Game Theory--A Katerina Carter Fraud Legal Thriller

by Colleen Cross

“That could take days. In the meantime, Edgewater gets plundered?” Zachary turned abruptly and faced Kat. “Can’t afford it. We’ll go with whatever you dig up by Monday.”

  “Monday? ” Friday was almost over. Considering Zachary’s entire future rested on her investigation, a few days was ridiculous. “I need a week or two minimum just to reconstruct the financials. Edgewater is a multi-billion dollar company.”

  “Monday.” Zachary exited into the hall before she had a chance to answer.

  Chapter 14

  Kat spent the evening hours in Nathan’s office extracting data from Edgewater’s client records system, the first step in validating the company’s revenue. Edgewater earned its fees as a percentage of their clients’ investment performance. If their clients’ investments grew, so did Edgewater’s revenues. But if they lost money, or even broke even, the hedge fund earned nothing.

  That was the problem. According to her calculations, Edgewater’s fees amounted to a fraction of what was actually reported on the financial statements. Barring an undiscovered source of income, the company’s revenues were overstated by billions. Did she miss something? Unlikely after her exhaustive analysis. Something fishy was going on. She needed to talk with Zachary before progressing further.

  There was also the problem of Beecham’s vacant lot address. On a hunch, Kat typed in Beecham’s 422 Cedar Street address into Snoopy, her proprietary audit analytics software. She pressed enter and waited while the software scanned all of Edgewater’s accounts payable data. She was surprised to see the results contained not one, but two vendors with the same address. The second name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place why.

  “Zachary?”

  No answer. She’d head down the hall to his office in a minute. But first she’d do some more digging. Finding two Edgewater vendors at a nonexistent address was a fraud red flag.

  She stared at the screen for a moment, wondering where she had heard the name Svensson before. Then it came to her: Fredrick Svensson was the man who had died in the snowshoeing accident. She was certain that was the name she’d heard on Harry’s radio this morning.

  She typed Svensson into a search engine and pressed enter. Sure enough, at the top of the results page were half-dozen stories on Wednesday’s snowshoeing accident. She clicked on the first one. A sixtyish gray-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard and John Lennon glasses gazed out from the photograph. The caption underneath read Nobel–Nominated Economist Dies in Snowshoe Tragedy.

  Why would Edgewater pay a Nobel economist? She pulled up Svensson’s vendor record in Edgewater’s accounting system and clicked on the transaction details. A series of invoices had been paid in the last two years, all for similar amounts of eight or nine thousand dollars. She clicked on one and read the description: consulting fees. Consulting for what? What did Svensson and Beecham have in common?

  More importantly, what did Svensson and Edgewater have in common? Kat scrolled through the rest of the stories. Aside from his love of the outdoors, Fredrick Svensson had very particular views on currency.

  She clicked on another article, dated last year.

  One World Currency—Does It Make Economic Sense?

  Fredrick Svensson, the Nobel–nominated economist and pioneer on currency reform, spoke today at the Davos Economic Summit. His work on currency reform is well known and controversial, arguing that numerous currencies create inefficiencies and barriers to world trade and overall economic well-being. Svensson says these barriers result in higher transaction costs and put developing countries at a disadvantage. He spoke about the need for one world currency as a step towards global prosperity.

  Kat skimmed the rest of the article. Edgewater and Svensson had currency as a common denominator. Edgewater traded currencies, and Svensson was the pre-eminent global expert. But their currency views differed dramatically. Svensson’s theories, if adopted, would directly impact Edgewater. Edgewater exploited currency exchange rates, the very thing Svensson recommended eliminating. So why would Edgewater pay Svensson consulting fees?

  Kat pressed the print button and grabbed the article from the printer. She paused for a moment at Nathan’s massive marble chess set, then headed out to the hall. Zachary might be able to make sense of it. He had retreated to his office a few hours ago.

  She noticed for the first time that the walls were lined with dark wood frames, each one containing an antiquated bank note or bond of some sort. She scanned the names—Mississippi, the South Sea Company, and others. Worthless, except as collector’s items. How ironic that Edgewater’s walls were lined with financial instruments of earlier financial scams. Had Nathan or Zachary had chosen them? The hall was eerily quiet. No voices, no typing, just the sound of her shoes sinking into the thick carpet.

  “Zachary?”

  No answer. She called out again, louder this time. She had assumed Zachary was somewhere else in the office since she hadn’t heard anyone come or go. Kat turned the corner into Zachary’s office. He wasn’t there. She’d assumed wrong.

  She pulled out her cell phone and punched in Zachary’s number. She jumped as she heard the ring nearby. Zachary’s cell phone sat on the desk, but his coat was gone.

  Kat swore under her breath. Why hadn’t Zachary told her he was leaving? Was he returning, or had he expected her to work here all night? She didn’t even have a key to lock up. She left a message for him to call as soon as possible, knowing it probably wouldn’t do much good.

  She returned to Nathan’s office and shut down her laptop. She gathered up Edgewater’s financial statements, account listings, client statements. While she hadn’t even begun to reconcile fully the client totals to the financials, there was one total in particular that troubled her.

  The Edgewater bank account now held a balance of less than a hundred thousand dollars. For a billionaire who invested heavily in his own company, that amount was unthinkable. Not only that, but it differed from the amount on Zachary’s net worth statement for the divorce. If the balance was accurate, his net worth was much less than he had believed since it was wrapped up completely in Edgewater. That meant Victoria Barron’s divorce settlement had been based on money that didn’t actually exist.

  Could Zachary really be so oblivious to the value of his own holdings? How would he react when he found out the truth?

  She stuffed the documents into her briefcase and grabbed her coat. Although Zachary’s deadline loomed, she was past the point of concentration. Aside from her stomach ache, she felt a fever coming on. She needed sleep before this flu got the better of her. And to check in on Harry and Jace.

  She paused at the door, then turned back into Nathan’s office. She re-opened her briefcase and studied today’s ending bank balance. According to her rough calculations, Edgewater’s cash would run out on Tuesday—mere days from now, and one day after Zachary’s deadline.

  Zachary’s sense of urgency was real. Monday might even be too late, if she had under-estimated Edgewater’s cash burn and Nathan Barron’s greediness.

  A key clicked in the front door lock.

  Now was as good as time as any to tell him. Kat dropped her coat and briefcase on Nathan’s couch and started for the door.

  But it wasn’t Zachary. A woman’s laugh broke the silence.

  Kat froze. Her heart pounded as she scanned the office for a place to hide. Then she realized: she knew that voice. It was Victoria. But why was she here now? After such an ugly courtroom battle, why hadn’t Zachary changed the locks?

  The front door slammed shut. Kat spun around and searched for cover. The only door led straight out into the reception and Victoria. Behind the sofa? No. Victoria might come in the office. If she sat down, it would be on the sofa or the desk.

  Victoria’s stilettos clicked across the reception’s marble floor, then grew silent as she reached the Berber carpet in the hallway. Kat stifled a sneeze as strong perfume wafted towards her. She dove behind the heavy damask curtains. They were in the current fashion, long enou
gh so they draped in a puddle on the floor, and luckily covered her feet.

  Victoria whispered something—Kat assumed into her cell phone. She was in Nathan’s office now, too close for comfort.

  Kat glanced down in horror. Light seeped in under the curtain by her feet, and she realized the toe of her shoe was outside the carpet. She slowly slid her foot in, hoping the movement didn’t attract attention.

  Who was with Victoria? She hadn’t heard any other footsteps. A drawer opened and papers rustled.

  Kat flattened herself against the wall, wishing she hadn’t eaten such a big lunch. Did she bulge through the curtains? She couldn’t tell.

  “Okay, got it. Call you later.”

  Kat barely made out the whispered words. Victoria must be talking on her cell phone. Got What?

  She breathed a sigh of relief as Victoria’s heels echoed off the foyer’s marble floor. She had a lot of nerve to come here, as she hadn’t worked at Edgewater since the separation. Didn’t she care if she ran into Zachary? Or did she somehow know he wasn’t here?

  The outer office door slammed. Kat held her breath as the key clicked in the tumbler.

  She listened for the elevator bell, then waited a full five minutes before emerging from behind the curtains. Victoria’s heavy perfume lingered, tickling her nose. She sneezed.

  As Kat searched for a tissue, she spotted her coat and briefcase sitting on the couch. Had Victoria seen them? She jumped as her cell phone rang. She checked her call display as she shut the ringer off. It was Jace. She didn’t dare call him back from here. Victoria might return, and Kat would be home in twenty minutes anyways.

  Chapter 15

  Kat’s eyes twitched from fatigue. It was almost three a.m. She longed for some shuteye, but couldn’t rest until she tallied up the damage for Zachary. Edgewater appeared to be the victim of a massive fraud, bigger than anything she had ever seen.

  Since arriving home from Edgewater several hours ago, she continued to analyze the individual client accounts against the statement copies she had found in Nathan’s office. It was a painstaking, eye-straining process. She had checked over a hundred and fifty accounts so far but had yet to come up with a single account where the paper statement matched the computer records. The paper copies boasted double-digit returns, yet most accounts in the computer had balances close to zero, with investment losses instead of gains.

  The investment returns of the paper accounts were also remarkably consistent. Too consistent, as a matter of fact. Every account she checked earned exactly a twelve percent return, regardless of the timing of the client’s investment. Such consistency was statistically impossible given that the fund itself fluctuated. It invested in different currencies with constantly changing gains and losses.

  The wind gusted outside, and she longed for the warmth of her bed.

  “Still at it?” Jace stood in the doorway of the upstairs study, holding two cups of steaming coffee.

  “Come see this, Jace.” She waved him over to her computer screen. “The client accounts only total about one hundred and fifty million dollars. Not the billions showing on Edgewater’s financial statements. I’ve crossed referenced them with the account statements I found. It doesn’t look good.” She had found files of paper statements in a locked filing cabinet at Edgewater. None reconciled to the balances in the computer system.

  Jace handed her a coffee and pulled up a chair. “A hundred and fifty mil out of three billion? You mean 2.8 billion missing? How can it be so different?”

  “It appears that Nathan’s been operating a giant Ponzi scheme. He takes investors’ money and transfers it out as soon as it comes in. These must be copies of the fake statements. It’s how he keeps track. See this?” Kat pointed to the computer screen where she had reconstructed investment returns for a sample group of twenty Edgewater investors. “All these investors earned exactly twelve percent per year for the last three years.”

  “That’s impressive. I make less than two percent at the bank. Maybe I should move my money?”

  “It’s fake, Jace. All made up. Each of these clients invested at different times. Some have been in the fund the whole time, and others just invested in the last year. Yet they made exactly the same return on investment.”

  “Coincidence, maybe?”

  “No. I’ve compared dozens of clients and their investments in the fund. The fund supposedly invests in all types of currency speculation, yet I can’t reconstruct the transactions in each of their accounts, or any of the other trades in Edgewater’s hedge fund. I’ve traced all the trade settlements from the bank statements and reconstructed the gain or loss in each currency that Edgewater trades in. Know what I get?”

  “What?”

  “A loss, Jace. There is no twelve percent return. Zachary thinks his currency model works, but it doesn’t. There are no trades. Nathan simply doesn’t execute them. He’s not investing the money, and Zachary’s oblivious to that fact because he never reviews the accounts.”

  “You mean it’s all faked? Don’t other people work here? How could that go unnoticed?”

  “Nathan is very hands-on, which is surprising with his frequent trips and absences. An executive doing administrative work is another fraud red flag. The work is much too junior for a billionaire founder.” Someone had to be helping too. The extent of the manual account manipulation was too much work for just one person.

  “Zachary really has no clue about this?”

  “He says he doesn’t. As hard as it is to believe, I think he’s telling the truth,” Kat said.

  “But how could Nathan get so much money without Zachary or anyone noticing?”

  “I don’t know. This fraud has been operating for at least ten years. Look at this.” Kat held up a statement. It had the Edgewater name and logo on it, but it was in a different format than the computer-generated statements. The client name was glued to the statement.

  Jace took the statement and rubbed his finger over the logo. “Sloppy. This cut and paste job wouldn’t fool anyone.”

  “He doesn’t use this version—he scans and emails an electronic copy, so no one knows it’s been doctored. He tallies everything on a spreadsheet and just adds a percentage increase to each account every quarter. Everyone’s happy.” The cryptic spreadsheets Kat had found in Nathan’s office finally made sense. It was his manual accounting system of sorts.

  “How does he ensure the real statements don’t go out?”

  “Someone else must be in on it. When the system prints the real statements, they are destroyed. The doctored statements are mailed to clients instead.”

  Jace whistled. “All this money goes where?”

  “A good chunk of it has gone to a company called Research Analytics. I’ll pay them a visit tomorrow.” Kat pointed to the pile of Research Analytics invoices. “Fifty million was transferred so far this year, and two hundred and twenty million last year. I’m still searching for the rest.”

  “What if a client wanted to cash in their investment? Wouldn’t that expose the fraud?”

  “Only if Nathan doesn’t give them their money. As long as more new money comes in, he can pay redeeming investors without the fund going broke. He just moves the money from one investor account to another to cover it.” Kat caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned around to see Harry in the hallway, dressed in shorts and a golf shirt. “Going somewhere, Uncle Harry?”

  “Just out for a stroll.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. And it’s raining.” Harry had decided to stay over after watching the game with Jace. Had Harry been on these nighttime excursions before?

  “It is? Maybe I’ll just stay in, then.”

  Kat and Jace exchanged glances. What if she hadn’t been awake? Harry would have gone out in the sub-zero weather without a coat. “Okay, Uncle Harry. See you in the morning.”

  Harry shuffled back down the hall. The doctor was right: Harry wasn’t safe on his own. But moving him to a care home was out o
f the question. She’d figure something out tomorrow. She turned back to Jace.

  “Would you redeem your investment if you were earning twelve percent a year for five years running?”

  Jace shook his head. “No way. I can’t get that kind of return at the bank—or anywhere else.”

  “That’s exactly what Edgewater’s clients think too. Year in and year out, they’ve earned fantastic returns. No one redeems their investment unless they’re in dire straits. You’d be crazy to pass up that income. Nathan’s banking on very few redemptions. Investors always cash in less profitable investments first.”

  “So Nathan just needs enough money to cover off the few accounts that did redeem.”

  Kat nodded. “Yes, and that hasn’t been a problem. Investors are practically banging down the door to invest in the hedge fund. The fund has an air of exclusivity about it. Nathan doesn’t let just anyone invest, so people consider themselves lucky to invest in the first place. If they redeem their investment, they might not be allowed back in. And you have to be rich to invest in a high-risk hedge fund with a minimum five hundred thousand investment.”

  “It sounds like there’s no risk at all. The investors get a hefty return, year over year. The markets haven’t been anything like that. It’s too good to be true.”

  “It is—as long as Edgewater keeps earning those stellar returns. Zachary thinks it’s due to his secret trading model.”

  “Sounds like you doubt him.”

  Kat sipped her coffee. “I think he believes his model works. Trouble is, it’s never been proven, since Nathan isn’t processing the trades. And Zachary never checks. I guess he assumes twelve percent overall sounds about right. Zachary’s suspicions are bang on, though. Nathan is clearly defrauding Edgewater. The fake client statements and Beecham & Company prove that. I just don’t get how Zachary could be so disconnected. There’s more.” She filled him in on Edgewater’s unlikely association with Fredrick Svensson.

  “The Nobel economist guy? Maybe there’s a good reason to pay him. Even with different views, he might have some good currency predictions.”