The Enigma Rising

Quip launched a secure conference call and looped in Jacob, Otto, and Petra to discuss the findings on the peculiar activity at Cayman Bank, and the players Phillip Johnston, Simone, and Juan and Carlos Rodriquez. The findings of these searches were within an hour of the requests, which pleased him.

Quip opened the discussion, “Your suspicions were right, Jacob. The computer activity you spotted under the radar at the bank was accounting sleight of hand. The program being used was a decimal rounding program from our old friends at the Dteam used to divert third, fourth, and fifth decimal point earnings from a bank account to another destination. Petra just confirmed the program’s usage since it had part of her code in it along with yours.

“Upon closer inspection it looks like your contact Phillip Johnston is the instigator. With this little handiwork, he is building a nice little nest egg for himself. Here’s the funny part: it’s in his name with no outbound wire transfers to get it out of Dodge. I mean what a maroon this guy is. Even a first year junior internal auditor should be able to trace this.

“So I looked into this Johnston guy. He has been at the bank for three years now, but it looks like he has been trying to engineer himself into this position ever since he got there, probably with this idea in mind. You’d think that with three years to plan he would be a little more creative and stealthier than this. I know of people who make crossword puzzles that are more innovative than the guy who did this clumsy piece of work.

“Oh, and the other thing is he seems to be taking principle from six accounts that have come on line over the last six months, along with the rounding decimal movement. These accounts indicate that Carlos and Juan Rodriquez are the financial sponsors of record for these accounts. All of them are classified as inheritance type accounts with huge balances.”

Otto then asked, “What did you discover about Juan and Carlos?”

“That’s another odd series of issues. Juan is mostly a flyboy pilot with lots of pilot certifications, including one to fly Boeing 727 aircraft. Apparently he got that from a major carrier just before that airline collapsed. He has been practically non-existent since then but does surface every once in a while when he flies into U.S. airspace to party in Dallas, Texas.

“Carlos however came out of the Mexican Military. Haven’t found his last rank yet, but he was a part of the communications group where he received special training with U.S. counterparts. His record contains notations that he showed a very high aptitude for satellite and wireless communications in hostile climate conditions, and promotion was considered to an officer’s rank. He was subsequently thrown out of the military apparently for fighting and landing issues with a squad of eight soldiers in a bar one night. He had minor cuts and abrasions and was treated and released. The squad was hospitalized with one man still in rehabilitation.”

Jacob questioned, “Fighting and landing?”

Quip laughed, “Yeah, fighting and landing. Carlos did the fighting and the other eight soldiers did the landings. It might not have been so bad for him if the commandant’s son hadn’t been one of the landees. Apparently he is quite the scrapper, Jacob. He did all of this with no weapon in hand. His file noted that his allegiance was to himself rather than the Mexican Army.

“Simone is listed in the resort with Carlos as Rodriguez as well, like they are married, but I cannot locate anything to substantiate that yet. Plus Petra had said that they weren’t married in her summary note to me regarding conversations between her and Simone.

“Anyway, Carlos has only surfaced in the last six months or so in this financial advisor role. Now he and Juan have accounts at Cayman Bank, but all I see going into the account are the commissions they are collecting up front when the accounts are opened. Looks like the account disbursements are legitimate and indicate a comfortable lifestyle. So I don’t really see anything to suggest that Juan and Carlos are working a scheme together. Frankly, I am rather relieved that they are not scheming with Johnston since both of them appear to be much smarter.

“Over the last six months, several drug dealers and their liquid assets have been leaving Mexico through some unidentified conduit. In that same time frame, large cash deposits are being shepherded into this same Cayman Bank. There is also no evidence to suggest that Juan or Carlos have legitimately earned the designation of financial consultants, or we would have seen some evidence of this type of education or experience in their backgrounds. They only popped up on the grid six months ago and are moving millions into a country known for its bank secrecy laws.

“So I would put it to you all, I suspect these are the money moving magicians for those drug lords based on what we have so far. There is nothing solid to back up this statement. We all know already that I do not believe in coincidences.”

Neither Petra nor Jacob liked the evidence nor the conclusion offered by Quip. Otto sensed the dismay of everyone with the resigned sighs heard over the call.

Before Otto could voice what everyone was feeling, Quip added, “Let me go on record as having said dammit! Dammit! Dammit! I happen to like Juan and Carlos from everything I’ve seen so far, as well as from what Petra and Jacob have relayed in conversation. Add in the fact that I am convinced that Carlos pulled off an amazing satellite cloaking event to shield the plane his brother is flying that significantly impressed Andrew. And well, I have a sneaking admiration for these two rogue scoundrels.”