Adding to app.
Which made no sense in her world but apparently did in his. She waited but there was nothing more. She texted Pris to check her bank account for a partial refund from the scammer. It would be up to Pris to decide whether to return it to her mother.
Pris texted a surprise emoji back.
Uneasy with Roark’s circular thought processes, Ariel returned to tracing bitcoin wallets, focusing on the ones that seemed to relate to his father’s network. She couldn’t figure out all the connections. The bank account Roark was robbing only received small deposits, not enough to represent a large operation.
Those deposits got transferred to larger corporate accounts that received credit card deposits. The average daily take would feed a village but not buy any yachts. She assumed a certain amount of cash got skimmed off the top, if Cousin Omer was any example.
She couldn’t trace cash, although a quick study of the Whitesville Bank’s accounts showed more cash transactions than a normal bank would average. But that could be cultural. It spoke of an underground economy that avoided taxes.
She’d traced some of the transfers out of the larger account to an offshore account. More went to the bitcoin wallet she couldn’t hack. Without being able to see into the wallet or offshore accounts, she couldn’t tell if they were receiving additional funds from elsewhere. She suspected they did.
She returned to investigating the transactions in the bank accounts of the scammers’ victims. Aside from the normal checks the owners wrote, there were a number of cash transfers to a variety of different banks. Most people, especially elderly ones, didn’t use direct online transfers. That made her suspect the transfers weren’t legit. It would take a while to trace them, though.
If she was right, the scammers had gained access to the victims’ checking accounts and were slowly siphoning off the balances. Not all of them. Some of the poor suckers were still spending large sums on what appeared to be gift cards, given the round numbers. Others had debit card deductions and automatic payment on credit cards the thieves might be using. She’d have to dig into credit cards, but they were more troublesome. That would take a while.
She developed a spreadsheet of cash transfers from the victim accounts to half a dozen accounts that appeared to be fictitious business names—including Whitesville Fishing. It probably wouldn’t help, but she emailed the spreadsheet to the security offices of the banks involved.
An email popped into her inbox. No longer resisting, she opened it. Roark had posted another link and addeddownload to the camera phone.
The link took her to an unsecure website for moneytransfer.org. He’d set up a website? With what? Stolen credit cards?
With a sigh, she downloaded the app from the unsecure website. If it infected her camera phone, it wouldn’t go to anyone else.
A perfectly normal money transfer app appeared, looking like any mobile bank wallet. She wasn’t about to give it her own bank account. She typed in the bank information for Whitesville Fishing.
Apparently controlling the app, Roark created a transfer sending money from the Fishing account to Pris. Once the transaction completed—
The cackling granny video popped up, hexing her.
Then her phone froze.
Twenty-four
Jax proudly depositedhis very first client payment in the bank. He’d earned a hefty salary at his old firm in Savannah, but that wasn’t the same as earning every cent he billed his own clients.
He could pay office rent with that check. He’d need a lot more clients before he could hire a secretary. It was a shame Evie’s multitudinous talents couldn’t be better employed in his office, but she would spend more time analyzing his clients than filing. And asking her to do bookkeeping... She’d probably paint the walls.
The sex was too good to mess up by working together—in an office, anyway. It was a shame he wasn’t independently wealthy so he could spend more time chasing haunts with her.
Which reminded him to check on the standing of his case against DVM Electronics. The voting machine company had so many suits against them now that they couldn’t last much longer. He wanted the royalties and his father’s patents before they filed bankruptcy. He’d had to hire a patent attorney who understood those archaic, complex laws.
“We can settle,” Jax said, back in his office and speaking to his lawyer. “But only if we get the rights back on the patent. They can’t be trusted not to start another company and continue the fraud.”
A knock sounded on his outer office door, and he hurriedly ended the conversation while checking his security camera—Professor James Gump was in the hall, reaching for the doorknob.
It was never good to have a federal agent at the door, if that was what he was.
Phone still in hand, Jax let the stiff-rumped professor in. “Good afternoon, sir. To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”
Gump perused the nearly empty reception area. “Striking out on your own isn’t easy.”
“From that, I gather you had me investigated and should know why I left Stockton. Do I invite you back or do you simply want to warn me off?”
“Invite me back. A man who isn’t afraid to stop highly-placed political figures who could destroy his career isn’t a man easily warned off.” Gump strode for the back office as if he’d been invited. He settled into the old-fashioned leather Morris chair with a sigh.
Jax checked his phone time and gestured at the mini-bar he’d set up on his credenza. “Not quite five o’clock, but if you’d like a bourbon...”