Trail of Greed: Fighting Fraud and Corruption... A Dangerous Game

by John Dysart

  I cleared the desk where my PC sits to give Sophie some working space.

  I realised that I was thinking thoughts about Sophie that I really shouldn’t be. Forget it, I told myself. I’m past all that, and she wouldn’t be interested. I’m far too old. Sad, but there it is. Liz’s picture in the corner seemed to nod approval.

  Pierre and Sophie arrived at around ten thirty. Pierre didn’t stay as he had organised an eleven thirty tee-off time.

  I showed Sophie around, offered her a cup of coffee and helped her to connect up her laptop.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” I said. “I’ve got some gardening to do. Make yourself at home and if you need anything just call.”

  She settled down to do battle with the world wide web and I went out to get on with some pruning and weeding.

  I popped in occasionally to check that all was well. Sophie was totally concentrated. She’d pulled her hair back and fixed it with a rubber band behind her head and she had a neat pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose.

  The screen of her laptop was showing screeds of numbers, letters or formulae cascading down at a tremendous pace. There were half a dozen discs lying on the table beside her and a pad and a pencil with notes. Whatever she was doing was completely beyond me.

  She turned and smiled when she heard me. “Everything ok?” I asked. “Sure. But this could take some time.” There was the day (about forty years ago) when I would have said “Take all night if you want”, but instead I replied that there was no particular hurry.

  I pottered around in the garden for another half hour then went in to suggest to Sophie that she stop for a while and we’d have a bite of lunch. The computer was still crunching numbers at a vast rate.

  I proposed some fish pâté and Chablis which I had in the fridge. This was met with approval. We sat outside in the sun, but sheltered from the wind.

  Over lunch I learned how she and Pierre had worked closely together for years. How it was Pierre that had given her her chance to develop. The company had paid for her to have extra training and it had been a great place to work. She had been very sad when Pierre had sold out but she had understood. She obviously had a great affection and respect for my elder brother and they had clearly been good friends as well as colleagues. She knew all about his history and his desire to find out more about his father.

  I got up and brought out Dad’s picture and showed it to her. She had seen the tiny copy that Pierre had but she was fascinated by the larger framed version.

  “Wow,” she said. “There’s really quite a family resemblance isn’t there? You all seem to have something of him in you. With Pierre it’s the shape of the head. I can see his mouth and chin in you and that’s definitely Mike’s eyes.”

  I told her a bit about myself, my career, Liz’s early death and Callum out in Australia. I told her about Heather and something about Mike. Our upbringing and education, which had been so different from France.

  She told me how delighted Pierre was at having discovered an unknown family.

  “He seems to have been rejuvenated by about ten years. It’s great for him.”

  “And how about you? Where’s home? No husband or kids?”

  She smiled. “No. Unfortunately – or fortunately, I’m not sure – I found out in my early twenties that I couldn’t have children. Most guys want them and I never found anyone that I wanted to see over the breakfast table every morning for the rest of my life. It’s no big deal. I can have a bit of fun when I want to and move on when I feel smothered. I’ve been very successful in my career and have the money to enjoy complete freedom.”

  Half of me could understand that but the other half, far larger, thought back with affection to the wonderful years I had had with Liz.

  I asked her how she was getting on with the task in hand. “Slowly,” was the reply. She then proceeded to give me an idiot’s course in hacking, explaining about IP addresses, ultra high speed scanning programmes and a whole lot of other technical jargon which was way above my head.

  “And they won’t know you’ve been in there?” “Not if I leave no trace behind.”

  “And if you do?” “Well, first of all, they’d have to be pretty good. Most companies use external IT people and they don’t give the same service as your own internal people. But if they do find out it’ll because I left a trace. Normally you clean out all traces before you leave. But it’s not fool proof.”

  “And could they get back to you?”

  “What do you mean?” “Could they identify where the hacking came from?” “If I left a trace and they had the software, yes.” Sophie went back to work. I went back to pottering and the afternoon wore on slowly.

  About four o’clock I heard Sophie call me. I went in to find her with a very pleased expression on her face.

  “I’ve done it,” she said with glee. She waved a CD at me. I walked over and congratulated her. I took the disc from her hand. It looked pretty innocuous – like any other disc.

  “On there is a list of all the investors in the three funds run by AIM and all the information about the funds’ investments over the last five years. I haven’t looked at the detail yet but it’s all there.”

  “Great,” I said and asked her if she’d made another copy.

  “Not yet,” she said, “But I’ll do it right now.” She stuck a new disc in the slot on the side of her machine, punched a few buttons. It whirred away for a minute or two and then ejected.

  “We’ve now got two copies on disc and one on the machine. Now give me some quiet while I get rid of all the traces of my visit. It’ll take me a good half hour.”

  I left her to her labours and went to tidy away the tools I had been using outside. Tomorrow we’d be able to have a good look at the inside workings of AIM and get to grips with Mr Purdy’s machinations.

  Pierre arrived about ten minutes later, full of the joys of his golfing experience. He’d met a couple of members who had invited him to play with them and he had thoroughly enjoyed himself.

  We interrupted Sophie to share the news of her success and opened a bottle of wine. We decided to meet the next day and take our time to analyse what we had found.

  “Leave one copy here for safety,” I said to Sophie, and she put one on the shelf above my computer.

  Pierre then got up to leave. “Come on Sophie, hurry up. Don’t forget I promised you a good dinner tonight. Do you want to come along, Bob?”

  I declined. “No thanks. I’m going to have a good bath and an early night after all the work I’ve done outside.”

  “Sophie, are you not finished yet?” “Nearly,” she said. “Stop hustling me.” Her finger tapping speeded up and a few minutes later she closed the lid of her machine and got up to go.

  We decided to leave it with me until tomorrow. I wasn’t going to try to read the disc until Sophie came back the next day to show us how. I was scared I might wipe something out.

  Hot bath. Meal in front of the TV, watching some European Tour event and then off to bed with a book – a reasonable evening programme for an oldie like me.

  We started the next morning just after ten. I had nipped in to Cupar and stocked up with printer ink and paper. I guessed we were going to need it.

  Sophie powered up my PC which was linked to the printer and slipped in the disc. The screen was suddenly filled with stacks of file references. Each had names and codes which meant nothing to any of us yet.

  We opened up the first one which turned out to be a file of data concerning a certain Michael Baxter. It listed all his personal details – name, birth date, marital status, children, occupation or previous occupation. It turned out he was widowed, seventy-eight years old and lived in Inverness. He had been a veterinary surgeon and had one daughter (details given), who had presented him with two grandchildren. He had invested three years ago and had still two years to run. He had invested a hundred and thirty thousand pounds and had earned a return of three point two per cent which had been paid out to him in t
he middle of January each year - just over four thousand pounds to add to his pension.

  We tried a few other ones. Each file had the same kind of information. There were between two hundred and fifty and three hundred of these files for each of the three funds, which meant an average investment of about a hundred and eighty thousand pounds.

  Suddenly Pierre told Sophie to stop for a minute. “What’s that box over there on the left?” On the left-hand side of the screen there was a framed box with nothing in it. Sophie moved her mouse over it and up flashed a label with the words ‘Password Protected’.

  We all looked at each other.

  “Can you bust the password, Sophie?” I asked. “Should be able to,” she replied. “But it’ll take a bit of time.”

  She pulled a set of discs from her briefcase and stacked them up beside her then proceeded to feed the top one into the slot.

  “This could take an hour or two,” she told us. “So you two can go and have a walk or something while I work.”

  Pierre and I took her at her word and went off for an hour up through the village to the hills behind. We walked gently, admiring the view and enjoying the fresh air. As we walked I pointed out some of the landmarks and gave him a brief history lesson about the area.

  We returned after an hour and a half and I made us all a cup of coffee. I was in the middle of explaining to Pierre the history of Falkland and its palace when Sophie called through to us. She had found the password and could now show us what was written in the box.

  For the particular file we had on the screen it said ‘Admitted retirement home March 2011. Trustee solicitors MacLean and Padgett, Stonehaven’.

  We went back over some more files looking for other comments. There was one where the comment was ‘Careful, ex-accountant’ and another with ‘diagnosed dementia’.

  Pierre then spotted something else – not everyone in the same fund was receiving the same rate of return. There seemed to be a correlation between the rates and the comments. Where ‘careful’ was noted, the return was higher than the poor guy who had dementia. Those in the hands of trustees seemed to be somewhere in the middle.

  We sat back and looked at each other, horrified. They were systematically adjusting the rates according to his perceived danger of someone kicking up a fuss.

  “Can you guys pull all this information out on to a spreadsheet so that we can really see the overall picture?”

  “Sure. No problem.” “Let’s do it then. I’ll leave you to it. I’m going outside to think about this.”

  I poured myself a stiff whisky, even if it was before noon, and went out into the garden. I was shocked to the core. I couldn’t believe that anyone could mount a scheme so brutally fraudulent and think he could get away with it. But the evidence was there. He must be creaming off millions.

  How did he get it past the authorities? The answer must be that he had crooked accountants and lawyers that he paid to turn a blind eye. The authorities would accept what was lodged with them and as long as nobody blew the whistle he was printing money. He had carefully selected his target group so that it was unlikely that anybody would challenge him.

  Inside the company I suppose a few people must be in on it but he would probably have sectioned off the work amongst different departments so that no one saw the whole picture.

  I went back in after ten minutes to see how Sophie and Pierre were getting on.

  “OK you geniuses, where are we?”

  Pierre pointed to the screen. “We’ve got a spreadsheet for each fund, listing all the investors and all their details. We can sort them by any characteristic you want. Watch.”

  He called up a menu screen, made a few selections and the whole list sorted itself out into ascending reported rate of return for 2011. All the other characteristics automatically sorted themselves out as well. Hey, presto! All the people in the low percentages had comments indicating that there was little chance of complaints – dementia, deceased, estate awaiting probate, etc. Down at the bottom were all the ‘careful’, ex-bankers and the like. They had the best returns.

  “Pierre, there’s your proof if ever you need it. This guy should go to jail.”

  “I fully agree, but I don’t want Sophie to go to jail as well,” he replied.

  “What do you mean?” “What Sophie has done is highly illegal. We can’t use this stuff. She‘d get arrested immediately. We can’t publish it either or we’d get sued for millions.”

  “Well we have to do something,” I retorted. “We can’t let this bastard get away with this. Let me have a think about it. Can you find out what they really did with these funds and how much they were actually making? If we can get a rough fix on that, then deduct what they have paid out, we’ll get an idea of the difference.”

  “Sure, but it’ll take us a couple of days.” “How about getting it worked out by Monday?” Pierre looked at Sophie who nodded. “Let’s get on with it then,” he said. Pierre was right, I realised. We had proof but we had no usable proof. We couldn’t even run the risk of showing this to any of the investors. They would be mad as hell and wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about the source of their information. I imagined what Alice would do if I showed her this. She’d probably write to her MP and then we’d be in trouble.

  I swiftly came to the conclusion that we were going to need some kind of plan which had nothing to do with the law of the land but which would scupper Purdy and his gang of thieves. The thought of acting outside the law didn’t bother me one bit. I considered it a perk of old age.

  I needed to think up something and I also needed Pierre and Mike to agree with it. Mike was still in Edinburgh but had promised to report back here on Sunday.

  It could wait until then.

  Chapter 11

  Mike arrived mid-morning and I updated him on the results of Sophie’s hacking and yesterday’s afternoon of digging. He was as disgusted as we were about what was going on and agreed that something had to be done.

  He told me what had been going on in Edinburgh. Purdy had had another lunch with Gavin Reid, the slimy lawyer, and they had identified the squash partner.

  “It turns out that Bill Dewar is a Scottish MP. He represents an outlying Edinburgh constituency and is a Scottish Nationalist. Used to be Labour but changed his allegiance about five years ago.

  “He lives in a terraced house on the outskirts of Linlithgow. I found someone who knows him and got him talking. He didn’t think much of him. He used to be a trade unionist and seems to have spent most of his career trying to climb up the political ladder using whatever means that happened to be useful at the time. His Dad was a miner and he left school at fifteen – not that there is anything wrong with that as such – but if he was a waster when he was young he apparently hasn’t improved, according to my source. I’ve left Doug to follow him around for a few days and report back.”

  At that point the phone rang. “That’ll be Doug,” said Mike and went to answer it, explaining that he’d given my number to him in case he had any news.

  I could hear a voice on the other end of the line but couldn’t make out what was being said. Mike’s face had a look of astonishment painted on it.

  “What in the hell are you doing in Alicante?” he said, with an air of disbelief.

  He listened for a few minutes and then told Doug to dig for as much information as he could find and then follow the guy back. “Give me a call when you get back.” He hung up.

  “That was Doug,” he said as he sat down again. “Apparently our ex-Labour, SNP MP flew out to Alicante yesterday evening. Doug managed to buy a ticket and get on the same plane. He was picked up at the airport by a woman driving a Porsche. Doug managed to get a taxi and he followed them to a bloody great villa not far out of town on the cliffs overlooking the Med. According to Doug the place looks as if it’s worth a few million. As you heard, I told him to keep digging and report back when he returned.”

  “So we’ve now got a fraudster running an investment company w
ho plays squash twice a week with an MP who lives in a terraced house in Linlithgow and goes out to Spain on a Friday night to stay in a multimillion pound villa . . .”

  Mike broke in. “He only took a small bag as hand luggage, by the way.”

  “. . . and a slimy-looking lawyer that he seems to have lunch with a couple of times a week.”

  “And our fraudster has a mistress.” “And he’s prepared to do a bit of burglary,” I added. “Do you think that Purdy, for some reason or another, is passing some of the money to Dewar who is stashing it away in Spain?”

  “Could be, but I can’t think why.” “Perhaps Dewar knows about the girlfriend and is blackmailing him,” suggested Mike.

  “Possible. If that house is Dewar’s the money must have come from somewhere.”

  “And our lawyer friend?”

  “Don’t know.” We gave up surmising and I told him that Pierre and Sophie had gone back to the hotel and would be working on the files. We were invited to go round and eat with them later.

  Mike got up. “I’ll go round now and see how they’re getting on,” and headed for the door.

  “Tell them I’ll be around about half past seven,” I called at his retreating back. He replied with something that I didn’t catch, got into his car and roared off.

  I drove across to the hotel, arriving there at the appointed hour and went into the bar. I found Pierre on his own at a table in the corner.

  “Where’s Sophie? And Mike? He said he was coming over.”

  “He did,” replied Pierre with a smile and a small shake of the head. “He arrived about an hour ago, decided that we were working Sophie much too hard and promptly took her off to dinner somewhere else.”

  “Oh, God. Typical. He can’t keep away from them.” “She seemed quite keen on the idea. Asked me if I minded. I told her to go ahead. It was nothing to do with me.”