Cops and Gypsies

So when Phantom, a veteran law enforcement officer in Miami, called me about exposing them, I was immediately intrigued. He quickly put me in touch with his source, the gypsy elder.

"These people drive Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, Ferraris," the gypsy told me. "They don't just take a little money for readings, they drain people of their savings, and it gives gypsies everywhere a bad name and brings heat on everybody. I'm a roofer, a general contractor, and I work for my money. I drive a Volkswagen. Hah!"

He said he was trying to modernize the entire culture and assimilate with the society at large.

"The old ways don't work anymore," he said. "Gypsies used to travel from town to town with their scams. They have computers now. It [referring to the old scams] doesn't work any more. It's a joke."

When I asked him about Unich's allegation about an extortion attempt, he laughed.

"Let me explain to you how it works with these guys," he began. "As soon as a cop is onto them, automatically they have to say things. Try to put themselves in the clear. Bullshit, man. That's how they talk, 'crooked cop and crooked gypsy.' But what about the money they take? That's the reason for all this."

He told me that he had recently tried to "patch things up" between John Uwanawich, who goes by the name "Johnny Gee," and another gypsy. He denied that he had ever tried to extort Uwanawich. When I reached Uwanawich by phone, though, he backed up his son's story about the gypsy asking him for $20,000 — before hanging up the phone.

"That's what any gypsy will tell you," said Uwanawich's rival (an "elder" who's actually in his 40s). "They don't speak the truth to American people, and you can't trust anything that comes through their mouths."

The lawman who contacted me says he has no idea what might be going on beneath the surface with the gypsies. "I just take the information and work with it," he says. "They complain about me a lot; they've called internal affairs before," he said. "That is their M.O., and they think by doing this that I will back up. It's unfortunate that we have to deal with this and they'll make stuff up."

He says he just wants victims of the Uwan­awich family to come forward so justice can be done. And you can't disagree with that.

But you get the sense that this war has just begun.