User:Efraim Diveroli

Efraim Diveroli was an 18-year-old pot smoking high school dropout when he decided to enter the murky world of international arms dealing. A brash young man from a Jewish Orthodox family in Miami Beach, barely old enough to drink in 2007 when at age 21 his company AEY, Inc. was awarded a nearly $300 million dollar contract from the Pentagon to supply weapons and munitions to the U.S. Army and the fledgling Afghan and Iraq security forces for the fight against the Taliban – a stunning accomplishment! Diveroli was soon negotiating deals with foreign defense ministers, holding meetings at embassies, and taking calls from Army brass. In the process, he travelled the world and encountered some very shady operators – including dubious weapons traders, crooked diplomats, soldiers of fortune, and unsavory merchants of death. But with the fearlessness of youth, he forged full speed ahead Rolling Stone magazine said of Diveroli, “His competition was mostly big corporations like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed and BAE Systems. Those companies had entire departments dedicated to selling to the Pentagon. But Diveroli had his own advantages: low overhead, an appetite for risk and all-devouring ambition.” He was on his way to securing government contracts approaching nearly half a billion dollars, while living the life of a rock star – until the Pentagon turned on him – and his American dream became an American nightmare. Diveroli had faced down some of the world’s most corrupt and merciless arms dealers over the negotiating table, but he had no inkling of the whirlwind of secrets, lies, and betrayals that his best customer – the U.S. Government – was about to unleash on him. Details magazine declared of Diveroli, “He would become a symbol of a mismanaged war effort and the target of an embarrassed, vengeful Washington”