---
category: "Victims & Witnesses"
tags:
  - Person
summary: "Former Austrian citizen and undercover informant working against Ben Kalka for the California DOJ, central to a massive methamphetamine reverse sting operation."
relations:
  - type: investigated
    with: "[[Ben Kalka]]"
    start: 1989-10
    role: "informant against Kalka, per Seymour"
    fn: 3
updated: 2026-10-15
---
[[John Di Giorgio]] was a former Austrian citizen who was allegedly an undercover informant working against [[Ben Kalka]] for the [[California Attorney General's Office]]. His criminal indictment was filed under seal by the INS on October 26, 1989, and remained secret for nearly a decade. At a news conference on November 17, 1989, former [[California Attorney General's Office|California State Attorney General]] [[John Van de Kamp]] touted the case as the "biggest methamphetamine seizure in the world," displaying 1,022 pounds of methamphetamine and $1 million in cash.[^1]

[[Pam MacLean]], a reporter for the *San Francisco Daily Journal*, spent thousands of dollars to get the Di Giorgio file unsealed. The unsealed documents revealed that the [[United States|U.S. government]] was looking for an alleged $13 million in laundered drug funds believed to be in [[Switzerland]], [[Germany]], and [[Israel]]. The methamphetamine precursors supplied to [[Ben Kalka]] were reportedly part of a "reverse sting" operation headed by [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] agent [[Robert Barnes]].[^1]

The federal case number on the sealed indictment is recorded in a federal docket index: No. 3:89-cr-00603 in the [[United States District Court for the Northern District of California|Northern District of California]], filed October 26, 1989 and terminated June 17, 1993. The index lists the parties as the United States and Ben Kalka.[^2] Seymour cites the same number as the "Di Giorgio Extradition File, Case No. CR89-0603 VRW, U.S. verses Di Giorgio."[^3]

---
### Footnotes

[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
[^2]: United States v. Kalka, No. 3:89-cr-00603 (N.D. Cal.), docket record filed October 26, 1989, terminated June 17, 1993. CourtListener. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/26558922/united-states-v-kalka/
[^3]: Seymour, *The Last Circle*, p. 400.