In New York, he joined Ignatz Griebl's not very secret cell of fledgling spies there in 1934 with Axel Wheeler-Hill and another man. The cell was created on the initiative of Grieb who had written to Joseph Goebbels in Germany offering his services as a spy. None of the members had access to secret information at that time and according to Ladislas Farago they were jokingly known among the wider circle of Nazi sympathisers as "Dr. Griebl's undercover boys", although Wheeler-Hill later became a member of the more significant Duquesne Spy Ring.Farago, pp. 24–26. Pfaus also started a Nazi group in New York with the Swedish-born Olov Edvin Tietzow, founder of The American Guard.Carlson, John Roy. (1943) Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America. New York: Dutton. p. 418.
