obvious question comes up when you see all these cars pulling in your

neighborhood. It's like, what's this guy doing?

And later...

In America's swankiest zip codes, a cat burglar strikes in the dead of night.

When I opened the doors to the silver closet, in the bottom two drawers were

missing. That's when I said, Eileen, we've been robbed.

For master thief Blaine Nordahl, no window is too small.

That's all the room that he needs.

No wall too high.

Blaine could probably be successful in any profession.

He just chose to be a burglar, and he's good at it.

For three decades, Nordahl turned thievery into stellar business.

But how long can he keep it up?

Blaine could be 80 years old, walking down the street with a cane, and he's

still going to be breaking into homes, stealing sterling silver.

The Fields of White Marsh is a quiet subdivision just north of Baltimore.

When a young man named Rodney Haley purchases a home here with cash in 2010,

neighbors like Rob Comadari take notice.

One day, a big old truck shows up. I shouldn't call it old. It was pretty

pretty new. Then a Rolls Royce shows up, a Ferrari, a Lamborghini.

two Maseratis, two Bentleys.

Before you know it, there was 14 cars sitting in front of our houses here.

Soon, the quiet street out front begins to resemble a bustling luxury car lot.

In front of the house down there in the corner, and they were on this curb right

here, down here. I mean, they were lined up.

For me, it became an inconvenience or a pain in the rear because you're coming

home from work, you're pulling up the street, and you've got to work your way

around this person, that person. You don't want to hit anybody.

It was a nuisance. It was a big nuisance.

Comandari and others begin to wonder, what's going on with the new guy on the

block? Well, I mean, I think about it. You know, is this a neighborhood that

supports 14 cars in front of your house? No, it's not.

The obvious question comes up when you see all these cars pulling in your

neighborhood. It's like, what's this guy doing?

The story behind Rodney Haley's riches starts about 50 miles south in the

nation's capital.

In 2005, President George W. Bush signed legislation aimed at boosting the

production of renewable fuels.

Using ethanol and biodiesel will leave our air cleaner.

And every time we use a homegrown fuel, particularly these, we'll be helping our

farmers. And at the same time...

to be less dependent on foreign sources of energy.

Under the new program, oil companies are mandated to do one of two things.

They can make a required amount of renewable fuel themselves, or they can

credits that existing biofuel producers generate when they make renewable fuels.

These credits subsidize the production of biofuel. They're called Renewable

Identification Numbers, or RINs.

As a result of the program and the credits that were afforded, a lot of

individuals said, hey, this is an opportunity for us to make some money.

number of people got into this type of cottage industry.

One person who sees an opportunity to cash in is Rodney Haley.

In 2009, he starts a company called Kling Green Fuel, where he claims to

biodiesel and sell Renz.

To get a sense of the scope of such an operation, American Greed visited a

in Georgia that belongs to a company called World Energy.

Here, 30 employees churn out biodiesel 24 hours a day.

They start with agricultural products such as used cooking oil, poultry fat,

soybean oil.

They mix in chemicals, then heat the mixture.

The result is biodiesel.

For each gallon they produce, World Energy can sell one and a half rins,

in 2014 fetched prices of around 50 cents each, but have also traded at much

lower prices.

This is important stuff, that we find alternatives to fossil fuel.

And every drop that we make has to be produced, it has to be distributed, it

to run through trucks and rail cars and pipes.

And these are pretty sophisticated businesses.

Rodney Haley's sophisticated business is born in March 2009 when he registers

clean green fuel with the Environmental Protection Agency.

He says he's collecting used cooking oil from 2 ,700 restaurants and turning

French fry grease into fuel.

When he applies to be part of the program, no one from the EPA comes to

his production facility.

The EPA declined an on -camera interview request.

In an email to American Greed, they write that Congress did not require or

the inspection of new facilities.

They also say that it was up to those who bought RINs to verify their

authenticity. Others see it differently.

This program operated like many government programs. It was based upon

was more on an honor system that you were actually creating the biofuel.

or the fuel that you were supposed to for the RIN. Somebody like Haley, for

example, he probably realized pretty quickly nobody was watching.

That fall, the EPA lists Haley as a registered RIN seller.

Any type of buyer could actually go into the EPA website and actually see that

Rodney's company was in good standing with the EPA.

Seeing this, brokers come calling.

They would assume that Rodney was a legit business and that they had no fear

buying his rent.

Some of the firms Haley deals with record conversations between their

and customers.

On this never -before -broadcast tape, Haley makes a deal.

I'll just call and touch base with you, see where you were, see what was going

on in your rent world.

I should have some more for you. I would say, you know, of course, probably like

Tuesday, Wednesday.

If you want to, you know, go ahead and agree on the price, you know, I'll buy

however many you got.

All right, man. I know it's around like $778 ,000 or $780 ,000.

It's around $780 ,000, I would say, around there. I mean, I could do $12

for them.

I'll move those to you. All right. So when I get back, I'll send them over to

you.

Haley has just agreed to sell 780 ,000 Wrens at a price of $12 .50 each.

To generate this many credits, he would need to make enough biodiesel to fill

nearly 70 tanker trucks.

It's a deal that brings in more than $105 ,000.

At Clean Green Fuel, rins go out and money comes in.

Middle of February, he gets $112 ,000.

The end of February, he gets $217 ,000.

As soon as this money comes in, he's purchasing cars.

The money's never sitting in the account.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, Haley sells Rins, representing the creation of

nearly two and a quarter million gallons of biodiesel.

The next quarter, he says he's nearly doubled his output.

Based on the numbers that we were able to collect, Mr. Haley would have been

approximately the third largest producer of biofuel in the country. He was going

for the stars.

But at Clean Green Fuel, something's dirty.

Up next.

What's really going on at Haley's company?

You might analogize it to selling a can of air, but Mr. Haley wasn't even

selling the can.

He was selling absolutely nothing.

Green energy has been good to Rodney Haley.

In just over a year, he sells more than $9 million worth of energy credits.

He plunks down thousands on vacation, traveling via private jet.

He also spends big on jewelry, rents a palatial mansion in California, and pays

cash for that home outside Baltimore where he parks his growing car

In all my years in law enforcement, I've never seen a criminal spend money so

fast. Mr. Haley was not scared about bringing attention to himself.

It was almost like it was welcome.

In nine months, Haley picks up 25 cars with a total price tag adding up to more

than $2 .2 million.

He buys a Rolls Royce Phantom for $149 ,000 as a surprise for his wife.

In a single day, he writes a check for $377 ,000 for two Bentleys.

He also purchases three Ferraris and a Maserati. He actually pulled up in a

Rolls Royce the day he went to pick up his Maseratis. That's how flamboyant

guy was.

And although he claims to be a green energy entrepreneur, the crown jewel in

collection is a Lamborghini Murcielago, which gets just eight miles per gallon.

As investigators will later see, his spending is a mirror image of his

On 6 -1 -2010, he gets a deposit from ConocoPhillips for rins he sells for

,000. The next week, he buys a Lamborghini for $230 ,000.

As soon as this money comes in, he's purchasing cars.

But who is the man making millions selling rins?

In talking to brokers...

Rodney Haley tells quite an impressive story about his background.

Just to give you a history of me, eight years ago, I was a vice president for

Bell Atlantic.

I also worked for General Dynamics and, you know, plain and simple, I have an

engineering degree. If it can be done, I can think and I can do it.

This is all a lie.

In truth, Haley's fuel -related work record is not so impressive.

In 2006, a police report says he's arrested for stealing gas and is given

probation on a lesser charge.

Three years later, he's running Clean Green Fuel at a headquarters a few miles

away, where he employs close to a dozen people.

Mr. Haley's corporate headquarters looked like any other business.

On the front, it said Clean Green Fuel. We were greeted by a receptionist.

you would assume that he was a corporate office for a large company.

Oddly, though, the heart of his operation, his biodiesel plant, has no

address. At various times, he says it's at this rented garage or at this

warehouse.

And while a real biodiesel plant is a huge and complicated endeavor, Haley

sometimes claims his plant is located at his home.

Rodney's garage was the standard garage. You could actually put tanks from floor

to ceiling, wall to wall, and you would never be able to produce the volume that

Rodney claimed.

There's no evidence that Mr. Haley ever had a plant that produced biofuel. In

fact, all it was producing was dirty money that funded Mr. Haley's lavish

lifestyle.

If Haley has no plant, how then is he making RIN?

It seems he's simply generating the long strings of numbers on his computer

using a spreadsheet program.

Most people would love this job. You sit at home, you look at your computer for

an hour, you create some Excel spreadsheets, and then you send them to

and they pay you millions of dollars for your work for an hour.

Money for nothing may seem enviable.

But by the summer of 2010, brokers begin to ask some pretty simple questions.

What's the address of the plant?

Good question. I don't know it myself.

It's 7500 Tumpalaski Highway, but honestly, I don't know it myself.

I know that's bad. I know my corporate address. I don't know that address.

Well, let me call you back. I'll get it for you. Okay.

Okay? Yep. Give me a call back.

With answers like this, the brokers aren't satisfied.

A number of the brokers were curious if he actually had a facility.

Because of the large volumes, there was rumor that maybe he wasn't actually a

producer. So one of the brokers actually asked for some pictures.

Rodney said, no problem, I'll send you pictures.

Immediately after the phone call, Rodney searched the Internet, was able to

download a number of pictures, and then emailed them back to the brokers to pass

off as his facility. But in fact, they were actually another facility.

Around this time, civil inspectors from the EPA also come calling.

Haley can't answer their very simple questions either.

When somebody's primary business is producing biofuel, if you ask them where

their factory is, that ought to be very easy for them to answer. But Mr. Haley,

in fact, was unable to answer even that basic question of where the facility was

located.

Haley first tells inspectors his plant is here, in the heart of Baltimore's

industry. But he can't show them exactly where.

A week later, he takes them to a different location.

this warehouse on the other side of town.

It hardly seems a fitting place for a top biofuel producer.

All they saw was three empty tanks, not even bolted to the ground, even to the

point that his water source was a green garden hose that was hung over the

rafters.

Rodney had nothing that was even close to what a real facility required.

Haley gives them the pictures of someone else's facility.

saying this is what the place once looked like.

There was obviously no production facility. They didn't find a production

facility. But even then, there's no evidence that EPA took any immediate

to shut down Mr. Haley, and EPA didn't refer the case for criminal

investigation. The EPA tells American Greed that shutting down a facility

requires court action and that their inspectors spoke to criminal authorities

once an investigation began.

But this was at least five months later.

During this time, Haley sells more than $4 .5 million in additional rents.

Up next, it's not the EPA Rodney Haley has to worry about. The threat to his

livelihood is closer to home.

The lesson in this case is never get a mom who has to walk her daughter down to

the school bus man.

For more than a year, Rodney Haley has been making millions pretending to be a

biofuel producer.

But it turns out it's not the EPA he should fear.

It's the neighbors he's annoyed with his overflowing exotic car collection.

Rodney, by parking his cars, the school bus drivers were so scared to drive

through, he thought he was going to scratch or bump one of Rodney's exotic

And these moms and dads had to walk their kids all the way down to the main

to get on the school bus.

In this particular case, a small community complaint turned out to be one

largest frauds against the EPA.

Baltimore County Detective Mike Iosa is part of an IRS financial crimes task

force. In January 2011, he first received word of Rodney Haley and his

from a local police commander.

He and fellow task force member Rick Henry examine Haley's impressive list of

assets. all of which are fully paid off.

Yellow F430 Ferrari.

This one was the Lamborghini. He had $230 ,000.

And then you had the Maserati.

He had like $170 ,000.

They see that Haley is spending millions but has no clear source of income, save

for one.

While Mr. Haley was running this fraud scheme that generated $9 million in

proceeds for Haley, he was collecting unemployment compensation in the state

Maryland.

In fact, Haley boldly uses the unemployment benefits to make a payment

Rolls Royce.

But investigators soon learn it's another government program funding his

ride. They look at his financial records and see millions of dollars coming in

marked as payments for the sale of Rins.

But they find nothing to prove that Haley is actually producing biodiesel.

Throughout our financial investigation, you would look for different expenses

for a real business, such as the removal of a byproduct or waste, a large water

bill, electric bill, things of that nature. We never saw any of that within

Bailey's company.

Every one of his expenses seemed to be more personal than business related.

It's not long before investigators reach a simple conclusion.

His whole company, his whole idea of making biodiesel fuel was a complete

illusion.

Haley's neighbors were once bothered by an influx of his cars on their street.

One morning in May 2011...

they notice a new batch of vehicles slowly rolling up. I think it was a

morning. It was like 8 .30 a .m., and I think it was 22 unmarked cars come

rolling up the street.

The feds have come knocking.

Until now, neighbors have asked where Haley's money comes from.

Now there's a new question.

What's a Wren?

Number one, I had no idea what a Wren was.

Five months later...

Haley is charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and violations of the Clean

Air Act.

He pleads not guilty and in June 2012 goes on trial here at the United States

Courthouse in Baltimore.

After a six -day trial, it takes a jury just over an hour to find Haley guilty

on all counts.

The ultimate victims are the American citizens who were deprived of the

of the program, which was to produce biofuel.

and reduce reliance on fossil fuel.

The one -time CEO of Clean Green Fuel is sentenced to 12 and a half years behind

bars.

The EPA says they've made changes to the RIN program to limit the potential for

abuse.

Now, the con man's house sits empty.

His prized car collection is gone.

And the orgy of consumption fueled by easy money...

has come to an end.

Greed and common sense is what got Mr. Haley caught.

If he would have been nice with the neighbors, not had 20 cars, he would

continued to do what he's doing today.

Up next on American Greed, the silent thief who comes at night, striking while

his victims sleep nearby.

Literally, I was... A few feet away, and I'll be honest with you, I keep a .357

loaded by my bed.

Bo DuBose's home is tucked away amongst the woods on Atlanta, Georgia's

northwest side.

Inside, history abounds. My dad and I put together what was regarded as the

largest collection of Civil War memorabilia ever assembled in private

One night in 2013, DuBose and his wife Eileen fall asleep to the sounds of a

powerful June thunderstorm.

As DuBose prepares to leave town the next morning, he notices what he

to be a casualty of the weather.

When I came out on the Monday morning to feed the birds, I saw that this window

pane here was cracked.

I kind of attributed it to the violent storm we had had the night before.

When he returns home later that week, DuBose learns it wasn't the weather that

broke his window.

Eileen walked into the dining room, and she said to me, Did you move the cake

basket? And I said, no, I don't think so, but let me look in the silver

And when I opened the doors to the silver closet, the bottom two drawers

missing. And that's when I said, Eileen, we've been robbed.

The thief has left DuBose's Civil War collection alone and gone after one

and one thing only,

sterling silver.

Among the missing items is an 18th century sterling mug that once belonged

George II, King of England.

For the thief that took it and many other items, it's quite a haul.

The insurance company wrote us a check for $170 ,000.

And unfortunately, that didn't cover the total value.

Many home alarms go off when a door or window is opened.

By entering the way he did, the thief avoided setting off DuBose's system.

It was pretty obvious when we returned that this was the point of entry.

And the alarm was on.

but it was only the perimeter alone, and coming through here would not trigger

it.

The thief leaves behind no prints, but he has left behind silver -plated items

and knives with hollow handles.

Over off the side of this far terrace, that's where he had left the drawers to

the silver chest that still had the knives in them, as well as the Pacific

bag that had four or five Sheffield plate trays still in it.

What I surmise is that he got this out the window, went down where the noise

wouldn't be as obvious, and kind of picked through everything to make sure

he was taking was all sterling silver. And he left what was not.

DuBose is not alone in finding his silver missing.

All across the South, many families learn they've joined an elite club.

They've allegedly been targeted by a man who goes after silver inside the

country's finest homes, a man known as the burglar to the stars.

I said, well, at least we got robbed by the best.

20 years ago, Cornell Abruzzini works as a burglary squad detective in

Greenwich, Connecticut.

This is a goldmine for a burglar, especially for a residential burglar.

outside New York City, Greenwich is home to the wealthiest neighborhood in the U

.S. Any burglar worth his weight could come out of here with tens of thousands

of dollars worth of merchandise within ten minutes' work.

Now a cop in Norwalk, Connecticut, Ebrudzini has been chasing one such

for almost 20 years.

For him, the case begins here.

I was called to this particular residence in the month of August 1995 to

investigate a residential burglary in which strictly sterling silver was

It was really nothing like we'd ever seen before so far as a burglary.

Over the next year, he works five similar cases in Greenwich.

In each, the thief figures out a way to get in without setting off a door's

contact alarm.

say, a wood panel of the door itself and not open the door, because if you open

the door, there was a chance he had set off a perimeter alarm.

Once inside, the burglar heads straight for the downstairs butler's pantry

or dining room.

He's looking for silver, and only Sterling will do.

So he'd carry his own testing device with him. Some pieces were actually

to see if it was actually Sterling silver or Wedgwood silver plate.

Wearing rubber -tipped work gloves, the thief leaves behind no prints.

But he does leave behind certain pieces of silver.

Some because of their size.

No matter how you try to manipulate this tray, you can't get it out that exit

point. Others are left behind because they are silver -plated, not sterling.

On the way out, everything is left nice and tidy.

You can see where he's taken out the molding.

that held that wood panel in place. And again, I could see here where the

molding is stacked, all parallel to each other. Nothing he's doing here that's

unscripted. Everything follows a pattern.

Because most families rarely use their silver, the neat thief can go weeks

before his crime is even detected.

Abruzzini shows American Greed an example of the types of items the

might target.

Naturally, we have the tray. We have a coffee and a tea service. And this would

be an example of a creamer of this set. And by flipping it to the bottom, you

can actually see the designer's mark and where it was manufactured in the year

of manufacture, which would be instrumental in what he'd be able to

for on the market so far as its artistic or historic value.

Something like this normally would go in the ballpark of about $100 ,000.

In Greenwich, Ivana Trump becomes a victim.

Elsewhere, other reported targets include Bruce Springsteen and Steven

Spielberg. I don't think his motive was to hit specific people. It just happened

that he'd be in an affluent neighborhood, and the chances are, being

type of neighborhood, you're going to hit somebody with a lot of, you know,

financial juice.

Case files still crowd Abruzzini's home. For him, understanding the criminal

means a crash course in high -end silver.

There were certain items that would be stolen, which I had never heard of.

I have yet to utilize a Bon Bon server or even an ice cream

fork in the Abruzzini household.

At the six houses in Greenwich in the mid -1990s...

The burglar makes off with approximately $400 ,000 in loot.

And this is just one stop in a crime spree stretching for thousands of miles.

We're seeing burglaries from Greenwich all the way out to the north shore of

Lake Michigan and down to Palm Beach, Florida.

All these points, it wasn't just random areas. It was definitely affluent towns

that were being targeted.

For the thief, it's a busy and lucrative venture.

You're talking between $5 and $10 million during this two -year frame.

As Abruzzini talks to law enforcement and other hard -hit jurisdictions, he

meets a detective in New Jersey who's been tracking the thief for years.

He actually had dealt with this burglar going back to, I think, 83.

He looks at what we have and he says, like, there's no question in my mind,

guy you're looking at is Blaine Nordahl.

Next, is Blaine Nordahl's crime the ultimate rush or just plain greed?

I'm sure he gets some sort of thrill out of being in a home, but he's doing it

primarily for the monetary end.

See more crime scene photos at pnvccrime .com slash American Greed.

Feeling greedy?

Want more than your share of behind -the -scenes dirt?

Follow us at American Greed TV on Twitter.

We'll be right back.

FBI Special Agent James McCarthy first began studying silver thief Blaine

Nordahl in the 1990s. Blaine is one of the top burglars ever.

Here is a cat burglar who could commit crime after crime, go through territory

after territory, and sometimes not even leave enough clues so that people would

even recognize that they were burgled. But Nordahl wasn't always so slick.

The son of an artist, he first started hitting homes in New Jersey in the

while serving in the Navy.

Initially, he was just your nickel -and -dime burglar, breaking into homes,

like, stealing appliances, stealing electronics.

Nordahl's greatness isn't innate.

It's learned.

Every time Blaine got caught, he would amend what got him caught and not use

that again.

For example, they made cases on him.

forensically by the use of tool impressions.

After that arrest, he decides every night after I use my tools in the

I'm going to throw those tools out and use new ones. So there's no way of

directly linking him with any type of forensics.

As a burglar, Nordahl has two attributes that serve him well.

First is his size.

This is the actual size of a panel that Blaine was able to remove.

As you can see, it's very, very small.

That's all the room that he needs.

Next is his brain.

I'm curious as to what his IQ is because maybe once or twice in a career you run

into a burglar the caliber of Blaine.

He said he would target homes that had animals. If there's an animal moving in

the house, there can't be a motion detector on because the alarm would be

constantly going off.

I mean, you're dealing sometimes with a spooky dude. Trust me.

In 1996, Abruzzini obtains a warrant for Nodal's arrest for the burglaries in

Greenwich, Connecticut.

That fall, with the FBI's help, cops take down the silver thief at a Walmart

parking lot in Wisconsin.

Even in jail, the master thief can't keep his hands off the cutlery.

He stole a spoon from the cafeteria, and he actually sharpened one edge of it

down so it was like a cutting tool. What he was trying to do was he was trying

to cut through the bars, and he went so far as to actually plan a jailbreak on

one of the Sunday afternoons when the Green Bay Packers were playing because

figured everybody in Wisconsin would be watching the Packers, including the

prison guards.

Nordahl's breakout attempt fails, and eventually he's extradited to New York.

There, he works out a favorable plea deal with the feds. You tell us all the

burglaries you did during this two -year time frame, and whatever you tell us,

you can't be charged with further down the road.

In these never -before -broadcast recordings, Nordahl outlines the wide

burglaries he's committed.

Greenwich, we've covered with seven.

Okay. How many in Southampton?

I put it around 10 ,000.

Okay, so do they.

What township's in the state of Florida?

As Nardole

talks, the number of crimes he's known to have committed grows.

He gave me 144 burglaries that he did in 36 different jurisdictions

throughout the United States, nine different states.

Nordahl isn't just pointing out jobs he did. He's letting law enforcement in on

some of his mysterious ways, like how he selects a home.

Nordahl also explains what he does after he leaves the crime scene.

The property from these three burglaries, what did you do with it?

I'll take it to the house. Before it's even reported, the best objective is be

disposed of everything.

You go to the crime scene at 8 o 'clock, 9 o 'clock in the morning, it's already

been done.

Everything's been disposed of, property's already gone.

Nordahl says he drives straight from crime scenes to a fence in the New York

area. He was basically getting between 10 to 15 cents on a dollar. His payout

for three hours work was between 10 and $15 ,000 a night, which is not bad for a

paywall. The thief says that his fence is moving the product overseas and that

it's going to people with wish lists.

They wanted me to get porcelain. They wanted me to get oil paintings.

Diamonds, you name it. There was no limit. If I had gotten the Mona Lisa, I

could have got rid of it.

So why is Nordahl only taking silver?

You have basically access to the whole house.

Why just stop with the sterling? Because I don't want any competition.

So in other words, you're counting on the silver being stored in the dining

downstairs away from the sleeping quarters. And if you were going after

you'd have to go up there.

For cops, Nordahl is giving a master class in silver theft.

I learned a lot from Blaine over the years. Maybe it's not that I respect

he does. I can respect the professionalism he brings to the table.

Because of his cooperation, Nordahl is sentenced to five years in prison.

Next on American Greed, Blaine Nordahl may steal only silver.

But he takes something more, his victim's sense of security.

What upset me about it was the vulnerability you feel of being invaded.

On the east bank of the Hudson River, in a part of New York State that Franklin

Roosevelt once called home, lies Edgewater.

Dick Genrett, a former Wall Street financier, bought the estate from writer

Vidal in 1969.

Well, I bought it really as a second home. I had a place in New York City

for my work on Wall Street.

And I thought it would be a nice retirement home, which it turned out to

Jenrette plans to one day share Edgewater with the public.

After I pass on my next reward or punishment, whatever it should be, it

become a house museum.

In the 19th century, the Donaldson family lived at Edgewater, and Jenrette

gone to great pains to fill it with their possessions.

He once traveled to Spain.

where he tracked down many of the items that belonged to the home, including a

silver set decorated with the signs of the Zodiac.

The silver had a lot of meaning. I mean, I'd done a lot of research and a lot of

trips to Spain to get it, and in one fell swoop, it was gone out the door.

Blaine Nordahl walked out of federal prison in April 2001.

Before long...

He stops reporting to his parole officer, and in January 2002, he makes

to the Hudson River Valley, then along a set of train tracks, over a wall, and

into Edgewater.

This is the entry point where Blaine Ardell came in. He cut this glass out,

this is one of five French doors he could have entered through.

He chose this one, suggesting maybe he knew where he was going.

Because he only had to come right up here to the silver cabinet.

Among the items Nordahl steals is the Zodiac silverware Gin Red tracked down

Spain.

Nordahl hits another estate just upriver. And the story makes it into the

York Times.

When Detective Cornell Abruzzini reads it, he calls the New York State Police.

I said, listen, I might be going on a limb here. I said, but...

I think I know who's doing your burglaries. And the initial trooper I

his attitude was like, yeah, right.

Eventually, with Abruzzini's help, police in New York arrest Nordahl.

In December 2004, at the Dutchess County Courthouse, he agrees to a plea deal

that includes an eight -year prison sentence.

Before being locked up, he says he wants to go straight.

When he gets out in 2010, he and his commitment to clean living head south.

I believe he moved to the Florida area because he had relatives down there. I

think another reason he moved down there was to get away from the detectives

here in the Northeast that knew his M .O. so well.

Not long after he shows up, Silver starts disappearing in Georgia, the

Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky.

What they were saying was...

A similar entry to what we had. In other words, panels were taken out or windows

were taken out. And again, the only thing stolen from the Holmes was the

sterling silver.

He was back doing what he does because this is what he knows.

You know, Blaine could probably, he could be successful in any profession.

He just chose to be a burglar, and he's good at it.

Before long, a detective from South Carolina finds an old article about

Nordahl and calls up Rizzini.

Once he sent me his crime scene photographs and his narrative reports, I

you could take his crime scene photographs, and they were basically

my Greenwich scenes from the 90s. Word spreads among various jurisdictions that

Blaine Nordahl is on the loose.

And that brings us back to Beau DuBose in Atlanta and the June thunderstorm.

When the alarm people actually showed up that Friday afternoon, he said, I hate

to tell you this, but I know who did this.

We said, you're kidding me.

He said, no, it's a man named Blaine Nordell.

The cops are once again on Nordell's trail.

And that August, he's arrested in Hilliard, Florida, not far from

When we first started investigating this, we knew it had to be a small

involved in this because these openings are no more than 12 inches by 19 inches

where he's getting in.

Mr. Nordahl is about 5 '4", about 150 pounds.

In two and a half years, police say Nordahl has stolen an additional $6 to

million worth of silver from victims in six southern states.

In previous cases, he says he was moving stolen goods through a fence to buyers

overseas. Police say in recent years, he sent some silver to be melted down.

and sold merely for the value of its weight.

What I hate is the fact that a real piece of history is no longer with us.

that's why I hope that somebody else owns it, even if it's not me, rather

have it melted.

You just hate to think that these things are no longer there.

Now, Nordahl is here in Atlanta, Georgia, awaiting trial.

If convicted...

The 52 -year -old burglar could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Though his career has certainly been lucrative, no one knows the exact amount

silver he's taken.

It's definitely within the tens of millions of dollars. I mean, I'd say at

point it's over $50 million worth of silver.

Nordahl once said he kept 10 to 15 % of the value of each night's work.

He's a man who lived simply.

So what happened to all the cash he's made? He's putting this much thought

process into his method of the burglaries.

So you know he's putting at least as much thought process into what he's

with that money.

Somewhere this money exists. It's just that the connections haven't been made

yet.

It's very, very clever.

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