Shell Game by Jeff Buick

mail. Then they would go to the bank, open an account and order checks with their address on them. They’d wait for the checks to be printed and mailed out, then they’d go on a spending spree. Now, with computers and the Internet, they simply place an order with a firm that prints checks and have them sent to a P.O. box. Turnaround time is less than a week, and they don’t need an address. I don’t know if any of you saw the movie
Catch Me If You Can
, with Leonardo DiCaprio, but one of the scams they showed in the movie still works just fine. Say someone wants to write a bunch of bad checks in New York State. They take the checks and modify one number on the routing numbers the banks use to designate the Federal Reserve Bank in that region. By changing two to twelve on the routing number, the checks are sent to Hawaii for processing rather than New York. That buys them another two weeks. When the checks finally start to come back to the bank, they’ve scammed thousands and thousands of dollars from merchants and the bank and have moved on to the next set of checks they ordered. The losses to the banks are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s just checks. There are hundreds of other frauds going on out there every day. We’re talking billions of dollars in fraud every year. Yet for some reason, everyone seems to think this is acceptable. It’s all Greek to me.”
    â€œHow do you catch them?” Alan asked.
    Morel shrugged. “Usually we don’t. The criminal has to make a mistake to get caught. If they’re smart about what they’re doing, keep moving and don’t get too greedy, they get away with it. In fact, most of the small ones just get written off. It’s the big ones, like this, that get the attention.”
    â€œThat’s not good news,” Taylor said.
    Morel finished his coffee and set the mug on the table. “We might have a line on some of the computers they used. And sometimes there is still usable information on the drives. Sometimes. Usually they wipe the drives clean by writing a series of zeroes over the data.”
    Taylor nodded. “Kelly told me about that,” she said. Both men looked at her. “Kelly Kramer, he’s my computer specialist at G-cubed. Well,
was
my computer specialist. He took some kind of Master’s program in some sort of high-technology crime investigation from some college in Arlington.”
    â€œHe’s working for an advertising firm?” Morel asked. “What’s with that?”
    â€œHe was involved with some woman, and she wanted to move to San Francisco. When he followed her out here, he needed a job. I was the first one to make him an offer. He’s great with computers and CAD, and he loved the job. So he stayed.”
    Morel scratched his head thoughtfully. Jamie was an asset when it came to dredging information off a wiped hard drive, but Jamie wasn’t always reliable. There were times when he was AWOL. It would be wise to keep Taylor Simons’s computer specialist as a backup. “Maybe we could use him,” Sam said. “We’re run off our feet just trying to keep up with all the fraud that’s happening. We’ve got a hiring freeze on. It’s all about money these days. Anyway, one of my sources has a line on a batch of computers that just came on the resale market. I’m meeting with him later today.”
    Alan managed a slight smile. “Well, good luck. Any news these days is good news. It’s been over a week since they took off with our money. I don’t imagine the trail gets any warmer with time.”
    â€œNo. It’s not like a murder investigation where time is often crucial, but the longer Brand and his crew have to settle in somewhere, the worse it is for us.”
    â€œIf the trail goes cold . . .” Taylor let the sentence die off. She didn’t have to finish. The money had disappeared into a black hole,