Nobody goes into the arms business for altruistic purposes.”. This is very not fair. “Da, da,” they would tell Packouz. Those companies had entire departments dedicated to selling to the Pentagon. As Diveroli’s apprentice, Packouz saw that his friend never read a book or a magazine, never went to the movies — all he did was pore over government documents, looking for an angle, a way in. The exhausted Packouz no longer had to work 18 hours a day to track down suppliers. Maybe we can play on his fears. You don’t even know whose side you were on — who you were helping and who you were hurting.”. “It made sense to me, but I didn’t really care. To fight simultaneous wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration had decided to outsource virtually every facet of America’s military operations, from building and staffing Army bases to hiring mercenaries to provide security for diplomats abroad. Even Diveroli’s mother concurred. So Diveroli dispatched another friend from their synagogue, Alex Podrizki, to the capital city of Tirana to oversee the details of fulfilling the deal. All the notoriety in my industry and all the good times — and there were some — cannot make up for the damage.”. “Thomet could get body armor, machine guns, anti-aircraft rockets — anything,” Packouz recalls. He also had business cards printed up with an impressive new title, considering he was part of a two-man operation: vice president. “It’s a great business, but I need a guy to come on board and make money with me.”. The film may not … Also, Packouz is given a girlfriend in the movie (Ana de Armas), unlike the real story. Diveroli loved to brag about how rich he was, and rumors circulated among the stoners about the vast sums he was making, at least compared with their crappy part-time jobs. “Then I would tell them the specifics of what I was after — mortar rounds, the size of ammo, the amount. Unfortunately, the military later took back the medals, claiming that Chips was only equipment … Aboard the plane were 80 pallets loaded with nearly 5 million rounds of ammunition for AK-47s, the Soviet-era assault rifle favored by the Afghan National Army. When Packouz contacted the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan, the military attache immediately wrote to the Kyrgyz government, explaining that the cargo was “urgently needed for the war on terrorism being fought by your neighboring Afghan forces.” Two weeks later, Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to Kyrgyzstan on a mission to keep supplies flowing through the airport there. But back in Albania, he also became the lead witness in a case that targeted Albanian thugs and gangsters with ties to the prime minister. Diveroli was the class clown, an overweight kid with a big mouth and no sense of fear. If we worked hard. SEE DETAILS, when you spend $25 on participating products. “Things were rolling along,” Packouz recalls. He e-mailed or faxed or called them all. His wife and kids were going to go hungry. “It was surreal,” he recalls. Any new sources you bring to the table, I’ll give you 25 percent of the profit.”. Podrizki fibbed, saying it was to lighten the load and save money on air freight. “Efraim was conflicted about whether to put a nine percent or 10 percent profit margin on top of our prices,” Packouz recalls. As an apprentice arms dealer, he proved to be a quick study. But Diveroli and Packouz had three advantages. “Efraim called it the Save the King Project, but he didn’t give a shit about the king,” Packouz says. Most astonishingly, both men were twentysomething stoners with no experience handling anything of this size or scope. “People won’t do business with you unless you have experience, but how can you get experience if they won’t do business with you? “We’ve got a problem,” he told Packouz, shouting to be heard over the restaurant’s thumping music. But Diveroli wanted more than that: His ambition was to be the biggest arms dealer in the world — a young Adnan Khashoggi, a teenage Victor Bout. To get into the game, Diveroli knew he would have to deal with some of the world’s shadiest operators — the war criminals, soldiers of fortune, crooked diplomats and small-time thugs who keep militaries and mercenaries loaded with arms. Not at all, the U.S. official replied. Some of the crates were infested with termites, and the ammunition had been damaged by water. Once a week or so, the pair would hit the clubs of South Beach to let off steam. The girls were models or cosmetologists. Dogs have played an important role in the United States military since the early … She didn’t approve of their drug use, and she talked openly about them on the phone, as if they weren’t present. Supplying the contract would mean buying up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ammunition for the kind of Eastern Bloc weapons that the Afghans used. But the ATF agent, who had thoughtfully brought along a gun of his own, handed Diveroli a Glock to try out. As arms dealers, subverting the law wasn’t some sort of extreme scenario — it was a routine part of the business. Deepening his voice and adopting a clipped military inflection, Packouz chatted them up, made them laugh, asked about how things were in Kazakhstan, described how sunny it was in Miami. On July 28th, 2006, the Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Illinois, posted a 44-page document titled “A Solicitation for Nonstandard Ammunition.” It looked like any other government form on fbo.gov, with blank spaces for names and telephone numbers and hundreds of squares to be filled in. "War Dogs" is a film about two twenty-somethings who become international arms dealers. We can find a settlement.”, “I know all of your contacts, and I can send them the actual documents showing what the government is paying,” Packouz said. There was not only an embargo against selling weapons manufactured in China: The Afghan contract specifically stipulated that Chinese ammo was not permitted. Brave Soldier Dog of The 102 nd Infantry. This was the “gray market” that Diveroli wanted to penetrate. “The marketing slogan for the building was ‘South Beach revolves around us,’ and it was true. The most decorated military dog of World War II was a German Shepherd/Collie/Husky mix named Chips. They didn’t need quality; antique shells, second-rate mortar rounds — all of it was fine, as long as it worked. “It was such a deep game, we didn’t know what was really happening.”, With the flights to Kabul arranged, Packouz hit the phones looking for more ammunition. “I had a transcendental experience.”. He located stockpiles of ammunition in Eastern Europe at good prices. Read the incredible true story behind the movie ‘War Dogs’, The real 'War Dogs': David Packouz (left) and Efraim Diveroli at a gun range near Miami (top). “I inspected the stuff and it seems good,” Podrizki told him. Diveroli was rich. However, as the trailer makes clear, the film ups the action quotient. “I have good news and bad news,” Diveroli said. But it didn’t take long for success to drive a wedge between the two friends. The deals were tiny, relatively speaking, but they gave AEY a history of “past performance” — the kind of track record the Pentagon requires of companies that want to bid on large defense contracts. “If you can help us do business with another Russian company, then we can buy from them.”. One evening, Diveroli picked Packouz up in his Mercedes, and the two headed to a party at a local rabbi’s house, lured by the promise of free booze and pretty girls. Several weeks later, as he was arranging supply routes for the deal, Packouz was informed that AEY would not be given overflight permission for Turkmenistan, a former Soviet satellite that had to be crossed to reach Afghanistan. In the beginning, Diveroli specialized in bidding on smaller contracts for items like helmets and ammunition for U.S. Special Forces. For 19 years she’d tried to think of ways to find him — or anyone who might share her interest in the story of Vietnam’s war dogs. A shell company called Evdin, which Thomet had incorporated in Cyprus, would buy the ammo from Albania’s arms-exporting company. His title was account executive. As the balloon inflated with vapors from the high-grade weed, he took a deep toke and felt the pressures of the day drift away into a crisp, clean high. The money was only available for two years, so it had to be spent quickly. “I said it was part of the vital process of nation building in the central front of the War on Terror,” Packouz recalls. “If the Russians made life difficult for us, they would get taken off the American blacklist, so they could get our business for themselves.”, Packouz managed to obtain the overflight permission through a Ukrainian airline — but the episode was an ominous reminder of how little he understood about the business he was in. “I knew once they saw them we were in trouble. “You’ve got the bitch’s panties off,” Diveroli said, adopting his best movie-star swagger. The hearing was not the end of Diveroli’s woes. Between songs, the two friends would take hits of the cocaine that Diveroli kept in a small plastic bullet with a tiny valve on the top for easy access. Under pressure from top U.S. officials, the ammo was eventually released. If you strip away the guns and the politics, this is really a buddy comedy about two bumbling stoners who get in way over their heads and face the wrath of the Powers That Be. But I was a central player in the Afghan war — and if our delivery didn’t make it to Kabul, the entire strategy of building up the Afghanistan army was going to fail. “But I’ve got good contacts for you to start with. When Podrizki went to look at a cache of ammunition in one bunker, it was apparent that the Albanians had a haphazard attitude about safety; they used an ax to open crates containing live rounds and lit cigarettes in a room filled with gunpowder. Worst of all, Podrizki noticed that the steel containers holding the ammunition — known as “sardine cans” — were covered in Chinese markings. He wrote angsty rock ballads with titles like “Eternal Moment” — but it was hard to get a break in the music industry. Packouz was about to get a rare education. We had suppliers in Hungary and Bulgaria and other countries. Packouz was in excellent spirits. Diveroli soon followed, taking a two-bedroom in the central tower. The pseudo case wasn’t secret, precisely, but the only place it was publicized was on fbo.gov. But how much do you know about the decorated war dog? “Efraim was a Republican because they started more wars,” Packouz says. There were too many thugs involved on the Albanian end of the deal, and it was just too dangerous. He said that if the deal fell through he was going to be ruined. In 2014, the onetime wanna-be pop star invented the BeatBuddy, the “first guitar pedal drum machine,” which went on to be one of the most successful items to ever be funded on IndieGoGo. In an effort to protect his interests, Packouz demanded a meeting with lawyers present. War Dogs (2016) Plot. “ANY age ammunition is acceptable.”. The move made sense. “We have very good interest in this business,” he said in a thick Russian accent. He started coming in late and knocking off early. It was May 2007, and the war was going badly. “He was still just a kid, but he didn’t see himself that way. Screen Reader Users: To optimize your experience with your screen reading software, please use our Flixster.com website, which has the same tickets as our Fandango.com and MovieTickets.com websites. The animals just got too out of control.”. In January, dressed in a tan prison-issued jumper, Diveroli came before Judge Joan Lenard for sentencing at Miami’s gleaming new federal courthouse. Diveroli didn’t bring a weapon — he knew that would constitute a felony. Every day, Packouz spoke with military officials, sending volleys of e-mails to Kabul and Kyrgyzstan and the Army depot in Rock Island. “We were delivering on a consistent basis. After stopping to refuel there, the flight would carry on to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. After extended haggling with Diveroli back in Miami, Trebicka agreed to do the job for $280,000 and hired a team of men to begin repackaging the rounds. Stubby the War Dog tells the true story of a stray who finds himself a part of an army unit headed to Europe during WWI. The Pentagon’s buyers were soldiers with little or no business experience, and Diveroli knew how to win them over with a mixture of charm, patriotism and a keen sense of how to play to the military culture; he could yes sir and no sir with the best of them. “The e-mails were incredibly incriminating — they spelled out everything,” Packouz says. As Diveroli arranged a line of coke on the dashboard, he warned Packouz not to make any mistakes with the grenades. In January, Packouz was sentenced to seven months of house arrest after he stood before a federal judge in Miami and expressed his remorse for the “embarrassment, stress and heartache that I have caused.” But his real regret is political: He believes that he and Diveroli were scapegoats, prosecuted not for breaking the law but for embarrassing the Bush administration. Returning home, Packouz drifted through two semesters at the University of Florida. Like Diveroli, Thomet had been in the business since he was a teenager, and he recognized that the two young upstarts could be useful to him. However, Hill reached out to the, Although Diveroli has written about his experiences in a memoir titled, While Diveroli refused to meet with the actor playing him in, Although Hill and Teller now seem like they were destined to nab these parts, they weren’t the first choices. “I will do whatever you tell me to do.”, Diveroli suggested that Trebicka try bribing Ylli Pinari, the head of the Albanian arms-exporting agency that was supplying the ammunition. But then we might be leaving money on the table — God forbid!”. War Dogs is an entertaining (and presumably fictionalized) “true-life tale” of men behaving badly during an inherently immoral situation. Finally, the ATF agent lured Diveroli to a meeting, asking him to bring along a gun so they could go shooting together. I didn’t know anything about the situation in that part of the world. Was that a problem? Diveroli was enraged. Packouz had no written contract with Diveroli, only an oral agreement. The War Dogs movie poster is inspired by the poster for the ultra-violent gangster film Scarface, starring Al Pacino, which was also set in Miami. “There are Chinese markings all over the crates.”. Trebicka was happy to help. It felt like AEY was under siege from all directions. Packouz’s heart sank. So the two friends chose a third option. No. But while he was awaiting sentencing on the fraud charges, Diveroli couldn’t stay out of the business he loved. The deputy director looked like he was ex-KGB — big and fat, in his sixties, with thick square glasses. Furious at being frozen out, he called Diveroli and secretly recorded the conversation, threatening to tell the CIA what he knew about the deal. © Copyright 2020 Rolling Stone, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. Lawson then wrote a 2015 book, Arms and the Dudes, detailing the story. Both Packouz and Diveroli suddenly were rich and at their mid-20s, they became international arms dealers. He was doing some online business himself, buying sheets from textile companies in Pakistan and reselling them to distributors that supplied nursing homes in Miami. Reading the source material may indicate why: In this story, Packouz comes off as the more sympathetic of the two, which isn’t saying that much considering that they both engage in all kinds of shady business. Packouz e-mailed Podrizki in Albania and instructed him to have the rounds repackaged to get rid of any Chinese markings. The Bush administration’s ambivalence about Afghanistan had manifested itself in the terms of the contract: The soldiers of Kabul and Kandahar would not be abandoned in the field, but nor would they be given the tools to succeed. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. Get your swag on with discounted movies to stream at home, exclusive movie gear, access to advanced screenings and discounts galore. One month is OK to do business, next month is not OK. He would go toe-to-toe with high-ranking military officers, Eastern European mobsters, executives of Fortune 500 companies. As much as the film may diverge from the truth for the sake of cinematic drama, the core story remains jaw-droppingly true. According to a report by Amnesty International, “Tens of millions of rounds of ammunition from the Balkans were reportedly shipped — clandestinely and without public oversight — to Iraq by a chain of private brokers and transport contractors under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense.”. But because the Afghanistan solicitation was a “pseudo case,” it had been designed to move swiftly. “They said Bush and Rumsfeld were trying to arm Afghanistan with enough ammo to last them the next few decades,” Packouz recalls. All the partying wasn’t exactly conducive to running a small business, especially one as complicated and perilous as arms dealing. He would take them on and win, and then give them the finger. As AEY grew, it defaulted on at least seven contracts, in one case failing to deliver a shipment of 10,000 Beretta pistols for the Iraqi army. He regaled Packouz with the tale of how he had won the contract, how much money he was making and how much more there was to be made. Despite the celebratory air, they both knew that their work had just begun. For once, at least, taxpayers were getting a good deal on a defense contract. And he’s not going to get much — $20,000 from you.”, When Trebicka complained about being muscled out of the deal, Diveroli said there was nothing he could do about it. No government agency buys and sells more stuff than the Defense Department — everything from F-16s to paper clips and front-end loaders. He would do anything to make money.”, To master the art of federal contracts, Packouz studied the solicitations posted on fbo.gov. When both of them fell through, Hill was cast as Efraim… and Chris Pratt was rumored to play David for a hot minute. “I’ve found the perfect contract for us,” Diveroli said. Trebicka thought the request exceedingly odd. All told, AEY made 85 deliveries of munitions to Afghanistan worth more than $66 million, and had already received orders for another $100 million in ammunition. The embassy had been trying to find the money to pay for demolishing the ammunition, so sending the rounds to Afghanistan would actually do them a favor. “I know you hate me for saying this,” she said, addressing her son directly, “but you need to go to jail.” Diveroli’s shoulders slumped. Efraim Diveroli, by contrast, knew exactly what he wanted to be: an arms dealer. There was only one snag: When Diveroli bid on the contract, he had miscalculated the cost of shipping, failing to anticipate the rising cost of fuel. He would be paid entirely in commission. Then he played his trump card. After all, it wasn’t like the military was buying weapons and helmets for American soldiers. “Why don’t you kiss Pinari’s ass one more time,” Diveroli said. “Sometimes you have to fake it until you make it,” Packouz says. Sign up for our newsletter. There was drinking, dancing, people making out in the Jacuzzi — sometimes more than just making out. The Mormon gun manufacturer from Utah, Ralph Merrill, pleaded not guilty and was convicted in December. The company and Diveroli had both been placed on the State Department “watch list” for importing illegal firearms. Then one afternoon in September 2008, Trebicka was killed in a mysterious “accident” when his truck somehow managed to flip over on a flat stretch of land outside Tirana. Showing all 5 items Jump to: Summaries (4) Synopsis (1) Summaries. And that was fine by the Wolf of the Wall Street Oscar nominee, who told EW: “This is a good sign: if I sign on to play a real person and they don’t want me to be involved and they don’t want anything to do with it? Very political. The military officials receiving the ammo in Kabul had to know it was Chinese: Every round is stamped with the place of manufacture, as any soldier knows. I don’t understand your government. Not because I’m bragging.” Diveroli paused, as if he were about to disclose his most precious secret. Watch the trailer for ‘War Dogs,’ starring Jonah Hill and Miles Teller. The trouble was, it couldn’t go into such a murky underworld on its own. Packouz took his performances seriously, choosing soulful music like U2’s “With or Without You” or Pearl Jam’s “Black,” while Diveroli threw himself into power ballads and country anthems, tearing off his shirt and pumping his fists to the music. But for gun runners, this kind of legal hurdle was just that — a hurdle to be jumped. Fortunately, AEY had friends in high places. Packouz was baffled, stoned and way out of his league. “Don’t throw around three-letter words like IRS. The real kids traveled the world, but usually to check out foreign arms stockpiles and international gun shows. After all, by doing an end run around Thomet, there would be more money for everyone else. War Dogs covers that impossible-to-invent narrative in Hollywood style. What Trebicka had failed to grasp was that Thomet was paying a kickback to the Albanians from the large margin he was making on the deal. Before long, Diveroli was winning Pentagon contracts. Diveroli asked Ralph Merrill, the Mormon gun manufacturer from Utah, to come along. The company hired an office manager and two young secretaries they found on Craigslist. War Dogs is based on one of those true stories that no one would actually believe if it were written as fiction. While the film is a conceptual departure from his past work, it’s easy to imagine the hard-partying Packouz and Diveroli (who would share cocaine snorted out of a plastic bullet the latter carried with him) getting along quite well with the wild, hard-partying bros of Phillips’ previous movies. Trebicka was stuck with the tab for the workers he had hired to repackage the rounds, along with a warehouse full of useless cardboard boxes he had printed to hold the ammo. The Russian president didn’t like NATO expanding into Kyrgyzstan, and the Kyrgyzs wanted the U.S. government to pay more rent to use their airport as a crucial supply line for the war in Afghanistan. Packouz knew he was in a bad bargaining position. The contracts often ran to 30 or 40 pages, each filled with fine print and legalese. Still a teenager, he rented a room in a house owned by a Hispanic family in Miami and went to work on his laptop. “How much money are you making, dude?” Packouz asked. Kicked out of school in the ninth grade, Diveroli was sent to Los Angeles to work for his uncle. “Mark my words — crash and burn.”, In June, seven months after Packouz started at AEY, he and Diveroli traveled to Paris for Eurosatory, one of the world’s largest arms trade shows. It was a lucrative deal, but Diveroli wasn’t satisfied — he always wanted more. The two men met at a bar near the Sky Tower in the center of town. Normally, a small-time outfit like AEY wouldn’t have a shot at such a major defense contract. Anticipating the big payday, he ditched his beater Mazda for a brand-new Audi A4. At the same time, Heinrich Thomet sourced a massive amount of ammunition through his Albanian connections. Yet the story behind War Dogs might be the most interesting of all. When prison guards saw his file, he said, they asked in amazement how such a young person had managed to win such a huge military contract. Stubby the War Dog: The True Story of World War I's Bravest Dog [Bausum, Ann] on Amazon.com. “But it seemed like we might be able to actually compete with the big boys. The allegation was false, but it had apparently triggered a criminal investigation by the Pentagon. When the agents came to my lawyer’s office to interview me, they were joking about how they had seen all the e-mails and notes. Whenever possible, he threw in military lingo designed to appeal to the officers: He was working on an essential contract in the War on Terror, he explained, and the United States military was counting on AEY to complete the mission. Why go to all that trouble? The Army had given him permission to repackage the rounds into cardboard boxes, but getting anything done in a country as dysfunctional as Albania wasn’t easy. Federal contracting rules were routinely ignored or skirted, and military-industrial giants like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin cashed in as war profiteering went from war crime to business model. Part of the Dogs for Defense program initiated after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Chips was given to the military by his owner in New York. At one point, he spent weeks obsessing over an $8 million contract to supply SUVs to the State Department in Pakistan, only to lose the bid. AEY was giving the Swiss arms broker just over four cents per round and reselling them to the Pentagon for 10 cents. But Diveroli went right on shipping Chinese ammo to Afghanistan — and the Army went right on accepting it. Any delay would risk losing the entire contract. But he wasn’t so sure that AEY was going to be able to deliver. The Albanians didn’t require a large deposit as a down payment, which made it easier for AEY to place big orders. People at parties would ask us what we did for a living. The cheaper the better: The less the ammo cost, the more he and Diveroli would pocket for themselves. Let’s get him happy. Packouz was intrigued. While Diveroli refused to meet with the actor playing him in War Dogs, Packouz met with both Miles Teller and Jonah Hill. Packouz showed him the list of munitions he needed, along with the quantities. “I don’t care if I have the smallest dick in the room,” he would say, “as long as I have the fattest wallet.” Or: “If you see a crack in the door, you’ve got to kick the fucker open.” Or: “Once a gun runner, always a gun runner.”, “Efraim’s self-image was as the modern merchant of death,” says Packouz. There was a “questionable need for the contract,” a “grossly inadequate assessment of AEY’s qualifications” and “poor execution and oversight” of the contract. The defense industry and politics were extremely intertwined — you couldn’t do business in one without dealing with the other. “When the United States invaded Iraq, he was thrilled. Stubby the War Dog: The True Story of World War I's Bravest Dog We know life happens, so if something comes up, you can return or exchange your tickets up until the posted showtime. In Abu Dhabi, Packouz hoped to find a single supplier big enough to meet most of AEY’s demands. War Dogs The e-mail confirmed it: the delivery was back on track, after weeks of maddening, inexplicable delays. It also ignored the fact that AEY had defaulted on prior contracts. Diveroli was excited about a deal he had just completed, a $15 million contract to sell old Russian-manufactured rifles to the Pentagon to supply the Iraqi army. Bidding on contracts on fbo.gov was an art; closing a deal was a science. The contracting officers he dealt with told him that there was a secret agenda involved in the deal. Diveroli called it squeezing into a deal — putting himself between the supplier and the government by shaving a few pennies off each unit and reselling them at a markup that undercut his competitors. But am I happy about it? It was perfectly legal, but it had the stench of double-dealing. Packouz has had something of a comeback in recent years. “The Army was pushing us for the ammo,” says Packouz. As they passed a joint back and forth, Diveroli decided it was time for Packouz to step up and take on a larger role. The Albanians, he thought, would be glad to deal with AEY directly. Karaoke in a basement bar called the Studio was a favorite. She was paired with military working dog Rex (E168). And unlike most federal contracts, there was no dollar limit posted; companies vying for the deal could bid whatever they wanted. Throughout the meal they passed Diveroli’s cocaine bullet back and forth under the table, using napkins to pretend to blow their noses. Finally, on the last day, Packouz was given an appointment. Teller -- who saw Phillips at a restaurant and asked to be put in the movie -- ultimately secured it. The real 'War Dogs': David Packouz (left) and Efraim Diveroli at a gun range near Miami (top). Although Hill and Teller now seem like they were destined to nab these parts, they weren’t the first choices. Reassured by the e-mail, Packouz got into his brand-new blue Audi A4 and headed home for the evening, windows open, the stereo blasting. It was undeniable. But if he was about to lose a deal, his voice would start shaking. The guys were stockbrokers and lawyers. With Thomet on their side, Diveroli and Packouz soon got the break they were looking for. The raid led agents directly to the e-mails about the Chinese markings on the ammunition from Albania, and the conspiracy to repackage it. War Dogs finds these guys literally under fire while personally transporting their goods across enemy territory, which didn’t happen. 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