This didn’t seem to impress Wilhelm. If he hadn’t dealt with bigger fish, he certainly wanted to give that impression. Perhaps I should have mentioned a bigger amount.
“Would your client be giving the instructions? Or would he want us to trade for him?”
“Due to time differences, I think he’d prefer your experts to do it. Tell me how’s it done.”
He spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the investment mechanism. I gave him a gracious smile and a nod.
“Earlier you mentioned confidentiality. This is something that my client insists upon.”
“Swiss law and our bank’s rules assure that,” he said.
“What about communication? How does he contact you?”
“On the phone, unless there’s a problem for him in America,” he said smoothly, looking at my face through his rimless glasses. “Or he could fax or e-mail us. We can also hold his mail until he comes to Switzerland to collect it.”
“Do you have a U.S.-based correspondent bank? My client may want to use that link, rather than go through international communication lines.”
“I understand, sir. In fact, we can use McHanna Associates in New York. They aren’t a bank, but rather a service company, and I’m told they’re very experienced.”
“That sounds good,” I said.
“With your client’s written authorization, they could handle all matters for your client without any problem.”
“Including receiving mail, like your monthly statements?” “Of course.”
“By the way,” I said casually. “Where can I find Whitney-Davis? My client was so impressed with his professional abilities.”
He frowned and dialed his phone again and exchanged a few sentences.
“We aren’t sure,” he said. “You may want to contact McHanna Associates in New York. They may know more about him.”
Ah, but McHanna had already told me that he couldn’t remember whether he’d heard from Whitney-Davis since his South Dakota scam in the mid 1980s.
I returned to my hotel with a briefcase full of glossy brochures and application forms. Discovering a current business relationship between the former manager of a savings bank victimized by Whitney-Davis and a Swiss bank that appeared to run a legitimate business was peculiar but not earthshaking. There were, however, two very interesting findings. First, McHanna hadn’t only lied to me. He didn’t seem to hold a grudge against Whitney- Davis and now, in fact, could be in contact with him. I was puzzled by that finding. I had just heard that Whitney- Davis continued to use that name years after the scam. But the FBI had told us that the name had disappeared from all credit-reporting agencies. And now it had surfaced again? It was highly unusual.
Second, McHanna Associates was apparently helping U.S. residents avoid the prying eyes of the U.S. government by accepting and keeping their Swiss banking correspondence. That could be considered aiding and abetting money laundering, if the proceeds deposited by the client were the fruit of a crime. But at that moment I was too frustrated, tired, and hungry to follow up on these promising leads or think about the resurrection of Whitney-Davis’s name. The idea that man could live on bread alone turned out to be all wet. I was hungry and needed a beer. Unfortunately, the meal I ended up getting consisted of a tuna sandwich and a local beer that tasted as if it had gone through a horse first.
I hooked up my laptop to my room’s high-speed Internet connection and sent Esther the efficient office admin an encrypted e-mail: Please check with the New York State Banking Department whether McHanna Associates need a license to act as a liaison for a Swiss bank in currency transactions for U.S. citizens. If such a license is necessary, please see if one was issued to McHanna. Also, ask the FBI field office in Manhattan whether there’s an ongoing investigation regarding that company’s possible involvement in money laundering. Finally, check if McHanna ever filed any tax returns listing Harrington T. Whitney-Davis as an employee, or engaged him as an in de pen dent contractor.
The latter two questions were legitimate, but the chances that the FBI would discuss the first question, even though we were both agencies of the U.S. government, were slim to none. As to the tax returns, the IRS could not, under federal law, share that information without a court order. Neither the FBI nor the IRS were the bad guys in this bureaucratic nightmare. They had to maintain a stringent procedure for information exchange. But maybe Esther, with her quiet demeanor, could achieve what I couldn’t with my big mouth and aggressive attitude.
I had a free evening. But Zurich at night is as exciting as having a warm beer with an overly talkative blind date you agreed to meet during a temporary moment of insanity. Swiss TV isn’t any better. I called my children and went to sleep.
In the morning, I had barely shaken myself awake when I turned on my laptop computer. There was an incoming encrypted e-mail from Esther: There’s no need for a license from the New York State Banking Department if the company isn’t doing any banking activities in New York, such as taking deposits or making loans to the public. Providing liaison services alone requires no license. As for the FBI, I received an evasive answer regarding any investigation of McHanna Associates. The IRS says officially that they can’t help us, but unofficially I was led to understand that Harrington T. Whitney-Davis’s name never appeared on McHanna Associates’ tax filings, although it’s possible that an alias was used. Please let me know if you need anything else. Esther.
I returned to New York. Unenthusiastically, I pulled out the files again. I checked the names of the perpetrators in the remaining eight cases. By now, what I found didn’t surprise me; it was all so obvious that I almost expected it. All eight men had left the U.S. in 1980 or 1981. Their respective names had resurfaced briefly, one with each of the banking or other scams perpetrated. Then each had vanished again. Since I discovered that the name of Whitney-Davis resurfaced, I ran a check on all other names to see if we had a wholesale revival. But the answer came as expected. No. No resurgence of any other name.
I had a hunch that the suspected perpetrators’ disappearances weren’t coincidental. There was a clear pattern. Since none of the men had any meaningful criminal record, or a troubled past, I didn’t suspect that they had cooperated with the thefts of their identities, although I couldn’t rule that out altogether. I had to decide on a direction. But I had no idea which way to turn.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There were additional questions I wanted to ask McHanna about his contacts with Whitney-Davis, but I decided against it. The information I had received in Switzerland was, at best, just raw intelligence, and confronting McHanna before I had hard evidence could be damaging.
I called David Stone. He had always been a good sounding board for my queries. David’s physical appearance as a typical absentminded university professor with profuse white hair and eyeglasses slipping to the tip of his nose was misleading. Although nearing retirement, he was very alert, and all brain. He was always the first to come to the office and the last to leave, the exact opposite of a lot of guys in his position, who are just there to mark time until their pension kicks in. I tried to imagine what David would do in retirement, but it seemed so out of character for him that no clear picture materialized in my mind’s eye.
“Let me put you on speaker,” he said. “Bob Holliday is also here, and I want him to get involved.”
“OK, I’m facing an interesting question. Who would know that a bunch of apparently unrelated young American men in their early twenties left the United States at about the same time, leaving no trace behind them?”
“There are many young men, Americans and other nationals, who take off and never return to their homelands. That’s no news,” David answered.
“I think there’s at least one common denominator to all these cases,” I continued, “but the FBI takes it even a step further. They think all the scams were perpetrated by the same person.”
“I saw that. Their conclusion is based on paper-thin evidence. You know that from a false premise, any conclusion can be drawn. I tend to think that the FBI found itself in a cul-de-sac, or it wouldn’t have off-loaded the file on us.” David sounded tired. “I didn’t get back to you on this because I had no answers either. So maybe you
