For cronies attached to America-supported regimes, California was irresistible. A cornucopia of start-up and suburban development and shopping-center and office-tower projects promised high returns on big investments under safe conditions, even if things went badly at home. “They come over here with shopping bags full of money—real money,” one Palo Alto real estate agent told the San Jose Mercury News in 1985, regarding Filipino investors.50 The article was part of an investigative series by the Merc into capital flight from the islands to the Bay Area, which revealed a network of elites affiliated with President Ferdinand Marcos siphoning billions of dollars out of the country’s coffers into their own accounts and portfolios—billions the regime had borrowed from international lenders on their people’s credit line. Corrupt authoritarians had to invest, too, and among the best ways to do it was to dump a pile of cash on a California lawyer’s desk.

In one case, a government fund directed by the infamous embezzler (and first lady) Imelda Marcos invested millions to acquire three Silicon Valley tech firms through a holding company.51 Prominent among the elite Filipino investors in California was Enrique Zóbel, whose namesake, recall, was the Falangist father-in-law of Ampex co-owner Joe McMicking. Now that the family fortune was restored, Zóbel’s Ayala International controlled two hotel projects in San Francisco and Los Angeles worth a combined $73 million.52 “They have money in Switzerland and money all over,” one Silicon Valley electronics executive told the Mercury about the Filipino investors he worked with, “but the really wealthy put their money over here, always with the expectation something could go wrong. One man told me: ‘As long as I can get out of the Philippines and get to a telephone, I’m in no trouble.’”53 Investing in California meant, whether a communist revolution or democratic regime change, the country’s rich could stay rich. The Mercury’s “Hidden Billions: The Draining of the Philippines” series created a stir on the islands. Local papers repeated the articles in excerpt and in full. At a time of financial hardship, this “dollar salting” took food out of hungry mouths, retarded economic development, and ran up a $28 billion tab.54 The ensuing scandal helped pressure President Marcos to concede to the early elections that removed him from power.