Trivia

Remarkably cool-headed during most of the undercover mission, Evelyn Mazur, the wife of Robert Mazur, admitted she did encounter one sticking point when it came to her husband's alternate identity. "The most challenging part of the whole case, to be honest, was the idea of Bob having a fiancé and planning a wedding. For me, that was like time-out." Robert Mazur recalled: "Ev ultimately came to the decision that it would be better for me just to go and stay in deep cover. I could come home when I finished the job and at that point we'd determine whether or not we still had a life together." Mr. and Mrs. Mazur survived the rigors of Operation C-Chase and three decades later remain a happily married couple.

During Robert Mazur's real life training with the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), before he joined the U.S. Customs Office of Enforcement, Mazur learned an invaluable lesson about creating an undercover alias. "I'll never forget when an IRS special agent told me 'Do as much as you can personally to build your own identity and do not rely on the government'." By way of illustration, Robert Mazur said: "If you let someone in the government get you a credit card, there's going to be a red flag in a file somewhere at American Express saying 'If this card becomes overdrawn, contact Special Agent so and so.' The people I infiltrated had very high-level contacts. They've bought presidents of countries. It would be easy for them to get somebody in charge of American Express to give them information."

A shrewd understanding of body language helped Robert Mazur sell himself as trustworthy to drug traffickers like Cartel Kingpin Rudy Armbrecht, who is played in the film by actor Carsten Hayes. "When I first met Rudy I needed to have him see me as somebody who was very open and transparent," Mazur remembered. "I sat on a couch and had both of my arms on the top of the couch. I didn't have my legs crossed and once we started talking, I opened up as much as I could because these are little things people pick up on."

Evelyn Mazur, the wife of Robert Mazur, remembered what it was like to assume the role of single parent. "When Bob was home physically, he was mentally here maybe 75 percent of the time but he was always thinking, thinking, thinking," said Evelyn Mazur. "[Operation] C-Chase was more intense and longer than anything Bob had done before. The kids knew when the strobe light in the closet went on, they had to go to their rooms and be silent. If we were traveling in the car and Bob's undercover phone went on, the rule was 'Sit still and don't talk'."

The key piece in Robert Mazur's undercover tool kit came in the form of a "Renwick" briefcase which contained a tape recorder. The recording device was concealed by a canvas flap held in place by Velcro straps. Mazur endured one spine-chilling close call, dramatized in the film when the straps gave way a few inches from Cartel members. Mazur recalled: "I was in a hotel room with Rudy Armbrecht (played in the film by actor Carsten Hayes) when I picked up the briefcase lid. The Velcro let loose, the thing fell down and I was looking straight down into the recorder and this nest of wires. I kept talking to Rudy trying to act normal when he got up because he wanted to see some papers in the briefcase. I managed to re-close the compartment within a split second of when Rudy leaned over." Mazur concluded: "There are a bunch of different ways in which you can get killed and one of them would have been if Rudy had seen that tape recorder."