When I left the station, I aimed directly for Flo Cash’s house to verify whether it was actually being treated for termites. As I drove, I continued to listen to KCSH. While one of the syndicated shows now played, Flo took advantage of the commercial break times not only to promote several local businesses but also to let callers berate the IRS on the air.
“The American tax rates are sky-high!” one man exclaimed. “Between income taxes and Social Security taxes, I’m lucky to get home with half of my paycheck.”
Even though I knew the jackass couldn’t see or hear me, I nonetheless glared at my radio and responded to the caller, “Feel free to move to Belgium, Germany, or Denmark.”
All three of those countries had higher income tax rates than the United States, as did Hungary, Austria, Greece, and the United Kingdom. Those nations with the lowest tax rates tended to be oil-rich countries in the Middle East, such as Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. Macedonia also had a very low tax rate, though its public debt had more than doubled in the last decade. At some point, the system would have to be rethought or it would implode.
Another caller suggested that Flo “should’ve tossed that IRS agent out the door!”
I would’ve liked to see her try.
As I turned onto Flo’s street, my eyes were nearly blinded by lights so bright there must’ve been a nuclear explosion. Blinking and squinting, I finally managed to make things out. A yellow van sat at the curb, a big plastic bug on top with disco balls for eyes. The mirrored eyes reflected the sun, which sat low on the western horizon, the rays refracting like laser beams. Seriously, those bug eyes were a public hazard.
I pulled to a stop in front of the house, which was fully enclosed in a blue nylon tent. Yep, Flo Cash was indeed getting a termite treatment. Or maybe she was hosting a circus or a tent revival instead. Both of the latter would require a tub of water, either for the animals to drink from or to perform impromptu baptisms.
The van at Flo’s house featured the logo for Cowtown Critter Control. Cowtown was a nickname for Fort Worth, Dallas’s country cousin that sat a half-hour drive to the west. Surely there were dozens of exterminators in the city of Dallas. Why would Flo have hired an outfit from the next town over?
Two technicians decked head to toe in hazmat gear came around the corner of the house, carrying tanks of chemicals. They headed to the van, opened the back, and stashed their gear inside.
I climbed out of my car and walked over the van. “Hello there,” I said, raising a hand in greeting. “Just wondering what Cowtown Critter Control is doing all the way over here in Dallas.”
One of the men glanced my way. “We go where the boss tells us to.”
That was something we had in common. But I bet their boss didn’t sport a beehive. A beehive on an exterminator would be ironic, huh? “Do you do many jobs in Dallas?”
“No,” he said. “This is the first one I’ve ever done. Our usual territory is Fort Worth and the surrounding suburbs.”
Hm-m … “So what’s special about this particular job that you were sent all this way?”
“I didn’t ask.” His tone indicated he’d become impatient with my barrage of questions. “I just do what I’m told. If you need an exterminator out this way I’d suggest you look online.”
With that, the man I’d been speaking with closed the back doors of the van—Slam! Slam!—and circled around to the driver’s seat. The other tech climbed in on the passenger side.
If I wanted answers, looked like I was on my own.
* * *
Wednesday morning, I woke more determined than ever to see Flo Cash get her due. On the entire drive home from her office the day before I’d listened to caller after caller phone the station to make disparaging remarks about the IRS and the “unfair tax system.”
What a big bunch of whiners.
The 1 percent thought the graduated tax rates were inequitable. Those who lived paycheck to paycheck resented the lower capital gains rates that benefited only those fortunate enough to have disposable income to invest. The middle class, who benefited little from tax programs designed to help the poor or to encourage the wealthy to invest their excess funds, believed they shouldered too much of the burden. Nobody on any point of the earnings spectrum thought the tax system was equitable.
Fortunately, though, I didn’t have to deal with Flo Cash today. A good thing, too. I wasn’t sure I had much restraint left. One more toot-toot or pipsqueak and I’d poke her in the eye with my mechanical pencil or drive my G-ride through the wall of her radio station and provide a real-life sound effect. CRASH!
This morning I was working on another case, one involving a catfishing Casanova who’d met several local women on a dating Web site known as the Big D Dating Service and duped them out of thousands of dollars. Many such victims felt horribly embarrassed that they’d been so naïve and went only so far as to notify the dating service and file a police report. But not so in this case. Three of this particular catfisher’s victims had found one another online after each went public with their stories in the hopes of tracking down the man who’d ripped them off. They’d banded together and approached the Texas Attorney General’s Office, the FBI, and the IRS, hoping one of the agencies would take on the case and help them nail the bastard.
With the limited resources available to the state and federal governments, priority normally went to scams perpetuated on a wider scale. But when Lu had received an urgent and impassioned letter from the women she’d empathized with their plight and decided to offer some help. Or, more precisely, she decided to offer them my help. After all, it was unlikely that the crook had paid taxes on the funds he’d weaseled out of his victims.
I’d just returned from filling my mug with coffee in the office kitchen when Viola, Lu’s secretary, buzzed me on the intercom. “Your nine o’clocks are here.”
I jabbed the button. “I’ll be right down.”
I left my coffee on my desk and headed down the hall, where I found three surprisingly attractive, nicely dressed women engaged in conversation at Viola’s desk. Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I’d assumed women who’d fall victim to an online con artist would be older, lonely sad sacks. These women appeared to be anything but. In fact, they looked more like the types of women you’d see sipping chardonnay with their friends at a book club.
“Good morning,” I told the ladies, holding out my hand. “I’m Special Agent Holloway.”
“Leslie Gleason,” said the first, giving my hand a firm shake. Leslie looked to be in her mid-forties, with cute blond ringlets framing her thin face. Her turquoise dress brought out the blue of her eyes and hugged her slim curves, stopping just below the knees to show off well-toned calves that told me Leslie was a runner.
The next woman was a petite Latina with skin the color of cajeta. She looked to be in her mid- to late thirties. She wore a silky blouse and jeans with a pair of cute wedges. My gaze stopped on her pendant, which featured the face of a friendly feline.
“Cute necklace,” I said. “I love cats.”
“Me, too,” the woman said, taking my hand. “I’m a veterinarian. Dr. Julia Valenzuela.”
The third woman appeared to be a mix of Asian and Caucasian, fortyish, and tall. Her sleek black hair hung in a face-framing bob. She wore a pale-blue blazer over an ivory blouse and navy dress pants. “Nataya Lawan,” she said, introducing herself.
I gestured for them to follow me back to my office, stealing a wing chair from Nick’s space so that I could accommodate all three.
Once they were seated, I slipped into my chair. “I’ve read over your letters and looked at the documentation you sent.”
They’d submitted documentation including copies of the fronts and backs of the checks the catfisher had each of the women cash for him. All three were third-party business checks made payable to Jack Smirnoff and drawn on an account purportedly in the name of Wellsource Insurance. All three checks were the amount of two thousand dollars, all three were dated on the same day in late March, and all three had been returned when the account had been found to be false.
I pulled the copies from the file and held them up. “What can you tell me about these checks?” I asked. “And about the man who asked you to cash them?”
After exchanging glances with the other two women, Nataya spoke first. “The man I knew as Jack Smirnoff gave me the check at breakfast one morning. He’d asked me to meet him at a pancake house. We’d been out several times and had really hit it off. Or so I’d thought.” She frowned in memory and continued. “Anyway, he’d told me that he was a psychologist and that he lived in Colorado—”
“Colorado?” I repeated. This was news to me. Their letter hadn’t mentioned that he lived out of state.
“Right,” Nataya replied. “Denver, to be exact.” She looked at me expectantly, and I nodded for her to continue. “He said his wife had suddenly passed away last fall. He told me he was having a hard time dealing with all of the memories in Colorado and was ready to make a fresh start in Dallas. He was living in one of those extended-stay suites while looking for a place to buy here in town.”
Leslie chimed in. “That was the same story he told me.”
Julia let out a frustrated breath. “Me, too.”
Nataya continued. “He said that his wife had a twenty-two-year-old son from her first marriage and that the son had lived with them. The son was supposedly a deadbeat who couldn’t hold a job because he’d stay out all night partying with his friends and was too lazy to get up and go to work in the mornings.”
Again, the other two women nodded in agreement.
“Jack claimed that his wife had provided well for her son in her will, though she’d directed that the funds be placed in a trust for his benefit so that he couldn’t squander it all away. The terms of the will appointed Jack as the trustee of the trust. Jack had also said that his stepson received two thousand dollars a month from an annuity, payable directly to him, no strings attached.”
Nataya went on to tell me that Jack’s wife had left him only twenty grand in her will, but her son had nonetheless filed a lawsuit, claiming Jack had unduly influenced his mother to put the funds in a trust and that she’d always told the son that he would get all of her property outright on her demise. In other words, Jack’s stepson was challenging both the trust and Jack’s token inheritance.
Leslie continued the saga. “Jack’s bank accounts and property were supposedly frozen by the court until the lawsuit could be tried or settled. Jack said the check was a payment from an insurance company for sessions with his clients, but that he couldn’t deposit the check into the joint checking account he owned with his dead wife or her son might get his hands on the money and blow it going out to party with his friends.”
Julia chimed in now. “That’s what Jack told me, too. It all made sense to me.”
“Me, too,” said Leslie.
“It’s certainly a plausible story,” I said. It was all a lie, of course, but not so far out in left field as to be immediately recognizable as a fabrication.
Nataya crossed her ankles. “Jack asked if I would mind cashing one of the checks for him. He said it was no problem if I was uncomfortable doing it, that he could cash it at a check-cashing place, but he said that those places charge very high fees and it seemed ridiculous for him to pay the fee to them when he could give it to me instead.”
The other women murmured in assent. Looked like he’d given them the same story.
“He was very nonchalant about it,” Nataya said, heaving a sigh, “not pushy at all. So, I decided to go ahead. I figured if the check was bogus my bank would know right away and tell me on the spot. With as fast as everything gets processed these days I didn’t think there was any risk.”
Unfortunately, the idea that one bank could immediately verify the existence and balance of an account at another bank was a myth that led many an unwitting victim to their financial doom. The truth was that each bank’s information was kept private from the others and that it still took a day or more for checks to be run through the systems and verified. Meanwhile, the victims’ banks often gave their customers the benefit of the doubt, cashing the check immediately rather than making their customers wait for the funds to clear. It wasn’t until later, when the check proved invalid, that the customers would suddenly find themselves holding the bag, the funds debited from their own account to repay the bank for the NSF check.
Nataya frowned. “He made me feel pretty damn stupid.”
“Don’t,” I told her. “Con artists can be very crafty.”
She wouldn’t be the first person to be taken in by one of these scammers, and she wouldn’t be the last. Even celebrities had fallen for catfishing scams, including Thomas Gibson, star of the TV shows Criminal Minds and Dharma & Greg, who’d sent a video of himself in a hot tub to the fictitious woman who’d lured him in online. Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o had also fallen for a young woman he’d met online. He’d mourned when the girl allegedly died, only to find out she’d never even existed in the first place. What kind of sick person would play on someone else’s emotions like that?
Of course I had to admire the Chechen women who catfished some members of ISIS online and conned the jihadists into sending them thousands of roubles via QIWI Wallet, a Russian electronic cash transfer system. The women might be con artists, but it was hard to fault them when their victims were responsible for killing so many innocent people and instigating a heartbreaking refugee crisis. As far as I was concerned, the men got what they deserved. A little bitch slap from karma.
Nataya sighed. “I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure Jack stole my credit card, too.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“During our second date,” she said, “when we were in the middle of our dinner, I got a phone call from work. I didn’t want to be rude, so I took my phone outside the restaurant. I left my purse behind. A few days later, I went to use my MasterCard and I couldn’t find it. I called the credit card company and they told me there’d been all kinds of charges made at clothing and shoe stores in The Galleria the day after my date with Jack. Over four thousand dollars’ worth.”
Whoa. Not exactly chump change. “Did you report the fraud to the police?”
She nodded. “I know they can’t do much, though. This kind of thing happens every day and they’ve got more important things to deal with.”
It was true. The amount of credit card fraud was overwhelming. Most police departments merely took a report and filed it away, never to be looked at again. The perpetrators knew it, too. Few were caught and prosecuted. The risk was minimal.
“It didn’t even cross my mind that Jack could have taken my card,” Nataya said. “At least not until after the fiasco with the check. I just figured I’d accidentally left the card somewhere or dropped it or something. But when I found out the check I cashed for Jack was a fake I remembered that I’d left my purse at our table when I took the call. We were seated in a back corner, so it would have been easy for him to go through my purse without anyone noticing.”
Even if someone had noticed, they might have assumed Nataya trusted her date or she wouldn’t have left her purse in his care. Or they might have assumed Jack was her husband and that the situation was totally normal.
“Did you talk to security at the mall?” I asked. “Request to see videotapes?”
“No,” Nataya said. “My bank agreed to reverse the charges, so there was no harm done. At least not to me. The stores suffered losses, of course.”
“Can you send me a copy of the credit card bill?”
“Sure.”
Leslie leaned forward. “I’ve done a lot of online dating and I’ve had catfishers hit on me before, but usually it’s obvious. They’ll claim to be a model or an aspiring actor or a sports figure, post a photo of a really good-looking guy with washboard abs, and go overboard with the flattery to try to draw you in. But Jack did none of those things. He brought me a small bouquet of flowers on our second date, but he didn’t come on too strong.”
“That’s how he was with me, too,” Julia agreed. “He seemed like a really nice, down-to-earth guy. Genuine, you know?”
“Exactly,” Nataya said. “I mean, he was a cutie, don’t get us wrong. In good shape, too. But what really made me fall for him was that he was such a good—”
Uh-oh—
“Listener?” Julia interjected.
“Exactly!” Nataya said.
Thank goodness. I’d been afraid she was going to say he was a good lover. My stomach had turned at the mere thought of a guy misleading all these women and sticking his you-know-what all over the place like some type of sexual switchboard operator.
“I felt the same way about Jack,” Leslie replied, looking from the other two women to me. “He wasn’t like other men. He’d actually look you in the eye when you were talking rather than stealing glances at your boobs.”
Julia nodded. “He’d ask appropriate follow-up questions.”
“Yeah,” Nataya said. “He really paid attention and seemed to care. I assumed that’s part of what made him so successful as a psychologist.”
Call me a cynic, but maybe his attentiveness and concern should’ve been their first clue that Jack Smirnoff was too good to be true. In my experience, men would just as soon keep the conversation light and paid only enough attention to a woman to keep her on the hook. Even Nick, as wonderful as he could be, gave me only his partial attention if I tried to engage in any real conversation while a Cowboys or Mavericks game was on. I’d learned to approach him with significant topics at more opportune times and to keep my musings short and to the point. Of course, the reverse was true, too. Unless something was on fire, he knew better than to interrupt my bathtub reading time. These things didn’t mean we didn’t love each other or weren’t fully committed to our relationship; they were just realities, the typical types of negotiations couples make.
I jotted down a note—good listener—and turned my attention back to the women. “Did any of you try to verify his identity or story in any way?”
The first thing I would do if approached by someone on a dating service site would be perform some cybersleuthing. I’d take a look at his Facebook page, Google his name and see what might pop up. Of course with me being an IRS agent, I had access to many more databases than the average person. I could take a look at the criminal records to see if the guy had a rap sheet, pull up his driver’s license to verify his address, check the motor vehicle records to see what kind of car he owned. I could also quickly search the vital records and court filings to take a look at birth certificates, marriage licenses, and lawsuit information.
“I did a little bit of snooping before our first date,” Leslie said. “I didn’t find a personal Facebook page for him or anything about his practice online. When I asked him about it, he said that he worked as a subcontractor at a mental health facility and that everything was kept very private due to the health privacy laws. He also said that he dealt with some emotionally unstable people, so he didn’t like his personal life and whereabouts to be easy to find.”
“That’s what he told me, too,” Julia said. “It sounded reasonable.”
Nataya cringed. “This might sound morbid, but I searched online for an obituary for his wife. I wanted to make sure she was really out of the picture.”
“Did you find one?” I asked.
“I did,” she replied. “It was printed in The Denver Post.” She gestured to my computer. “You can find it. Just search for ‘Christine Smirnoff.’”
I logged on to my computer, entered the name and the word “obituary” in my browser, and ran a quick search. Sure enough, an entry popped up on the Denver Post site, the black-and-white photo depicting a fortyish woman with a broad smile and dark, wavy hair. Per the listing, Christine E. Smirnoff, a local psychologist and avid hiker, had passed away from an undiagnosed heart condition late last October. She was survived by her son and husband. In lieu of flowers, the family requested donations to the Sierra Club.
Hm-m …
I pulled up the Colorado Department of Public Health information and searched for the name Christine Smirnoff among the death certificates. A few entries popped up. Some contained alternate spellings of the first name or similar names such as Christopher Smirnoff, but none of the deaths had occurred in the preceding year. I eyed the women over my screen. “There’s no death certificate for his alleged wife.”
Julia frowned. “So the obituary was a fake, too?”
“Looks that way.” Whoever this Jack Smirnoff really was, he’d probably bought the obituary to make himself look legitimate, to create an air of verisimilitude. Wow. Look at me using big words this morning. My high school English teachers would be so proud! I asked the women a few more questions to ascertain more about Jack. “How many dates did each of you have with Jack? Where did you go? What did you do? What topics did you talk about?”
As I listened to their stories, I learned that Jack had a standard MO. Over the course of two weeks, he’d taken each of the women out to dinner twice, first at a chain restaurant, then to a more upscale place on their second date. On their third outing, he’d suggested doing something more personal to each of them. He’d jogged at White Rock Lake with Leslie. Taken Nataya to a traveling Broadway show. Went to a tasting at a local winery with Julia, even buying her a bottle to take home. It was after their third dates that, on the exact same day, he’d taken Nataya to breakfast, Leslie to an early lunch, and Julia to a late lunch, casually asking each of them whether they’d mind cashing the checks. He seemed to have found a tried-and-true formula and stuck with it.
By my estimate, he’d spent between two and five hundred dollars wooing each woman. Given that he’d taken each for two grand, he’d earned at worst a fifteen-hundred-dollar profit per victim, an immediate 300 percent return on his investment. He certainly wouldn’t get that kind of earnings from trading on Wall Street or a certificate of deposit. And all he’d had to do was eat some good food, spend a little time with attractive women, and listen.
My gaze ran over the women. “Did he go into the bank with any of you when you cashed his checks?” If so, there’d be surveillance camera footage that could be used to convict him.
“Not me,” Nataya said. “He received a phone call just after we arrived at the bank. He stayed outside to take the call while I went inside to cash the check.”
“Same thing here,” Julia said.
Leslie frowned. “Me, too.”
The incoming calls surely weren’t coincidence. Chances were the calls were as bogus as the checks he’d given them to cash. “Did any of you actually hear his phone ring?”
All three replied in the negative. “No.” “Not me.” “Didn’t hear a thing.”
Julia looked from Nataya to Leslie and back to me. “I’d just assumed his phone had vibrated in his pocket.”
The other two nodded in agreement.
“What kind of car did he drive?” I asked the women.
“A Mercedes convertible,” Julia said. “An SLK two-fifty model.”
Leslie let out a huff. “The nice car was part of the reason I trusted him. He looked like he’d done well for himself and had plenty of money.”
“Any chance you know the plate number?”
None of them had it, though all three had noted that the car bore Colorado license plates.
I jotted a note on my pad. CO plates. “I can check with the restaurants, see if they have outdoor video cameras that might have picked up his plate number.” With any luck, they’d have exterior cameras to catch customers who attempted to dine and dash. “Where did he stay when he was in town?”
“The Omni,” all three said in unison.
“Did he ever invite any of you back to his hotel room?”
They all answered in the negative this time, too.
“So you can’t say for certain that he was actually staying at the Omni, right?”
Leslie said, “He had a key card from there. It fell out of his pocket on our second date.”
Nataya rolled her eyes. “Same here.”
Julia groaned. “Ditto.”
The key card could, in fact, mean he’d stayed at the Omni. But the fact that he’d invited none of these women back to his hotel and made a show of dropping the key so that all three women would take note seemed like a ploy. More likely he’d swiped the key or perhaps spent a single night at the hotel and failed to turn the keys in on checkout.
“Besides his sob story,” I said, “what else did he tell you about himself?”
Nataya looked up at the ceiling, Julia tapped her finger on her cheek, and Leslie chewed her lip, all in thought.
Leslie responded first. “He said precious little about himself, now that I think about it. Any time I asked him a question, he’d give me a short answer and find a way to turn the conversation back to me or my interests.”
Julia chimed in next. “Same here. I hate to admit it, but after all the losers I’ve met through the dating site it was refreshing to meet a guy who didn’t have a huge ego and expect me to fawn all over him.”
Nataya concurred. “The only specific thing I can remember him saying is that he liked Elton John’s music. ‘Crocodile Rock’ was playing over the speakers at one of the restaurants while we were waiting to be seated and he sang along with it. At the time I’d thought it was cute.” She punctuated her words with a groan.
Not exactly the kind of information I needed. “What about photos of him?” I asked. “Do you have any?”
All three whipped out their cell phones and showed me pics they’d taken with Jack. In each of the photos, he sported short, dark-brown hair and eyeglasses with oval lenses and black frames. He had a lean but athletic build. He appeared to be Caucasian, though his skin tone was a little on the olive side.
Leslie had a photo of Jack leaning back against a tree on the shore of White Rock Lake. Julia and Jack had done a fun, up-close selfie of the two of them holding up glasses of chardonnay at the winery, smiling big smiles at the camera. Someone else had taken a photo of Nataya and Jack standing with one of the costumed actors from the Broadway show at a meet and greet in the theater lobby.
I mulled things over for a moment. “I’m surprised a con artist wouldn’t balk at having his picture taken.” Most preferred to hide under rocks, the same place they probably crawled out from.
Julia jabbed a button on her phone to close the picture. “The fact that he wasn’t concerned about me taking his photo made him seem for real. If he hadn’t wanted his picture taken I would’ve thought that maybe he was lying about himself and that he was still married or something.”
The other women murmured in agreement.
“I’ve also got the photo he used in his profile on the Big D site,” Nataya said, holding up her phone to show me the head shot she’d downloaded. He wore the same eyeglasses in the profile pic as he did in the other photos.
“E-mail all of the pics to me,” I instructed, giving them my IRS e-mail address. “I’m not sure if any information can be gleaned from the photos, but it can’t hurt for me to take a closer look.”
As they worked their phones to send the photos my way, I asked whether there was anything else they could tell me about him. “Anything that might provide a clue as to his real identity or help me track him down. Anything that caught your eye or ear. Even the smallest detail could help.”
“There was one thing,” Leslie said. “After we went jogging at the lake, he opened his trunk and got a towel out of a gym bag inside. When he pulled out the towel, something that looked like a black belt fell out and I asked him if he did martial arts. He said no, that the belt was some type of strap he used when he worked out. I didn’t have any reason to doubt his explanation at the time. But now?”
Now? She had every reason to doubt anything the guy had ever told her.
Nataya sat up straighter in her seat and cut a glance at Leslie. “Now that you mention it, I remember seeing a martial arts medal in his glove compartment. You know, the kind that hangs around your neck?” She moved her hands as if to indicate a long ribbon draped over her shoulders. She went on to explain that when Jack stopped for gas on their way to the theater her allergies got the best of her. “I was having a major sneezing fit and had used up all the tissues in my purse, so I opened the glove box to look for a napkin while Jack was outside filling the tank. I spotted the medal inside. I asked him about it when he got back in the car, but he said it belonged to his stepson.”
Hm-m. Had he been telling the truth about the strap and the medal? Or was Jack Smirnoff not only a con artist but also some type of ninja warrior?
“Could you tell what type of martial arts the medal was for?” I asked. “Karate? Tae kwon do, maybe?” I knew there were a few other forms as well.
“I have no idea,” Nataya said, cringing apologetically. “All I remember is that the medal was gold and round and depicted two people throwing kicks at each other. The ribbon had red, white, and blue stripes.”
I jotted down the description, though it sounded like a fairly typical type of award.
“Anything else?” I asked a final time, offering suggestions that might jog their memories. “Did he have a parking sticker on the back of his car that might indicate where he works or lives? Root for a particular college sports team? Take any prescription meds that you know of?”
Apparently he’d done none of the above. The women offered nothing further and I realized I was grasping at straws. Of course you never knew when one of those straws might pay off.
Having collected all of the information I could from the women, I typed up affidavits for them to sign. After printing them out, I led the trio to Viola’s desk so that she could notarize the documents. When the affidavits were complete, I walked the women back to the elevators. As they waited for the car, I told them I’d do my best to try to track the man down and see that justice was done. Still, I had to be careful not to get their hopes up.
“The chances of me finding the guy are slim,” I warned, “Even if I find him, there’s a good chance he’s already spent most, if not all, of your money.” Which meant there might be no funds left for him to pay taxes on his ill-gotten income or restitution to these women.
“Frankly,” Julia said, “I’m more interested in seeing him put behind bars than I am in getting my money back.”
“Me, too!” Nataya snapped. “Losing a couple grand wasn’t nearly as bad as the humiliation.”
Leslie was a bit more pragmatic. “Me? I’d just love a chance to kick him where the sun doesn’t shine.”
With any luck, Leslie would get that kick in.