Fraudulent Transfers Page 18
“Shouldn’t the U.S. banks be able to identify these transfers as suspicious activities?”
“Certainly not Wells Fargo. Its customer is a large and reputable brokerage firm that does high dollar wire transfers for its customers all the time. However, it’s possible that the Houston bank and the Miami bank should question these transfers. It may be that Bounce is getting some help from within those banks. Or, the log on, PIN and password information that Pollard is giving to Padilla may be enough to allow Bounce to control the transaction and shut down any suspicion that might otherwise exist.”
“You asked Pollard to try to get you the name of the person at the first off shore bank who would be greasing the transaction. Was he able to do that?”
“Yes. The guy’s name is Seymour Wheeler. Padilla only knew his first name but Pollard was able to find a directory of the employees of Bayfield Bank who handle wire transfers and there was only one Seymour—Seymour Wheeler. So we think he’s our Bounce operative within the bank.”
“OK, what happens next?”
“You and Veronica are heading to Grand Cayman Island tomorrow. As I told you on Friday, you’ll again be traveling as Jonathan Swisher, disbarred Phoenix lawyer. You’ll be working for Albert Campbell, ex-con, who needs to launder money from the illegal sale of performance enhancing drugs. Veronica will be traveling as Jonathan Swisher’s girlfriend, Sarah Hollister. You will travel to Phoenix as Jack McConnell. You’ll go from there to Miami, and on to Grand Cayman Island, as Swisher. Veronica will go to Miami from San Francisco as Veronica Stailey. She’ll meet you there and become Sarah Hollister. You’ll then travel together to Grand Cayman Island. You’ll get to Owen Roberts International Airport, right outside George Town, at around 7:00 p.m. local time. That will be Eastern Standard Time. Your flight confirmation numbers and your Jonathan Swisher American Express card will be delivered to your office by FedEx this afternoon at around 4:00. Veronica’s flight confirmation numbers and her Sarah Hollister credentials will be delivered to her hotel in San Francisco at about the same time. You’ll both have to get your own boarding passes at the airports or over the Internet. You have an appointment to meet with Wheeler at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday. You’ll need to call him tomorrow to confirm the appointment and give him some sketchy preliminary information about the purpose of your meeting. Basically, you’re Albert Campbell’s agent looking at banks in the Caribbean that might meet Campbell’s needs for international funds transfers.”
“About the false passports, Ed. Isn’t that a little tricky—and illegal?”
“We’re getting into trade secrets Jack. I can’t talk about it.”
“Oh, right. I should have known that.”
“But I might add that sometimes in this line of work, as your fortune cookie said the other day when we were in Chinatown, we have to fight fire with fire. That’s what we’re doing here.”
“So what happens when Veronica and I get to George Town?”
“You’ll be staying at a nice seaside hotel called the Riviera Grand Cayman, just west of downtown George Town and walking distance to Bayfield Bank. I assume Jonathan and Sarah will have a nice dinner looking out over the ocean, a romantic—but short--walk on the beach, and whatever happens next, realizing, of course, that they will need to be up early the next morning and ready to go to work.”
Ed then proceeded to tell me the rest of the plan, after which I said, “This doesn’t sound very safe. Are you sure we should be doing this? Have you done this sort of thing before?”
“I haven’t done this exact sort of thing before but I have great confidence in you and Veronica. If our plan doesn’t work, the worst that can happen is you can stay over another night on Grand Cayman Island and have a longer walk on the beach--although I suppose there is some risk that, by then, people who are really mad at you, and who may have guns, will be looking for you.”
“Well that certainly makes me feel better. Where are you going to be while Veronica and I are sticking our necks out?”
“I’ll be in San Francisco with, or on the phone with, Pollard. There’s a fair amount of work on this end of our enterprise that he needs to help with.”
As soon as I hung up with Ed, I called Veronica, told her we were heading to Grand Cayman Island in the morning, described to her the assignment Ed was giving us and instructed her to be on the lookout for a FedEx shipment when she returned to San Francisco from Monterey later in the day. She, like me, expressed concern about the risks inherent in our mission but finally came around to deciding that our spending a couple of all expenses paid days together in the Caribbean in the middle of winter had some advantages. With the help of a waitress at the Fishwife, Veronica said, she had managed to find a salon in Carmel that could fit her in on an emergency basis and carry out Ed’s instructions for a new look. She would be going there at 4:00 p.m. before heading back to San Francisco.
My Jonathan Swisher charge card and flight confirmation information arrived right on time, at 4:00 p.m. Just before that, my Christmas present from Veronica arrived, delivered personally by Georgette. It was a case of the hard to find French white burgundy wine Georgette sometimes sold at her restaurant and knew I liked.
“Bonjour Jack,” Georgette said, giving me a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. “This is your Christmas present from Veronica. She told me to tell you that you’ll need to share some of it with her when she finally gets back to Colorado.”
“Merci Georgette. This is great. Thanks. I’ll be glad to share some of this with Veronica—provided she doesn’t wait too long to get home.”
After my calls with Ed and Veronica, and my visit from Georgette, I made arrangements for Fletcher to spend a few more days with Buttercup and lined up Cooper to watch over my house, feed my fish, and shovel my driveway if it snows. I again told him payment for these services was contingent on his leaving the beer in my refrigerator alone. He offered to drive me to the airport if he could then use my truck while I was gone. I declined this proposal with the usual excuse that my insurance company wouldn’t allow it. Plus, he was still subject to a parentally imposed driving restriction after the accident he had last summer.
Tuesday morning, I left home at 5:30 a.m. and was at the Colorado Springs airport by 6:00 a.m. in order to make a 7:00 a.m. flight to Denver on United Airlines and then on to Phoenix on Frontier Airlines. Normally, I would drive to Denver since flying out of Colorado Springs to Denver and then boarding another flight from there regularly resulted in missed connections, additional cost, lost luggage, a second opportunity to crash and a variety of other problems. This time, however, I decided using the Colorado Springs airport made sense since I didn’t know how long I would be gone, I only had carry-on luggage and, once I got to Denver, there would be ample time to connect to the flight to Phoenix.
As I entered the airport, I noticed the temperature outside was six degrees below zero. An inquiry to my cell phone told me the temperature in George Town, Grand Cayman Island, was sixty-eight degrees, heading for a high of seventy-two.
When I arrived in Phoenix, I exited the security area as Jack McConnell and reentered as Jonathan Swisher. My flight to Miami, on American Airlines, left on time at 10:50 a.m. When I arrived in Miami shortly after 4:00 p.m. (now on Eastern Standard Time), Veronica was already there, at the gate for the last leg of our trip, from Miami to George Town, Grand Cayman Island. Ed had booked us on Cayman Airways for this part of the trip, scheduled to leave Miami at 5:20 p.m. Veronica, who had started her day with an 8:30 a.m. (Pacific Standard Time) flight from San Francisco, looked fresh and relaxed, unlike me who looked (or at least felt) old and tired. She gave me a nice hug and a kiss that helped perk me up.
“Veronica,” I said, “just as I predicted, you look wonderful as a blond with short hair and glasses.”
On the flight to George Town, I tried to sleep but couldn’t. The person in front of me, as usual, had immediately put his seat into full recline mode, meaning my knees were pinned against his seatback. I therefo
re read the material I had brought along about the Cayman Islands.
There are three islands, I learned—Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. Grand Cayman is by far the largest (at 76 square miles) and is home to some 52,000 of the Cayman Islands’ total population of around 55,000. These islands lie to the south of Cuba and to the west of Jamaica. (I assumed, therefore, that we were not flying across the Bermuda Triangle but I wasn’t entirely sure of this.) Residents of the Cayman Islands apparently have the highest standard of living to be found in the Caribbean. This is due in part to the fact that the Cayman Islands are the fifth largest banking center in the world. There are hundreds of banks located here—big ones and small ones. These banks emphasize, and advertise, customer privacy. The material I was reading said the Cayman Islands have more registered businesses than people. I knew as a lawyer that wealthy residents of the U.S. intent on putting their assets someplace where creditors will have a hard time reaching them occasionally set up trusts using trustees in the Cayman Islands. They pay substantial annual fees to the trustees to maintain these trusts.
The Cayman Islands, I read, are a British Overseas Territory and not an independent country. As best I could tell, this means the king or queen of England appoints a governor who has ultimate authority over Cayman Islands affairs. However, there is also an elected legislative assembly that provides local governance. Prior to the seventeenth century, when the British started to get things organized in this part of the world, the residents of the Cayman Islands were mostly British army deserters and pirates. Based on what we knew about Seymour Wheeler at Bayfield Bank, the pirate tradition seems to have lived on.
After going through customs at Owen Roberts International Airport, without incident, as Jonathan Swisher and Sarah Hollister, we took a cab to our hotel, a mere three miles west of the airport. This brought us through downtown George Town. It was now 7:30 p.m. local time and there was still lots of activity at the restaurants and bars in the downtown area. George Town had a fresh, clean look to it, probably because Hurricane Ivan did major damage to the Cayman Islands in early September 2004, necessitating much rebuilding. The architecture was a nice blend of modern and Old England retro. We went past Bayfield Bank on our way to the hotel. It occupied the ground floor of a small and modest looking office building on the west side of town.
When we arrived at our hotel, a full moon was hanging over the ocean in the southern sky, giving the water a shimmering silver-blue look and the beach a warm yellow glow. A thermometer outside the hotel entrance showed a temperature of seventy degrees. A check of the Weather Channel app on my cell phone told me it was now ten degrees in Colorado Springs, after a high for the day of fourteen. I was beginning to think less harshly of Tomas Padilla.
Veronica and I did indeed have a nice romantic dinner at the hotel restaurant, on a deck looking out over the ocean and the beach. Our waiter wasn’t exactly a local. He was from Brooklyn. He’d been living on Grand Cayman Island for three years now, on a work visa. After ten years, he said, he would have to reapply or leave the island. The prices at the restaurant also reminded us of New York, even after the currency exchange rate was taken into account. (Eighty cents U.S. buys a Cayman Islands dollar.) The price of a filet of sole entrée and a bottle of Australian white wine was about 150% of what it would be back home. I paid for dinner with the Jonathan Swisher American Express card Ed had included in my travel kit.
Over dinner, I gave Veronica her Christmas present, the star fish pendant I had purchased Christmas Eve in Colorado Springs. I told her my initial choice for her present was a really nice eight foot six inch, medium flex, graphite-composite fly rod. She said that was very thoughtful of me but assured me I had made the right decision with the pendant. I in turn thanked Veronica for the wine Georgette had delivered and confirmed that I would save some of it to be shared with her when she returned to Colorado following her current West Coast assignment.
After dinner, we had our walk on the beach. We took off shoes and socks and waded a short distance into the water. Both the sand and the water were warm. But when little fish started to swim around our feet and Veronica decided that could mean bigger, and hungrier, fish might be lurking nearby, we retreated to the beach. We talked briefly about plans for tomorrow but decided we’d have time in the morning to prepare for what we’d come here to do. After maybe a half-mile of travel along the beach, and a pause for a long kiss under the moon and stars (I see now why they always do this in movies), we headed back to our room. Once there, Veronica informed me that, to help her sleep and be at her best tomorrow, she needed a backrub. She also informed me the supplies in the hotel bathroom included a container of something called Sea Scent Body Lotion which, she said, would be perfect for the occasion. This product smelled, pleasantly, like salt air and decomposing kelp. I asked her if she thought there was enough for a front rub as well as a back rub and she assured me there was. My assignment was therefore expanded to include both sides, using application techniques of my choice. After I had performed my duties, and been allowed to share in the lotion, I believe Veronica slept well. I know I did.
Chapter 30
It was now Wednesday--D-Day--and also day forty-one of the forty-three day standstill agreement among and between Turnbull and Williston, Front Street Bank, the Fed and Merchants Bank. Veronica and I were up early and, on the theory we were still on someone’s expense account (we weren’t sure whose), we ordered a hearty room service breakfast. Although the sky was clear directly above us, large dark and billowing clouds were hanging above the horizon in all directions. This was supposed to be the dry season in the Caribbean but oceans, it seems, have a way of making their own weather any time of year. In all events, it was now time to drill down hard on what we would be doing starting at 1:30 this afternoon when Jonathan Swisher had his prospective new client appointment with Seymour Wheeler and Sarah Hollister would be tagging along, to wait in the lobby of Bayfield Bank while Swisher was meeting with Wheeler. Veronica chose the balcony of our room, with a westerly ocean view, as her workplace. I decided a walk on the beach was best for me. There was a steady ten mile an hour onshore wind blowing as I headed north along a popular tourist area called Seven Mile Beach. The tide was ebbing and the wind was kicking up swells that averaged maybe three feet in height—a noticeable change from last evening’s calm.
Veronica and I packed up our belonging and checked out of our hotel, with a pre-approved late check out, at shortly after 1:00 p.m. Veronica, contrary to her usual practice, was traveling light, having managed to fit all of her essentials into a single (although bulging) carry-on size roller bag. I had brought along for my meeting with Seymour Wheeler, and was now wearing, a green and white striped short-sleeve shirt, no tie, a navy blazer and tan summer weight wool blend slacks. I was also wearing the over-priced pinkish blue tinted photo sensitive sunglasses Ed had made me buy prior to my first appearance as Jonathan Swisher. Our hotel room had come with an iron and ironing board and I was pleased to learn Veronica actually knew how to use these tools. Veronica was in tourist attire—a white sleeveless cotton top with a neckline low enough to reveal a bit of very attractive cleavage and garner male attention, charcoal grey capri-cropped pants and sandals.
We walked the eight blocks from our hotel to the bank, arriving there at 1:25 p.m. The interior of Bayfield Bank looked more like the reception area of an upscale office in London than the lobby of a financial institution on an island in the middle of the Caribbean. The furnishings included dark wood paneling, hardwood floors of a lighter color, Oriental rugs, overstuffed chairs in a forest green and rust fabric, and brass lamps on walnut end tables. Only the ceiling fans, which were turning slowly, gave the place a tropical look.
I checked in with the receptionist, an older woman who had a straight-from-the-old-country British accent, and told her I was here for a 1:30 p.m. appointment with Mr. Wheeler.
“Yes, of course. You must be Mr. Swisher. Mr. Wheeler is expecting you. I’ll let him know you�
��re here. Please be seated. He’ll be with you shortly.”
Veronica and I then found seats in the waiting area that gave us a view of a series of glass-walled offices along the north side of the room. Our plan was to put Veronica in a location where she would be able to see Wheeler and me and would be within the area covered by the bank’s wi-fi system. (Ed had confirmed through contacts he had in George Town that Bayfield Bank had a wi-fi system in place for its customers and another for its staff.) We assumed, correctly, that my meeting with Wheeler would take place in one of the glass-walled offices.
Wheeler appeared a few minutes later. He looked like a character right out of a Charles Dickens novel. Five-foot-five, early forties, thinning brown hair, pale with no hint of a Caribbean island tan, slender, a small moustache and gold-colored wire rim bifocal glasses. He was wearing a black suit, with the coat fully buttoned, a white shirt with a heavily starched spread collar, a dark blue tie sprinkled with little seashells of various shapes and colors and highly polished black lace up shoes with elevated heels.
I stood up and came forward a few steps to meet him, leaving Veronica behind.
“Hello Mr. Swisher. Thank you for coming all this way to meet with me. I hope you’ve had a pleasant stay on our island.”
“Yes. Thank you. This is a great place to be when it’s winter in the U.S., although Arizona, where I come from, is also pleasant this time of year. But, you have an ocean and all we have are deserts.”
Wheeler then took me into one of the glass cubicles, which served as a small conference room. He offered me coffee or tea. I told him coffee—just black please. He poured the coffee from a silver decanter into a small white china cup. He poured himself a cup of tea from another silver decanter, to which he added milk and sugar. The manner in which we were seated worked out perfectly. I was able to see Veronica in the reception area and she could see me, but Wheeler had his back to her.