The Matter of the Dematerializing Armored Car

by Steve Levi

  FinCEN could not legally seize the money because the money was legally acquired. But FinCEN could sequester it. Maybe. Sequestering the cash would do the same as seizing it. In either case, the money would be under federal control. Once sequestering happened, a collection of law-abiding businesses making money legally could be—and would be—shut down for political reasons.

  The second expression that came to his mind as Noonan entered the vault was “same old, same old.” FinCEN was playing the same old game. When you cannot win honestly, cheat.

  Noonan’s problem was tightly wound with FinCEN. Those Cookie-Cutter agents had played with Homeland Security Commissioner Lizzard like a fiddle. Lizzard was no dummy when it came to politics. He was not smart enough to know why he was being played, but he was astute enough to keep his fingers out of the frying pan. If Noonan did what he was told, Lizzard was going to claim credit for “breaking up a drug ring.” If the entire affair fizzled, Noonan was going to take the heat for failing to “break up a drug ring.”

  But there was one thing Lizzard was not: a creative thinker. Neither, it was becoming evident, were the Cookie-Cutter agents. They were all charging down a well-worn path with no thought whatsoever of the possibility they were in error. This was actually in Noonan’s favor: Blessed are they who are ignorant, for they are happy in thinking they know everything.

  John Swensen could read the tea leaves as well. He opened the door to the vault and escorted the three State of North Carolina auditors into the secure room behind Noonan. Then Swensen closed the door behind them. He was not going to be a party to this charade.

  “Well,” said one of the auditors with a fake, tired look on his face. “The money you are supposed to verify is on the palette over there.” He pointed to a lonely palette against the far wall of the vault. “You go do your counting, and we’ll do ours.”

  But he and the other auditors made no effort to even bother to make it appear they were counting, tabulating, counting, computing, enumerating, auditing, checking, investigating, verifying, or balancing any accounts, books, receipts, cash, or records. The three men simply sat on three metal chairs in a circle and talked in hushed tones.

  “Been there, done that,” Noonan said to himself quietly as he surveyed the palette.

  Noonan had seen money on palettes before, but this collection was a bit different. In the past, the money he had seen on palettes were clean and usually in bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills. That was not the case here. There were bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills, but there were also bundles of twenty-dollar, ten-dollar, five-dollar, and even one-dollar bills. Noonan knew it in an instant because the bill bundles facing up were of different denominations. When he picked up a random bundle and fanned through it, he saw all the same denomination of bills, but the cash had been folded, balled up, stained, or were greasy.

  Noonan putzed around for about ten minutes trying to appear busy. FinCEN wanted him to look at random bundles, so he did. But he did not look very hard. Just hard enough the circle of auditors could say Noonan gave it the old college try. And that’s what it was. In his mind, he quoted Babe Ruth—from his father’s generation—who said the old college try “was playing to the grandstand or making strenuous effort to field a ball that obviously cannot be handled.”

  After he had spent enough time to make it appear he had given it the old college try, he twisted a concerned look on his face as he approached the auditors. “I’m gonna win an Academy Award for this,” he silently said to himself. “Time to toss the dead rat in the punch bowl at the cotillion.”

  “Well,” he said, wiping his brow, which had no sweat. “I’ve got good news, bad news, and no news. Which do you gentlemen want first?”

  This took them by surprise. Auditors are not used to surprises. Mathematics is the queen of the sciences because everything adds up. Everything must add up. That’s why it’s called accounting. Every penny is accounted for. Numbers are never missed; they are just misplaced or debits hiding as credits (or vice versa). Accountants do not have an understanding of good news, bad news, or no news. They are human calculators with less personality than a computer.

  “The good news is, I did look over the money—cash, I guess, you’d call it. It’s there.” He turned sideways and pointed to the palette. “The bad news is, I cannot tell you a thing about the money. I cannot tell you how much is there. I cannot tell you who owns it. I cannot tell you how it got here. The no news is, I guess there is about one thousand pounds of paper.”

  One of the accountants gave a sick smile and handed him a sheet of paper. “OK. All you have to do is sign this sheet, and we’ll be through.”

  Noonan looked over the sheet and gave every indication he was reading the wording. Then he handed the sheet back to the accountant. “I can’t sign this. I don’t know this money belongs to this RMC, LLC.” He tapped the document. “I don’t know it amounts to ten million dollars, and I have no way of assuring a court,” he shook the sheet, “there is an unbroken evidentiary chain of custody. All I can say is I saw about one thousand pounds of American dollars, whose origin I cannot detect and whose ownership I have no documentation to prove.”

  This did not sit well with the auditors. They were not used to this kind of talk from law-enforcement people. But then, again, they did not deal with cops or money. They dealt with numbers, and numbers do not lie. Numbers do not necessarily tell the truth, but they do not lie. Accountants put black (or red) numbers on blank sheets of paper—actually in electronic columns—and then auditors look to see if the debits equal the credits.

  Noonan’s response took their breath away. Numbers don’t lie! The money, the cash, was there! They could see it! Somebody owned it. So why wouldn’t Noonan sign the manifest? They asked him that. Noonan said he would only sign his name to what he knew to be a fact, and there was not a fact concerning the 1,000 pounds of cash he knew for fact.

  Things didn’t get much better when Noonan and the auditors met with the Cookie-Cutters and Sandusky in the breakroom. John Swensen had the good sense to be needed in the garage. Noonan was on his own. But then, again, he was a master at steering clear of political disaster.

  “The difficulty here is,” Noonan said softly to the Cookie-Cutters, “you have a chain of custody problem. What you know will not stand up in court. I know; I’ve been there. To make a case, you have to show an unbroken paper trail of dollars and ownership. What you have now is a palette of cash with no proof as to who owns it. All the Swensen Armored Car Company knows is RMD, LLC is storing it in the vault. This does not mean RMD, LLC owns the cash. It is like a trucking company. A trucking company transports cargo but does not own the cargo. If law enforcement discovers drugs in a shipment in a truck, they do not arrest the truck driver. They go after the shipper. The same applies here.”

  Noonan tapped the sheet of paper he could not sign. “I can’t verify any of this is true. Even a C-rated defense attorney would get this tossed before it ever went to trial.”

  “But we’re not going to trial,” Cookie-Cutter one whined as he broke in. “All we need to do is hold the money until such time as we can determine who owns it.”

  Noonan shook his head. “You will never know who owns it. Every judge knows that. No bank or business can determine where each twenty-dollar bill in the cash drawer came from. When it arrives, it falls into a pot. Like soup. When you add water to soup, it just thins the mixture. You cannot separate the water from the soup and say, ‘This cup of water came from Sam and that one from Sylvester.’”

  “But we need a third party to confirm the money is there,” whined Cookie-Cutter two. “You don’t have to say who owns the money.”

  Noonan had them. “This was whole point of looking at the money, wasn’t it? You wanted someone to confirm the money on the palette was from RMD, LLC. I can confirm there is money on a palette. I have been told but do not know for myself the money belongs to RMD, LLC. Even then, just because the money belongs to RMD, LLC, the company could be a cu
stodian of other people’s or businesses’ money. I don’t know whose money it is; just that you say it’s RMD, LLC’s money. Besides, if you need a third-party confirmation,” he pointed at the auditors, “these guys are better than me. They know more about money than I do. And they could see the palette from where they were sitting.”

  “Well . . .” Cookie-Cutter one started to crawfish. “It’s not so simple. The RMC, LLC matter is federal.” He pointed at the auditors. “They are from North Carolina. We can’t cross our wires.”

  “You got that one right,” said Noonan. “That’s what you’d be doing with me. I investigate criminal activity. Technically there is no criminal activity here. There is no money missing, ergo there is no crime. The missing armored car is an interesting aside,” he pointed at Sandusky, “but until North Carolina Mutual Indemnity informs the Sandersonville Police Department an item of value—the armored car—should be investigated, my hands are tied. You show me the crime, and I’ll investigate. Right now, there is no crime. No one has claimed there is any money missing. No party has suffered damages I can tabulate.”

  “So you won’t sign any sheet of paper as to the money?” Cookie-Cutter two was now pleading.

  “I never said I would not witness or verify an alleged item that might—or might not—be pertinent to a legal investigation.” Noonan was sensitive to lies—particularly when someone was saying he, Noonan, had said the lie. “I said I would sign a sheet of paper stating I had examined a palette of cash the bulk of which was in one-hundred-dollar and fifty-dollar bills, and I estimated the total amount to be about one thousand pounds, which is about ten million dollars. What I said I would not do was speculate on where the money came from or whose money it was. Homeland security specifically asked me to verify if a certain collection of money in cash form was in the vault. I have done so. I will sign an affidavit asserting I located some moneys said to be associated with RMD, LLC and estimated the value of the money.”

  “But such a statement will do us little good,” whined Cookie-Cutter one again. “We need a chain of custody to sequester the money.”

  Noonan sighed; the cat was now out of the bag. Until this moment there had been no talk of why this money was important. But Noonan was no slouch. He had played this political game before. Too often. If the money had been illegal, as in mob money or gambling money, there would have been no problem getting a search warrant, and this little game of identifying money in a vault would have been meaningless. Not to mention a waste of time. This could only mean this money was marijuana money. The big money in the drugs like heroin, cocaine, and opioids was washed, particularly here on the East Coast. Money was collected into large amounts, like the money in the vault, and then flown to the Bahamas. A plane leaving Virginia Beach with cash for the Bahamas filed a flight plan for Orlando and then “got lost” on the way and ended up in the Bahamas. The Bahamians cared very little for what was coming in and didn’t even bother to monitor many landing fields. The money was then trucked to a bank and put in a numbered account. Then the money was transferred to a bank in the Caymans or Europe and then, if needed, to a bank in the United States.

  The money in the vault could not be money from heroin, cocaine, or opioids. Or mob money. Or gambling money. That only left one reasonable option: marijuana money. Marijuana money was legal in states where marijuana was legal. And marijuana money could legally be moved across a state line as long as it was not via the United States Post Office. The problem with marijuana money: it could not go through a bank.

  Why this particular collection of money was in the vault was the real question. Under normal circumstances—or normally as Noonan saw it—marijuana money could go directly to the Bahamas and be deposited. The problem was not getting the money to the Bahamas; it was using money from the Bahamas in financial transactions in the United States. The feds viewed money from Bahamian banks as washed and seized it for investigation. What this meant to the marijuana industry was, its legally acquired money could not go through an American bank or to an American bank from a Bahamian bank.

  Forcing the money to be kept in cash in the United States.

  But not in an American bank.

  So an armored-car company vault was the best option. The money would be safe, secure, and insured.

  But it would have to stay in the vault, earning no interest and not legally available for investments like stocks, bonds, or certificates of deposit until the feds removed marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug.

  But the feds were not going to remove marijuana from Schedule 1 and were aggressively going after the legal money in a quasi-illegal fashion. Like this ballet around RMD, LLC’s money. Cookie-Cutter one’s comment confirmed what Noonan suspected. This was a witch hunt. Every year there’s a witch hunt. The key to surviving is not being this year’s witch.

  Noonan looked directly at Cookie-Cutter one. “Even with a chain of custody, you’ve got nothing. No judge is going to let you take money you cannot prove came from an illegal source. If you could prove it came from an illegal source, you would not have needed me to look at the palette.”

  “We don’t want to seize the money,” whined Cookie-Cutter two. “We just want to sequester it.”

  “I don’t see how you can do that either.” Noonan shook his head. “I’ve been there, done that. Unless you can show real cause, no judge is going to let you hold money you cannot state definitively came from an illegal source. Whoever owns this money—”

  “RMD, LLC,” interrupted Cookie-Cutter one.

  “OK,” said Noonan. “RMD, LLC apparently owns this money. Anyone with this kind of money can hire the best attorney in town. You will be in and out of court in the life of a mayfly.”

  “Not if the money is sequestered,” cut in Cookie-Cutter two. “All we want to do is hold the money. We’re just legally seizing it or the moment.”

  “You don’t need me to do that. You guys usually just do it. You know the old saw, ‘It’s better to be forgiven than ask permission.’” Noonan handed the unsigned sheet to Cookie-Cutter two. “I can’t sign this.” Then he indicated the auditors and Sandusky, who had been silent the whole time, “They won’t sign it, and North Carolina Mutual Indemnity doesn’t have the standing to sign it. Neither does Swensen’s Armored Car Company. You’re stuck.”

  “Maybe not,” said Cookie-Cutter one. “I’ll sign it. My signature will hold it for a while until we can figure out what to do next. We’ll see what happens when we get to court. FinCEN does know a few friendly judges.”

  “Goody for FinCEN,” Noonan said, smiling as Cookie-Cutter one signed the document. “But I’d advise you to remember the towel story I told you. You could end up trying to dry yourself with a wet towel.”

  Sandusky looked at the Cookie-Cutters. “What’s this towel thing?”

  Cookie-Cutter two shook his head. “It’s one of those Banacek old Polish proverbs that makes no sense. Let it be.”

  “Who’s Banacek?” asked Sandusky.

  “When you get to be my age,” said Noonan, “you’ll know.”

  Chapter 32

  Joseph Richiamo got a call at 4:15 p m. He immediately made three calls on his disposable cell phone. The first was to Lenny Rusnak.

  “We are at go,” he said. “I need your people gone, out of town, anywhere they can establish an alibi. They are not to return until Friday at the earliest. Cell phones are to go ghost in an hour. Got it?”

  There was a grunt at the other end of the line—in spite of the fact cell phones do not have lines. “We are all ready to go. It’s clearly time to get going while the getting is good.”

  The phone went dead.

  The next call was to Curtis Jackson. “I don’t want to know where you are. I just want your people out of North Carolina now.”

  “They’re already gone.”

  “Good. All cell phones are to be destroyed.”

  “Already been done. Mine is the last. It will be like the Hittites in ten minutes.”

  “Hitt
ites?”

  “It’s an old expression. ‘He was like the Hittites: history.’”

  “Good enough for me.”

  The third call was one-sided. “Examination of the vault is complete. Nothing unexpected. Time to move. Destroy the cell phone.”

  Then his phone went dead.

  Ten minutes later the other phone was dead in another form: in the Atlantic. Into the deep water off the St. Petersburg Pier. Now the recipient of the call was going to have the best meal he could find to celebrate his 3 percent of ten-million-dollar commission and a piece of LLC pie.

  Chapter 33

  Far to the north of Sandersonville, North Carolina—and substantially to the west—there is a chain of islands named the Aleutians. The islands extend 1,200 miles from the Alaskan mainland and stretch so far west, the last island is actually six degrees into the Eastern Hemisphere. This makes Alaska the farthest northern, eastern, and western state. The last island in the chain, Attu, was seized by the Japanese during World War II. It was the first time Americans had fought a foreign enemy on American soil since the War of 1812. The retaking of the island resulted in one of the highest casualty rate by American soldiers in the Pacific Theater. Fifteen thousand Americans and Canadians invaded Attu; 549 were killed, and 2,962 were wounded or suffered injuries from the cold. Of the 3,000 Japanese on the island where the United States invaded, only 29 survived.

  The Aleutian Island chains is just as famous for its unpredictable weather patterns. This is primarily because the southern shores of the islands are warmed by the Kuroshio, the Japanese current. The northern shores of the islands are on the Bering Sea, notorious for icy weather every month of the year. To illustrate the climatic disparity between the two bodies of water, during the winter the Bering Sea has a solid mantle of ice from Alaska to Siberia that can be up to fifteen feet thick. To the south of the Aleutians, the waters are ice-free.