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Richard and Joan Rosetter, corn farmers in Minnesota, believed everything they heard from their son, 40-year-old Lt. Cmdr. David Rosetter.
First there were the Mexican "hit men" known as "the Dreaded Burrito Gang."
Then came the part about a Samoan mobster named "Uncle Mo."
Add to that a stripper from Guam and the Navy officer's love child.
And finally, an urgent plea for cash.
The far-fetched story terrified the farm couple, who lived in fear for months. Together with one other family member, they forked over $185,000 to help their son. But it was all a fraud, according to the FBI, and it has landed the decorated officer in federal court on extortion charges, along with his Samoan wife and her sister.
Federal authorities unsealed a nine-count indictment July 21 charging David Rosetter, his wife, Fia Rosetter, and her sister, Tau Tafaoa, with nine counts each of extortion in the alleged plot targeting his parents and his sister. All three have pleaded not guilty.
David Rosetter, until last November the head of the Military Sealift Command office in Hawaii, seemingly had a good career. An Iowa State University grad, he was the chief engineer aboard the frigate Hawes, served on the cruiser Chosin and then the amphibious assault ship Belleau Wood, Navy records show. He also served a year in Iraq with the Army's 101st Airborne Division and, according to his bio on the MSC website, earned a Bronze Star. That bio has since been pulled from the site.
But now, if convicted in an alleged scheme beyond the imagination of many Hollywood scriptwriters, Rosetter, along with his wife and her sister, could face up to 90 years in federal prison.
The following details are based on court documents, which include the nine-count indictment and several FBI affidavits on file in U.S. District Court in Minnesota and lay out the claims Rosetter allegedly made to his family members. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune first reported the story after the documents were unsealed. Attorneys for the Rosetters and Tafaoa did not respond to calls for comment.
The 'Dreaded Burritos'
According to the FBI, the extortion scheme began back in 2005, when David Rosetter's parents were visiting him and his wife in San Diego. He was stationed on Belleau Wood at the time. The younger couple told David's parents that the entire family was under surveillance because Fia's sister had broken her foot while working at a Walmart and later filed a worker's compensation claim.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., they said, would rather see the sister, Tau Tafaoa, dead than pay the lifelong worker's compensation claim, so the company hired Mexican "hit men" from "Los Burritos" or "the Dreaded Burrito Gang" to target them all for assassination, the Star-Tribune reported.
David Rosetter said that because he had helped his sister-in-law sue Wal-Mart, the company was targeting his entire family. Several months later, the story expanded and began to involve David Rosetter's sister, Luann Rosetter, a middle school music teacher in Rapid City, S.D.
On a visit to Luann Rosetter's home in November 2005, David Rosetter told his sister to "watch her back" because she was also in danger. He told her to check the brake lines on her pickup to ensure the Mexican gangsters had not cut them.
They also said that because Fia Rosetter and her sister were Samoan, the Samoan mafia — headed by a man known as "Uncle Mo" — was secretly following the family to protect them from the Mexican hit men.
During the visit to Rapid City, David and Fia Rosetter placed an urgent call to David's parents on their Minnesota farm and told the elderly couple that their lives were in danger — threatened by the Mexican hit men. They had 20 minutes to leave or be killed; they should leave immediately and come to Rapid City.
After making the seven-hour drive to Rapid City, Richard and Joan Rosetter were told that they had barely escaped with their lives. Their son told them that the Samoan mafia had killed two of the Mexican hit men.
The story about hit men stalking the family continued. For the next week, David, Fia and Tafaoa kept the three other Rosetters constantly on the move to various meeting points, ostensibly to evade the hit men who were closing in on them.
David, Fia and Tafaoa left Rapid City, but continued to perpetuate the story for months. They told Richard, Joan and Luann Rosetter to avoid being seen in public at all costs. They told the older Rosetters to change their physical appearance. The FBI affidavit does not say how they changed. Richard and Joan Rosetter declined a Navy Times request for an interview.
David, Fia and Tafaoa told Luann to quit her job and leave Rapid City. They told her to change her name, buy a new car and get rid of her dog, which she did.
For several months, Luann lived in hiding on her parents' farm. Whenever she left the property, she hid under blankets in the back seat of her parents' car.
In January 2006, David called his sister and told her it was time to sell her house, a two-bedroom rancher in Rapid City. But, he warned, the Samoan mafia and "Uncle Mo" could protect her only for 30 minutes while she was in her house grabbing personal belongings.
Luann drove to Rapid City, filled her car with trash bags full of possessions and immediately returned to Minnesota. Luann then sold her house and all the furniture that remained inside "for pennies on the dollar," according to the FBI.
Demands for money
A year later, in January 2007, David Rosetter began demanding money, court documents show.
By then he was stationed in Norfolk, Va., and working for the Operational Test and Evaluation Force in the chemical and biological programs office. The lieutenant commander called his mother, father and sister and talked vaguely about how "he had made some sort of mistake," that his life was being threatened, and the only way out was "six feet under."
He told them not to ask questions, but if they did not send him money, they would all be killed, court records show.
In response, Richard, Joan and Luann Rosetter wired David more than $7,000, court records show.
In April 2007, Tafaoa began sending e-mails to Richard and Luann outlining a new phase to their story: The Samoan mafia had learned that David Rosetter was leaving his wife. The officer had a love child with a stripper from Guam.
This had embarrassed Fia's Samoan family and angered "Uncle Mo." In addition, the e-mails said, David Rosetter had left his wife with massive credit card debt — if the money was not repaid, the Samoan mafia intended to kill all of the Rosetters.
The family was given a deadline of April 23, 2007, to pay off the debt, or else "he and his family (you and your parents) will be 'dealt with immediately.'"
In May 2007, Richard and Luann received e-mails purportedly from "Uncle Mo" himself.
These e-mails told the Rosetters that the Samoan mafia had decided — referring to David Rosetter — to "[f]inish him off completely. Hence it means sleeping with the fishes."
The e-mail also said: "Unfortunately it looks very grim for all of you, too. Why? Because his fate is also your fate. Yes, David is well aware that whatever he does will have consequences upon himself. As well as all of you."
The e-mail from "Uncle Mo" ended by demanding that the Rosetter family send $164,000 to cover the debt incurred by David.
Luann contacted her brother and asked him to explain himself.
The Navy officer apparently responded using a personal e-mail account saying: "Oh S—-! Big Mo was not bluffing at all."
Another e-mail purportedly from David Rosetter to Luann Rosetter referred to his new Guamanian girlfriend. "Why should I do what Big Mo tells me?! I'm in love with my Chamorro (Guam) girlfriend and we have a daughter together." The e-mail included a photo of a topless woman.
In a later e-mail, David Rosetter told his sister: "Yes, I f—-ed up and I am paying the price for it. ... I seriously cannot believe you would question Uncle Mo."
For months, Richard, Joan and Luann believed the increasingly wild story and wired a total of $185,000 to David and Fia.
Family contacts the feds
After an e-mail — purportedly from Uncle Mo — demanded an additional $120,000, the Rosetter family had had enough. In June 2007, Luann and her parents contacted authorities and a federal investigation began.
A two-year investigation uncovered Internet records showing that the Yahoo e-mail address for Uncle Mo was registered in Fia Rosetter's name, and all of the e-mails sent to the Rosetter family came from the same two computers.
After almost three years of investigations, David Rosetter, his wife and sister were indicted in April and were summoned to federal court in July.
Navy officials fired David Rosetter from his job as officer-in-charge of the MSC office at Pearl Harbor in November 2009. He was passed over last year for promotion to commander and is assigned to administrative duties in Hawaii pending the outcome of the court case.
