by Ian Hamilton
She had no idea how he did, but she saw no reason to ask. He smiled, showing teeth that were yellowish. She looked at his fingers and saw nicotine stains. “Thank you for taking the time to see me,” she said.
Most of the people in the open workspace were dressed casually, but not Howell. He wore a navy-blue suit, a white shirt, and a tie that was knotted tightly. Ava guessed he was in his mid-forties. He had a full head of grey hair that stuck out in various directions and made him look boyish, although that impression was somewhat nullified by the deep lines etched across his forehead and down his cheeks.
“The pleasure is mine,” he said, and then turned and looked towards the row of offices. “I thought we’d meet in one of the small boardrooms, but they all seem to be occupied. We’ll sit in my office instead.”
She followed him as he wound his way around the workstations. There were about twenty private offices, she figured, and maybe double that number of desks in the open space. Most of the office doors were open, and Ava glanced into them as they passed. The offices were small and plainly furnished, with a desk, a credenza, a couple of filing cabinets, and a chair or two for visitors. Given that Howell was a partner, she expected his office would be a bit grander, but it wasn’t. It was the same size as the others and as sparsely furnished. What made it different was the clutter that covered his desk, the credenza, the top of the filing cabinets, and even the window ledge. Most of the clutter was files, but the credenza was a forest of computer towers.
“Pardon the mess, but I do know where everything is,” he said as he sat down at his desk. “I’d love to get rid of those towers, but we have to hang on to the hard drives until we close the cases they’re tied to. Many of them are bankruptcies or connected to fraud in its various forms.”
“You obviously handle quite a number of them.”
“I do. We’re a generalist firm, except for me. For some reason I fell into financial law about ten years ago and I haven’t been able to get away from it,” he said, and smiled. “Mind you, I’m not complaining. Business never lets up, and it seems I’m doing more every year.”
“How did the Harvest Investment Fund case find its way to you?”
“One of my neighbours was a victim. Like some of the others, he was embarrassed about being swindled, but his wife spoke to my wife and I was persuaded to raise the subject with him,” Howell said. “When I heard what had happened, I offered to help. Although to be truthful, if I’d known what a pain in the ass the case would turn out to be, I would have minded my own business.”
“Derek told me you aren’t pursuing it any further.”
“Not because I don’t want to. If I had my way I’d sue Malcolm Muir in every jurisdiction I could. You know who he is, yes?”
“I do.”
Howell nodded. “But there’s no point in starting any legal action unless we know where the money eventually landed and how much of it is left. And even if we did locate it, there’s absolutely no guarantee we’d be able to recover any of it,” he said. “My neighbour and the other victims won’t put up the money to pursue it any further, and my partners won’t finance anything that has so much uncertainty attached to the outcome. I can’t say I blame them. In all probability it would just be throwing good money after bad. I haven’t officially dropped the case, though. Rather optimistically, I think of it as just being in limbo.”
“But Derek told me you know where the money has gone,” Ava said. “Was he misinterpreting what you said?”
Howell leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his neck. He stared at Ava, pursing his lips as if he calculating what he wanted to say. “Before I answer any more of your questions, I have to tell you that you have quite the reputation,” he said finally.
“I have no idea what you mean by that,” she said.
“Derek told me that you’re a forensic accountant who was in the debt-collection business in Hong Kong. He said you and your partner specialized in collecting money that was otherwise uncollectable.”
“I was in that business, but unfortunately my partner passed away and the business no longer exists.”
“You didn’t want to go it alone or find another partner? You seem to be quite young to pack it in.”
“I went into a less stressful business.”
“Maybe so, but you still have knowledge and experience, and I can’t believe you’ve lost any of your skill.”
“I’m probably no more capable than you or your staff. As you know, it’s very difficult to hide money these days.”
“Except that fucker Malcolm Muir seems to have done exactly that and is thumbing his nose at us,” Howell snarled. He suddenly leaned forward, his hands clasped in front on him on top of the desk. “But I’m leaping all over the place. Why don’t I tell you what I know, and then maybe we can put our heads together and see if there’s a path forward.”
“You do understand that the reason I’m here is because of Mimi and Mrs. Gregory? My only interest is in seeing if there’s a way to salvage some of the money Mr. Gregory lost.”
“I know that, but you’re not going to achieve that without taking on Muir.”
Ava frowned. “You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Howell, but it seems that you’re making a lot of assumptions and putting a lot of trust in someone you don’t really know. I’m not sure what Derek told you about me that would cause you to be this forthcoming.”
“Oh, I’m prepared to be completely forthcoming, and not just because of Derek,” Howell said. “He told me enough that I agreed to meet with you as a friend of the family, but not much more than that. Later, after he and his wife left, I mentioned your name to Eddie Ng — one of the juniors who’s been assisting me with the case — and his face lit up. Eddie is Vietnamese Chinese, with family in Hong Kong. He told me you recovered more than twenty million dollars for some Vietnamese people in Toronto who got caught up in a bank scam. He told me that you’re a real heroine in that community. He’s also heard stories about some of your other exploits. Eddie is a fan.”
“People exaggerate. The people we worked for were typically so desperate to get anything back that, when we did manage it, their appreciation was often disproportionate to our actual success.”
“But you did retrieve the twenty million?”
“We did.”
“And from what I’ve been told, that was hardly the first time you were successful.”
“My partner and I had a decent success rate.”
“Your main base of operations was Asia, though, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, we had very strong contacts there,” Ava said. “That’s not to say we didn’t have clients outside of Asia.”
“How are your contacts in Europe?”
“I know some people here and there.”
“That’s good enough.”
“Good enough for what?”
“Good enough for now. So, can I tell you what I know about Muir and his fund?”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, I think it was a scam from the very start. The fund was never registered as an investment vehicle, as a charity, as anything. Muir created a series of numbered companies and used the Harvest Investment name as a doing-business-as entity. All the money that went into the fund was immediately redirected to the numbered companies, and then it was most often transferred between the numbered companies. The companies were established in five different provinces.”
“Which means five different provincial jurisdictions and applicable laws,” Ava said.
“Exactly. You’ve encountered this before?”
“No, but I’ve heard about it.”
“So you know what the game is. He establishes the companies and then moves money between them like in a shell game. Except when the shells finally stopped moving, the money was in Europe and he had put every one of the numbered companies in Canada into bankruptcy.”
“Who owned the numbered companies?”
“Muir.”
“No one else was listed?”
“He used someone from his law firm to stand in as secretary and vice-president.”
“And no one associated with Harvest Table Bible Chapel was listed anywhere?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“I read the terms sheet and the monthly statements Mr. Gregory received. I thought the disclaimers separating the chapel from the fund were a bit over-the-top,” Ava said. “In fact, they were so oddly excessive that you could think the person who wrote them knew what was going to happen with the fund and was laying the groundwork for the chapel to be able to plead ignorance.”
“I thought the same thing, and I made that point quite forcefully when I met with Pastor Sammy Rogers and Patrick Cunningham, the COO and CFO of the organization, along with their lawyers. They were highly insulted, and I was told that if I repeated my opinions in public they wouldn’t hesitate to take legal action against me,” Howell said. “But I have to admit that our conversation was more cordial after that. Rogers said he was prepared to swear on the Bible he knew nothing about what Muir was up to, and that he would instruct his CFO to cooperate fully with us.”
“You believed Rogers?”
Howell paused, then said, “Not at that moment, but Cunningham, the CFO, was co-operative and I found absolutely nothing that connected the chapel to the fund. So in the end I didn’t have much choice.”
“So it all came down to Muir?”
“Yes.”
“What did you decide to do about him?”
“I tried to sue him. By then he had bankrupted all the numbered companies, so the only option I had left was to go after him personally. He lives in Ontario, so I initiated an action here. I thought I was making a little headway, but as soon as I got a judge willing to listen to the case, Muir declared personal bankruptcy.”
“He has no assets?”
“He lives in a multi-million-dollar house in the Annex owned by his wife. He drives a Mercedes-Benz Roadster that she owns as well. They eat out several times a week at some of the most expensive restaurants in the city, paid for with her credit cards.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“Nothing. Her name is Marla Swift and she is the only child of Frank Swift, who owned a car dealership in Oakville. When he died, she inherited the business and then sold it for millions.”
“How convenient for Muir,” Ava said.
“Yes, but evidently he wanted a lot more than his wife could provide,” Howell said.
“So it seems. How much money did he actually move overseas?”
“About thirty million.”
Ava blinked in surprise. “That’s about the declared value of the fund in the last statement I saw. I thought this was a Ponzi scheme and that he was making a run for it before he ran out of cash.”
“No, I think it was out-and-out theft, because I know of one person who wanted to cash out more than a million dollars and was paid. Muir also didn’t miss a single annual profit-sharing payment until the last one was due.”
“How large were those payments?”
“On average, I’d say three to four percent,” Howell said. “But not everyone took them. In fact, most people just reinvested in the fund, Phillip Gregory included.”
“But that still means the fund — theoretically, anyway — was making about an eight percent annual return.”
“That’s what Muir claimed.”
“With half of it supposedly going to good works in Africa and Asia.”
“That part of it was pure bullshit. We couldn’t locate anyone overseas who received money from the fund,” Howell said. “But when you consider that one person who cashed out and the profit sharing to investors, Muir never actually shortchanged anyone until two investors decided to take out four million at once.”
“You’re making it sound like the fund was actually turning a profit.”
“That’s what the numbers indicate. Apparently Muir is a smart investment fund manager.”
“You just said he’s a thief.”
“The two descriptions aren’t incompatible.”
“I guess not,” Ava said, processing what she’d been told. Then she asked, “Have you gone to the authorities? Surely there’s a case to be made for fraud.”
“I went to the Ontario Provincial Police financial crimes unit. They heard me out, but the moment they saw that the fund had never been registered provincially, the stream of bankruptcies, and the involvement of other provincial jurisdictions, they told me the case should be handled by the RCMP. When I went to the Mounties, they told me that, because of the lack of registrations, the fund had been run in effect like a private investment club. They said taking civil action was the most appropriate thing for us to do. The truth is, Muir created a very clever and complicated trail, and I think neither force wanted to invest the manpower in trying to unravel it. Especially when, as I said earlier, the outcome is doubtful.”
“But how can they not even attempt to prosecute him?”
“I don’t blame the police,” Howell said. “Our securities regulations are a joke, and jurisdictional confusion makes us an easy target for fraudsters. When the cops do catch one and get a conviction, the penalties are so minor they wonder why they even bothered.”
“Well, at the end of the day, money doesn’t have a jurisdiction. You said it was sent to Europe. Derek said it went to the Netherlands. Is that correct?”
“Yes, to the BNSA Bank in Amsterdam. Money was wired there from Muir’s various accounts. I have copies of the wires.”
“So obviously you also have the Dutch account number.”
“We do, but there isn’t a name we can attach to it. It’s yet another numbered company that was registered through a law firm.”
“Is that where the trail ends?”
“For us it did. We hired our own lawyer in Amsterdam and through him went to the bank and the law firm that was used to register the company. It was a waste of time. They both said we had no legal justification to require them to give us information about the account holder or the account’s contents,” Howell said.
“So you don’t know if the money is still in the account.”
“That’s correct. It could be on Mars by now,” Howell said. He paused to lean towards Ava. “Do you have a way of finding out if it’s still there?”
“I do know a man in the Netherlands who has excellent bank connections.”
“Will you contact him?”
“If I do, I’ll need to provide him with specific information.”
Howell touched a trio of files that sat in front of him. “Most of what you need is in here. You can take them if you want. I’m not giving you everything I have, but I went through my information and separated what I think is most important.”
Ava eyed the files. “That was thoughtful of you. I’ll take them to read, but that isn’t a commitment to do anything else.”
“That’s fine.”
“Do the files explain how people were persuaded to invest in the fund?”
“You’ll find an explanation in my notes,” Howell said. “Basically they were all members of the chapel’s finance committee. Muir was chairman. That’s how they got to know and trust him.”
“If they were on this finance committee, how valid is the disclaimer that the chapel and the fund operated independently of each other?”
“The finance committee had no power. Pastor Rogers pretends to believe in democratizing the chapel, so he set up any number of committees to give the members a voice in its various activities. He refers to them as advisory committees, but at the end of the day they have zero power. He makes every decision himself.”
“What kind of advice would the finance committee have given him?”
H
owell smiled. “Their focus was entirely on ways to expand the chapel’s income. How money was spent, according to Rogers, was not part of their advisory mandate.”
“Still, Muir must have told him about the fund. Surely he wouldn’t have set it up without his approval.”
“According to Rogers, Muir did approach him, through Patrick Cunningham. Rogers thought the fund’s objectives were admirable and gave it his unofficial blessing, but he insists that neither he nor anyone else in a senior position endorsed it, recommended it to chapel members, or had anything to do with its operation. And, like I told you, I couldn’t find a shred of evidence that said otherwise.”
Ava glanced at the files again. “Tell me, if I decide to pursue this further, what will you want from me?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you saying that if I get some money out of Muir, you won’t want a piece of it?”
“I am.”
“But you’ve invested a lot in this.”
“I’ve written it off. What I haven’t written off, though, is the possibility that Muir can be brought down. Hell, I’d pay to see that,” Howell said.
“Derek mentioned that you met him.”
“I did, and so can you. His home address is in one of the files,” Howell said. “I went to the house to serve him with papers. He took the papers, laughed, and then slammed the door in my face.”
“He knew who you were?” Ava said.
“It wasn’t our first meeting. That was when he came here to my office with his lawyer and sat where you’re sitting. I told him we were prepared to take him to court to recoup the money he’d stolen. Within five minutes I understood how he was able to con everyone at the chapel,” Howell said. “He’s a good-looking guy, perfectly groomed, well-dressed, soft-spoken, and carries himself in a dignified manner — until he opens his mouth.”
“He was profane?”
“No, he’s a specialist in avoiding direct questions. He talks and talks, but by the time you strip away his clichés and stupid anecdotes, there’s nothing left of any substance.” Howell grimaced. “The longer he talked to me, going around and around in pointless circles, the angrier I got. After all these years dealing with people like him, I thought I was past getting upset, but he was so smug and artificial that I wanted to punch him in the face just to crack that veneer.”
