Death, Taxes, and a Shotgun Wedding

by Diane Kelly

  “Yeot,” she said. “It’s a traditional Korean candy. It’s like taffy. It’s supposed to make good luck stick to you. I figured with someone out to kill you, you might need some good luck.”

  She’d gotten that right. I unwrapped one of the candies and popped it into my mouth. “Yum!” But she was right. The stuff sure was sticky. I could hardly chew it. It nearly glued my upper and bottom teeth together. She popped one into her mouth, too.

  We rode down to the lobby in silence, not so much on purpose but because our mouths were busy working the candy. Outside, we headed to the employee lot and my plain government sedan, what we feds called a G-ride. Not the sexiest cars around by any stretch of the imagination and not nearly as fun to drive as my personal BMW convertible, but you don’t exactly get luxury when you’re paying for a car with taxpayer dollars.

  We climbed in and headed for the Dallas PD headquarters, making a run through a coffee place drive-thru on the way. I opted for a skinny no-whip latte, ordering a second to take to Booth. Hana went all out and got a caramel macchiato with whipped cream. She could afford the calories. She played softball not only on the IRS team—the Tax Maniacs—but also played in a recreational league as well. Volleyball was more my game, but the only chance I’d had to play since college intramurals was an occasional game at a backyard barbecue. I’d recently pudged out a bit while battling a sweet-potato-fry addiction, but I was trying to get back on track so that I’d look my best on my wedding day. In fact, I had a final fitting for my wedding dress two weeks from Wednesday night. Until then, I’d better add an extra hundred sit-ups to my workouts.

  “Thanks.” I took the drinks from the young man at the window and situated them in the cup holders. Before I could pull out of the drive-thru, the air was pierced with an earsplitting BANG!

  Hana and I ducked down in our seats and whipped out our guns.

  Hana looked at me, her eyes wide and wary. “Was that a gunshot?”

  “It sure sounded like one!”

  Stuck in the drive-thru with a building to our left and cars to our right side and rear, we were sitting ducks. Still, we hadn’t taken a hit as far as I could tell. If someone had fired at us, they weren’t a good shot. I poked my head up to see over the steering wheel.

  BANG!

  “Sheesh.” I sat full upright now and slid my gun back into my holster. “It’s just an old VW backfiring.” Get a tune-up, you old hippie!

  “Good.” Hana sat up and reholstered her gun, too. She reached for her drink, taking a sip and getting whipped cream on the end of her nose. “For a second there, I thought we were goners.”

  chapter four

  You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours

  When we arrived at the Dallas PD headquarters building, we parked and made our way into the building, cardboard coffee cups in hand. We checked in with the uniformed Dallas PD officer working the front desk.

  “We’re here to see Detective Booth,” I said.

  The muscular guy looked us up and down, his expression skeptical as he took in the two shorter-than-average women in front of him. “You’re the special agents from the IRS?”

  “Yes,” we said in unison. And don’t let our size fool you. We kick ass. Hana’s narrowed eyes told me we’d had that thought in unison, too.

  The guy hiked a thumb toward the elevators. “You can go on up.”

  “Thanks.”

  Before we stepped away, Hana handed him one of the candies. “Try this. It’s good-luck candy.”

  “Cops can always use some of that.” He unwrapped it, popped it in his mouth, and nodded in approval as the sweet taste hit his tongue.

  Yep, Dallas PD could definitely use some good luck after the losses it suffered last year. Five officers were gunned down when a sniper ambushed them at what was supposed to be a peaceful protest to bring attention to police shootings of unarmed black men in other cities. Because the protest had been expected to be calm, and as a symbolic gesture of unity rather than divisiveness, the officers had not been wearing protective riot gear. Four of the officers who were killed served with the Dallas Police Department, while one served with Dallas Area Rapid Transit, or DART for short. On top of the deaths, multiple other officers and two civilians had been shot but had luckily survived, including a mother who had used her body to shield her children from the gunfire. It was the deadliest day for law enforcement in the U.S. since 9/11, and a dark day for Dallas. Ironically, then Police Chief David Brown, a black man, had made significant reforms during his six-year tenure, and the number of excessive-force complaints had decreased dramatically prior to the shooting. The department had focused on deescalation and community policing. But it wasn’t enough to stop an armed man intent on revenge.

  We rode an elevator up to the third floor and I led Hana down to the detective’s office at the end of the hall. The door was cracked. A coffee cup in each hand, I rapped on it with the knuckle of my index finger, saying, “It’s Agents Holloway and Kim.”

  “Come on in,” called a voice from inside.

  I opened the door and we stepped into Detective Booth’s office. She was around forty years old, seasoned enough to have learned a thing or two, at or approaching the peak of her career. She wore a pink button-down shirt and navy blue pants. Her pointy features were pixielike, her honey-colored hair slicked back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She stood from behind her desk, her gaze going from me to Hana. “Nice to see you again, Agent Holloway. I see you’ve brought a friend?”

  “Boss’s orders,” I told her. “The reason Special Agent Kim is with me is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Booth extended her hand. “Good to meet you, Agent Kim.”

  When they’d finished their exchange, I raised the cup in my right hand. “I also brought you a latte.”

  She took the cup from me and smiled at it as she cradled it in her hands. “Good to meet you, too.”

  The introductions complete, we took our seats.

  After gulping a healthy slug of coffee, the detective tilted her head and eyed me. “You want to go first or should I?”

  “Go ahead,” I told her. After all, she’d been the one to get the ball rolling by placing the call to me earlier. Her case should get priority.

  “Okay.” She picked a file folder up from her desk and held it out to me. “Here’s a set of documentation for you on the rent scam. More than forty people have filed complaints in the last five months. The MO is the same each time. The victims found a really good deal on a house or condo listed for rent online, filled out a contact form, and received an e-mail in reply from a man purporting to be a leasing agent working on behalf of the owner. The responses were virtually identical. You know, ‘there’s been a lot of interest, if you want a shot at the place you better move fast.’ That kind of thing.”

  In other words, the e-mail reply contained the standard BS intended to pressure people into making quick decisions rather than smart ones. But how was the con artist able to access the properties? Did he break in? Steal the keys somehow?

  Booth continued. “After he shows each victim the place and they express interest, he gives them an application to fill out. He tells them that the current tenants will be out at the end of the month. He also tells them that there have been other well-qualified applicants but that he’d love to rent to them because he can tell they really like the place. He says that the other applicants have higher income and more money in savings and, because of that, the property owner will probably consider them better risks. But he suggests that if the victim gets a payment to him before the other applicants they’ll have a good chance of landing the lease because the owner is leaving for a two-month trip to Europe the next day and wants to get the deal settled beforehand. He suggests the victim immediately get a money order in the amount of the first and last months’ rent, plus a security deposit. The total is usually in the range of three to four thousand dollars.”

  My mind performed some quick mental math, computing the nu
mbers. Forty victims at a minimum of three grand each totaled at least $120,000 in tax-free money. This crook had cleaned up. And who knew how much more he might have earned since the last report?

  Booth continued. “He waits at the unit until the victim returns with the money order. He claims that he called the property owner in the meantime and got the go-ahead to offer them a lease. He has them sign a rental agreement, gives them a copy of it and his business card, and arranges an alleged time later when he’ll meet them at the unit with the keys. Then he takes off with their money order, cashes it, and never shows up with the keys at the scheduled time.”

  I finished for her. “And that’s when the victims find out the guy isn’t a real leasing agent and had no authority to rent the place.”

  “Exactly,” Booth said. “Neither the victims nor the owners of the properties have any clue who the guy is. He never uses a phone to conduct business. He only uses e-mail. Clever, huh?”

  Clever, indeed. Cell phones were extremely vulnerable. Their signals could easily be located and traced, acting like a homing beacon for law enforcement. But without a phone number to ping, there was nowhere to begin.

  “Did the victims give you a good description?” I asked. “Was it consistent?”

  “Yes and yes.” She gestured to the file. “When you read through all the paperwork, you’ll see that each victim’s description of the leasing agent is virtually identical. He’s Caucasian, thirtyish. Around six feet tall. Beefy build. Short brown hair. Always wears eyeglasses with thick frames and a business suit. No scars, moles, tattoos, or other distinguishing characteristics that anyone can remember.”

  Typical. White-collar criminals weren’t usually the type to have telltale battle scars on their faces, visible body piercings, or their names tattooed across their knuckles. They tended to look like clean-cut cookie-cutter business types.

  Hana leaned forward in her seat beside me. “How does he find the properties?”

  I’d been wondering the same thing. I knew rental scams had been on the rise, but I hadn’t worked on one before and didn’t know the ins and outs of how they operated.

  Booth took another gulp of her coffee. “The so-called leasing agent rents the places for a few weeks or more on Airbnb or another vacation rental site, and while he’s leasing the place himself he runs the scam. Because he’s got keys to the place and unfettered access, it makes him look legitimate.”

  So that’s how he had done it. “If he rents the places online,” I said, “and posts ads of his own on rental sites, he’s got to be using a credit card, right? Is it a prepaid one?”

  “No,” Booth replied. “This guy is crafty. He’s opened at least three credit card accounts in other people’s names and used those cards to rent the properties and place the ads.”

  Interesting. So he’d not only run a rent scam, he’d committed identity theft as well.

  “How did he get the names and corresponding social security numbers to open the credit card accounts?” I asked.

  From her seat next to me, Hana scoffed. “If Detective Booth knew that, she’d probably have identified the guy already. She wouldn’t have called you in to help.”

  Hana had a point. The point being that I should stop asking stupid questions. But now I had a smart one. “When he applied for the credit cards under the stolen identities, where did he have the cards sent?” Maybe the address he had the cards mailed to would provide a clue as to his identity.

  “He had the cards mailed to the houses he was renting,” the detective said. “He signed up for paperless billing so that once the card was received nothing else was ever mailed to the addresses. He kept the cards active by sending in a money order for the minimum payment due each month. That way the accounts were never turned over to collections and the people whose identities he’d stolen remained clueless.”

  Hana chimed in again. “What about e-mails he sent to the victims? Any leads there?”

  Booth shifted her gaze to my coworker. “He used a different e-mail address for each property. Random ones with no pattern.”

  In other words, we couldn’t tap into his e-mails to determine where and when he might be meeting up with a potential victim so that we could make an easy arrest.

  Booth took another sip from her cup before going on. “All of the e-mails were sent from public computers at libraries or hotels. He didn’t do anything else on the computers when he sent them.”

  Too bad he hadn’t engaged in other activity on the computer, such as checking his personal e-mail account or doing some online shopping that could have helped us identify him. Also, the fact that he changed the e-mail address each time he rented a place made it impossible for us to know what address he was using now.

  “What about the money orders?” I asked. “Any leads there? He would have been required to show ID when he cashed them.”

  She dipped her head in acknowledgment. “He showed a driver’s license each time, but he appears to be using several different ones with different names on them. The one he used most often shows an address in Philadelphia. When I contacted the DMV in Philly I learned that the name and driver’s license number were phony. The address doesn’t exist, either. It was the same story with the other licenses he used. Completely bogus. My best guess is the guy ordered the licenses online. There are Web sites offering good counterfeits for around a hundred bucks. They’re made overseas and are often hidden inside a cheap toy or clothing item when they’re shipped to the U.S. in case customs decides to inspect the package.”

  Ugh. No matter how hard law enforcement tried to make it more difficult for official passports, documentation, and licenses to be faked, it seemed counterfeiters worked just as hard to provide passable forgeries. Short of fingerprints, DNA, or implanting microchips into human beings at birth, there was no failsafe method for identifying someone. And while people might not mind having a chip inserted into their cat or dog in case their beloved pet wandered off, it was unlikely the masses would agree to have a chip inserted in themselves.

  “I take it you’ve sent an alert to places in the area that cash money orders?”

  She nodded. “Not sure it’ll do much good since he seems to have a whole slew of aliases, but it’s standard procedure.”

  “What about security cameras?” I asked. “Was there any footage from these places? Maybe something showing a license plate?”

  “We got a partial license plate at one of them,” she said. “We were able to use that to identify the vehicle. Turns out the car belonged to a Backseat Driver.”

  I was familiar with Backseat Driver. It was the latest private ride service, a new competitor for Uber and Lyft.

  She went on. “The passenger used a fraudulent credit card to pay for the ride.”

  “The same card he used to rent the properties online?”

  She shook her head. “No. Again, this guy was smart. He used a different card, probably to prevent us from making the connection. We got a subpoena and Backseat Driver provided us a list of rides paid for by the fraudulent credit card. The guy was picked up at various locations, none of them a personal residence. He took Backseats to meet with the prospective tenants and to cash the money orders. He never used his own vehicle. The video clips are on a flash drive in the file. They include clips from the libraries and hotels where he sent the e-mails from.”

  Good. I’d take a close look at the video footage when I returned to my office, see if my eyes caught something the detective’s hadn’t. “Is the card still active?”

  “No. The person whose name it was in had applied for a car loan and discovered the account on his credit report. He called the bank and had the card canceled before we could get in touch with him.”

  Darn. So much for putting a hot watch on the card so that we could track its use and maybe catch the con artist in action.

  Hana had a question now. “You said he didn’t use phones in the rental-scam business, but he must’ve used a phone to access the Backseat Driver app to re
quest a ride.”

  “That’s true,” Booth acknowledged. “That was the only phone number we were able to get for him. We tried to ping it but got nothing. My guess is it was a burner phone that he ditched. He seems to know that switching things up with the credit cards will throw law enforcement off his trail, so he’s probably switching up phones, too.”

  “He’s certainly covered his tracks.” Looked like he’d done his homework, too, researching how law enforcement tracked down those committing financial crimes and doing his best to avoid repeating the mistakes of the criminals who’d come before him. His method of constantly changing credit cards and identities and phones was a good one. Trying to catch him would be like trying to hit a moving target.

  Booth raised her palms. “I’ve done everything I can think of. I interviewed the victims of the rental scam, of course. The owners of the properties, too. I also spoke with the people in whose names he opened the accounts. Most of them live out of state, everywhere from Florida to Wyoming to New Hampshire. I dug and dug, but I couldn’t find a common thread among them.”

  Everything she’d done already was exactly what I would have done, too. I exhaled a long breath. “Not sure what more I can do. Sounds like you covered all the bases. But I’ll take a second look, see if I can come up with some fresh leads.”

  The detective thanked me and said, “Your turn now. What did you need my help with?”

  I pulled the greeting card out of my purse. “This.”

  She took the card from me, read it over, and looked up at me. “You’re getting married?”

  “In just a few weeks.” Assuming I live that long.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Congratulate me once I’ve survived to see the day.”

  She chuckled, but it was mirthless. “Don’t IRS agents get death threats all the time?”

  “People have tried to kill us,” I acknowledged. “But they don’t usually warn us first.”

  “That’s because those people had a sincere intent to kill you.” She held up the card. “But things like this? Pure bluster. We see it all the time. Heck, I’ve received a dozen or more death threats myself. They’re usually sent by amateurs who have no real plan to do harm. They just want to scare their victims, cause them some distress and inconvenience. It’s the same with bomb threats. When there’s a threat made in advance, there’s rarely, if ever, a bomb.”