Chapter 44

Rory

I started work in the IT department on very good terms with my new boss. It took a few nights of working with him when the office was empty before we discovered the scam which was being run within the firm. The communications revealing it were all done on the home computers of the people carrying out the fraud. However they had a link to them from their office computer as they often accessed the office computer from home.

Once I had found the passwords for their office computers I was then able to access the ones in their home. It turned out that slowly after the new man in the buying department took over, the suppliers of several parts which our firm ordered was gradually changed. The quality of the goods remained the same but over two years the prices rose considerably. Through emails sent to their counterparts in the new suppliers we found they were accepting the higher prices and the individuals were skimming off the difference between what their company were actually quoting, than their head of sales was charging.

This led to a four way split between the head of sales and the head of accounts in the supplying firm and with our head of the buying department and our head of accounts. It was not widespread, but since the accounts which were the victims of the fraud amounted to several hundred thousands of pounds and sometimes over a million within the companies concerned a skim of even two or three percent of those amounts would rake in a considerable sum for each of the participants.

Going further back through the head of the buying department's records, I found that he had been doing the same with the company he left in order to come and work for us. The changes of suppliers were in the companies where others had cooperated with him in the past. He had been getting away with this kind of scam for over a decade. The takings increased when he came to us because we were a much bigger firmer than the one for which had previously worked.

It took a few more weeks to detail the extent of the scam, but once we accomplished this we were ready to take our evidence to David. So that we would not alert the culprits Frank suggested that I arrange a private meeting with him and then we could decide on what course of action was going to be necessary. I told Rebecca I needed to talk to her father privately but needed to do it in a way that would seem normal to anyone else. So we invited him and Ruth to dinner one evening and after it was over I asked to talk to him alone.

When he saw the evidence we had compiled he was absolutely flabbergasted. The problem was how to use it without revealing how we had obtained it, since we did not want to risk exposing my skills as a hacker for this was very illegal. We had also to work out how to we would accomplish this without revealing the fact that our discoveries we made through illegal means so we had to find a way to hide the fact that I had actually hacked into our computer systems. After some discussion David decided to bring in Marjory's father since he was on the board of our loan scheme and was also our company lawyer. If I gave my permission he thought that he could reveal to him how we obtained it without him blowing the whistle on me. He also felt that perhaps Mr Brown could come up with some way of using our findings finding ways to use it without disclosing the way it was gathered.

Rebecca

Rory had asked me to invite my dad for a meal since he wanted to have a private talk to him without anyone else knowing. I asked him why he wanted to talk to my dad and why all the secrecy. He just said it was something to do with the work he was doing and that he would tell me once he knew what dad planned to do about the matter. He went on to say it was nothing to worry about. They just had to find a way of dealing with something that had cropped up in his new job.

Having satisfied my curiosity I was still left wondering why they could not just talk about it in his office at work. Obviously it was something they did not want anyone else to know about. I deduced from the nights he had spent working alone in the office with Frank, his boss, it must be serious despite Rory's protests to the contrary.

While I was getting the meal ready on the night I had finally worked out that it must have been something that Rory had discovered on somebody's computer and that Frank had asked him to hack into it to find out what was going on. If that was the case they would not want to alert the person concerned. I suspected that they were looking for a way to deal with the person without him or her knowing how they got the information in the first place. I smiled to myself and decided that as a member of the board and a future owner of the company I would use my womanly wiles to wheedle the information out of him in the bedroom later that evening. I would not be the first time a woman learned a secret in what they spy books called pillow talk.

We all enjoyed our meal together and when dad and Rory took themselves off to have their secret talks; it gave me an opportunity catch up with what was going on in my mother's life. It seemed that for the time being at any rate the most important event was something which would involve both Rory and I as the music group were putting on a show in the church just before Halloween This meant that rehearsals would be starting the following week and as a result I would have to make room for them in my study schedule which was very heavy as this was my A level year.

When we made our way to the bedroom shortly after my mum and dad left I asked Rory what all this clandestine stuff was about. He told me about the swindle that two heads of department were working and how Frank had asked him to help confirm his suspicions that they were up to something. He also told me what they were doing and the steps they were taking to expose them so I did not need to use my spider trap techniques after all. However a girl can't disappoint herself so I decided he deserved something for being so forthcoming so I took him to bed and had him make love to me as his reward. Though in the end I was not sure who had been rewarded since in the course of our love making he brought me to two screaming orgasms.

Rory

We met with Mr. Brown the next day and we set our problem for him to think about and to see what he would advise. After he had given it some thought he gave us his opinion.

"The crux of the matter lies in whether or not you want to prosecute them for their villainy or whether you just want to get as much of your money back as possible and then sack them. To do the first then you have the difficult of how you collected the evidence. I would think that you would have every right as their employer to explore their computers and lay before the court any villainy found there. The problem arises through you breaking into their home computers, for that is a much greyer area. Since they themselves set up the link so that they could work from home it might be possible to argue that it was legitimate for you to follow the trail there though the defence might want to know how you managed to do that.

On the other hand if you would be content with the recovery of the money they stole then you can just confront them with your evidence and threaten them with prosecution if they do not comply with your demands. If they then fold and do as you ask you then talk to the other companies that have been defrauded by the people at their end and they can do the same. I am of a mind to talk to the head of my investigation team and see if we might be able to strengthen our hand.

If you call him in to confirm your suspicions it might legitimise things if he then instructed your IT department to follow the trail from your computers to theirs since he is a former detective chief inspector in our police department. It would be worth doing even if it just made criminals think that you were on stronger ground than you actually are and cause them to accede more readily to your demands. There would of course be a small fee for my firm for this work but it might well be worth it if you have to take the matter to court. You can always argue that you were able to guess their passwords rather than having to reveal you got round it because of Rory's skill as a hacker. To do that would get him into real trouble I imagine."

After giving it some thought and some further discussion we decided to go along with Marjory's father's suggestion, especially as it would help to provide a smokescreen for my hacking ability. At the end of the day people are not going to expect that someone in the firm had the skill to do this. We laid our plans accordingly and decided that within the next seven days we would set out the evidence and then confront the culprits. When we showed the evidence we had accumulated to former chief inspector McIlhone he felt that if we presented it correctly then we had enough evidence for a prosecution.

He pointed out to us that the passwords used were ones that could easily have been arrived at by trial and error since they consisted of the names of children and their birthdays or their own second names and birthdays. Since we had records of some of these things and could easily find out about others it would be assumed that this is how we retrieved the information from our computers. He also felt it would be a good thing if he was present when we presented our accusations to them as making known his former rank within the police force might make them more susceptible to the idea that prosecution would follow. If that was the case then it would keep the option of recovery of our assets rather than prosecution as a bargaining chip.

At the start of the third week in October we called for a conference with them regarding future plans about trying to keep down costs in their departments. They came along totally unaware that we were on to their misdeeds or of the kind of confrontation which was to follow. As the meeting came to order I think they were surprised to see me and the head of the IT department present. When we introduced former inspector McIlhone they looked puzzled but not alarmed.