J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 03 - No Time To Hide (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Frank Vatch studied the documents that had just been handed to him. “These are bank records that I received a month ago.”

United States Attorney Brenda Gadd nodded her head and walked back toward counsel table. A few of the jurors were looking at the clock, but most of them leaned forward in their seats. They were now engaged.

It had been two days, and they wanted to see the evidence that had been hinted at from the beginning. Like all juries, there was also a desire to just get the job done — hang the bastard and go home.

“And how did you obtain these bank records?” Gadd sat down. She picked up a pen and made a checkmark by one of the questions typed on her sheet of paper.

“It wasn’t easy.” Vatch forced his narrow slit of a mouth into a bent smile. He attempted to seem normal and friendly, but it didn’t work. When he made eye contact with a few of the jurors, they looked away. Since he was a child, Vatch simply gave off a bad vibe. He was an asshole, and anybody who spent more than thirty seconds in his presence quickly figured that out.

“Michael Collins’ story didn’t seem right to me. I always treated him like a suspect, because it would be stupid not to.” Vatch paused, and then continued. “He had opportunity and he took it.”

“Explain,” said Gadd, and Vatch obliged.

“On the night Joshua Krane was murdered, Krane and Mr. Collins went to get the account numbers and passwords from a safe deposit box as part of a potential settlement agreement with the Justice Department.”

“Why?” Gadd asked, just as they had rehearsed the night before.

“Krane had been accused of bribery and various other bad acts while securing very large contracts from the Defense Department. We are talking billions of dollars. The money in those accounts was going to be used by Krane to pay back some of what had been stolen and also as a penalty.”

Vatch paused and waited. Gadd nodded her head and he continued.

“In the confusion that night, either before or after Krane was killed and Mr. Collins was shot, Michael Collins got those bank account numbers and then later illegally transferred the money to his personal accounts.”

“And Michael Collins had no authority to make those wire transfers, true?”

“That’s true.” Vatch spoke directly to the grand jurors. “That money either belonged to Krane, Krane’s family, Krane’s company or the victims who had been defrauded by Joshua Krane. I don’t know who it belonged to, exactly; I’ll leave that to the lawyers. I just know that the money didn’t belong to Michael Collins.”

Gadd nodded earnestly, allowing the jurors a few moments to process the information.

“And to you, as a trained law enforcement officer, what did this mean?”

“It means
that Michael Collins committed wire fraud.”

Gadd nodded, making sure to give the jurors time to write down the words “wire fraud” in their notebooks. She liked the term ‘wire fraud.’ It sounded like Michael Collins was
an old-time mobster.  “And then?”

“And then motive wasn’t too hard to figure out.” Vatch leaned forward. “Michael Collins had grown up pretty poor, and the temptation to get rich quick isn’t unusual for his type. Then he disappeared. People don’t normally
ditch all of their belongings and move to Mexico,” Vatch smirked. “It made him look very suspicious to me.”

“Are you saying that Michael Collins arranged to have Joshua Krane murdered?”

Vatch shook his head.

“I can’t say that. It’s possible, but I can’t say that for sure. There were others who also wanted to kill Krane and take the money.” Vatch paused, unsure of how much detail he should provide. “I just know that Michael Collins took the money and ran.”

Vatch caught the eye of a few jurors. They nodded at him, despite their dislike. Then, Vatch nodded back. His honesty had apparently just scored a few points.

“A few years ago,” Vatch continued. “Collins had come back to New York. His girlfriend was in trouble, and we had an opportunity to make an arrest. But things got complicated.”

“How so?” Gadd knew that Agent Vatch was going to talk about Lowell Moore, Patty Bernice and the
Maltow
file. It was complicated testimony that she would try to avoid at the actual trial, but in the safety of a grand jury room, Gadd wanted to see how it would play out. She wanted to practice, just in case Vatch had to testify about it at the actual trial. Without a judge or defense attorney in a grand jury proceeding, there wasn’t any better place to test Agent Vatch.

“Well, I had been focused on Michael Collins from the beginning. But, it appears that there were multiple people who knew about these bank accounts and wanted to take the money from Krane. A den of thieves, so to speak.” Vatch paused. He smirked, hoping that somebody would find him humorous
, but nobody laughed. He was back to being an asshole.

“The law firm where Collins
worked had mishandled a case, called
Maltow
. The firm had missed a major deadline, which resulted in the case being dismissed. Rather than come clean, the senior partner, Mr. Lowell Moore and his assistant, Patty Bernice, tried to cover it up. They didn’t tell their client. They faked a settlement agreement, and then paid for the
Maltow
settlement from the escrow accounts of other clients of the law firm, and this started a domino effect.”

“What does that mean?” Gadd interrupted, sensing that the jurors were getting confused.

“
Maltow
was a huge case,” Vatch said. “To avoid a malpractice claim and tarnish the law firm’s reputation, they faked the settlement and the law firm issued a large settlement check to their client. Although the settlement was fake, the check was real and so Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice started constantly shifting money among the law firm’s various client escrow accounts. Like a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme. The law firm’s books were never in balance, because they were always short the amount the firm paid out in
Maltow.
Ultimately, by stealing Joshua Krane’s money, Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice believed that they would be able to cover up the faked settlement. The money would replenish the escrow accounts and bring the law firm’s books into balance and nobody would be the wiser.”

Vatch stopped himself, knowing that his testimony was getting too detailed.

“And why does all that matter in this case against Mr. Collins?” asked Gadd, giving Vatch an opportunity to get back on track. Vatch took a breath, and then refocused.

“In short,” Vatch said, “I believe Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice were likely involved in Joshua Krane’s murder. When this i
nformation came to light, it became unclear whether Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice had taken Joshua Krane’s money, whether Michael Collins was working with them, or whether Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice intended to take Joshua Krane’s money but Michael Collins snatched it first.”

“So then what happened?” Gadd asked.

“I had to back off.” Vatch turned to the jurors and puffed up his chest. “My job is to get the right perpetrator and build a rock solid case.”

A few of the female jurors rolled their eyes, but Vatch didn’t stop. “As long as there
were other people out there who were just as likely to have stolen the money, a prosecution couldn’t move forward. We needed proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“And then what?” Gadd liked how Vatch had handled the question. She scanned the grand jurors, looking for any sign of confusion. She saw none.

“We had to wait for the banks to provide the information,” Vatch continued. “The only way to get the truth was to follow the money trail to Michael Collins. We needed proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and we couldn’t do that without clear evidence that Michael Collins had Joshua Krane’s money.”

“So you sent the subpoenas to these banks right away?” Gadd made a checkmark next to another question on her sheet of paper.

“No.” Vatch shook his head. “First we had to figure out where Joshua Krane had hidden the money. Due to the plea negotiations, we knew there were secret, foreign accounts. But at the time, the government didn’t know where the accounts were located. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of banks where people can hide assets.”

Vatch took a breath and waited to see if Gadd was going to ask another question or wanted him to proceed. She didn’t say anything, so he continued his story. 

In an actual criminal trial, a witness was not allowed to talk without a specific question. A good defense attorney would object and a judge would sustain the objection, stopping the narrative. But this was an initial grand jury proceeding. There was nobody to object. There was simply United States Attorney Brenda Gadd, alone in a room with a witness and the grand jurors. The playing field was so tilted in the government’s favor that most attorneys are unable to remember a time when a grand jury had refused to indict the accused. So here, Gadd wanted Agent Vatch to tell this part of the story uninterrupted and that was exactly what happened.

“It took about six months of reviewing computer files and paper files before our forensic accountants
could identify where the bank accounts were located,” Vatch said. “Once they were located, we had to force these banks to respond to our subpoenas, which was not easy, and then the process had to be repeated every time the money was moved.”

“The money
moved?”

“Many times,” Vatch said. “We found the original accounts, but they all had minimal funds or were closed by the time we had located them and
the banks released the information.”

Gadd went back to her table and turned on a projector. It was time to move forward. She also didn’t want Vatch talking about his little debacle in Florida after the botched arrest in New York.

A small fan inside the projector whirled to life, and the jurors turned toward the screen. A chart showed a diagram of how Michael Collins had purportedly transferred over $500 million from Krane’s accounts to a series of other foreign bank accounts throughout the world. There were dozens of boxes with arrows to other sets of boxes, and then another series of arrows and boxes and then another.

Brenda Gadd allowed the jurors a moment to review the complex chart on their own, and then she got up, walked to the witness stand, and handed Agent Frank Vatch a laser pointer.

“Tell us how the money got from Krane to Michael Collins.”

Vatch closed his eyes for a second, remembering the numerous times he had rehearsed this testimony with Gadd in the last month. Testifying felt good, but the actual criminal trial would feel even better. He opened his eyes.

“Perhaps it’s easier to work backwards.” Vatch pressed a small button on the device in his hand. He pointed it at the bottom of the screen.

“Do you see down here?”  Vatch bounced the red dot from the laser pointer between two large boxes.

Gadd nodded her head. “Yes.”

“These are two major withdrawals that were made by Michael Collins. The first is a rather large donation to his parish here in New York. He is very close to the priest there. Then we have another withdrawal when he purchased the Sunset Resort and Hostel in Mexico through a shell company. There’s no dispute that this donation and the acquisition of the resort were done by Mr. Collins with Joshua Krane’s assets.”

Vatch pointed at the series of boxes directly above these two itemized withdrawals.

“These are the accounts where that money came from.” Vatch moved the laser pointer to the next series of boxes and then to the next. “As you can see, the money was transferred multiple times, but the trail clearly goes from Joshua Krane’s original foreign bank accounts to Michael Collins.”

“And you have copies of every money transfer and purchase made from these accounts, which provide the foundation for the chart that we are now looking at?”

Vatch set the laser pointer down and nodded.

“Absolutely.” Vatch pointed at a large stack of documents sitting next to the projector. “They’re right there. Every receipt. Every account statement. There are also emails between the bank and Michael Collins that discuss the transactions. There is no doubt in my mind that Michael Collins stole this money from his law firm’s client, Joshua Krane.”

###

The cab stopped in front of Vatch’s apartment. The cabbie got out, popped the trunk, and removed Vatch’s collapsed wheelc
hair. He fiddled with the lever. Eventually the wheelchair opened and the cabbie set it on the sidewalk near the open passenger side door.

Vatch grabbed
the small handle above the door. He pulled himself out of the back seat and into the wheelchair. “How much?”

The cabbie looked through the window at the meter. “Thirteen twenty.”

Vatch nodded. He got out his wallet and handed the cabbie a ten dollar bill and four ones. 

The cabbie looked at the cash in his hand.

“That’s it?” he said. “No tip. I haul that wheelchair around and get no tip from you?”

Vatch’s face sharpened. “You got a tip.” Vatch’s tongue flicked out of his mouth as he pointed at the cab’s meter. “You owe me eighty cents, according to that thing, and I’m letting you keep it.” Vatch undid the wheel lock and turned, while the cabbie started yelling at him.