Pierre LaFitte

Jaques Voignier, also known as Jean Pierre LaFitte, was a prolific French and American criminal and confidential informant, eventually operating as an undercover spy for the American Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) in the pursuit of criminal narcotics and mafia organizations around the world. He also worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to track and hunt down white collar criminals and art thieves. Notoriously, Voignier used the connections he made as an undercover operative to participate in the criminal underworld while also investigating it - but some historians suggest this was part of a deception invented by the FBI in 1951. By the year 1955, he had been arrested or detained at least 34 times in 34 years, but spent very little time in prison compared to his official sentences. Controversially, Voignier was also involved in the MKUltra experiments, and was one of the two men in the room with Frank Olson on the night that Olson died.

In 1955, the journalist Bob Considine of the International News Service wrote:

"...one of the most amazing underworld figures of the age. He is a mystery man who chooses to call himself, at times, Pierre LaFitte, and claims that he is descendant of the notorious Nineteenth century smuggler and pirate, Jean Lafitte... Lafitte is an actor who can impersonate any type, from banker to gangster to skilled portrait painter... As artful a liar as he is an imposter... A man who might have made a career on the stage so convincing is he in any role he chooses to assume... The government insists that his real name is Jacques Voignier."