A Central Otago-raised investment banker co-opted as an undercover agent for the United States' Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has written a book about his life on both sides of the law.
Keith Bulfin was happily married with three children and working as an investment banker for a Melbourne sharebroking firm in late 2000 when he was convicted of fraud charge and was eventually jailed for a minimum of three years.
Mysteriously, instead of being sent to a prison farm - the usual destination of white-collar criminals with the lowest security risk - he was put in a "super max" jail for the worst criminals.
In the prison he was stabbed twice.
"You have to watch what you say and how you look at someone because they could respond quite differently".
Mr Bulfin struck up a friendship with two fellow banking professionals, but it turned out that the DEA had identified one of them as the main banker for a Mexican drug cartel.
On his release the DEA recruited Mr Bulfin to go to Mexico and become a banker for the cartels.
In an interview with the ABC in Melbourne today, Mr Bulfin (64) said that when the proposal was made to him replied: "'No way in the world will I go to Mexico' and they said: 'you've got immigration issues, it'll restore your credibility' and, at the end of the day, I felt I had no choice."
"Suddenly I was on a plane and in Mexico City and meeting my friend I had befriended in the super max prison.
"I would have been executed if I'd been caught," he added, matter-of-factly.
The drug cartels were "the most ruthless people in the world and the scariest".
Asked by the DEA to set up an investment bank in San Diego to lure Mexican drug money, he also opened a chain of fish and chip restaurants in Mexico as a cover, calling it KB Chips.
At one point, a bloody shootout in a Mexico city hotel room left a DEA agent and two drug dealers dead, and Mr Bulfin headed for US border carrying $US10 million ($NZ13.4 million) in a suitcase.
Back in his normal family life again, he wrote a book about his experiences called Undercover and is now writing a second book about his time with the FBI in Washington.
Asked if he was worried about the cartels taking revenge, he replied: "You're probably never safe.
"But I feel safer now because most of people I dealt with are either in jail or dead."
