By the end of the 90's, Chris Paciello was the proclaimed "King of South Beach." His successful night spots had transformed the town from a backwater to a celebrity mecca. And with his gentlemanly charm and alluring rumors of a mafioso past, Paciello fast became a celebrity himself. For a while he was People Magazine's IT Boy, romantically linked with the likes of Madonna and Nikki Taylor.
But it would soon come out that Paciello was not who he said he was.
He was in fact Chris Ludwigsen, a petty thug from Bensonhurst and former member of the Bath Avenue crew. Before Miami, the closest he had come to "club promotion" was during the early 90's, when Manhattan's crime- and drug- fueled scene was having its heydey -- his crew started fights to drive customers away from the mob's competition.
After a botched robbery led to murder, Ludwigsen fled to South Beach and took his mother's maiden name. For a while he lived low, but by working his former connections he reinvented himself as a business man and bought into his first night club -- which shortly thereafter burned down, earning him a $250,000 insurance settlement. Rumors of arson abounded, but Paciello called it dumb luck.
And his "luck" continued. His new club thrived even as his competitors suffered from chronic police raids. He opened a restaurant and another club. His profits soared (much higher than was possible, investigators later realized), and his problems had a way of disappearing. One law suit against him was dropped when the claimant became convinced he would "never get to spend the money."
In the end, however, he placed his trust in the wrong person, and his empire threatened to unravel. Allegations surfaced of money laundering, drug dealing, bribery, threats and assaults -- and finally the murder he thought he'd left behind. As the indictments rolled in, his powerful supporters rolled out, and the former King of South beach was left to face his past alone.
About Detective Andrew Dohler
Andrew Dohler began his career in law enforcement in 1990. He spent his first three years as a police officer assigned to the NYPD’s 75th precinct where he worked the midnight shift and was responsible for making hundreds of arrests. In 1992 he was awarded Cop of the Month for making several key gun arrests and a rare Murder 2 collar.
After only three years, he was transferred by his then commanding officer Deputy Inspector Joe Dunne, to the elite Anti-Crime Squad, an undercover unit that focuses on gun and robbery related crimes.
Dohler retired from the NYPD in 1996 and a short time later was hired by the Miami Beach Police Department where he was assigned to the Third Platoon, Uniform Patrol. He eventually was recruited to work undercover for Miami’s Strategic Investigation Unit. Only three people in the Miami Beach police department knew of his assignment which was to infiltrate the inner circle of a powerful Miami Beach club owner named Chris Paciello. The operation, which was originally supposed to last three months, lasted two years and Dohler was able to gather enough evidence to help the government put Paciello away.
Dohler’s work on the Paciello case resulted in his promotion to Detective. For the past seven years he has been working undercover in the vice unit handling everything from Organized Crime to narcotics to prostitution. He has spent two and half of those seven years detached “on-loan” to the Drug Enforcement Administration, working in their money laundering unit.
Dohler served as a technical adviser on the film. |
