U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
MONDAY, 10:15 A.M. EST
Judd Ryker calling me? Dios mío, this can’t be good news,” Isabella Espinosa giggled.
“I know. I owe you lunch, Special Agent,” Judd said into the speakerphone, suddenly feeling guilty for not staying in closer touch with the Department of Justice investigator who had helped him on past missions. “How’s my favorite monster hunter?”
Isabella Espinosa had midnight-black hair, fierce eyes, and a chip on her shoulder. She’d grown up in the worst barrios of East Los Angeles. Her mother, Florita, born in Chihuahua not far off the main highway into Ciudad Juárez, had made her way to California to raise her only daughter. Isabella had scrapped her way through overcrowded LA public schools, a training ground more for street gangs than the workforce, but with a firm mother’s hand she had not only survived but thrived. Next was community college, a minimum-wage internship with a public defender, a transfer to UC Irvine, and eventually a full ride at UCLA law school.
“I’m keeping busy,” she said.
After graduation, Isabella had been lavished with generous offers from California’s most prominent law firms, and a bidding war had ignited for the Hispanic woman who’d come in top of her class. In the end, with the full support of her mother, she’d turned them all down for an entry-level civil service job in Washington, D.C., chasing down the worst that humanity had to offer. Isabella Espinosa had dedicated her life, not to money or prestige, but to justice.
“I’ve rotated off war crimes for a few months,” she said. “They’ve got me chasing other ghosts now.”
“Any news from Zimbabwe?” Judd asked.
“Nothing yet,” she said. “The new government is still deciding whether to prosecute the general for war crimes or let him confess in exchange for immunity. Just like South Africa did after apartheid.”
“After everything that happened? After all the suffering? All those people slaughtered? Are they seriously considering . . . forgiving him?”
“If Zimbabwe chooses truth and reconciliation—if the general admits in open court what he did—then, yes, they’ll let him off,” Isabella said. “They call it healing.”
“I don’t get it,” Judd said. “I don’t think I could forgive someone after all of that. If someone did that to my family—”
“It’s not up to us,” she said curtly.
“After we worked so hard to take the old man down and put his henchman in prison? After finally getting a decent election? After all we did together? That doesn’t bother you if they let him off?”
“It’s not about us.”
“You’re right, Isabella,” Judd acknowledged. “That’s not why I’m calling.”
“So, qué pasa, Professor?”
“You know anything about advance fee scam letters? You know, the ones offering a big payout if you send money or your bank account details?”
“Claro,” she chuckled. “Don’t tell me our Dr. Ryker fell for one of those?”
“No. Not me. I just need to know more about them.”
“Law enforcement calls them 419, after the fraud section of the Nigerian criminal code. The bait, as you know, is any false promise, like a cut of a long-lost bank account or an unclaimed court settlement.”
“Do you know how many people fall for it?”
“Thousands. Back in the 1990s, the FBI was getting dozens of reports every week. People kept calling for help getting their money back. But it’s gotten a lot more sophisticated since. It began with simple letters, then graduated to email. Now the scammers deploy modern marketing software and big data. They use all kinds of lures to convince people to send money. Promises of jobs, fame, even marriage. And it’s moved from a few con artists in an Internet café to a sophisticated international criminal operation. Don’t think of some poor street kid. Think of Pablo Escobar. Or a modern business run by the Sopranos.”
“A Nigerian Tony Soprano? Isn’t that a bit dramatic, Isabella?”
“Nigeria has its mob bosses, its peces gordos, just like everyone else. But these networks have spread way beyond West Africa. Everyone loves to blame the Nigerians, but we’re now seeing scams run out of Brazil, Russia, Madrid, Dubai. Ground zero for fraud today is London.”
“London?” Judd’s ears perked up. “That’s a coincidence. That’s exactly why I’m calling. I’m looking for a civilian who’s gone missing in London.”
“And you think he’s caught up in a scam?”
“It’s possible. Some business deal that was too good to be true, and now he’s disappeared.”
“Since when does S/CRU hunt for missing persons?”
“That’s an excellent question, Special Agent Espinosa.”
“But you’re not going to tell me,” she said.
“What’s DOJ doing about all of this? Don’t you have an antifraud task force or something?”
“We don’t. But Nigeria does.”
“Nigeria?”
“The Justice Department works with local authorities wherever we can. We can’t police the whole world. We can’t even respond to specific cases where American citizens have been taken in. So we’ve worked closely in the past with the Nigerian Crime and Corruption Task Force and they clamped down on the 419ers. They did a pretty good job. Executed raids, confiscated computers, blocked bank accounts, even put a few of the big bosses in jail. But it’s whack-a-mole, Judd. The government moved on to other problems and the scammers came back.”
“What about rumors in the press that senior Nigerian government officials are involved? I read a Nigerian state governor was arrested when one of his staff was running a hustle using official email and stationery.”
“Yes, I remember that case in Oyo. They never proved the governor was aware. But the Nigerian government has much bigger problems these days. The price of oil is low. They’ve got terrorists in the north and militants in the south. If government officials are involved with organized crime, we don’t know how high it goes. Just like in Mexico. We’ll probably never know. There’s a certain level of tolerance, if not outright complicity. All politics is local.”
“If you believe that the Nigerian government is harboring organized crime bosses, how are you not running stings? Can’t you beef up that task force again? Kick in some doors?”
“I can’t talk about DOJ operations, Judd. You know that.”
“Sure, but it seems wrong to just give up.”
“Fraud is just way too low on the Christmas list these days. We’re tracking terrorist finance. If we have time, we look into high-level political corruption. That leaves no resources for the little stuff.”
“You just said it was organized criminal networks.” Judd leaned forward in his chair. “Isabella, you said Pablo Escobar. You said Tony Soprano.”
“If the crazies in Boko Haram were getting money from 419 letters, we’d take a different view. If we saw al-Qaeda making money off these scams, believe me, we’d have bodies on it. But as long as it’s a naïve old lady in Oklahoma, we can’t do much.”
“Or a missing kid in London?”
“Sorry, Judd. You know how it is.”
“What about . . . kidnapping?”
“Excuse me?”
“Or murder? What if the kid I’m searching for turns up dead? Would that make any difference?”
“Look, Judd. Let’s not speculate. Go ahead and send over the missing person’s details and I’ll look into it for you. I promise I will. But don’t expect me to find much. If he was sucked into a confidence game, this kind of thing has been going on since money was invented. Dios mío, they’ve found scam letters from the French Revolution. There’s not much we can do to protect people from themselves. Cons work best on people who just want to believe.”
“They want to believe,” Judd repeated. “Right. Special Agent Espinosa, how about I buy you that lunch?”