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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Intertel.md

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+---
+category: "Private Organization"
+tags:
+  - Organization
+  - Intertel
+  - ResortsInternational
+  - RobertPeloquin
+  - PrivateIntelligence
+  - Bahamas
+  - HowardHughes
+  - OrganizedCrime
+alias:
+  - International Intelligence Inc.
+  - International Intelligence, Inc.
+summary: "Private intelligence company formed by Justice Department organized crime lawyers Robert Peloquin and William Hundley as a subsidiary of the Bahamian casino operator Resorts International, staffed from the IRS operation that had investigated the islands."
+location: "Washington, D.C."
+created: 2026-09-21
+updated: 2026-09-21
+---
+
+International Intelligence, Inc., called Intertel, was a private investigative company owned by [[Resorts International]], formerly the [[Mary Carter Paint Company]], the operator of the casino on [[Paradise Island]] in the [[Bahamas]].[^1]
+
+### Paradise Island
+
+[[James Crosby]]'s Mary Carter Paint bought three quarters of Paradise Island from [[Huntington Hartford]] for 3.5 million dollars and with it "the legal services of Sir [[Stafford Sands]]," the Bahamian minister and lawyer, who advised that the casino be run by the group of [[Wallace Groves]] at Freeport. Crosby gave a Groves company four ninths of the casino. [[Robert Peloquin]], a lawyer in the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s organized crime section who worked with the revenue service's [[Operation Tradewinds]], wrote in a January memorandum that "the atmosphere looks right for a Lansky skim." A royal commission sat in 1967 under Sir [[Ranulph Bacon]], formerly of Scotland Yard and later a director of Intertel, with Peloquin as "an 'unofficial,' but influential, observer." It exposed [[Meyer Lansky]]'s interest in the Lucayan Beach casino and the fees Sands had taken, and Sands "retired to his castle in [[Spain]]." It did not examine Crosby's company, whose casino had not yet opened.[^1]
+
+### The Firm
+
+Peloquin left the government in 1967 with [[William Hundley]], and within weeks the two were vice presidents of the Resorts subsidiary responsible for the new casino. "Many of those involved in Tradewinds," among them the IRS intelligence chief [[William Kolar]], "would all find jobs with Intertel." Hundley later defended [[Tongsun Park]], [[John Mitchell]], and [[Richard Kleindienst]]. A few weeks before the casino opened on January 1, 1968, Crosby wrote 34 checks to campaign committees of [[Richard Nixon]], all but one for 3,000 dollars, and raised another hundred thousand from friends. Nixon, [[Bebe Rebozo]], and [[Robert Abplanalp]] attended the opening. The casino's manager was [[Eddie Cellini]], brother of Lansky's associate [[Dino Cellini]]. Crosby later ordered Peloquin to dismiss him.[^1]
+
+One of Tradewinds's informants, the former [[Wackenhut Corporation|Wackenhut]] detective [[Norman Casper]], later obtained the depositor list of the [[Castle Bank and Trust]], one of whose customers, [[William Mellon Hitchcock|Billy Mellon Hitchcock]], an early financier of the Paradise Island development, was then suing the bank over its voting of his Resorts stock.[^1]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Hougan, Jim. *Spooks: The Haunting of America: The Private Use of Secret Agents*. William Morrow, 1978, pp. 237-242, 380-394.