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The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/John Di Giorgio.md

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Victims & Witnesses
Person
Former Austrian citizen and undercover informant working against Ben Kalka for the California DOJ, central to a massive methamphetamine reverse sting operation.
type with start role fn
investigated Ben Kalka 1989-10 informant against Kalka, per Seymour 3
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 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 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 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, 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. ↩︎