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?


.-. . ... ..- .-.. - ...

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.

.-. . ... ..- .-.. - ...