by Steven Gore
“You mean for a bunch of TIMCOs.”
“We just don’t have records going back to the start of the insurance scam because Palmer didn’t get involved until witnesses needed to be paid off.”
Gage turned back toward the bag, set his feet, and then popped the rectangular Everlast label with a straight right, jolting the hundred-and-thirty-pound bag.
Skeeter grinned. “Anston’s lucky that wasn’t his head. You would’ve separated it from his body.”
Gage glanced over his shoulder. “I wish it was that simple.” He lowered his gloves and turned toward Skeeter. “You know what Landon told me? He said I was the most political person he ever met-no, he accused me of it.”
“You?” Skeeter chuckled. “Politics in this country is treating opinions as if they were hard facts and unwelcome facts as if they were just opinions.”
“Kind of like criminal defense work?”
“That’s why I don’t do it. Even so, a wrongheaded jury verdict isn’t a declaration of war.” Skeeter nodded at Gage. “Seems to me you’re completely antipolitical. Nothing seems to outrage you more than pretense.” He grinned. “Maybe that’s why you’re an investigator instead of a lawyer.”
“Not a good one at the moment. I feel like I’ve been walking down the wrong trail for days.”
“Maybe you need to backtrack a little.”
“We’ve done some. We reviewed IRS listings of illegal tax shelters and all of the private letter opinions and didn’t find Pegasus mentioned by name in any of them. So it wasn’t like the IRS came knocking on somebody’s door asking about them.”
Gage spun and punched the bag one final time. Then turned back toward Skeeter.
“Wait a second… wait a second…” Gage smiled. “Maybe they knocked, but nobody was there to answer.”
T hirty-four years old, a lifetime’s worth of money, and no chance of ever getting laid.
Kelvin Kim answered the door in flip-flops, shorts, an X-Men T-shirt, and wire-rimmed glasses. He tried to flatten his hair as he looked up at Gage standing on the landing of his creekside Tudor mansion near Palo Alto.
“Sorry to bother you at home on a Sunday morning,” Gage said, handing Kim his business card, “but I didn’t want people at your company wondering why I wanted to talk to you.”
Kim peered up at Gage. “ I’m sort of wondering.”
“I need to talk to you about some insurance RaveTron Electronics bought a few years ago.”
A call to Norbett after Gage left Skeeter at the gym had gotten him the names of some of Pegasus’s Silicon Valley clients. His own research suggested RaveTron was the best place to start, and Kim was the CEO.
“I’m not sure I-”
“I’ve seen the records.”
“I’m still not-”
“Bloomberg says you guys are planning an IPO in a few months. For you alone, probably a half a billion dollars is at stake. A little bad press about a tax fraud investigation might snuff it out.”
“Our lawyer said it was legal-”
“How do you know what insurance I want to talk to you about?”
Kim pulled back as though Gage had drawn back his fist.
“Because it’s the only one that ever worried you?”
“How do I know you’re not the one who’ll go running to the press?”
“Because I could do it now, and haven’t. And because I’m less interested in why you started buying it than why you stopped.”
Kim backed away from the door, then turned to let Gage pass by and into the long marble hallway. Gage waited for Kim to close it, then followed him past the two-story living room and through the French doors and onto the redwood deck. Kim directed Gage to one of four teakwood chairs surrounding a matching table. Gage adjusted the umbrella to shade their eyes against the midmorning sun reflecting off the pool, then sat down.
“We were kids when we started the company,” Kim said. “We didn’t know anything about taxes. I don’t think I’d even filed a tax return before. I was just out of Caltech. The second year I owned the company, the bottom line on my 1040 was larger than all the money my father made in his whole life.”
“What was Marc Anston’s pitch?”
“It was the other way around, at least at the beginning. Somebody said we could make a lot of money by offering extended warranties on the electronics we sell and we went to Anston to set it up.”
“And he told you a warranty is like insurance.”
Kim smiled. “How’d you know?”
“And he told you that you could make a lot more money by setting up offshore.”
Kim nodded. “Basically. The customer bought the warranty from us, and then we’d buy reinsurance. We keep a little money here to pay off claims, like when somebody’s iPod crashed, but ninety percent of the money went offshore. We didn’t have to pay taxes on any of it. Tens of millions of dollars a year.”
Gage glanced back the house. “I take it some of the money came back to pay for this.”
The county assessor records Alex Z had located placed the value of the property at four point two million. The recorder’s office records showed Kim paid off the property a year after he bought it.
Kim reddened. “Anston said I could. And not just me. All the guys I started the company with did it.”
“Sounds like a good scheme.”
“Anston’s a shrewd guy, about lots of things. He talked us out of going public years ago, said if we held the company close we’d make a lot more money down the road.”
“Are you sure he didn’t want you to go public for fear that a new board of directors might audit the books?”
“I thought about that.” Kim shrugged. “But he was right in the end.”
“How’d he get you to agree to use some of the offshore money for political contributions?”
Kim drew back. “Shit. How’d you…”
“You’re not the only one.”
“Anston told us we needed to spend some money to fight having to charge sales tax on Internet purchases. Not having sales tax gave us a real edge on brick and mortar stores.”
“Did he tell you how the money would be spent?”
“No. He just said to trust him.”
“And every year it was something else.”
“Like clockwork. Eventually he just took money without asking.” Kim spread his hands. “What were we going to do? Sue him?”
“Sounds like extortion.”
Kim blew out a breath. “Sure felt like it.”
“Then how’d you get out of it?”
“The IRS saved our asses. Can you believe it? Four or five years ago, Anston found out they were investigating us, so he shut the thing down. He was really pissed. Apparently he had a lot of clients paying money into the company-”
“Pegasus.”
“Yeah, Pegasus. And he had to make the company evaporate. He kind of blamed us because we were the only one doing warranties. And blamed himself because we were the only dot-com in the group. The rest were all old line, old money companies. Dow thirty and all that.”
“Did he explain what forced the issue?”
Kim squinted into the distance, then looked back.
“Once he complained about cash flow but I didn’t understand what he meant.” Kim smiled. “If other companies were paying in as much as us, cash flow should’ve been the least of his problems.”
“Did the IRS ever come after RaveTron for back taxes?”
“Nope. Anston had that covered. First, he got a senator to call the IRS commissioner and tell him to lay off by saying we were young guys and the company grew too fast. It was a bunch of bullshit. He never said who it was, but I can guess.”
“Who?”
“Landon Meyer. Because his brother used to be Anston’s law partner.”
“And second?”
“I’m not sure I understand it exactly, but Anston had some gimmick where we wired the insurance premiums to the Cayman Islands, but the money ended up somewhere el
se. We never figured that part out. And after we were a few payments into the scheme, we were afraid to ask.”
“I take it the reason for the somewhere else was so the IRS would never be able to connect the money you paid for premiums offshore with the money that came back to the U.S. as loans.”
Kim nodded, then gestured with his thumb toward his house. “Ex-actly.”
H ow’d you pick me?” Kim asked Gage as he poured coffee into oversized blue RaveTron mugs in the kitchen. “You could’ve knocked on a lot of doors. I guess you figured me for the weakest link.”
“Just the opposite. I read over some of the press coverage you got when your early investors were pressuring you into going public years ago. You said you didn’t want to become a gone-tomorrow dot-com millionaire. You wanted to build a real company.” Gage leaned back against the kitchen counter. “You made a mistake getting involved with Anston, but you weren’t the kind of person who’d take millions and leave investors with an empty shell. A lot of others did.”
Kim handed Gage a cup. “Well, we sure screwed up in that tax thing.”
“I think you’re the only one of Anston’s clients who looks at it that way.”
Kim lowered his head, then swallowed hard and looked again at Gage.
“Do you happen to know what the statute of limitations is on tax fraud?”
“Sorry, but there isn’t one.”
Chapter 75
Instead of walking directly to the redbrick St. Francis Yacht Club, Gage grabbed his binoculars from his glove compartment and found a spot along a stepped sea wall with an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate. It took only seconds to spot the purple sail on the sixteen-foot Australian Mosquito catamaran, then a slight turn of the focus to capture international lawyer Jack Burch, feet locked on the rail, stretched out against the harness, back brushing the whitecaps as he shot under the bridge. They hadn’t spoken in detail since Gage telephoned him in Moscow.
Gage tracked Burch until he arrived near the spit of land on which the club stood and that formed the boat harbor, then he began the long walk across the parking lot to meet Burch near the dock entrance. Burch looked like a wet St. Bernard wrapped in yellow Gore-Tex as he came through the gate and reached out his hand. He pulled it back and inspected it.
“Maybe I better dry off.”
Fifteen minutes later Burch emerged from the locker room and directed Gage into the restaurant and then to a table by the wall of windows facing the harbor. It was set for five: Burch, Gage, their wives, and Alex Z, whom Gage had invited to Burch’s birthday lunch so he could talk to the lawyer about using his offshore connections to investigate the ownership of the banks Anston was using.
Gage nodded toward the marina after they sat down. Nearly all the slips were occupied. “How come the members aren’t out on the bay?”
“Big awards banquet this evening for those who didn’t drown themselves during the Hawaii race.”
The waiter appeared and took their drink orders.
“Thanks for coming in early,” Gage said, as he walked away. “I need to run a couple of things by you.”
Gage reached for his wallet, took out a dollar, and handed it to Burch.
“Your fee to make this a privileged conversation.”
Burch accepted it and held it up to the light.
“Looks legal. Maybe I’ll frame it.” Burch glanced around the restaurant in mock furtiveness, then slipped it into his jacket pocket. “I shouldn’t be seen taking money in this place. What would the other members think?”
“I don’t recall that being a guiding consideration in your life.”
Burch spread his hands. “What does a man have, if not his reputation?”
“His integrity.”
“Yeah, I forgot about that part.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Gage leaned forward, resting his folded hands on the edge of the table. Burch followed suit.
“Excellent,” Burch said, “a conspiracy.”
“You remember when I called you about a company called Pegasus in the Caymans?”
“I was bloody jet-lagged in Moscow, not comatose. Sure. Captive insurance.”
“It looks like it began as a straight-up tax fraud, then as a cover for bribery, and finally a way to launder illegal corporate campaign contributions.”
“Who set it up?”
“Marc Anston, and maybe Brandon Meyer.”
“After he was appointed?”
“Before. More than fourteen years ago.”
“Was the political money for his brother?”
“At first I thought it was. Now it seems it was also used to push legislation through by secretly contributing to senatorial and congressional campaigns.”
“How did they do it?”
“Loans.”
“I thought loans had to be reported.”
“They do. But nobody really examines them. I did some research. One senator loaned himself over a million dollars in an early campaign, but nobody paid attention until eleven years later when the Federal Election Commission noticed something hinky about how he paid himself back-”
“By taking out another loan?”
“From a different bank. And now I think Brandon and Anston are in a race against time because Landon needs to get his nominations through before anyone-”
Burch smiled. “Meaning you-”
“Maybe… figures it out.”
“Because…”
“The two new justices will join with Sunseri, Thompson, Robins, and Ardino to roll campaign disclosure law back to the eighteenth century and open the gates on corporate contributions directly to political candidates.”
“And then Pegasus pays off all the loans in secret?”
Gage nodded. “I read Sunseri’s dissent in the Massachusetts Environmental Action case. He comes right out and says it. Limiting corporate contributions is the suppression of political speech, and forcing the disclosure of the contributors’ identities is a violation of privacy. Once you start with the idea that a corporation is a person, and not just an artificial creation, you’re forced to the conclusion that it has First Amendment rights.”
“And poof.” Burch made an exploding motion with his fingers. “The public will never again be able to figure out who’s controlling the electoral process.”
“I’d never realized Landon was that cynical. He constantly wraps himself in grand ideas.” Gage leaned back in his chair. “You know what Brandon told me when I went to see him after Charlie died? He said Landon took St. Augustine and Thomas Hobbes to read on a flight to Beijing a few months ago.”
Burch raised a hand like he was seeking his teacher’s attention in class.
“I know one. From Hobbes. ‘There is always war of everyone against everyone, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.”
Burch glanced around the elegant, bright-lit dining room, and at the San Francisco elite now collecting at the bar.
“Not so poor here, of course.” Burch looked back at Gage. “I tried to read the Leviathan at Oxford, a long, boring book written in an archaic kind of English. I never finished it.”
“Landon didn’t either. I don’t think he struggled his way as far as the chapter where Hobbes says corporations are ‘like worms in the entrails of natural man.’ ”
“Maybe he just skipped that part while rushing to read the celebration of the all-knowing, all-powerful sovereign.”
They ceased speaking as the waiter delivered their drinks. Scotch for Burch. Beer for Gage.
Gage raised his glass, “Happy birthday.”
Burch raised his in turn. “Thanks, old man.” He took a sip and set the glass down. “Who else knows about what’s been going on besides you?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
“Landon?”
“I’m not sure he’s ready to accept the reality.” Gage said. “The question is whether there’s any way the scheme could be legal?”
“From a tax perspecti
ve or campaign finance perspective?”
“Both.”
Burch took a sip of his Scotch.
“Are they still doing it?”
“It looks like the tax gimmick ended four years ago, possibly because one of their clients got investigated by the IRS.”
Burch nodded. “I remember that time very well. Everybody who’d been using captive insurance to move money offshore and then back in again tax free, was bailing out. The real crime wasn’t making premium payments to an offshore insurer, it was that the money was returned right away to officers of the companies.”
“But what if the money was returned to the U.S. and put in someone else’s pocket,” Gage said. “Maybe sent from an offshore finance company and into a U.S. bank, and then invested in CDs or time deposits and held there until they needed it.”
Burch stirred the ice cubes in his drink with his fingertip.
“It wouldn’t be a good idea from an investment perspective,” Burch said. “They could make a lot more money elsewhere.” He paused in thought, then said, “This reminds me of a group in Chicago. They sent about two hundred million offshore as insurance payments, then invested the money in mutual and hedge funds operating out of the Caribbean and made a killing, tax free. An illegal kind of 401(k).”
“Except Brandon and Anston’s aim wasn’t to make money,” Gage said, “just to move it into political campaigns.”
“But that’s pretty risky from a bank regulator’s point of view. Campaigns are notoriously bad at making good on loans.”
“But there’s no risk if the loans to the campaigns are secured by the deposits Anston and his people made.”
“So, basically, you think it’s a money laundering scheme.”
Gage nodded. “Say the bank pays them three percent interest on their deposits and they pay the bank five percent interest on the loans. Or even two percent and four percent. The two percent spread between what the bank pays them and what they pay the bank is the bank’s fee for laundering the money.”
“Brilliant. The bank takes no risk at all.”
“And there’s something more,” Gage said. “I think they’ve put a lot more money into the banks they’re using than they’ve taken out. I’ll bet they have a couple of hundred million waiting to be tapped.”