Someone at International Merchants Bank had figured out a way. The only thing he hadn’t figured on was Robin Hendricks and the lucky break. The lucky break was Harold Chu, a fourth-generation Chinese-American, who worked in the communications section of the bank handling the night traffic.
Besides checking the computer program and procedures, Robin had gone around to the various departments and asked the employees if they remembered anything unusual happening in the last few months, anything out of the ordinary — anything, no matter how trivial or insignificant. She got several dozen responses. They didn’t pan out. Then Harold Chu knocked on her door.
Harold was bright, in his twenties, and had an insatiable curiosity about everything. The night shift in communications handled routine transactions. The branches and regional clearing houses fed all the day’s checks, deposits, and withdrawals information through the computers at night. Pretty dry stuff, virtually all automated. Harold just had to see that the data-transmission lines kept working and that all this mass of data was going to the right places.
But a couple of months ago that routine had been broken several times during the course of two weeks. He got instructions to send domestic money transfers to various other banks to be deposited to a number of different companies. That was unusual. Generally that kind of traffic was handled directly during banking hours by the operations officers upstairs. Harold had never handled anything like that before. He had to transfer the information over the telex to the various banks.
All the proper clearances and codes were in the transmittal orders, which came in over the bank’s own computer, so Harold didn’t see anything wrong, but he was curious. Harold wrote down the dates, names of the companies and the banks where the transfers were going, and the account of the major corporate customer they were drawn against. He thought he would check out these companies sometime, see what they did. They had names like Global Transport, QRB Corporation, Toltec Import-Export, Cal-Farm Commodities, Ltd.
He put the list in his desk. When Robin made her request for odd information Harold remembered the list. He showed it to her. She showed it to Naughton. Naughton began to get that funny feeling that tells you something is really out of whack.
“We checked these companies with the other banks, Mr. McDermott,” Naughton said. “The accounts had all been opened recently, within the last four months. All were checking accounts for three to four thousand dollars. There had been no activity until these domestic money transfers were deposited.”
Naughton went on to say that the next day after each of these transactions took place a telex message was received by these banks to transfer the funds by international wire to a bank in Zurich. They all went to a company called International Outfitters, S.A., of Panama. Naughton’s staff queried Panama — no such company. They checked their corporate account — the right name, but there was no account for the number used. They queried the Swiss bank, where a tight-lipped bank officer said only that the International Outfitters, S.A., account had been dosed out, end conversation.
Now that they knew the money had been stolen, Robin reasoned out how it had probably been done. “Actually, Mr. McDermott, it was relatively simple for someone having an intimate knowledge of the computer program here at the bank. It had to be someone in the bank with access to the computer itself. The security for the system precludes any outside tampering.”
“Our thief had to program the computer to instruct Harold Chu to telex these domestic money transfers to the various accounts he had established at the other banks. Once that was done he had to erase the memory of those transactions from the computer. The second part was to hide the source of the money. The audit department found that the float accounts at the other branches are short the five point seven million. The float here at the main branch balances, so we believe our thief transferred the money in from the other branches to the dummy corporate account he set up and then sent it out as domestic money transfers from the main branch. He did a good job of it. There are no records of withdrawals from the branch floats, deposits to the corporate account, or of the domestic money transfers on Harold Chu’s list. Without that list we wouldn’t have the faintest idea what had happened to the money.”
Naughton broke in, “Miss Hendricks is quite right, McDermott. There is absolutely no record of any of these transactions anywhere. We know the money was stolen and we know how it was done.”
I asked the sixty-four-dollar question, “OK, the money’s gone. Do you have a suspect?”
“We have a good idea,” said Naughton. “F. Terrance Boynton was our head of data processing. He was here when we put in the new computer system. He helped put it in and he left over two months ago.”
Robin added, “I talked to Laidlaw and they said Boynton was totally familiar with the system and the program. He has the knowledge and the ability to get past the security blocks and change the program.”
Naughton sounded angry, “When Miss Hendricks told us that the computer was tampered with we phoned Boynton. He’d already left town. There’s no forwarding address.”
“So what do you want Quad to do, Mr. Naughton?”
“I think it’s a good bet that Boynton stole the money. But that’s just a hunch. I want you to find where he’s gone. Check the companies that got the money. See if there’s a connection. Mr. McDermott, I want you to find the bank’s five million, seven hundred thousand dollars.”
Robin and I had two rules: no familiarity during working hours and no business during off hours. We spent a quiet weekend at her place. On Sunday we went over to Art and Rosa’s for a barbecue with their kids. Art Tones was another of the partners in Quad. He was a lawyer and had been with the D.A.’s office until he couldn’t take the legal games any longer. So twelve years ago he and I, Bob Johnson, and Charlie Schwartz had formed Quad Investigations.
On Monday morning I headed for the office. Quad was going hunting for F. Terrance Boynton. Our office was in West L. A., off Sepulveda. We had bought an old machine shop and fixed up the inside. The outside still looked like a machine shop.
Charlie Schwartz, our only partner with a police background, twenty-three years on the Chicago PD, was going to tackle Boynton’s old neighbors, while Art and Bob were going to see if there were records of a condo sale, DMV, post office, etc. I went back to the bank.
This time I didn’t head for the twenty-seventh floor. The elevator took me down two flights to the security office. Most big operations have their employees sign in and out at the security desk after regular hours. The time sheets showed that Boynton had been in the computer room at the times and dates on Chu’s list. He had also spent a few nights a week in the computer room for several months previous to the thefts. I figured that was when he worked out the programming for the theft. Before that he very seldom came in after hours. Boynton was looking more and more like a good suspect.
By Tuesday afternoon we knew Boynton was really gone — vanished into the woodwork. He had sold his condominium, furniture, and car, closed out his bank accounts, paid all his bills. Even with all the computers, credit cards, I.D.s, and government agencies, if someone wants to disappear it’s simple. There was no record of Boynton having a passport, so it was a cinch he had established a phony identity. We already knew of two that he had used for setting up the fake bank accounts — he would have others, one for the Swiss bank and one or more for his final disappearance.