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

by John Dysart

  “Well she’s certainly a cut above his usual,” I said “I hope she knows what she’s doing. He’s going to be sixty in a year and a half.”

  “So what? Didn’t you still feel quite young when you were fifty-eight?”

  I thought back and smiled to myself at a few memories. “And perhaps she makes him feel five years younger? That would make him fifty-three. Sophie’s just turned forty-four. So where’s the problem?”

  “Looks like it’s just you and me then. Let’s go and eat and decide what we’re going to do about our Mr Purdy.”

  A Tournedos Rossini, a bottle of Nuits St Georges and a malt with our coffee did wonders for my feeling of wellbeing. We had a complicated picture that was emerging and neither of us knew where it was leading, nor what we were going to do about it, so we just chatted and enjoyed each other’s company.

  I heard more about Pierre’s upbringing in France after the war, about how he had started his company and how it had grown over the years. I filled in more of the story of our family which he absorbed with eagerness. There was no rancour or bitterness in him. He told me that there had been times when he was young when he’d felt it hard not knowing who his father was but he had become much more philosophical about as he got older. He had made a success of his life in spite of the difficult beginnings and, when he eventually found out the truth, he felt no hard feelings towards Dad, who had, after all, known absolutely nothing about his existence.

  He confessed to being genuinely delighted to have found us and was looking forward to his later years being much more fulfilling than he had imagined that they might be.

  Mike and Sophie arrived back about eleven o’clock and joined us for coffee. They seemed to have become very comfortable in each other’s company. Mike was being quite the gentleman and Sophie’s warmth of reaction and the easy banter between them made me glance at Pierre with upraised eyebrows. He answered with a smile and a Gallic shrug. Neither Mike nor Sophie noticed our exchange. They were much too interested in each other.

  “Time to go,” I announced when we had finished our coffee. “Pierre and Sophie have got work to do tomorrow.”

  Sophie turned to Pierre and asked him something in French which I couldn’t follow. There was a bit of gesticulating of hands and a questioning expression on Sophie’s face. Pierre raised his eyebrows for a moment, asked another question and got his answer. It seemed to me that she was trying to persuade him into something but I had no idea what it was.

  Mike meanwhile had turned to me. “Mind if I stay the night, Bob?” he asked me. “My pleasure. Are you going back to Edinburgh tomorrow?”

  “Well, no actually. I’m taking the day off.” Pierre then spoke. “And so is Sophie, apparently,” he said to me. I looked from one to the other, puzzled.

  “I’m taking Sophie to see a bit of Scotland. We’re going up to Loch Tay. All she’s seen so far is Letham which is not exactly the only part of the country worth seeing.”

  “What about the analysis we need done?” “I’ll take care of that,” said Pierre “I should be able to get through it all tomorrow. Let the young ones have a tourist day if they want.”

  They both looked slightly embarrassed. I didn’t know Sophie that well yet but I did know my brother. This was definitely a different Mike from the one I was used to.

  Pierre and I got up to go. Mike and Sophie exchanged a word or two. We all said our “goodnights” and Mike and I set off home.

  No sooner were we in the car than Mike looked across at me with a grin.

  “No bloody comments from you about photograph collections. Right?”

  “I wouldn’t dare. Let’s go.” I was actually secretly quite glad about the way things were turning out, although I wasn’t going to admit it yet. It smelled very much as if Mike had fallen for this delightful Frenchwoman and, hopefully, she for him. I let these thoughts occupy me on the short drive home and avoided making any humorous remarks. Getting on the wrong side of Mike can be dangerous sometimes.

  Mike set off the next morning and I decided to get stuck into the information that we had extracted from the AIM files. I fired in the CD and started scrolling through the files, checking the information with the spreadsheet that Sophie had generated. When I was satisfied that everything seemed to have been picked up I closed down all the detailed files and started to concentrate on the spreadsheet. It was much easier to comprehend what had been going on.

  I had a file for each of the three funds. Each contained between two hundred and fifty and three hundred names. There were about twenty columns for each name, finishing with the column which contained the comments. I immediately made a copy of each one to work with and closed down the originals.

  Where to start? They were, at the moment, ranked by ascending rate of return so that the poor investors who had received the smallest returns were at the top. There were exceptions, but generally speaking you could see that all the widows over seventy were up in the top third.

  Down in the bottom third I found the profiles where the husband and wife were both still alive. They tended to be younger and often the husband had been a banker or an accountant or a lawyer – the type of people who would have a better understanding of numbers. And presumably the fact that both spouses were still alive multiplied the chances of suspicion.

  I was totally disgusted at the callousness of the scheme. If you were a widow, eighty-five years old and had been in a retirement home for the last four years, there you were in the top quartile. If you had had a job which had needed an understanding of figures, there you were down near the bottom, coded “careful”. At what point you were moved up the rankings to “normal” or then up to “no problem” I hated to think. The whole scheme was cynical in the extreme.

  The commentary box noted dates of death of spouses and dates of going into homes. “No children” moved you up the ranks, presumably because there wouldn’t be anyone to complain after you’d gone. There were even a few dates shown where someone had been diagnosed with dementia. They must have a staff of people tracking the personal circumstances of each of their investors.

  I looked for Alice. She was ranked in the normal section. I found Pierre around the middle as well, presumably because he was French. There were a few foreign names, but not many. They were all in the normal section. My guess was that they would be more difficult to track. All in all it was a picture of utter greed.

  The next question was to estimate the differential between what this money had really earned and the amount Purdy had grudgingly passed on to his investors. That would have to wait until Pierre had finished his work.

  Whatever the amount was I had proof, right in front of me, of the fraud.

  I took a break and rustled up a cup of coffee. I’d been looking at these numbers for a couple of hours and the old eyes needed a rest.

  I thought things over for five minutes. Purdy knew I was suspicious. He must do because it could only be he who had organized the burglary of the house.

  We couldn’t use this information because we had obtained it illegally. How could we obtain information legally that perhaps we could use? I had asked Alice to write to AIM and she was going to give me a copy of the reply. Could I get others to do the same? Purdy would be suspicious if he suddenly got a dozen similar letters from a dozen people querying the management of their money, but maybe that was a good idea. We wanted to rattle him and make him realise that people were getting suspicious. He then might make a mistake and give us information that we needed. Or he might even stop his whole scheme, realising that it was getting dangerous. That he was close to getting discovered.

  I called Pierre in the afternoon to see how he was getting on. He was on target and hoped to have some results for us the next day. We discussed the idea of trying to contact some of the people on the list and getting them to email the company with requests for information. We’d go for about twenty and see what happened when twenty emails hit Purdy’s desk on Monday morning.

  Pierre, excita
ble Frenchman that he was, was all for it. I could almost hear him rubbing his hands with glee at the end of the phone. I was a little bit more reluctant but eventually agreed that I would get on the phone that afternoon and see if I could organize something.

  Looking at the list I selected twenty names who, by their profiles, seemed to me the type of people who could be persuaded. It took a few hours but, by pretending to be a fellow investor who was a bit concerned, I managed to rustle up fourteen people who agreed to send suitable emails that evening. The only reason my target was reduced to fourteen was because I found that six people either did not have computers or, if they did, they didn’t know how to use emails. I wasn’t going to do a training course over the phone so I kept it to fourteen. I was sure that would be enough to achieve the effect we wanted.

  The effect it did achieve turned out to be considerably more dramatic than we had envisaged.

  Chapter 12

  The next day, Tuesday, Mike and Sophie turned up for coffee mid-morning. Sophie was full of praise for the Scottish countryside and Mike was like the proverbial cat who had found a dish of cream.

  We were able to sit outside and enjoy the warm morning sun. Sophie was bubbling, full of praise for what she had seen and keen to go hiking off into the mountains as soon as she could get the opportunity.

  After a while we had exhausted the tourist guide to the Trossachs and Mike asked how things were on the AIM front. Sophie came back down to earth and listened while I explained to them the results of my examination of the files. They were both as horrified and indignant is I had been.

  “Bob, we’ve got to do something about this guy,” said Mike. “There is no way he should be allowed to get away with a scam like that.”

  “Sure,” I replied, “But don’t forget we can’t use any of this stuff because it would get Sophie into trouble. Hacking in to their systems is a criminal offence. You don’t want her behind bars, do you?”

  I then told them what Pierre and I had agreed. I showed them the list of the fourteen people who were prepared to send emails to AIM and explained our reasoning. Mike liked the idea of stirring things up. Sophie was a little more reticent, wondering what it might lead to. After all, Purdy had already shown he was capable of burglary. How much further was he capable of going?

  I was able to rustle up a satisfactory lunch and Pierre arrived just as we were finishing. He had brought Sophie’s laptop over and we set it up.

  “Here’s what I’ve found,” he said, as he brought up on screen a list of the investments that had been made by each of the three funds.

  “I’ve been able to identify all purchases and sales during the year. It’s what you would expect. This fund has been going in and out of various stocks and bonds, presumably programming their positions to sell automatically when any investment hits a predetermined growth figure. They’ve even dabbled a bit in foreign exchange. The net result of all this can be seen at the bottom.”

  He pointed to a figure at the top of his list. “This is the value at the beginning of the year. And this . . .”

  He moved the cursor down to the bottom. “. . . is the value at the end of the year. I’ve checked some of these values with records from the internet and they are correct. What it says is that this particular fund increased in value over the year by eight point two per cent, which is close to the industry average.”

  I powered up my computer and checked the details of the returns AIM had announced to its investors for the same fund. They had credited their investors at various rates, depending on the infamous “comments” column, at rates of between three point four per cent and five point eight. The weighted average, bearing in mind that not everybody had invested the same amount, was three point nine per cent.

  “Mon Dieu,” said Sophie, so shocked that she had slipped back into her mother tongue. “Cela fait plus de deux millions!”

  Mike tapped her gently on the shoulder.

  “Translation, please.” “Oh, sorry. That makes more than two million pounds.”

  “Wow.” We then ran a check on the other two funds. AIM had sold their investors short to the tune of four point eight million pounds.

  There were a few moments of silence in the room while we all tried to absorb the enormity of what was going on.

  I broke the silence. “This needs a bit of thinking about. This is not just a case of someone cooking the books or fiddling their expenses. This is theft on a massive scale. I suggest we reflect for a couple of days and each of us come up with a proposal as to what we should do about it. And don’t forget we can’t use this information without getting arrested ourselves.”

  I got up to pace the room and ease my back which was acting up from so much sitting.

  At that point the phone rang. It was Doug, asking if Mike was around. I handed him the receiver. He listened attentively for a while then asked Doug if he was now back in Edinburgh.

  “OK.” he said. “Call here tomorrow night and update Bob. I won’t be contactable,” and hung up.

  He turned towards us with a thoughtful look. He was starting to look concerned.

  “Doug has just informed me that the villa in Spain that our friend Dewar went to for the weekend is registered in the name of a Margaret Buchanan.”

  “Who’s she?” we asked. Milking the mystery for effect, he went on. “Doug has come back to Edinburgh. He didn’t get the same flight as Dewar, who flew back on Sunday night, because he didn’t want to risk any chance that Dewar would notice him. He flew back this morning and, anticipating that we would want to know who she was, he went hunting and, lo and behold, Margaret Buchanan is none other than . . .”

  Sophie broke in.

  “Mrs Dewar’s maiden name.” Mike looked hurt. “How did you guess?” “Female intuition, darling,” she said and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek.”You’d better get used to it.”

  Mike glanced over at me with a look of resignation. Pierre and I shared a laugh at his expense, but he really didn’t seem to mind.

  “So this man Dewar is a close buddy of Purdy. They play squash together twice a week and he goes off, presumably regularly, to Spain where he has bought a villa worth several million pounds and registered it in the name of his wife. Sounds like a typical bent French politician,” said Pierre. “And could it be that the money has somehow come from Purdy?”

  He left the question hanging in the air – then went on. “Perhaps he knows about Purdy’s girlfriend and is blackmailing him.”

  “Or he knows about the scam and is taking a cut,” I added. “One or the other would seem to fit.”

  “Right,” said Pierre. “Let’s add that into our reflections and we’ll get together tomorrow and decide on the next steps.”

  “Not tomorrow,” said Mike. “I’m afraid we can’t.” He looked at Sophie and took a step towards her. He put a protective arm around her shoulder and announced to us that they were going off for a couple of days – if nobody had any objections.

  I pretended to look astonished. Pierre laughed. Sophie blushed and Mike looked combative. I joined in the laughter with Pierre, and Sophie demanded to know what was so funny.

  “I’ll tell you when you get back,” I said. “Just make sure you take a camera.”

  There was definitely very little brotherly love in the look I got from Mike.

  “Are you planning to pop in and see Heather?” I asked innocently.

  Mike’s response was to pick up his jacket and say to Sophie, “Come on. It’s time to go before these two old farts really get started.”

  The next evening I heard from Doug. He had been continuing to keep an eye on Dewar and had picked up his trail at the squash club where he had known he had his regular court booked with Purdy.

  “All I can tell you Bob, is that they had their game and a drink afterwards. I was able to watch them without being able to hear their conversation but there was definitely something fairly serious being discussed. It looked as if Purdy was telling him something important.
Dewar was listening most of the time and when they left they gave the impression that they had come to some kind of a decision.”

  “Thanks, Doug,” I said. “Can you switch your attention back to Purdy now for a couple of days?”

  The Thursday morning sun woke me the next day. I had been fairly late in getting to sleep the previous night with my mind trying to sort out all the news we had learned from the day before.

  What we knew for sure was that Purdy was skimming off millions through AIM. That he had a mistress whom he presumably wished to keep secret. That Dewar was clearly a friend of some sort and he had a villa in the south of Spain worth a lot more than he could afford on an MP’s salary and he wanted to keep it quiet because he had registered it in his wife’s name – no paper trail to him.

  The question was whether Dewar had got the money from Purdy and whether it was because he was blackmailing him over the mistress or the fraud that he was running at AIM.

  It didn’t really matter which. The fundamental question was whether Dewar’s money was coming from Purdy or not.

  Then there was the conversation that Doug had observed. I had to consider the fact that, perhaps, Purdy had told Dewar that we were sniffing around AIM. He would have received the emails I had organized and had probably linked them to my question at the conference. Perhaps he had told Dewar of the burglary he had organized to get Alice’s papers.

  The scenario seemed perfectly possible but at the moment it was only supposition.

  Letham is a small village. It’s really not much more than a hamlet. The main street has houses down one side and stretches up to crossroads at the top. The other side is simply fields, giving a clear view across the Howe to the Lomond Hills about six miles away. There is a school and a post office and about sixty houses. It is quiet and suits me admirably. My cottage, unlike most of the others, has two storeys and is built in large chunks of granite. Half way up the street there is a lane which leads off to the right, past the village bowling green, which sits just behind my garden, and then on up to the farm. My house sits just on the corner.