January 7, 2003

By A.C. Thompson, with translations by Claudia Eyzaguirre

Saul Serrano was standing on the 2700 block of Mission Street, near 23rd Street, in San Francisco at roughly 11:30 a.m. Nov. 19 when a white van screeched to a stop alongside him. According to witnesses and police accounts, two men – one black, one white – wearing bulletproof vests and brandishing handguns jumped out and forced Serrano into the vehicle.

And then he was gone.

What's become of Serrano, a 28-year-old native of Mexico City, is anybody's guess. An undocumented immigrant, he's known as a warm, though rough-edged character (on his head he sports a tattoo of an eagle clutching a serpent) who spent years hanging out on the streets of city's Latino district.

Down on Mission Street, dark theories are circulating. Serrano, an alleged drug dealer who's been in the Bay Area for nearly eight years, is reputed to traffic in fake identity cards and phony documents. And some in the neighborhood think black-market rivals took him down.

Others, including the top local cop on the case, have another, remarkable theory: they think it's possible the windowless, nondescript van was government-issue. If that's the case, it's possible Serrano was snatched by federal law enforcement agents – possibly the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Drug Enforcement Administration – and is being held incommunicado in some dank lockup. Or maybe he was quietly, quickly deported.

In normal times this kind of the-secret-government-agents-got-him talk would be written off as hyperparanoid, X-Files-inspired blather. But obviously, given the scarily clandestine machinations of the federal government these days, we aren't living in normal times.

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Even the basic outline of the story is murky, the clues contradictory.

So far the San Francisco Police Department has interviewed two people who claim to have seen Serrano get into the van. Canvassing the neighborhood, we located a third witness. This person, who hasn't spoken to the cops, gave an account that jibed with the statements made by the other witnesses.

"Saul was talking on the phone when a white van came by," said the third witness, who asked not to be named. Serrano didn't resist when the men ordered him into the vehicle, the witness said. "I assumed it was the police."

In the seven weeks since he went missing, Serrano hasn't contacted Veronica, his girlfriend of three years. "I feel bad, very bad," said Veronica, 24, who lived with Serrano and their two-year-old child in the blue-collar East Bay town of San Pablo.

According to Veronica, who asked that her surname not be used in this story, Serrano was carrying an ATM card for the couple's joint bank account when he disappeared. That card hasn't been used since.

If Serrano was grabbed by cops or federal agents, they aren't talking. When he didn't show up for an appearance in traffic court, his attorney, Sherry Gendelman, started sleuthing – contacting the jails in five different counties around the bay, as well as federal law enforcement and immigration authorities and the Mexican consulate. "Nobody has him," Gendelman told us. "This guy just disappeared."

Two days after the apparent abduction, Veronica notified the San Francisco police, who haven't had any success pinpointing Serrano's whereabouts either. Police inspector Rich Daniele's hunch is that federal agents of some variety picked up Serrano, who is known to use the aliases Orlando Gonzalez and Armando Aguilar.

"At this point, I can't substantiate a kidnapping," said Daniele, the lead cop on the case. "Was he deported? Was he detained? I don't know."

Daniele also doesn't know what to make of the contradictory tales he's hearing: while combing the streets, the detective interviewed a local restaurateur who claimed Serrano had come in for a meal on the evening of Nov. 19 – hours after he supposedly disappeared.

Going door to door on Mission Street with a photo of Serrano, we couldn't find anybody who'd encountered him since Nov. 19. Francisco, a street vendor with a small inventory of Spanish-language CDs, said Serrano had been a regular customer. "I would see him every day," he told us. At Jeans Emporium, owner Norm Anand remembered the missing man clearly: "I haven't seen him in a long time."

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Perhaps Serrano's quest for the big score went sour. According to sources close to him, Serrano, who speaks little English, made a living peddling drugs and fake IDs, as well as working for a legitimate window-glass business in Oakland.

Like illegal drugs, fake documents are a major – cutthroat – industry. A bogus Social Security card, green card, or California ID can retail for anywhere from $200 to $1,000, depending on quality. And business is booming: in 2001, as tabulated in a recent report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, federal agents intercepted 114,000 fraudulent identity documents.

The bogus-ID industry has taken on the bloody dynamics of the drug trade. In recent months a Las Vegas-based syndicate has attempted to muscle in on the markets in San Francisco and New York, asserted one source familiar with the Mexican criminal underground.

Serrano's organization, which allegedly sold IDs – micas, in street vernacular – and marijuana near the intersection of Mission and 23rd Streets, frequently clashed with rivals who'd staked out a spot on 22nd Street, said a local merchant acquainted with Serrano. "They were always fighting," the shopkeeper recalled.

But it was a textbook drug-deal-gone-awry that got Serrano in trouble, according to an underworld figure who knew him.

Prosecuted in San Francisco for felony drug possession in 1997, Serrano had a reputation as a small-time pot dealer. However, in recent months he'd made a bid to climb up the ranks, the source said. Serrano, this person claims, had a dispute with some powerful players in the drug business – and they dispatched a team of hit men to get rid of him.

"They killed him," the source said.

That type of scenario seems plausible to Gendelman, Serrano's erstwhile attorney. At this juncture, she holds out little hope that he's still alive. "Like many undocumented immigrants," she said, sighing, "he got caught up in a global economy that brings immigrants here and exposes them to danger in order to survive."

Yet the last time we spoke to Veronica, she remained defiantly optimistic, though her eyes were downcast and her lower lip jutted out sullenly: "I'm waiting to see if he calls."