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Ron Wilburn has supported Dianne Wilkerson. |
Wilkerson reportedly ID's FBI source
Cooperating witness called a longtime ally
By
Donovan Slack and Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff
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November 10, 2008
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Only slivers of him are visible in grainy FBI surveillance photographs: the crisp white cuff of a dress shirt, a close-up of a palm, hands pressing neat folds of cash toward state Senator Dianne Wilkerson.
Officially, he is CW, or the "cooperating witness." Working with the FBI, he allegedly gave Wilkerson thousands of dollars ostensibly for help in obtaining a liquor license - all the while secretly videotaping and audiotaping the transactions, according to a 32-page government affidavit. The FBI has declined to disclose the individual's name.
But Wilkerson has confided to close associates that the figure who led the FBI to her is a man she knows quite well: He is 69-year-old Ron Wilburn, said three of those associates in separate interviews. If true, it creates a plot line rich with irony and tragedy.
Wilburn is a longtime friend and active political supporter of Wilkerson's; he is described as a minor entrepreneur and a "gentlemanly" presence in Boston's black neighborhoods; he has publicly said in the past that he feels it is his responsibility to help other minorities gain an advantage in life.
Yet in the twilight of his career, if Wilkerson is correct, his cooperation with authorities has led to the political downfall of the only black state senator in Massachusetts. At the same time, his believed role undermines one of Wilkerson's core assertions throughout her troubled career: that her legal and ethical issues are manufactured by forces outside her community.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Wilburn said in a brief telephone call with a reporter shortly after Wilkerson's arrest, before hanging up. Wilburn, who has not been charged with any crime in the case, did not respond to repeated requests for interviews, including messages left at the Revere apartment where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Wilburn is a longtime consultant to minority business ventures in Boston who was perhaps best known for his association in the 1980s with one of the city's most prominent black entrepreneurs, the late Bertram M. Lee. Wilburn later helped manage a nightclub in Roxbury, Mirage at Estelle's, where he hosted fund-raising events for Wilkerson.
With his slight build and what acquaintances characterized as an affable, polite manner, Wilburn is described as a steady family man with no criminal record. Often, the FBI recruits cooperating witnesses from the ranks of criminals. That makes Wilburn an unusual figure in an FBI sting.
Wilkerson, who announced Wednesday that she plans to resign from the Senate, did not return messages seeking comment. Among the questions that remain unanswered is what motivated the confidential witness to cooperate with the FBI and the office of US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan.
If the public corruption case against Wilkerson goes to trial in US District Court in Boston, the confidential witness would be unmasked so that a jury could assess credibility.
People who have known Wilburn over the years said nothing they were aware of would foreshadow a role in the 18-month federal investigation.
"Ron Wilburn, as I knew him, was what I'd call a serial entrepreneur," said Ronald A. Homer, former chief executive of Boston Bank of Commerce, who last saw both Wilburn and Wilkerson at a fund-raising event for US Senator John F. Kerry at Mirage at Estelle's in 2004.
Wilburn advised
Wilburn was named in the early 1980s as one of several black shareholders in the parent company of a television station, WNEV-TV (Channel 7) in Boston, a CBS affiliate whose ownership was 13 percent black, believed to be the highest of any commercial station in the nation at the time. He evidently landed that position because of his relationship with Lee, who later bought a majority stake in the Denver Nuggets in the National Basketball Association.
In 1989, Wilburn represented Lee's BML Associates Inc., a Boston company that owned radio stations, in a deal to acquire an Atlanta-based ethnic hair-care firm.
But in recent years, Wilburn was involved in more modest ventures, including helping a young protege acquire and run Mirage at Estelle's. For 35 years, the nightclub was known simply as Estelle's and was a legendary black-owned club on Tremont Street in Lower Roxbury. Among those who performed there were Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and George Benson.
In 1999, Wilburn helped shepherd Felix "Manny" Soto through the process of buying a liquor license for the club, which added Mirage to its name when it opened soon afterward. People who worked at the club or danced there described Wilburn as the manager.
"I know him to be a . . . a very mature individual who has established roots in the community for many years," said Frank Williams Jr., whose father owned Estelle's from 1964 until his death in 1999. "He was a well-regarded gentleman in the community."
Wilburn's work at the club marked the second time he had assisted Soto. In 1992, he helped Soto, who was 21 at the time, obtain loans to open a car dealership, J & M Auto Sales, in Jamaica Plain. Wilburn also helped him obtain a city license to sell cars.
By 1996, Soto had built a car dealership with annual gross sales of more than $1 million, according to a Globe story that year. Wilburn said at the time that he felt it was his civic duty to help young minorities like Soto, who is Dominican-American.
"In these times, in this city, when it feels like we're moving backwards as far as affirmative action and everything else, I think it's the responsibility of established African-Americans like myself to nurture talent in the Latino community," Wilburn said at the time.
But Soto later got mixed up with the law. In January 2007 he pleaded guilty to drug charges and received seven years of probation after he was arrested by Boston police in 2005 when a passenger got out of his car with a Pop-Tart box stuffed with more than 200 grams of cocaine.
Wilkerson's associates say she met Wilburn while he was managing the Tremont Street nightclub. Wilkerson was a prominent state senator who, since her election in 1992, had staked her legislative reputation largely on civil rights issues and was popular in Boston's African-American neighborhoods. But she was also a polarizing figure with a track record of personal ethical and financial lapses, including failing to pay $51,000 in federal income taxes in the early 1990s.
Given the nightclub's location and popularity in Wilkerson's district, it was a natural venue for fund-raisers. Wilburn provided the club free of charge, and the senator only had to pay for food, said the associates who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing federal inquiry.
The FBI has not detailed what led to its relationship with CW. In early 2007, not long after Estelle's closed, the man identified in the FBI affidavit as CW made an allegation to agents. He told them that Wilkerson routinely took cash from constituents and others with business before the Senate. He told agents that he had personally witnessed two cash payments.
In June 2007, at the FBI's instruction, CW met with Wilkerson at Scollay Square, a restaurant near the State House, and paid her a $500 bribe for help in securing a liquor license for a nightclub called Dejavu, according to the FBI affidavit. A previous application for the club, on Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury, had been denied in April of that year. It was the first of thousands of dollars in bribes that CW would pay Wilkerson, according to authorities.
After the second bribe, a payment for $1,000 at the restaurant No. 9 Park, cash that Wilkerson stuffed into her bra, according to the affidavit, CW told Wilkerson: "That's a thousand dollars, all right? You tell me what you want. If this goes through, you got it. You, you tell me your price. Okay? And I am not playing around."
All told, CW and an undercover agent he introduced her to paid Wilkerson $8,500 in bribes for the nightclub license, the affidavit said. Wilkerson allegedly accepted another $15,000 from undercover agents in a second sting operation for legislation to pave the way for a separate Roxbury development.
Wilburn lives in a sprawling tan apartment complex near the beach on Ocean Avenue in Revere with his wife, Joanne, and their daughter.
Joanne Wilburn is a former executive assistant to Dunfey, the hotelier, and helped organize the well-known New England Circle roundtable discussions that featured international luminaries. In 1990, she took a job as conference coordinator at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School, but she now works elsewhere, Dunfey said.
Dunfey said he was unaware that Ron Wilburn was said to be CW.
"All I know is positive things about him," he said. "I always knew him to be a wonderful man, a wonderful father, and a wonderful husband."
Colette Phillips, who runs a public relations firm in Boston and knew Wilburn through his wife's involvement in the New England Circle, said "he's been around for a long, long time, sort of on the periphery of black businesses and black ventures."
She said she was unaware he was said to have been involved in the Wilkerson sting.
Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com. Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
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