Call Waiting

If there’s one thing that gets my head, and heart, racing, it’s when someone misses a meeting. Mother always taught me, if you’re not fifteen minutes early, you’re late.

Generally, for face to face meetings, I’ll arrive at the specified location much earlier than that to check for surveillance and to make sure my escape routes are mapped out. For internet meet-ups or phone calls, other than making sure you’re on a secure line, there’s nothing much more to do than sit and wait for your contact to arrive.

Now that my Bulgarian Operation has, for the most part, been wrapped up, I’m looking for another target on which to focus my skill set. I’ve done a good job of establishing my corporate cover. I’ve gained trust, built relationships and delivered results consistent, exceptional results to all of my corporate business partners. Because of this success, I may have the ability to gather more intelligence in other parts of the bank.

With this perspective, I was awaiting a phone call last night from one of Mother’s people who may have a way to interject me into their operation. We had met in person previously, but with Marcel currently residing on the Left Coast, we struggled through time zone differences to set up a contact time: 21:00 EST.

By 21:09 a myriad of what-ifs were running through my mind. What if he couldn’t get away from his corporate responsibilities? What if he couldn’t find a secure line? What if, unlikely as it may be, he forgot? What if he was tied to a metal chair in the basement of a Tijuana flat, bleeding, hoping the power goes out so the electrodes will stop while his captors repeatedly ask who he was meeting and what it was about?

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Thirty Minutes Or It's Free

Remember maintenance guy ploy? Well, it works for deliveries as well.

Upon returning home from work, I received a message instructing me to make a delivery to a local contact. My parcels weren’t all too exciting. I had two thumb drives containing dossiers on people of interest. But, I still had to figure out a way to bring the information without attracting the slightest amount of suspicion.

I made a sandwich, wrapped it in waxed paper, like what you’d get in deli, and put one of my Coke Zero’s in a paper bag. I put on some ratty jeans, an old t-shirt and a baseball cap. Got in my truck, opened the windows, which was finally possible as it was finally above sixty degrees today in Delaware, and blasted some ungodly rock-pop music from the first painful radio station I found via the scan button.

To anyone who may have casually watched me deliver the paper bag, I would have looked just like they would have expected a delivery person to. If someone actually stopped me, they would have needed to look inside the sandwich to find my data, as I had covered the thumb drives in plastic wrap, hollowed out a small notch on the inside of the roll and covered the drives back up with the bread, which was then further concealed with the makings of a fine sandwich.

Then, without a sandwich to eat for dinner, I settled on boiling some cappellini with some left over meat sauce.

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Cheeeeeeeese!

There are certain times where it just makes sense to pay a professional to do a job right. For a great variety of things, I’m the man you call to get results. But intrinsic in my skill set is an understanding of my own limitations. For instance, I’ll solicit the services of an accountant, a lawyer and a plumber, and yesterday, you can add a top notch photographer to the list.

Mother sent Timothy down to meet me. Whereas I can avoid detection, trail a mark, and gain access to areas without leaving a trace, taking pictures good enough for facial recognition software isn’t something I have on my resume.

Timothy and I met downtown and trailed our targets as they ran Sunday morning errands. While they made a trip to the ATM, a hair cut for him, nails for her and lunch at a burger place, Timothy was click-click-clicking away with his multi thousand dollar camera. I kept my truck from drawing attention.

He seemed to be pleased with the lighting and how the depth of the backgrounds complimented the subject matter, or something. His mood turned sour when we followed them back to their home, a working horse farm. At the thought of walking his white suede, leather soled dress shoes through the woods and a field or two to gather intelligence, he threw his hands up and exclaimed something to the effect of, ‘Oh, they’re last season’s style anyway.’

The layout of the property was all in the dossier. The fact that he knew that the couple lived on a horse farm and that we’d follow them there, and that he still chose to wear those shoes made me reason that his pictures must be really good to outweigh his complete absentmindedness.

A bluff of trees, two fields, and two now brown suede, leather soled shoes later, we had the pictures we needed. I brought Timothy back to his car and went home to cook dinner:

Sear seasoned chicken thighs in enameled cast iron dutch oven in butter and oil.
Set remove chicken, set aside and sauté chopped onion and garlic in oil.
Dump last sip of beer into dutch oven to deglaze stuck-on chicken goodness.
Add parsley, thyme, crushed red pepper, and a good dash of personal spice blend.
Add two cans of low fat, low sodium chicken broth and bring to a simmer.
Add chicken back to dutch oven and simmer until just shy of done.
Remove chicken thighs and add box of orzo. Add water if necessary.
Chop was-frozen-now-partially-microwaved spinach and add to ducth oven.
When orzo is almost done, reintroduce chicken thighs.
Top with parmesan cheese and devour.

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Going My Way?

What to do when you have to transport a body? Well, there are a few different types of bodies to transport.

First, you have a dead body. They’re easy to conceal in the trunk of a car and don’t make much noise. But, they are quite hard to explain if you’re talking to a customs agent who decides it would be a good idea to take a peak in your trunk.

Second are the alive but hostile bodies. The best part about this type is that they’re alive. When sitting in a car they don’t look dead and when given the proper motivation, or threat of physical violence to either them or someone they care about, they will generally sit still and can even say helpful things like, “No officer, there isn’t a problem here at all.” The worst part about the alive but hostiles is, well, they’re alive. They’re under duress and can be total wildcards. They can be a complete pain in the neck, alert law enforcement and get stressed enough to think that exiting a vehicle while bound at eighty five miles per hour on a busy highway is a good, safe way to attempt an escape.

Lastly are the alive and friendly type. For this kind, you can set up an arranged meeting time and place. Around lunch works well because it is a common time to leave the office. You get to the parking lot, pick up your friend Carson, take him to where he needs to go, acquire what information you need, and avoid information you don’t, like what is in that backpack, make sure you’re not being followed and return to work just in time to make that enthralling conference call you were scared you might miss.

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On Demand

I was scrambling at the end of my work day. I had some data testing to finish up. It was taking me longer than necessary. This exaggerated timeline was purposeful. It allowed me to finalize the data for Mother.

I was finally able to aggregate the Bulgarian data Mother was looking for. I saved it to disc, sent an email to my boss, and headed out the door.

I had to get to Blockbuster. Mother placed a contact there. Between 5 and 5:15, the contact’s co-worker would be out on break. Given her pack a day habit, it was a pretty safe bet they’d be out back.

I pulled up a few minutes after the turn of the hour, and dropped off season 6 of 24 in the return bin, and left without talking to anyone. The third disc of the season, to an outsider, would look like any other burned compact disc. It will even play a forty five minute mix if someone played it. Encrypted, though, was a dossier detailing the ins and outs of the Bulgarian operation. It looked as if someone had mistakenly returned the wrong disc. My contact would swap this out with an actual 24 DVD and forward the information to Mother later on.

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Majenta Feeling Taken Shelter In Base Of My Spine

This corporate gig has kept me working pretty hard recently. The only positives I see from this whole work thing are the pay check and the fact that the café stocks Cherry Coke Zero.

I’ve managed to profile our customer population into groups that may have been impacted by the Bulgarian credit card squeeze. Of the millions upon millions of accounts we have, I could immediately dismiss the ones that don’t owe anything. From there, it was a matter of modeling transaction behavior to determine who is involved in the Bulgarian scheme.

I segmented the population into buckets of accounts based upon the modeled probability that they were impacted. Before sending the file of leads to Mother for review, I discussed the separation logic I used to create the statistical stratification. Because some of the variables I incorporated weren’t the most operationally identifiable, I need to go back in and tweak it a bit.

More snow is expected again tonight. Next time I’m requesting assignment somewhere significantly warmer.

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Don't Showboat, Just Get Your Job Done

Well, turns out Mother’s original intel wasn’t totally accurate. I wasn’t in Baltimore to track down a potential boat buyer, I was there to locate a boat dealer.

I can’t imagine the logistical nightmare shows like this create. There were probably a few hundred boats inside the Baltimore Convention Center. Maneuvering trailers around the building in order to precisely place each boat in its location must be choreographed perfectly. And I do mean perfectly. These boats were mere inches away from each other. I’m sure this task was obscenely stressful, not just because of the time sensitive deadline, but because many of these boats were several multiples of my yearly corporate salary.

Organized chaos is a great opportunity for someone looking to get something done under the radar. The Director of Logistics, or whatever their actual/official title is, would have been under a great deal of pressure. Issues would only be brought to their attention if they were of the utmost importance. So if someone sees something that doesn’t seem right, chances are no inquiries will be made.

Mother’s new and improved information said that one of the boat dealers was transporting something illegal between conventions. We didn’t know what; drugs, arms, bootleg DVDs of Grey’s Anatomy. We had no idea. The what was someone else’s problem. The where was my task. And that’s why I brought the tracking devices.

The actual mission was easy. It’s not hard to find a boat dealer at a boat show. They advertise the bejeezus out of themselves. Determining what boat(s) were being used for transporting illegal goods was a bit more challenging. Each boat was in pristine condition. They were cleaned from top to bottom, so there was no visible evidence, that I could find, without CSI-esque gear, showing that a particular compartment was being used. Therefore, I picked two boats that had a good amount of storage room, planted the devices and hoped for the best.

Unrelated, if anyone is looking to buy a boat, I recommend contacting Dirk Van Rees of Taylor Marine Centers. He was genuinely friendly and extremely knowledgeable about the products he was selling. In particular, we talked about a 23 foot Grady White walk around cuddy cabin.

On that note, I’m going to go buy a lottery ticket.

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Thank You, Come Again

After work I went over to a small strip mall to meet someone on Mother’s behalf. This was the kind of place that was busy enough so that two people arriving at the same time wouldn’t be the only thing to watch, but not so congested that you had a hard time keeping track of who was coming in and out.

The strip mall had two ways in and out, one on each end of the parking lot. I entered from the west side. As I was pulling into my isolated parking spot, I observed a loading truck pull up on the east end, partially obstructing the exit. That way out now pinched the flow of traffic to one lane. It could still be used for a quick escape unless some innocent was entering as I tried to speed away. Or, of course, it could be by design.

Either way, the meet had to take place now. With the parking lot sparsely populated, sitting in a parked car for the truck to depart, if in fact the truck was there for legitimate reasons, was not an option. It would draw too much attention.

When I saw someone matching the rough description of the person I was waiting for walk into the convenience store, I followed. To even a fairly well trained eye, as well as the security cameras, our contact looked polite and casual. After my contact grabbed a bottle of Pepsi (blech) from the refrigerator, he held the door open for me so I could select a Coke Zero. Holding the door open gave the window just enough time to collect some condensation to further obstruct what our aligned bodies could not. Two electronic monitors were now inside my jacket. They were equipped with both a GPS and a satellite enabled recorder. We walked to the counter without any additional interaction, paid, and went our separate ways.

With the east end still partially blocked, and no sign of an ambush coming from the west, I exited where I entered and made my way back home.

What were the two devices for, you ask? Well, Mother’s intelligence places someone of interest at the Baltimore Boat Show tomorrow. Should they purchase a boat, it’s my job to make sure one of these devices is concealed inside. Why two? Well, in case they buy two boats.

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Top Of The List

As you know, because I mentioned it, everything you do within corporate walls is being monitored. They may not necessarily be actively monitored, but there’s a good chance if you do something quirky it’ll ring a few bells in corporate security or wind up on some monthly report. These are good ways to draw attention, and attention is not good.

But, one of the attributes that makes many banks strong also opens up holes in their information defenses. The banking industry has been consolidating recently. Often the newly acquired institutions are more likely to be Velcro’d on to the mother ship then they are to be assimilated. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is the technology cost, in both dollars and human capital, required to reconfigure the entire IT infrastructure each time another chip is added to the stack.

This means that analysts, like yours truly, are forced to navigate through a myriad of differing types of servers and databases to get to the information we need to make business decisions. While this is cumbersome when completing day to day tasks, it makes it easier for someone to run database queries and hide their covert data gathering agendas. One of easiest ways to do this is to have your code reference a macro located on your desktop. When your code finishes, erase the macro and it becomes very, very hard for someone to go back into your query and figure out what it did. They’ll see the macro referenced, but have no idea what its function is. This is akin to reading a novel’s sequel without reading the predecessor. Sure you can generally follow what’s going on, but you’re definitely not getting as much out of the story as you could be.

This morning Mother sent me a partial business name: ‘Pinnacle.’ This company had become involved the Bulgarian extortion scheme. All I knew was that the company’s name started with Pinnacle and it was located in Florida.

Here’s the short version:

Step 1: From database A, pull all records where the first eight characters of the business name were ‘Pinnacle,’ along with some firmographic information. This brought back hundreds of businesses.
Step 2: From database B, pull all business names located in Florida. This brought back thousands upon thousands of businesses.
Step 3: Move the datasets created in Step 1 and 2 into temp space, giving them different names, so they would be automatically deleted when I signed off.
Step 4: Determine which companies are located on both of the datasets. This brought back a handful of companies, six to be exact.
Step 5: Convert this dataset to a comma delimited text file and download it the Recycle Bin on my desktop.
Step 6: Copy the dataset, but rename it when I upload it back to database A.
Step 7: Append a junk dataset, one copied from a coworker’s directory, containing a few thousand records, to the end of it.
Step 8: Download this back to my desktop in the form of a comma delimited text file, renamed to something else of course.
Step 9: From database C, pull all companies that completed a cash advance on their credit cards within the past 12 months.
Step 10: Determine which of these companies matched with the six companies I identified in Step 4. Luckily, there was only one match. Memorize the account number.
Step 11: From database D, pull credit bureau data from the credit card application, but create the search parameters wide enough so that I would capture the one account as well as a lot of other extraneous noise.
Step 12: Move this dataset, in comma delimited text file format, to temp space. Do I even need to say ‘and rename the dataset’ at this point?
Step 13: Import the dataset from temp space into an access database. Sort data by account number, and locate Pinnacle Travel Enterprises by manually scrolling down until the account number is found.
Step 14: Send email on personal BlackBerry to Mother giving, among other things, the name, social security number, home and cell phone numbers, online banking logon ID, and mailing address of the primary card holder.
Step 15: When cleaning up your electronic paper trail, do not just delete your datasets, save over them first with something benign. Then delete them. I'll save my macros for when I really need them.
Step 16: Dial into next conference call and act like nothing happened.

See, pretty easy.

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Please Press "0" To Speak To The Next Mobster

I’ve been able to make a few observations about the Bulgarian banking operations. It seems as if they’re collecting a form of street tax from small business owners, but doing it through the financial system as a means of disconnecting the cash flows directly from the victims’ accounts to theirs as well as reducing the short term impact on those they’re robbing.

The crooks are targeting their victims either by brute force, or or by crafting business relationships that they can leverage. Once they have someone to squeeze, they pull cash out of the business. However, instead of directly extracting cash from the bottom line, it looks like they’re forcing the business owners to take cash advances out on their credit cards. Ironically enough, this helps the business owner because they don’t have to fight a large initial cash outflow. Instead, their obligation to the financial institution is the small monthly minimum payment. This keeps the business operational for as long as possible, though saddled with immense debt, so when the credit card balances are paid down, the Bulgarians force the owners to advance more cash.

The economy is both helping the Bulgarians in this regard. From the bank’s perspective, it’s almost impossible to tell which businesses are impacted by the Bulgarians versus which businesses are just increasing debt levels as a result of macro economic conditions. This gives the Bulgarians some additional operational cover. However, to their detriment, banks are protecting themselves from losses by cutting available, unused credit lines. This severely diminishes the amount of cash they can pull from business owners. The Bulgarians are effectively extorting less cash, but they’re doing it without as much risk of getting caught.

Mother’s concern is that if the cash trickles to a point where Bulgarian public officials aren’t being greased enough to continue cooperation, there will be retribution against the business owners.

While I don’t think this is the only angle the Bulgarians are playing, at least I’ve found some activity to investigate.

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Queue Up Opportunities

The Sam Adams was more appealing than the treadmill. To further dismantle the New Year’s resolution, I decided to go out and get a pizza as well. It really wasn’t pizza that I was craving, rather something to goes well with Sriracha. Given my recent spicy food kick, this should come as no surprise.

I placed my order at the pizza parlor and went a few doors down to the pool hall to grab a beer and shoot a rack while I waited. The bartender told me that games of pool are free from 3 PM – 7 PM on weekdays. The place must be hurting for business, and as a result, the bartender would be looking for other ways to earn a few bucks.

This could be advantageous. Bars are great places to pass information. It’s just as common for someone to stay for a drink as it is for someone to stay for a few hours and make a night out of it. This means you can either get in early and scout it out, or arrive, make your drop and depart without drawing unwanted attention.

A bartender in need can create another layer of separation between you and your contact. For a few bucks, you can drop off an item for someone else to pick up later. You and your contact never need to be seen together. And as long as it’s not a gun or drugs, it’s pretty easy to get someone to watch over your package and then deliver it for you.

I don’t say any of this to the bartender though. I just make a mental note, pay for my beer, chase the cue around the table for awhile then leave to pick up my anti-exercise dinner.

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In The News

Bomb Blast Kills Physicist in Iran

The target -- seen as a longtime regime insider who had veered toward supporting the opposition -- immediately raised suspicion among colleagues and students that the attack was politically motivated. Prof. Mohammadi's membership in Iran's broadly defined nuclear-science brain trust also raised questions about whether the attack was related to the country's controversial nuclear program. State media identified Mr. Mohammadi as a nuclear physicist. But he was best known for his work in mathematical physics and theoretical, high-energy physics,
according to one colleague, who was also a former student.

Expert: CIA missed glaring red flags on double-agent bomber

So how did a Jordanian doctor play double agent, outsmart his CIA handlers, and end up killing seven Americans and a Jordanian military officer at a remote base in Afghanistan? "This is the biggest deception ever of intelligence agencies, whether CIA or Jordanian intelligence," said Hassan Hanieh, a former Islamic extremist who now studies jihadist movements. "From the beginning, he was deceiving them." Sources familiar with intelligence operations in Jordan say al Qaeda takes at least a year to screen new recruits. The terrorist organization checks out their family backgrounds, gets input from fellow jihadists who know them -- and never trusts anyone who has been arrested, as al-Balawi had been.

These things happen. By definition, you won’t know when a covert operation is going down where you live. We all need to do a better job of memorizing license plates, locating firearms, maintaining cover stories and knowing where canned goods are in grocery stores.

EDIT According to this story, CIA not behind death of Iranian scientist: U.S. official. Publicly or directly, of course.

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Be-Claus I Can

Santa’s early origins are linked to Saint Nicholas of Myra, who liked to give gifts to the poor, and in one case, for the express purpose of preventing three young girls from a life time of prostitution. He also draws quite a few parallels to the Germanic figure Odin, who was known to lead hunting parties across the sky. Dutch traditions have Santa with a beard, hat, spear, and a “cloth bag held by the servants to capture naughty children.” It’s no wonder that parents want to keep this information a secret from their children.

And thus, the tradition of Secret Santa is born.

The commercialization of symbolic religious conglomerates aside, it can be quite useful to have your office do the whole Secret Santa routine. How many other times in a professional setting is it acceptable to bring a concealed object into your office, not to tell anyone what’s inside, and to give it to another person without a question asked? It’s like senior management is saying, “Hey, all you covert banking operatives, we’re going to make it exceptionally easy to pass information and materials back and forth.”

I realize that you may think I’m about two weeks late with this idea. “Christmas was last month, man! Don’t you undercover operatives get calendars?” Yes, for your information, I do have a calendar. And also, more importantly, the fact that I was able to pass information to May Langston today using a Christmas bag and wrapping paper during normal business hours without raising any suspicion seventeen days after Christmas proves how valuable this technique can be.

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"I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob."

Insert a “case of the Mundays” joke here. No. I don’t really want to. I’m too clever for that. But if one more person asks me to put a cover sheet on a…too late.

Mondays can be good if you use them effectively. Most, or at least a sizable portion of the office staff, likes to chit chat around about what they did over the weekend. Ask a probing question here and there, and you can pick up some valuable information.

“It was cold at the stadium yesterday, much more so than for previous games.” Translation: I have NFL season tickets, so feel free to break into my home half the weekends during the fall.

“I took my new rottweiler puppy to obedience classes. Boy does he need them!” Translation: Do not break into this house to acquire supplies.

So today I learned that a co-worker of mine is going overseas for three weeks to visit his parents. Three things immediately struck me: (A) Perhaps I should ask a few specific questions to see if the contents of your apartment could benefit me, (B) Dude…it’s only the second week of the year and that’s a whole lot of personal time to burn through, and (C) When you’re out, who’s going to get all of your work done? Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

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Nine to Five

As of today, I’m a covert banking operative. I’ve been inserted into the corporate office of a large bank. My job is to follow the money and identify key players. Mother has reason to believe that associates of the Bulgarian diplomat I identified about a week ago are involved in some not-so-legal dealings.

My full case background should be coming within the next few days, but here are the highlights:

- Bulgaria ‘s 2009 Corruption Index Score is 71st out of 180.
- Bulgaria’s perception of corruption value is lower than where it was a few years ago.
- A BBC news story discussing the EU’s concern can be found here.

“Tackling corruption and organized crime was supposed to be a pre-condition for Bulgaria's membership of the EU. But just over a year after it joined, three streams of EU funding have been suspended because of apparent fraud, and the EU's investigating agency has 45 cases of alleged Bulgarian malpractice on its books” (C. Miller, BBC News, 18Mar08).

When the police crack down on an illegal activity the perpetrators will need to work harder to maintain that source of income. If the EU is forcing Bulgarian law enforcement to investigate corruption in Bulgaria, the money making crimes will have to shift somewhere else. It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole…which, given the links to corruption and the mafia, is quite a nice play on words if I do say so myself.

Where do you live?


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NJ Turnpike: "What exit are you from?"

The truck is packed and loaded. Based on intelligence, I still have time to pick up a coffee from the corner deli before I head back down the Jersey Turnpike. Traffic on the Sunday following Christmas is bad. After Exit 8 the lanes converge from five to three resulting in a parking lot where a highway once stood. This isn’t good.

I need a visual on an unknown foreign diplomat and I can’t see past the eighteen wheeler three vehicles ahead. When the GPS says you’re almost a five miles behind your target but forward progress is impossible, you start to go a little crazy. At this point, I think I’m singing better than the guy on my Ipod.

When traffic breaks, it’s time to focus on some mental math. It’s about 90 miles from here to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Assuming no rest stops, at an average estimated speed of 70 mph the diplomat will reach the bridge in about an hour twenty minutes. After the bridge, the roads diverge and there are too many exits to monitor alone.

So I want give myself a 15 mile safety net. I can only let the diplomat get 75 miles before I catch up. So I have to go 80 miles in the same amount of time it takes the diplomat to go 75 miles at 70 mph. If I go 74.67 mph, I should reach the diplomat in about 63 minutes.

63 minutes driving about 10 mph over the speed limit on the Sunday after Christmas with out of state plates in a state that has quite the hefty deficit. Nice. At this point, I’m thinking that coffee wasn’t worth the risk of meeting a sworn representative of the New Jersey State Troopers.

Visual contact achieved.

Diplomatic plates, after the prefix “D”, have a two digit code that signifies what nation the diplomat represents. This provides some anonymity. My target’s plate starts with “DQM.” Bulgaria. I snap a few pictures of the license plates and a profile shot of the driver as discretely as possible.

Before I can begin to figure how Bulgaria fits into everything, the non-descript dark colored American made SUV seven vehicles back is now only four. ‘As possible’ must not have been good enough. It is occupied by two thirty something white males.

I use an RV in the adjacent lane to create a block in traffic and proceed the last nine miles to the bridge. Keeping with my cover, I used EZ Pass to pay my exit toll. The SUV picks a cash lane. I take the exit for Rt. 13 N into Wilmington. The tarp covered luggage in the bed allows me to enter parts of town where a clean SUV driven by two white guys would attract some attention.

Satisfied the combination of the space created at the toll and the city detour sufficiently evaded my tail, I head home and contact Mother to let her know I made it back safely.

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