The Whistleblower Read online

  “I went to the bar instead,” Mitch blurted.

  The only reaction was a head tilt. Bemused curiosity, but not yet comprehension.

  “Yesterday afternoon. After you told me to leave,” Mitch continued.

  Something finally clicked in.

  “Oh, right. Yeah. Good call,” Thad said, then cracked a sly grin. “You’re not telling me this because you need another day off for the hangover, are you?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that.”

  “All right. Good man.”

  And, again, there was nothing more.

  “Well, back to work,” Mitch said.

  “You bet,” Thad replied, and returned his attention to his phone.

  Mitch returned to his office and ran through the entire conversation again. He was trying to picture it from above, like he hadn’t been a participant.

  What he saw was an employee interrupting his boss, who was in the middle of something else—something that didn’t involve the employee at all. The boss was distracted, preoccupied. When the employee made a reference to their last interaction, the boss didn’t track it. When the boss finally did clue in, it was like the matter in question was about fourteenth place on the list of things the boss was thinking about.

  Like the employee had turned it into something more than it was.

  Poker-Playing Mitch had to admit it was possible Paranoid Mitch had been wrong about Thad. He could have been up on the thirty-fifth floor for some other reason. Something unrelated to Mitch and the CDCs.

  And that Nissan. Maybe it was completely benign—another driver, like Mitch, who was just looking for the fastest way downtown. The passenger could have been an ordinary guy of Latin American heritage who liked tattoos. Or, heck, a gangbanger, but not at all associated with New Colima.

  Mitch allowed for the possibility that he was simply letting his imagination get the best of him on all fronts.

  He was still going to blow the whistle, of course.

  If he didn’t do it soon, he swore the anxiety was going to kill him.

  * * *

  ***

  It was a quiet weekend at the Dupree household. At least in some ways.

  Mitch and Natalie remained on edge. Mitch recounted his brief visit to Thad’s office in full detail, and Natalie agreed it was possible—even likely—Thad had no idea what Mitch planned to do.

  Of course, they agreed it was also possible Thad was playing dumb.

  So they kept a vigil for black Nissans, shady-looking passersby, or anything that indicated they were being watched.

  They unceremoniously canceled the kids’ plans—a birthday party sleepover for Claire, an afternoon of video games with a friend for Charlie—and declared, over the strenuous chafing of both children, this was going to be a family weekend. Everyone was staying in. They said it was about reconnecting, not mentioning that it was because they were afraid to let the kids out of their sight.

  The kids only bitched further when Mitch disappeared into his office. If it was a family weekend, why was Daddy slinking off to do work? Natalie did her best to mollify them with unlimited screen time and abundant sweets.

  Mitch, meanwhile, had finally zeroed in on the right attorney.

  His name was Scott Trujillo. He was a partner at a boutique firm in Atlanta that specialized in plaintiff’s qui tam actions—whistle-blower suits against corporations and/or government agencies. Which meant he had never represented USB.

  He was, simply, the guy for this sort of thing. Atlanta Magazine put him on their “Best of Atlanta” list. Martindale-Hubbell had named him a “Top-Rated Lawyer.” Lawdragon selected him as one of the “500 Leading Lawyers in America.” Among his areas of focus, listed on his firm’s website, were “embezzlement, kickbacks, tax fraud, securities fraud, billing fraud, money laundering, and government overpayment.”

  He was even bilingual.

  Perfect.

  It got better. Mitch had been dimly aware that whistle-blowers could sometimes get compensated for their actions. He just had no idea how much. Under the False Claims Act, a whistle-blower could recoup a percentage—up to a quarter—of whatever fine the corporation was forced to pay on account of its wrongdoing. According to his bio, Trujillo had (successfully) sued a dazzling list of large companies, winning seven- and even eight-figure awards for his clients across a broad spectrum of industries.

  Mitch wasn’t doing this for the payday. All he wanted was to keep his job. And yet . . . there was no question USB could wind up paying a huge fine for its wanton recklessness with the CDC business.

  Like in the hundreds of millions. Easily.

  Mitch tried not to get too dreamy about that. USB would probably fight the fine for years, tying the thing up in courts with endless legal obfuscation. For now, what mattered was exposing this fraud and making it stop. Doing the right thing, in a way that USB wouldn’t dare fire him—because, as a whistle-blower, he was protected from retaliation.

  He weighed the best way to approach Trujillo. Someone that high on the legal heap would be selective about which clients he took on. He would want someone professional, capable; someone he could partner with during the long and inevitably bruising process of challenging a bank with USB’s endless resources.

  So. No desperate Saturday e-mails. No sniveling I’m losing my mind please call me as soon as you can voice mails.

  Mitch had to act like he was in control of this process, like he had other options. And he did, right? He was in a position of power here. Thinking like a banker, he was a valuable asset. He had to act that way.

  Come Monday, he would call Trujillo’s office and set up a face-to-face meeting, keeping the reason for it vague but tantalizing. When the time came, he’d wear his Mean Business suit. He’d bring electronic copies of the SARs, which he would retrieve from the USB cloud server, where they were safely stored. Before long, Trujillo would be begging to represent Mitch.

  And once Scott Trujillo was on Mitch’s side? He’d be safe. Legally. Financially. He could feel it.

  He laid out everything for Natalie, seeing if she could poke holes in his plan, trying to soft-sell the part about the seven and eight figures.

  She agreed: This wasn’t about the money.

  But the money sure wouldn’t be bad.

  Mitch was so optimistic about where things were headed, he rejoined family activities on Sunday. They made waffles for breakfast and stayed in their pj’s all day, alternating between playing board games and binge-watching a baking show they were all into.

  It was a glorious day, with an even better finish. After the kids went to bed, Mitch and Natalie made love, then cuddled, murmuring to each other until they fell asleep in a contented, naked tangle in the middle of the bed.

  Which is exactly where they were at five minutes after three in the morning, when their slumber was shattered by a thunderous thud, followed by the crack of splintering wood.

  * * *

  ***

  Mitch bolted upright. Natalie clutched the sheet to her chest.

  There was shouting coming from downstairs. It was indistinct, drowned out by the tromping of heavy boots on hardwood floors. It sounded like at least ten people.

  A panic like none he had ever known seized Mitch. Was this that Mexican gangbanger and his friends? Had they been watching all weekend? Waiting for the dead of night to pounce? Were they going to slaughter him and his family?

  New Colima doesn’t negotiate with business rivals. It beheads them.

  Mitch looked around for something to grab, something he could use to defend himself. If he could meet the attackers before they made it all the way up the stairs, maybe Natalie and the kids could escape out a second-floor window while the New Colima thugs butchered him. He was ready to make that sacrifice. Without a second thought.

  Then the shouting finally coalesced into three le
tters, being repeated in an insistent staccato:

  “FBI! FBI! FBI!”

  FBI? But why would the FBI—

  “We’re executing a warrant!” came another shout.

  Soon the boots were coming up the stairs. His bedroom door opened. A flashlight beam was shining in his face, blinding him.

  “Mitchell Dupree, you are under arrest! Let’s see those hands. Hands! Now!”

  Mitch was too stupefied not to comply. What choice did he have?

  “Stand up! Stand up and turn around!”

  Someone had turned on the light in the master bedroom. Natalie was cowering into the far corner of the bed, sitting against the headboard, the sheet and blanket now up to her neck.

  Mitch, still naked, felt his hands being roughly cuffed behind his back.

  “What did I do?” Mitch asked.

  He got no answer.

  “Seriously, what did I do?” he said again.

  As an FBI agent awkwardly helped him get dressed and led him outside, Mitch must have asked the question, in different forms, a dozen more times.

  It took roughly twelve hours to start getting answers.

  Money laundering. Racketeering. Wire fraud.

  By this point, he was in an interrogation room, deep inside the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office, seated across from two agents.

  Agent Lia Hines took the lead. She was roughly Mitch’s age, with a few gray streaks hiding under her straight brown hair. She talked like an elementary school teacher—calm, but commanding.

  Agent Chris Hall joined her. He was younger and looked like something straight out of the FBI handbook: blond, clean-cut, squared-jawed.

  Mitch was joined on his side of the table by an attorney. Not Scott Trujillo. It was a criminal defense attorney, a friend of a friend, who had experience with white-collar crime.

  As the agents discussed the allegations against Mitch, he was desperate to set them straight, to tell them they had grabbed the wrong person. And he could prove it. Just give him access to the USB cloud server so he could show them all those unfiled SARs, and he would have this cleared up in no time.

  Damn it, he was the good guy here.

  But Mitch’s attorney had already told him not to talk, not to say a word until after Hines and Hall had shown at least some of their hand. Mitch understood why. For a defense attorney, this was free discovery.

  So Mitch waited, patiently, incredulously, as they unspooled everything. The FBI had been tipped off that Mitch was leading a double life, that he was pretending to be a bank compliance director while secretly taking orders from New Colima Cartel.

  The documentary evidence was clear that Mitch had permitted a massive breach of the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed New Colima to make untold millions of dollars—perhaps billions of dollars—in illicit deposits through a network of casas de cambio in Mexico.

  Furthermore, he had used his position as compliance director to mislead his superiors at USB, both in the nature of these deposits and in their legal obligation to report them. Mitch had personally turned one of the largest banks of America into a money-laundering machine.

  And now the FBI, in its extraordinary magnanimity, was going to toss him a lifeline, give him one chance to do the right thing.

  “If you would like to plead guilty and then cooperate, tell us who you dealt with at the cartel and then testify against them, we will assist you in getting a sentence reduction,” Hines said. “Maybe a substantial one, depending on who you can serve up. We don’t make this kind of offer to everyone, Mr. Dupree. This is your one chance to come clean. What do you say?”

  Mitch, who was ready to scream at that point, was grateful when his attorney nodded that it was okay to talk.

  “You don’t understand,” Mitch said. “You’ve got this all wrong. I don’t work for the cartel. I’ve never worked for the cartel. I don’t know anyone at any cartel.”

  Hines, the elementary school teacher, frowned at her unruly student. Hall, the clean-cut one, actually smirked.

  “Then explain this,” he said.

  He slid a thin sheaf of paper across the table. It was a statement for an account in Jersey—the island in the English Channel, not the state—that contained more than four million dollars.

  And the owner was listed as Mitchell Dupree.

  “Can you explain the source of these funds?” Hall asked. “Because we’ve gone through your financials and checked with the IRS. There is nothing in your returns to indicate you’ve reported an income that would have allowed you to amass this kind of savings.”

  “But that’s not . . . that’s not mine,” Mitch stammered. “I’ve never seen that before. I’ve never done business with a bank in Jersey.”

  “Your name is on the account, Mr. Dupree.”

  “I know. But this has to be some kind of mistake. Some other Mitchell Dupree. I never—”

  “It was opened on Thursday. Funds arrived there on Friday from an account in the Caymans believed to be associated with New Colima Cartel. Is this your signature?”

  Hall slid a document across the table. Mitch looked at the bottom of it. His mouth was almost too dry to answer.

  “Yes, but—”

  “That signature is on all the bank’s paperwork.”

  Mitch studied the oversized M, the loop of the D, the way the last two e’s were represented only by a thin line. It was the digital signature he had stored in his work account, the one he had used on every single SAR he had ever completed—and all the other documents he had electronically signed for the bank.

  And that’s when it finally clicked.

  Thad.

  He had access to that signature. He was also the one who had established the relationship with the CDCs, who defended its continued existence, who lied about having filed all those SARs. And because of the nature of the Latin American division, so insulated from the rest of the bank, no one else at USB would know all the details.

  Except Roger. And good luck getting him to testify.

  It suddenly made sense why Thad had turned down promotions that would have taken him out of the Latin American division: The cartel was paying him better than USB. Plus, his successor would come in, ask the same kinds of questions Mitch had, and unravel the whole thing.

  Everything about his life was a cover. The sensitive boss act. The talk about family. Even the Disney fetish.

  And now, when he suspected Mitch was going to blow the whistle, he had turned the tables on Mitch, making him look like the guilty one. The account had been opened a few hours after their meeting on Thursday. The money arrived the next day. Thad wasn’t up on thirty-five that morning. He had been talking with his bosses at New Colima. We’re about to have a problem, he had said, but I know how we can make it go away. . . .

  “Thad Reiner is the one who told you all this, isn’t he,” Mitch said.

  A declarative statement. Not a question.

  “We’re not at liberty to discuss the identity of our informants,” Hines said.

  “He’s manipulating you,” Mitch said. “He’s using you. He’s the one who’s working for New Colima. And I can prove it.”

  Mitch told them about the four years’ worth of suspicious activity reports, about the deposit slips, about how he had relied on Thad, the one with the FinCEN password, to file them.

  “And it’s all still on the USB server,” Mitch said. “Just give me access to a computer and I’ll show you.”

  Hall, smirking again, glanced at Hines.

  “We were told you might say something like that,” Hines said.

  “Well, because it’s true. Just let me—”

  “Mr. Dupree, USB has given us their full cooperation. We’ve spent the weekend working with their attorneys. We were given access to your log-in. We searched the entire server. There are no suspicious activity reports relating to
the casas de cambio transactions.”

  Suddenly, the room was incredibly small and hot. Like someone had simultaneously removed all the air and cranked up the thermostat. Mitch was a fish who had unwittingly swum into a trap. Now he had been jerked into the bottom of a boat, where he lay squirming, repeatedly opening his mouth to gasp for breath, only there was no new oxygen entering his bloodstream.

  Thad had not only lied about filing those SARs, he had permanently erased every single one.

  * * *

  ***

  One of things all poker players have to learn—the hard way, if necessary—was encapsulated in a song written by Don Schlitz, most famously performed by Kenny Rogers.

  You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.

  There was no question in Mitch’s mind—as he was processed, then arraigned, then sent to jail to await trial—which he had to choose.

  Thad had him thoroughly outmaneuvered. Mitch could see it when he talked to the FBI agents, who listened to what he said without actually hearing it. He could even see it when he talked to his own attorney, who only pretended to believe in his client’s innocence.

  The account in Jersey was that damning. Mitch could keep insisting it wasn’t his, that he didn’t know anything about it. It just made him sound more guilty. It was, he conceded, already too late to keep himself out of prison.

  With that acknowledged, he had basically one last card left to play.

  And he had to be damn careful about how he did it.

  Mitch had already figured out his greatest threat wasn’t the FBI, the Justice Department, or whatever punishment the United States of America was going to mete out against him.

  It was New Colima.

  He couldn’t see how the cartel would allow him to stay alive. He was, at this point, nothing more than a loose end. Thad would have told his cartel contact as much.

  New Colima doesn’t negotiate . . . it beheads.

  If that’s what it did to business rivals, what would it do to potential witnesses?