She closed the folder. Hayes, the man who runs Sentinel, is named Spencer Vorhees. We know him. He was a Florida Highway Patrol trooper until 2018. He was descertified for excessive force during a traffic stop in Pasco County.
He stomped a man's wrist after the man was already in handcuffs. The bureau looked at him then. We didn't have enough. You have enough now, Camille. I have 14 more incidents going back to 2022 that I have not yet typed up.
Then type them up. Bring them in. We will open a formal predicate file. I drove home that afternoon. I sat at my kitchen table for 2 weeks and typed every interview.
I named every victim with their permission. I cross-referenced every uniform photograph with every Florida statute 843.085 case in the bureau database. I confirmed that what Sentinel was doing, wearing patches and badges close enough to a real police uniform that a reasonable elderly Florida resident would believe they were police was under the plain language of the statute, a third-degree felony per incident. By the end of October, Camille had assigned a four agent team. By December, the team had six.
By February, the case had grown to include sentinel contracts at 14 other Florida gated communities across Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties. By March, the FBI had identified a side bank account held by Spencer Vorhees and his wife, a Bayou Pines HOA president named Carlen Vorhees, 47 years old, blonde, policeed, the kind of woman who organized the holiday lighting committee with the same tone she used to discipline a contractor. The Vorhees were running a regional protection racket. Through the side account, they had collected almost $3 million in unsourced security assessment fees from 15 HOAs over 4 years. The fees had been billed to homeowners through HOA dues.
The fees had been transferred through a series of LLC's into Spencer Vorhees's personal accounts. There was no actual security infrastructure to show for it. The FBI had a federal RICO case in the making. But the FBI also had a problem. They needed a victim who would be willing to testify on camera.
Most of the elderly Bayou Pines's residents I had interviewed were afraid. They were afraid of being detained again. They were afraid of being followed home. They were afraid Spencer Vorhees would send his men to their door in the middle of the night. I drove to the FBI office on a Friday morning in March of 2024.
And I made Camille an offer that at the time I did not understand the full weight of Camille. I will be the victim. I will refuse to pay the next round of HOA fines. I will trigger the citation. I will let them come to my house.
We will record everything. I will testify in person. I'm a retired FBI SAC. I'm 62 years old. Spencer Vorhees cannot intimidate me.