Troubleshooter

Chapter 16 - Must. Not. Kill.

           

"HOW WAS your first day?" Amy asked Tom when he entered the office after his regular workday at Strom Defense had ended

"You should know; you were in my ear the whole day!" Tom said.

"That HR-girl sounded nice and interested."

"She is nice. I am interested. But she showed the same behavior to the other two guys that started today in the engineering department, so I don't think I have any special status with her."

"I know what her hobbies are. Should I collect some talking points and feed them to you, when she next comes by? Latest windsurfing gear. Best beaches of the Caribbean Sea."

"I had to cancel an after-work drink get-together with the new guys and some other people. Including Jasmine." Tom sighed. "Show me why I had to cancel an evening with Jasmine."

"Cheer up, mate! Forget Jasmine! You have a great evening with Amy in front of you." Amy showed Tom a long list of numbers. "To move a hundred million dollars from a financial computer system, you need to split up the amount. Otherwise it would be too easy to detect." Tom nodded. So far, so simple. "There are three ways to hide a financial transaction: First option: You hide it in a regular transaction. I claim to pay you a million dollars for goods, but in reality I move the money to my own bank account."

"But won't I become suspicious if my money does not arrive?"

"You will, but it might take some time. The scheduled pay date might be two or three month in the future."

"So it gives the robber to plan a graceful exit within that time."

"Correct. Possibility number two: You create real business transactions with a fake company or, in our case, probably many fake companies. As long as no one asks what the money is used for, no one will discover the fraud."

"But someone needs to authorize the transactions." Tom understood. "I see, the person signing-off on the payment is in on the theft."

"A company like Strom Industries has a set of authorized approvers. The higher you are in the hierarchy, the more you are allowed to sign. I estimate that, with an organization like Strom Defense with around ten thousand employees worldwide and about five thousand in England, we are talking about five hundred managers with signing authority."

Tom whistled. "A lot of suspects."

"The lowest level, maybe three hundred managers, will have only a small authorization level. Even at one hundred thousand US dollars signing level, you would need to create one thousand signed transactions in order to reach one hundred million. And that is risky because there are one thousand ways to be caught."

"What is the third option?" Tom asked.

"Theft by hacker: someone modifies the financial computer system to do something that skims of money by creating shadow transactions, by systematically and automatically exchanging bank accounts, or by taking off a pence or cent here and there and moving it elsewhere."

"And what numbers are we looking at here?" Tom asked. The list on the screen was updated with a new entry now and then with a new name and number.

"Those are numbers to investigate option one, change of the receiver's bank accounts. I created this report by consolidating all financial transactions for the last two years. Now the program runs in the background and collects any outgoing bank transaction. It compares the account details for the same companies. Any time it differs, it shows up on this list."

"Oh dear, looks like a long list."

"Well, either we hit the mother lode at the first attempt, or—what's more likely—all of these vendors or customers changed their bank connection in the last year."

"Or the partner company has several bank accounts? I know that I do. One here in London for managing my grants and one at home in Bristol," Tom said.

Amy stared at him intently for a minute and Tom had the feeling she was reevaluating him. She swallowed. "Must. Not. Kill."

Tom stepped aside. "What did I do wrong?"

Amy put her head on her arms. "Myself." She tapped on the keyboard, deleting the list and called up a database tool to start anew.

Tom wasn't sure whether he was delighted with his input or felt pity for Amy.