by Jim Magwood
“Best I can figure. They correspond to Monday through Friday of a certain week, if that means anything.”
“Okay. Then the next number looks like phone numbers. The banks?”
“Yes. I called a couple. One in Texas and one overseas. They both answered with a definite bank greeting, and the suffix causes the number to apparently go past the bank switchboard and into a fax or computer system inside.”
“The plus and minus column I know could mean anything. But this one with the random numbers, or codes? No idea there?”
“None right now. Again, I haven’t spent any…” He paused. “What if they’re specific bank identification numbers?”
“Good thought, but they would have to be some other kind of ID than I’m aware of. The normal bank IDs are usually about nine digits, aren’t they? What are they called…?”
“Routing and transit numbers?”
“Yes. And I don’t think they have letters in them. I’m not sure about other countries, but the only ones I know are just numbers. Israel just has numbers, I know that. It has come about so almost any bank anywhere doing international business can relate with any other major business bank.”
“Okay, so not… What about account numbers? Individuals or businesses? Bank accounts?”
“You’re right. It could be. But what would it mean. A list of banks worldwide, with account numbers at each bank? How many are there, I wonder?”
“I can tell you that in about one minute. Let me resort this list by date—then by bank number—then by the possible account number—and see what we have. Yeah, look. We have the dates that cover hundreds of banks. Then we have hundreds, or maybe dozens, of accounts at each bank. Some have just a few, some a lot. Then the pluses and minuses still don’t mean anything, but look how it all lines up.”
“I think you’re onto it, Roger. I wonder…” He paused for a moment. “Would it be possible for you to sign into some of these banks and find out if these actually are account numbers? Do you have that ability?”
“You know, I might. Let me do a little snooping here while you, maybe, go upstairs and make us some fresh coffee?”
“Consider it done, my friend.”
When Jacob came back down twenty minutes later, Roger gratefully accepted a steaming cup. He took a couple of sips, then said, “Look what I’ve found. I started with one bank in Michigan. I downloaded a program our group uses once in a while to research either criminal suspects or banking trends, and it enabled me to get into the bank system. Actually it was so easy I’m amazed no one has discovered it on their own before. You could raid banks so easily if you had this program.
“When I got in, it only took a moment of searching to find their account listing and to download it into my files here. Then I ran their list against ours here and, voila, guess what matches? Every one of our numbers corresponded to someone on their list.”
“Could you see any obvious reason why we would have the numbers on our list?”
“No. But I got the name and address, even the phone number, Social Security number, and a lot of other personal data. Anything in the individuals bank record. And there were several that were corporate accounts, too. I looked a little further and there were some, especially corporate, that had very large bank balances, and some where I could see fund movements in large amounts. Others were small, as if they were just regular homeowner accounts.”
“Did you check any other banks?”
“No, I was about to when you brought this delicious coffee. Thanks. I’ve got the program running now, so let me see about some other banks. Here’s one in Spokane, I think—yes, Spokane. Let me go there… Okay, I’m in. And let’s see bank accounts somewhere… Yeah, here they are. And I’ll plug in this one from our list… Oops, I can tell that raised an internal flag.”
“Will they be able to trace back to find you?”
“No. Long story, but this program won’t allow that. Hides itself immediately outside the bank system. They’ll see the intrusion, but won’t be able to follow it. They can try tracers and I’ll see them floating around, but they won’t be able to get through. I’ll try another… Nope, another flag. Another one… No. It appears there’s something wrong with these accounts that’s raising waves inside the bank. There’s only two more, so let me try them. Nope. And no again. Problems with each of the accounts.
“Whoa, and here comes the tracer. I can see the bank trying to identify who’s entering these accounts, so they really do have them flagged. Something apparently happened with each of these that’s got the bank in a snit. So let me get back out of here… Okay. So what do you think? Any idea?”
“Just the same as you stated, Roger. It appears something happened with each of those accounts and the bank wants to find out why. It wouldn’t be a major problem to just flag an account to see if it’s used or something, but to put a reverse tracer on them. That becomes, as they say, big time.”
“I’m going to try one more. See what we see. Hold on for a moment. Yeah, here’s one with a lot of account numbers after the bank number. I’ll try that one. Yeah, it appears to be Citibank in New York, a big one. Wow, still so easy to get into their files. It’s amazing. I’m going to run our files numbers against their account list and see… Oh, wow, did I ever cause a stir. They probably have bells ringing all over the bank and people running like crazy. Every file is flagged—and here come the tracers.”
“You’re sure they can’t find you?”
“Yeah, no problem as long as I’m not actually sending or receiving any messages. The data was a quick search and match, so they can’t backtrack that. I’m quiet now and not communicating in any way, so unless they have some real big guns… I’m going to get out, though. They’ll know they’ve been breached and will be hopping, so no use hanging around.”
Both men sat quietly, trying to get themselves to the next step. They knew now that these were bank and account numbers, and that apparently something had happened to the accounts to get them flagged and guarded in a big way, but what? And how to find out?
“Roger, this is an organized list. How did it come through to you? Did someone actually send this formal document?”
“I had that exact question when I first saw it. No, this is a compilation of all the Internet messages my system caught. There might even be others we didn’t get if they were in a different format than these. I had instructed my system to make somewhat formal lists of any activity it came across so if there were multiple contacts, like this, I could see them all at once. The system automatically chooses what format to put the contacts into, in this case a spreadsheet. The system apparently caught all these numbers of the same type floating in the ether and grabbed them into this format.”
“So was there anything else attached to this or just these numbers?”
“You know, I don’t remember. I’ve tweaked this list many times now, so I’ll need to go back to the original and see what all was there.”
Jacob said, “That would definitely be something to do. It would really help if we could see what this might have been all about. To start, though, why don’t you get a message to your detective friend and see if he has anything that might shine some light on this?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that right now. His last message said he had a bank case he was working on, but I haven’t read into that to see if there’s any correlation. I’ll get this off and then we can take a break.”
Paul’s reply came back about two hours later.
“Yes, you may have hit something. My case is a number of banks in the East where customers were told to stop sending mortgage payments. If you say you’ve got hundreds of banks worldwide, it appears to be much larger than we thought here. I’ve already contacted the FBI to contact those banks you gave me and see what they find. They have more federal power than we have, so the banks will probably give them information. I’ll be back to you as soon as I have information.”
It was only two more hours before Paul messaged again
, with, “Bingo. You hit the jackpot. Each of those accounts were ones given instructions to stop making mortgage payments. Individuals and companies both. The banks were apparently given internal instructions to compose and send letters to their own customers to stop making the payments. It was all computerized. No person was involved. The letters were generated internally and mailed, and payments just stopped. Do you have any way to trace back and see where the instructions came from? They would have been fed directly into the bank’s internal systems because the FBI says they’ve checked and can’t find anyone in any of the banks that was physically involved in making the letters or mailing them. All computerized.”
Jacob and Roger sat for a while again trying to think of how to search backwards through the messages. Finally, Jacob said, “Roger, there were hundreds, even thousands of banks involved. It appears that all the letters were set to generate about these dates, 0516, 0517, and so on. That means the messages to the banks had to be sent before then. If so many messages were sent, through the Internet, perhaps there would be a record somewhere of them going through the ether. They would have to be large messages with customer account codes, instructions for the computers, letter samples to generate for the customers and so on. I would think…”
“I’m on it. I’ll use our group resources to see if they show up anywhere. I’ll code my request to just look for large messages. I can actually include the bank routing numbers, any time before those 05 dates. Do you have any resources you can check?”
“As you said, I’m on it.”
When Paul got back to the office, Jake said, “We’ve got more fingerprints. This time it’s Sarge. There were some flat surfaces in that shack he was living in and the team got several prints. Looks like his real name is Frank Jesse Kimball, originally from Georgia. Born 1938; enlisted 1955; served until 1983; then left – honorably. Your Army friend has already sent his jacket. He really was a sergeant; served in Vietnam, then several other hot spots after that. Your friend said he was highly trained and did Ranger work, but wasn’t in any of the ‘black ops’ stuff. At least, that’s what he said. No word from Sarge after that until he showed here. He got a regular pension, but it was direct deposited as he apparently moved around. Funds were tapped a little each month. Nothing else. No civilian medical records. No Social Security or Medicare. And apparently, no family. Nothing on record anywhere.”
“But no sighting of him around here?”
“No. We’ve put out the fingerprints and his military picture and the composite you made up, so everyone’s looking. We at least know he’s not our bombing friend.”
“But do we know if he’s connected?”
“No, that we don’t. No signs any which way. Already ran his fingerprints past the bombing investigators and they say no matches with what they’ve got.”
“So, no way of knowing where he might be. Here, across the country, even overseas. He would have had lots of time to run before we started looking for him and shutting things down.”
“Maybe he’s buried somewhere?”
“Yeah, I thought of that, too. He turned us on to the guy at the hotel, and if someone found out… He didn’t leave anything at the shack, but anyone could have cleaned it out. Wouldn’t take much to put an old man in a hole somewhere.”
Paul’s phone rang, and when he answered, he suddenly rocked back in his chair, stunned, when the voice said, “This is Sarge.”
“Sarge? Where are you, man?” He was waving at Jake, who was already getting a trace going.
“Don’t bother tracing me. This is just a street phone and I won’t be here long. Just wanted to tell you it wasn’t me. The bombing. I heard about it and took off. Can’t spend any time in jail, you know. And some other people might find out I talked to you. But it wasn’t me. Didn’t tell that guy you were coming, either. Don’t really know what all happened, but I told you he’d probably be ready for a visit. Guess he was, huh?”
“Sarge. Come on in, man. Let me talk with you, okay?”
“No, can’t do that. Too old for that jailhouse stuff now. Suppose you know who I am by now, right? Kimball. Army’ll have my record. You can get all the info from them. I gotta go now or you’ll probably have a car here soon. But wanted you to know I’m okay and I weren’t involved. Don’t have any more info to tell you, but I’ll call you if I hear somethin’.”
And he hung up.
Paul knew they hadn’t had enough time to get him and Jake confirmed that a moment later.
Paul gave Jake the gist of what Sarge had said, and they both sat quietly for a moment, then Jake asked, “Think the old man’s straight?”
“Yeah, I think so. I don’t think he would have called if he wasn’t. His voice sounded calm, not stressed or pushing a story.” He paused, then said, “I hope the old man stays okay. Let’s soften the BOLO to just ‘interested party,’ okay? Keep the trigger fingers relaxed?”
Jake mumbled, “Yeah.”
It was one month to the day after Jeff had started his “investment company” that he decided how to start the exposé ball rolling. There was no need to keep it hidden and he had already had several messages from investors wanting to pull back out. Change of heart? Guilty conscience? Jeff thought with a chuckle each time. Time to play.
Jeff crafted half a dozen messages to various reporters across the country from supposedly disgruntled employees questioning their employers for taking money from the till. Messages from supposed auditors discovering missing public funds. Even some from some of the “investors” crying about their funds not being returned and hoping for help in investigations.
He sent out another message that was from a “whistleblower” who supposedly had some inside information on this illegal investment scheme that was sweeping the nation. The person had uncovered a list of thousands of names that “couldn’t be directly revealed,” but that appeared to be numerous politicians who were using public funds for illegal uses. To each of these messages Jeff appended a broken list of hundreds of names of “investors” as if the list had inadvertently been attached through a computer glitch, just enough data being shown to lead the investigators in hundreds of directions.
A tsunami had been unleashed. Virtually every large city newspaper in the country, and hundreds of small ones, were printing story after story about the investment scheme. Many wrote about public funds being stolen. Many wrote in pious tones about unscrupulous politicians taking advantage of slippery, private schemes not available to the citizens they had sworn to care for. Jeff kept padding the information flow with more exposé letters naming names and dollar amounts. Hundreds of names. Billions of dollars. And the media ran more stories. The firestorm raced from printing press to printing press.
And Jeff was ecstatic since, in this case, the stories were all real. The politicians had actually taken money, often from public funds, and invested them for their own gain—in a company that investigators could find no trace of, which added even more fuel to the fire. To top it off, those investors who were rapidly scratching to get their money back to refill emptied tills couldn’t get any responses to their requests, and panic reigned. Public funds had been stolen and many public entities were desperate. Private funds were gone and many of the investors were broke, facing destruction, destitute. And many were facing the loss of jobs they held which could have at least kept them afloat.
Chaos reigned “from sea to shining sea.”
“Okay, Paul, where did the list come from? This is too unreal to be real. Someone has a list of all the numbers of the pirated mortgage accounts? All of them? Do this old man a favor and tell him you have the manufacturer of the list in a holding cell in your very own building. Please tell me it’s so.”
“Sorry, Bob. No such luck. And you’re really not that old, are you?”
“Right now I’m getting years older every day. And if this keeps up… So what can you tell me?”
Bob D’Arcy was the senior FBI investigative field agent assigned to the Washington, D.C. off
ice and his present and most pressing assignment, whether or not he wanted to take it, had been the bank and mortgage company piracy. In addition, he was supposed to get a handle on the phony investment scheme that had started floating around government circles. From the little he had seen of it so far, he couldn’t figure how anyone would be drawn into it. But from the things he had seen over his career, nothing was impossible. All people had to see was a sign saying, “Don’t open this. This is a phony message,” and sure enough, it would get opened.
Paul had sent D’Arcy the list of possible bank accounts that he had received from Roger Evans in Canada. Bob had directed a team to start contacting the banks and matching numbers, and voila, instant chaos. The responses had come in so fast he had finally directed the Federal Reserve to send a message to all banks asking them to contact the FBI if it appeared they had had the “don’t make your mortgage payment” scam run against them. The team had then messaged the banks back to get lists of the account numbers supposedly involved and had then matched the numbers against the list. Again, voila. Now, how to find the perpetrator.
Paul led him through the process that had been taken: Paul to Roger; Roger already having the list from another search he was doing for Paul; Roger back to Paul; etc. He vouched for Roger and gave D’Arcy the name of CIA agent Ron Kincaide as a reference to check. When they hung up, Paul got back to Roger in Canada and asked him to try to run down the list and see if there was any background he could find on it.
Roger ran back through all the searches he had been doing until he found the one that attempted to sort and analyze the banking list. Where had it come from? Could it be traced backward? Any answers of any type?
He had originally set his system to look for any anomalies in the Internet that might get him started on the fire investigations for Paul. The system had flagged this huge list of numbers and stored it as information within the search parameters. Roger pulled up the original file and started looking through the coding from within the header section of the message and details behind the scenes.