Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Mountie always gets his Benz


 

Years of hanging out with bad guys as an undercover RCMP officer sparked a love of Mercedes-Benz cars

For two decades he lived in the seedy underworld of organized crime, in daily contact with criminals. As an undercover officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he infiltrated organized crime, drug lords and biker gangs around the globe. Despite hanging with the bad guys and dealing with drugs, guns, and illegal cash deals, Chris Mathers acquired only one addiction — a love for Mercedes-Benz cars.

"I started driving Mercedes-Benz when I was undercover. I was posing as a gangster and I started driving these cars and they were really nice … I started with a C-Class and then moved up and got the CL. This is my second CL.

"And I'll never drive another car. I will not drive anything but Mercedes. I'll walk. But I won't drive another car. And that's not a snooty thing — it's the best car in the world, so why not drive it?" says the 52-year-old Mathers, who also worked for the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Customs Service, Interpol and Scotland Yard.

He left law enforcement to establish the corporate intelligence division at KPMG, one of the world's largest forensic accounting firms. Now he runs his own Toronto-based consulting company, Chris Mathers Inc., which focuses on organized crime, terrorism, fraud and money laundering.

The Montreal native's current three-pointed star is a black-on-tan 2004 Mercedes-Benz CL500.

"I don't like sports. I don't gamble. I don't drink that much. I buy clothes. I smoke cigars and I drive a nice car. I'm not a car guy, but I love this car. It is really a thing of beauty," Mathers says.

"The only thing I don't like is I don't have DriveTronic in this model. I'm a Blackberry guy. If you have DriveTronic, it's made for Blackberrys because [if] you look down, the car will stop if you're going to hit the car ahead of you. You can't have something better than that."

 

When working undercover, Mathers never travelled incognito.

"I wore a suit to work. I drove to my office every day. I was supposed to be a wealthy businessman who was involved in criminal activity," he explains. "I'm not a surveillance guy — I am pretending to be a gangster ... The point of the exercise was to meet people and launder their money, at least pretend to. The biggest difference being that real money launderers give you your money back. We didn't do that."

No matter what role he assumed, he always drove a Benz — though he is quick to emphasize that "owning a Mercedes doesn't mean you are involved in criminal activity, obviously."

In his undercover work, Mathers had his share of mishaps.

"I was with the police doing surveillance on a guy and I hit him. We got jammed up. Sometimes it happens and you end up behind the guy and boom!" he slaps his hands together.

"I whacked right into him. That's it. That's the end of that. Call the local cops, come by and take a report. It turned out well.

"The guy ended up flipping and becoming an informant. But it was very embarrassing. ... I certainly did my share of stupid things. But that was probably the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me."

Behind the wheel of his CL500, he brushes up on his language skills. He's fluent in several languages, including French, German, Spanish and Italian.

He also listens to one CD repeatedly. Walking Papers is by punk rock band Hostage Life, whose members are his sons — 22-year-old Patrick and 21-year-old Shamus.

"It's funny 'cause I'm in a suit, tie and fedora smoking a big cigar and all you can hear is punk rock. At the lights, [other motorists] are looking — 'It can't be from that guy,'" he laughs.

Mathers has also produced anti-money-laundering training films and written a book, Crime School: Money Laundering — True Crime Meets the World of Business and Finance. He is also dabbling in television and recently finished writing a pilot for a drama called Crime World.

He has a few months left on his CL500 lease. When it's time to switch wheels he might move up the ladder to his dream car — a 2008 CL65 AMG. As he puts it, "life's too short" to drive anything less than the best.

 

PETRINA GENTILE

Globe and Mail