June 3- 9, 2004

cover story

I Was a Federal Informant

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The incredible story of one man, seven government agencies, a Jamaican drug ring and a North Philly community center.

by Amy L. Webb

The night of his first undercover operation, John Sims lost control of his breath. He was trying to appear calm, sitting in the passenger seat of Rodney's car. John looked out his window into the black night as they drove along Route 291 toward the Philadelphia International Airport. INS told me not to worry, he thought. Everything's going to be fine.

Sims — that's what the agents called John, though it sounded more like "Seth" in all the tapes he made of their meetings — was supposed to deliver an unsuspecting Rodney to agents in a room at the Radisson Hotel. There, Rodney would exchange cocaine for fake work visas and Social Security cards. Immigration and Naturalization Services has done this a million times, Sims thought. Standard operation for them. They'll be in a room right next door, and they'll have guns.

As Rodney drove, Sims' heart began to race. Watching the orange streetlamps flash as they drove by, Sims felt a sudden wave of cold tingles. Palms sweaty, mouth dry, his heart pounded in his throat. Sims turned to the left and looked at Rodney's massive build, his calloused hands gripping tight around the steering wheel. Then in Rodney's side mirror, he saw a car speeding up next to them and a familiar face. The driver was an agent trying to signal Sims — they were driving the wrong direction.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"Uh … we gotta turn around," Sims nervously told Rodney, trying to laugh it off as if he was daydreaming and forgot about the exit. Rodney shot him a menacing glance.

He knows, Sims thought. My god … he knows.

As they drove nearer to the hotel, Sims watched the streetlights race by them. He blinked: a flash of his home in West Philly. The community center he'd built. Another light. He blinked again: a flash of orange, reflecting off of the silver handgun attached to Rodney's belt.

My life is at risk, Sims thought. All for the sake of a building and the safety of my neighborhood.

John W. Sims III is an unlikely federal informant. For one thing, he doesn't look the part. Sims stands just a hair under 5 feet 5 inches. The khaki slacks and T-shirts he normally wears makes him look more like a kid dressed up in his dad's weekend clothes than a businessman. His round eyes and cherubic smile seem antithetical to the federal agent archetype.

Sims grew up on Hicks Street, near 15th and Lehigh in North Philly, and dreamed of earning a solid education and coming back to his city as a government official. He's the sort of man who, when his neighborhood succumbed to violent crime and the drug trade, decided to invest his money into a safe haven for local kids. He once disappeared for a month without warning, explaining later that he was off donating a kidney to save his mother's life. Thing is, he's got a fresh scar to prove it.

Sims is as intelligent as he is vigilant. He's kept copies of letters, certificates and contracts and he's even transcribed many of his important conversations and meetings. But to hear his story now, it's difficult not to wonder if his suspicion got in the way of government work.

Seven years ago, Sims' North Philly building was overtaken by the leader of a powerful Jamaican drug ring, according to federal documents and tape-recorded conversations obtained by City Paper. The alleged ringleader, Rodney C. Peters, is said to have led an army of more than 200 men in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Minnesota. Afraid to evict them, Sims called the Philadelphia Police Department. Then he went to the FBI, who, according to federal records, asked him to turn federal informant. Sims talks now about clandestine meetings in dark alleyways, about operations at immigration offices to get fake IDs and about the time a drug exchange went bad. There was a firebombing in West Philly, Sims says. And an eventual murder in Minnesota. Were the Jamaican drug dealers also tied into 9/11? It's possible. Sims says he just found new evidence, a note card folded in half with "TERRORIST" and a phone number written in red ink.

In the middle of his work with various federal agencies, the local District Attorney's Office seized Sims' building once and put it up for auction years later — the same one that the FBI and INS were at one point surveilling. The first time, Sims thought it would be tantamount to his own death sentence, because Rodney might find out about his involvement with the feds. Just weeks ago, he finally got his building back.

The many details of Sims' endeavor to keep his building and neighbors safe may seem like a tall tale. At one point or another, many of the people he knows have questioned his sanity. If he was really working for the FBI, why wouldn't they just arrest the Jamaicans and close the case? Why would trained INS agents use Sims to initiate a major drug bust? And if Sims' life really was in danger, why didn't he just get the hell out of town?

On the other hand, documents and records from federal agencies, members of congress, the district attorney and the state of Minnesota tell a different story. So do the 20 microcassettes Sims used to record nearly every conversation he ever had with police officers, agents, drug dealers and his lawyers. So do the dozen support letters he received from city council members.

It all happened.

His stories are true.

And his paranoia, neuroses and delusions are very real.

John Sims grew up during the 1960s, when neighbors looked out for one another. If kids acted up, someone would later have a talk with the family. If people were causing trouble, the neighbors would band together.

Sims' mother worked on then-U.S. Sen. John Heinz's tomato farms in New Jersey. His father, who worked on loading docks, lived with Sims, his mother, two sisters and brother for a short time before leaving them. Sims poured his energy into studying and working in the community. In 1980, he graduated in the top 10 percent of his high school class at Murrell Dobbins. The police department commended him for active participation in "Operation Town Watch," a crime-fighting program. He was accepted at Howard University and eventually majored in pre-law and psychology.

After graduation, Sims used his mother's connection with Heinz and went to work for him in Washington, D.C. Then followed a stint at the White House, where Sims worked in the communications department. One day, he was delivering documents to the secretary of state's office when then-President Ronald Reagan entered the hallway. Reagan looked at Sims and said, "Hi." Elated, Sims could barely greet him back.

Sims eventually returned to Philadelphia in the late 1980s, planning to effect great change in his old neighborhood and maybe even run for political office. "I wanted to use what I learned in the White House and the connections I had there to come back here and do something positive," Sims says. "That's the way I was raised. I wanted to help people."

In the early 1990s, he ran for secretary of the Philadelphia Council of Neighborhood Organizations, a governing body for the various neighborhood groups, and won. He joined then-Mayor W. Wilson Goode's Commission on Literacy in Philadelphia and taught adults how to read. The District Attorney's Office appointed him to serve on the Youth Aid Panel for the 39th Police District with a mission to help at-risk kids.

And he started buying property. Sims bought a duplex in West Philly and buildings at 30th and Master and 33rd and Spring Garden. His idea was to rehab the blighted properties using help from the community. "I offered people paid jobs to do some painting, to clean, to do some restoration," Sims says. At one point, he had seven paying tenants and A-1 credit with the opportunity to borrow big. His neighbors nicknamed Sims the Donald Trump of North Philly.

In 1994, Sims found a property at 1511 W. Lehigh Ave., near his childhood home. He was 32 years old and full of energy. "I knew this was the place," he says. "All the kids migrated between 15th and 16th on Lehigh. These kids had no place to go, no rec center. So I figured that I'd get this triplex and convert the storefront for the kids as a place for them to hang out with supervision and get help with their homework. And I could finance the place using the two floors of apartments upstairs."

Sims paid $8,000 in cash for the building and renovated the second and third floors. He also built a tiny security room just upstairs of the storefront, where he planned to install a high-tech video surveillance system. After his interactions with the 39th District, Sims realized that if something did happen in the community center or apartments, the police could do their jobs better with evidence recorded on tape. Plus, a sophisticated alarm and surveillance system meant a lower insurance premium.

Sims hired a Philadelphia rental management company, to handle screening and signing his tenants. Soon after, two tenants moved into the upstairs apartments. Using their rent money, Sims turned the storefront into a community center. He installed a hefty air-conditioning unit and set up study tables. He put a pool table in one corner of the room. He made sure that parents had the center's phone number, so that those who wanted to could check on their kids. Sims tutored children after school and helped them with their homework. He encouraged them to work hard and even displayed their accomplishments on one of the walls. He tacked a Polaroid picture of one local boy standing next to then-Councilman John F. Street as an example of what patience and determination could bring.

In 1997, the trouble began.

Sims' management company approved the lease on a white female tenant whose credit check was clean. Although it was her name on the lease, she was almost never in the building. Instead, a group of Jamaican men had moved into her space, Sims says. He noticed that they had bulges protruding from their hips, and on more than one occasion he caught a glimpse of their guns. On the second floor just off from the kitchen, a window led to a small rooftop space. Sims says that he often caught the men sitting there on overturned buckets and boxes, smoking marijuana. And sometimes they sat in a car outside of the building. Sims says that he could see them smoking things that definitely weren't cigarettes.

So he called the police. "I was feeling nervous," he says. "These guys were rough … some real tall and bulky, and they had guns. I'm not a big guy who can stand up to people like this. And the scary part was that no one really knew who these guys were." Sims says that he feared evicting them and wanted help. "But the police department wouldn't do anything."

Instead, Sims went through the neighborhood gathering evidence on his own. "Look, I built a safe place for kids, and these guys were threatening everyone," Sims says. "The situation was urgent. I talked to the neighbors, and they verified that the guys were selling drugs and doing drugs. They were taking away from what I built there."

Inspector William Colarulo, a police department spokesman, said that his department would not comment on whether police responded to Sims. "I'm not going to honor a request to check phone calls that took place seven years ago," he says.

Sims called the District Attorney's Office next. But after waiting for eight months, he still got no response, Sims says. "I was desperate," Sims says.

The district attorney says that they were not aware of any phone conversations with Sims. "And what would we do if a crime was being committed?" asks Cathie Abookire, spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office. "He needed to work with the police department."

Instead, one hot summer morning, Sims pulled the Yellow Pages off of his shelf, looked up the phone number for the FBI and made a call.

They asked him to come in to the federal building the next day.

False Identity: Sims found this license in a dresser drawer in his building.

Sims says he met two FBI agents in the building's second-floor cafe. The three of them sat at a table with coffee and sandwiches.

At last, someone was willing to listen to him, Sims thought, and now he was ready. He'd prepared notes.

FBI records show that, according to Sims' own observations, the men were Jamaican, armed and drove a four-door green Ford with out-of-state plates. They kept cash in a Blunts cigar box behind the counter of his community center. Their names were Tony, aka Short Man; Rodney Peters; Plunky, aka Black Panther; and Little Richie. Sims said that he thought they were part of an organized drug-trafficking organization moving narcotics and guns around the country using plastic wrap, Vaseline, motor oil, fabric softener and spare car parts.

"They were very receptive," Sims says. "The agents really listened to me. They were serious about getting these guys … and they wanted my help."

At that meeting, the two agents asked Sims to be a "CI," a "confidential informant," who would supply the FBI with information without having his identity disclosed to anyone. That information would later be used to track and possibly arrest the men involved. FBI documents show that Sims wouldn't get paid for his work, and according to the agreement he signed, the FBI could not guarantee his safety.

Sims says that the FBI agents fed him blank videotapes to use in his surveillance room. Sims was to record activities in his building and secretly monitor what was happening. He kept detailed notes on who was moving around and which men seemed to be coming and going. He would go on special "fixing" missions, pretending to mend a broken pipe or look at wires while observing for any evidence that might be useful to the FBI.

Meantime, the agents would do drive-bys along West Lehigh. Sometimes they'd park across the street, other times they'd just roll by slowly. Sims says that on those occasions, they would wink at him or give him some sort of signal. "I knew things were going well, because they communicated with me," he says. "I felt safer just having them there."

He was to meet with the agents every two weeks and hand over the videotapes and any other intelligence he may have found. Most of the time, they met at the federal building, but on a few occasions, they met at a diner on Broad Street. It continued this way for several months — the tenants kept using and dealing drugs, Sims watched them and recorded what they did, and the FBI built their case.

FBI records do show that Sims had a relationship with its agents. But Jerri Williams, a Philadelphia-based spokesperson for the FBI, could not confirm or deny whether Sims was working with them. She also couldn't explain why the FBI was interested in Rodney Peters, why it took so long for them to make a bust, or why they wanted to work with Sims in the first place. "We don't comment at all on current, past or future cases," Williams says.

On March 12, 1998, Sims was barely waking up when, through sleepy eyes, he read 8:00 on his clock as the phone rang. It was his security company. The District Attorney's Office was in the process of raiding his building, and the city's Licenses and Inspections Department was there asking for permits.

Sims immediately got on the phone with his lawyer, Gary Auerbach. Something had gone wrong. Why was the District Attorney's Office raiding his house, when the FBI was in the middle of an investigation? Auerbach and Sims rushed to the federal building and met with agents to find out what happened. No one seemed to know.

"The two agents were on the phone right away," Sims says. "They were pissed. I was terrified. I didn't know what was going on."

"Some strange things happened," Auerbach adds. "There was a meeting with the U.S. Attorney, with the assistant DA, with the FBI down in the federal building. I was aware that John was a CI, and we didn't know why his house had been seized. That was never made clear to us."

According to the District Attorney's Office, they filed forfeiture papers to seize Sims' property in 1998 because there was probable cause of drug activity. "Drugs were recovered from that building, and Sims was the landlord," Abookire says. "There was a misunderstanding."

The next day, Sims went to the Court of Common Pleas and met with Judge Tama Myers Clark, court records show. The district attorney had filed a forfeiture petition, saying that Sims' West Lehigh building was being used "to commit and/or to facilitate, or was the proceeds of violations of the Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act." According to court records, an agreement was reached that day: The property was seized by mistake and the restraining order on Sims was issued in error. Clark ordered the property be given back to Sims and that $12,300 — to cover lost revenue, repairs and a new security system — be paid to him immediately.

On May 12, 1998, Sims got a check from the district attorney's federal drug forfeiture account.

"Boy were the Jamaicans angry," Sims says. "I had to make up a story to explain the raid to Rodney and the Jamaicans, told them that there was some sort of paperwork mistake at L&I. But I also had to explain what happened to the kids in the neighborhood — I didn't want them to think that I was dealing."

In the meantime, Sims started making the repairs on his building. He fixed the security system and repaired some minor damage to the storefront. And he was still feeding information to the FBI.

In May 1999, the agents Sims had been working with told him that INS would be taking over the investigation, he says. Sims met with INS agent Pat McCall and on May 19, signed a "cooperating individual agreement." According to that document, Sims agreed not to engage in any investigative activity without INS approval. He would be tracking and informing the INS of Rodney's activity. And payment might be involved — at the discretion of INS.

McCall wanted Sims to take part in a sting operation — he was supposed to arrange a cocaine-for-ID-card deal. "They wanted to use me as an agent," Sims says. "They told me that they needed someone familiar with the Jamaicans. They gave me a fake green work authorization card and a fake birth certificate. I showed this to Rodney — I was terrified, but I showed it to him."

Sims persuaded Rodney to meet a "friend" — a female INS agent — at the Radisson Hotel near the Philadelphia Airport. "The night before we left, I didn't sleep at all. I knew that if it didn't work, I was a dead man. Pat McCall said that I was the only one who could do it, and that if I really wanted the Jamaicans out, I had to do what INS said. I was trapped. I had no choice but to go along with this little plan of theirs."

The night of the Radisson sting, Rodney turned around on Route 291. They found the hotel, and Sims finally exhaled.

They went into the room, and Sims introduced Rodney to his "friend" Judy, he says. They chatted as if they'd known each other for years. When Rodney seemed comfortable, Sims went and sat in front of the television with the volume on low. Rodney and Judy started to do paperwork for the IDs — she asked him for the name, age, date of birth. And she took some photographs. Sims says that the agents told him to have Rodney bring some cocaine for the deal. And according to Sims, they made a trade after the paperwork was done.

"I was expecting them to make an arrest, because Rodney traded the coke for the IDs," Sims says. "But they wanted him to recruit more of his members to come in and trade drugs for ID cards. I think they didn't arrest him so that they could catch more of them down the road."

But on the table next to them, Sims says that he could see Rodney's INS file. "She brought it with her, and just laid it out there," Sims says. "They sent this inexperienced agent to do a complicated operation, one that could have gotten me killed. Rodney may or may not have seen it, but it was out there."

Why was INS interested in this particular sting operation? Why did they send this agent, if she really had no experience? Why did they use Sims? What was the result of the sting? INS, which today is called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), could not explain for the record why no arrests were made. "We cannot discuss and cannot verify any of the information Sims gave you," says William Riley, acting assistant special agent in charge. "If there were undercover operations, we would never discuss them."

A few weeks later, Rodney barreled into the community center. He'd thought about the sting and about Judy and decided that something seemed suspicious. He was angry and wanted answers from Sims. "He said, 'Was your friend a fuckin' agent? Are you setting me up?'"

Terrified, Sims tried to assuage him, telling him that he'd known Judy forever. That they were friends from the neighborhood. That he wouldn't lie to Rodney.

"I did talk to John at this time," Auerbach says. "I remember letters going back and forth about John's safety. He was really worried."

At that point, Sims says that he called McCall for help. "I wanted out," Sims says. "I wanted help. I was afraid they'd kill me."

Why would INS launch an investigation but make no arrests? Where were the drugs that Rodney was supposed to trade? Wasn't that enough evidence to prove Rodney's guilt?

Incredibly, at the beginning of August 1999, Sims says that Rodney approached him for more fake IDs. A friend of his had been involved in a murder — he couldn't say who or where — and he needed to leave the country, quick.

Locked Out: The padlock remains bolted to Sims' West Lehigh building. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Sims said that he'd make a call.

According to Sims, INS set up another sting — this time, Sims was supposed to feed Rodney a fake Social Security card and birth certificate and deliver him to the immigration office at Broad and Glenwood to make the deal.

Sims and Rodney went down to the office and stood in line. When they got to the counter, the clerk typed in Rodney's fake information and waited for a response. Sims stood next to him, nervous about the results. After a few seconds, nothing.

"Try it again, will you?" Sims pleaded.

She entered the numbers into her computer. Rodney was now looking at Sims, as if something was very wrong.

"It's not here," she said.

Rodney said nothing, turned around and walked out. Together, they went back to the West Lehigh building.

When Rodney left, Sims says that he called INS immediately. They told him that he'd gone to immigration too quickly — to try a few days later at the branch in Germantown.

"I convinced Rodney to come again," Sims says. "I don't know how, but he agreed."

Two days later, they went to the Germantown branch and waited in line, Sims says. When it was his turn, Rodney handed over his information to the clerk.

This time, everything checked out.

But again, there were no arrests. There seemed to be no answer why the first sting went wrong. For reasons unexplained, Sims says, INS just kept watching Rodney and stringing him along.

Later that month, Sims says that he noticed changes in the apartment. People seemed to be planning trips and meetings. Rodney kept leaving the city. At one point, Rodney said that he'd gone to Las Vegas and back. His minions had allegedly shipped the drugs and guns ahead of time using crates filled with fabric softener, plastic wrap and spare car parts.

Sims says that he called McCall at INS several times to let him know that Rodney was planning something big. He didn't know where, but something was going down.

On Aug. 26, 1999, Rodney was in Minnesota on an airplane ticket bought by his girlfriend. He went to a Minneapolis bar with two friends and one man named Aryton Darrell Welch. According to Minneapolis Police Department records, Welch that day had acquired 60 pounds of marijuana.

Just after 7 p.m., Rodney and one of the friends drove a pickup truck back to Welch's home. When they got there, two women were inside along with Welch's 4-year-old son. Rodney used duct tape to bind the women, the child and his friend and held a gun up to them.

Why he taped everyone and ran from the house is unclear. But hours after Rodney left, Welch still never came home.

He was already dead, shot by Rodney just an hour earlier.

Rodney returned to Philadelphia, according to Sgt. Patrick King, an investigator with the Minneapolis Police Department. He was arrested in Philadelphia by Minnesota law enforcement and extradited back to that state for trial. He is currently incarcerated at the Stillwater maximum-security prison in Minnesota, serving time until March 2025, according to prison records.

In Philadelphia, word got back that Rodney was in jail. Sims says that Rodney's No. 2 man, someone they called "Black Panther," was planning to get Rodney out of jail. One night, Panther and his men hauled a bunch of shovels out of Sims' building. Apparently, Rodney had buried piles of money all over the city.

"I was stuck," Sims says. "I kept calling INS asking for help, for protection. It had gone too far. I tried to tell them that Panther was going to go to the courthouse for Rodney's trial and bust him out."

Did Sims really need to fear for his life? Was he angry because INS wasn't more active in solving the case? Was he trying to get back at certain federal agents who he felt weren't doing their jobs?

Sims would argue yes to all three. And he feared someone — Panther, Rodney, the district attorney or an INS agent — would try to retaliate against him for so much of the investigation going sour. To protect himself, Sims says, he tape-recorded every phone call. Sometimes, if Sims wasn't in a position to connect his tape recorder to the phone, he'd just record himself talking during a conversation.

He also launched a massive letter-writing campaign. Sims reached out to Councilman Frank Rizzo's office. Sen. Arlen Specter. Congressman Chaka Fattah. The U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. Attorney's Office. Even the General Accounting Office in Washington, D.C.

When asked about their correspondence with Sims, many of them have the same response: a sigh, then a patent answer.

"We take all citizen complaints seriously," says Rich Manieri, the Philadelphia-based spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office. "We have had communications with Mr. Sims. We take seriously as a matter of policy not to discuss beyond what's in the public record, the circumstances surrounding the receipt of such information."

Frank Galioto, Rizzo's director of constituent services, also said that he'd been contacted by Sims. "We were able to get him in contact with the District Attorney's Office," Galioto says. "He was very persistent."

Sims contacted McCall at INS often — paging him with emergency information or leaving voicemail messages. Sometimes, when McCall would try to reach Sims, days would go by without a response.

At one point, McCall agreed to meet Sims at his office, but Sims never showed. Instead, they talked on the phone — a conversation that Sims recorded. When McCall asked why he missed their meeting, Sims said that he was busy at work.

"You called me three times today with 911," McCall said. "I called you back and I was on hold for fucking five minutes. Last week when I paged you 50 times, you couldn't come into my office. Did it occur to you to call me back?"

"So you're basically saying what about my fucking life?" Sims said.

"No, Sims. What it means is that you should have called me back. Now tell me what's wrong."

Another Clue: Sims found this motel key days after he got his building back. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"I've been threatened."

"What do you want me to do with this guy, Panther?" McCall asked. "He has no involvement in this investigation. Explain to me what you want me to do, Sims. Some guy is in your building? Is he threatening you?"

"He's friends with Rodney."

"I can't come down and arrest the guy because he's in your fucking building. You paged me 911 to give me that information? I told you, Rodney is sitting in jail in Minnesota for fucking murder."

"You said …"

"How does that constitute a threat?" McCall continued.

"You know that I cannot talk right now, because [they're upstairs]. I know what to do, I'll call the police and I intend to do that."

"Sims, are you losing it? Because if we talk to Panther and get conflicting stories, we're going to have a problem. Do you understand?"

"You called me to see if I felt threatened."

"No, Sims, you paged me 911. You're losing it."

In February 2000, against the advice of his attorney, Sims took his story to Channel 10 — an appearance that everyone who knows Sims remembers. Since then, Auerbach, Abookire and McCall have said the same thing either in interviews or on tape: Why on earth would Sims go on camera with this story if he was fearing for his life? All it did was make a bad situation worse.

But Sims says that it was a last resort. He felt abandoned and unprotected. And he needed answers.

Unfortunately for Sims, the appearance revealed exactly who he was to the Jamaican drug dealers.

In August, later that year, Sims went to Atlantic City to visit his sister. He'd been getting what he calls death threats on his answering machine. "You know what you did was wrong," a voice said. On another occasion, "you can run, but you can't hide." Sims called McCall and Specter's office and played those tapes over the phone.

That night, a phone call came from his security company. Someone had firebombed his West Philadelphia house. Two black males were seen lurking around the property earlier in the day. They came back later, assuming that everyone was asleep, torched a brick and rag, and set the building on fire.

Sims was living in the basement of the building — a tenant occupied the upstairs apartment. No one was hurt, but the second floor was ruined. And many of Sims' things — antique dishes from his grandmother, college books, certificates from his service to the city — were lost.

No one was arrested. And worse, Sims thought that they'd be back for him.

On Oct. 21, 2001, Sims got a call from a friend who'd read the morning paper and seen Sims' West Lehigh house up for auction by the District Attorney's Office. According to a copy of a list of seized properties for auction by the District Attorney's Office, Sims' property was listed as No. 89: Barry S. Slosberg and associates auctioned it on Oct. 18 from 10 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.

"No one was in the building, there were no tenants at that point," Sims says. "So I called the DA again, the same people who took my building wrongly in the first place. They sounded pretty upset to hear my voice. Apparently, they'd never taken my name off of the original auction list in 1998 — and my property was up for grabs again."

But the District Attorney's Office tells a different story. "John called us, said he was afraid of drug dealers in his building," Abookire says. "It was him who asked us to auction his building off. So we said OK and we put it up for auction, and he would have gotten all the money for it. Then he changed his mind. We never took, never occupied, never owned that property. That's just false."

Sims maintains that the sale went through, and that the person who bought his property put a padlock on the front door, locking both Sims and his tenants out. "The DA says that the sale didn't go through," says Richard P. Hackman, a Philadelphia lawyer Sims hired to get his building back. "They were supposed to have taken care of the situation in 1998, but didn't." Last month, an agreement was reached between the district attorney and Sims' lawyer. Sims took possession of his building, Hackman says.

In those two years, the community center closed and Sims lost a considerable amount of money. The Jamaican tenants left. So did his other tenants. Between trying to rehabilitate his West Philly home and the other buildings he owned, Sims was out of money, and his credit rating was shot. Sims claims that the district attorney and city promised him that they'd take care of the West Lehigh mortgage and other utilities while he served as a CI. He had no tenant income and was attempting to find work to rehab his West Philly home.

"John did not have access, so he lost his tenants and couldn't maintain the building," Hackman says. "We're now asking the DA to voluntarily pay John for the damages, which is $48,000, according to one estimate."

When Sims went back into the West Lehigh building in April after two years of being locked out, he found a scattered mess. Panther and the rest of the group had fled shortly after Rodney's arrest in Minnesota. The third floor had old cellphone bills laying on the floor along with black garbage bags and dusty clothes. There were drawers that'd been left empty and dangling open. Empty soda cans and bags of chips were on the kitchen table.

Sims and some of his friends started cleaning on the third floor. When they got to the second, someone noticed a pile of plastic cards. The Jamaicans had not only left behind their trash — they left their false identities in a dresser drawer. There were seven — one may have belonged to a woman from Illinois, but its edges were frayed, like someone had tried to replace her photo. The others all had red backgrounds and photos of black men with addresses in New Jersey.

Then, another startling discovery. When one of Sims' friends went to the second-floor bathroom, he found a white note card laying on the toilet. It had been folded in half, and read "TERRORIST" and bore a phone number with a (917) area code. And there was a mysterious key with a green plastic tag — something from a hotel room.

Sims did what most people in his situation would not: He made another phone call. This time, he'd try a brand-new agency, one he hadn't worked with before: Homeland Security.

"Yes, people have told me that I'm someone who doesn't know when to stop," Sims says. "But I felt that if I didn't turn in the licenses, that somebody would know. And they'd think I was withholding evidence, interrupting an investigation. Maybe someone needed the licenses for an operation. And then when I saw the terrorist card, I thought that with the licenses from New Jersey, maybe they were linked to al-Qaeda."

An agent from Homeland Security did meet Sims and collect the IDs and the card. And Sims is still in contact with him.

"At this point, I want people to know that they should be on their guards," Sims says. Today, he's working to repair the properties he owns. Now that he has the West Lehigh building back, he's trying to get the community center open in time for summer break.

And despite years of personal and psychological chaos, Sims still believes that, with time, he can deliver parts of his neighborhood from danger and blight. He also believes that if the district attorney and INS had just listened to him, Rodney would never have killed anyone — and that many of Rodney's associates would now be behind bars.

"Someone got killed. That didn't have to happen," he says. "Someone ought to look at the entire investigation to see how the DA's office and INS screwed up. INS gave me an agent who was new to operations like this. And the DA fumbled right into a federal investigation — and then they didn't pull back.

"People say only in Hollywood could a story like mine happen. I was so naive. I do think that now. People see me as someone who tried to do right by the government, and look what happened to me. But for the rest of my life, I'll have to be on my guard. I can't trust the government, local or federal. Rodney is out there, still. So is Panther. Some of the INS agents are against me, and so is the DA. I don't know who to trust."