Chapter 314: Organizing the Money

Thursday, August 10 to Thursday, August 31, 2006

Vanessa called our lawyer back, to tell him we'd signed.

He said, "Congratulations. I'll get the ball rolling here and I'll fly to Corvallis with the rest of the originals on the next available flight."

"It'd be more convenient if you could fly direct on one of our new jets."

"It's too early for that. Commercial flights will be fine. I'll see you tomorrow. I'll let you know my arrival time when I've got the bookings."

Now that we knew how much we were getting, and what the current situation was, a lot of decisions needed to be quickly made. Checks would soon be made out to us, and it'd be much easier if we got who "us" was right the first time (e.g., would Donna's $125 million be made out to Donna, or a trust for Donna, or an Anderson family corporation or trust). The settlement agreement was full of "or their nominees" after our side's names, so it was time to nominate those recipients. At our law firm in DC a whole new team of lawyers was put on the job, with several accountants roped in. The $10 million payment they'd be getting from the Government was being consumed-in-advance impressively quickly.

When I described the settlement agreement as saying, "MAF gets $15 billion", or, "The Family gets $1.5 billion"; it wasn't ANYWHERE near as simple as that. There were all sorts of legal issues involved, and some tax issues too. For example, in reality the brand new $50 million private jet was going to be Vanessa's, but who would it belong to on paper? It was going to be used mainly for MAF business, but also for family fun, some charity work, and lent out to friends, especially the Dean of OSU. He does a lot of traveling and he'd been VERY helpful to us since I'd been kidnapped by the DHS, so he'd be getting frequent private use of the jet. His peers are going to be VERY jealous when he travels to conferences in a large, private, luxury jet.

We'd sell the DHS and CIA jets secondhand, which would recover nearly half of the $50 million. It wasn't right for Vanessa to pay roughly $25 million for a plane we'd all be using, but it couldn't be put into MAF's name either, because using it for non-MAF business could be questioned. It wouldn't be theft - as would be the case if many other trusts lent out their planes - because MAF was going to be chartered and financed in a way that allowed a great deal of financial flexibility between it and us, but ownership of the new jet still needed to be structured carefully.

Even just our being given the five SUVs and two jets was complicated. When I said above that they were to be given to us, I was using the English language rather than lawyer-speak. The contract actually said that we or our nominee would buy them at their market value. In addition to the money I'd said the Government was going to pay us for the settlement, it was also going to give us or our nominee the total value of those seven vehicles, to be used to buy them. So we had to decide who our vehicle-buying nominee was (or nominees were), whether that/those nominee(s) should be given the money to pay for them directly from the Government, or via one of us, or another legal entity of ours, etc.

We would be giving all the SUVs to charity (mostly for PR reasons, partly to avoid bugs), so we wanted the tax deduction for that to appear in the right place. It'd be a waste to have the SUVs given to any of us personally, because we wouldn't be paying tax and therefore had no use for a tax deduction. We'd nominate a yet-to-be-created profit-making corporation as recipient for the SUVs.

We'd be setting up several legal entities:

• MAF itself, of course.

• A corporation for "The Family".

• A corporation to buy and own Vanessa's plane, employ the pilots, pay its other costs, rent it out (maybe for $1), claim the tax deductions for it, etc. It needed to be set up in a way that it could make a profit so it could get the benefit of the planes' depreciation and other costs, but it didn't want to make too much profit, because then it'd be paying too much tax.

• Trusts for the under-25s. The under-25s but over-18s would need parental consent to consume more than 5% of their capital in one year, the under 18s were even more restrained.

• Ron Fisher's money needed to be handled in a way that stopped his parents claiming it if Ron Fisher's death was ever discovered, or if I disappeared to change identities again, but which also let me - posing as Ron Fisher - control it.

• Mark Anderson was also getting $125 million (everyone insisted). So that needed to be parked somewhere in case he turned up (unlikely, but who knew what might happen decades from now), but also had to be accessible to the rest of us, in the much more likely case that he never turned up.

• Plus some of the above entities would be interrelated in various ways.

• And then there'd be God knows how many different legal entities required when we started doing things with our money, e.g., we'd probably have several different investment companies, any risky venture would be isolated to limit our financial exposure to its risks, etc.

Then there was the publicity to think about. We'd been thinking about that the whole time, but now we knew the specifics so there were decisions to be made there.

Vanessa had a great deal more to think about than the rest of us because she wanted to get MAF up and running - and sticking into the side of the Government - as fast as possible. She would never have a better chance to publicize MAF than when we announced our settling with the Government, which was going to be happening tomorrow.

Vanessa and Prof stayed in the house to work on Vanessa's speeches. They called The Boys, asking them to get together with their girlfriends and come over later in the evening for some interesting family news. The Boys had known they were members of "The Family", but they hadn't been following the negotiation. The amount just signed for was considerably more than the last figure they'd heard, so they were in for a nice surprise.

I copied the signed contracts several times, while Julia called Ava to check whether she was with her parents (she was), and to tell her, "We're on our way to see you and them with some good news. We'll tell you when we get there."

With a copy of the agreement, Dad, Mom, Carol, Julia and I headed to see Katie and Carson. They were both very sick and we wanted them to know about Ava's now being financially secure - to the tune of $125 million worth of security - as quickly as possible.

Dad came mostly because he was too hyped up to stay at home. Donna didn't really appreciate the significance of so much money, so she wasn't so worked up about it - I'm sure I didn't fully appreciate the significance either. Donna was happy to be left to play with Patch. Donna was a good enough rider now, and Mom and Dad trusted Patch enough that Donna was allowed to ride without close supervision, as were some of her girlfriends when their parents had provided us with written authorization.

The short car trip to the hospital was a very noisy, excited one, and we were still giggly when we got to the Wests' room, so the three of them immediately knew something was up.

I stood at the back as usual, Mom at the front. Ava was standing with Julia, Carol and me now, to greet us and to make room for my dad and mom near her parents.

[I'd visited Katie and Carson several times with other people, or sometimes with just Ava. I always keep a low profile, and they knew me only as Ron Fisher, and always would; "always" being an extremely short period for them. They were somewhat confused by my becoming so friendly with everyone so quickly - including with Ava, who hugged me openly - but they had more important things to worry about than me. They'd privately asked Ava what the story was with me. She'd stuck to the Ron Fisher story, understanding that her parents would be very worried if they knew I was Mark. Andrew, Robert and Ava were still the only 'outsiders' (meaning people who didn't live in the mansion full time) who knew Ron was Mark.]

Mom said, "We signed our settlement agreement with the Government a few minutes ago, and there are a few little clauses we want to show you."

"Okay?" Carson replied, not understanding.

Mom showed them the clause that said, to summarize it considerably, "The Family to receive $1,000,000,000 (ONE BILLION DOLLARS)."

Carson and Katie started congratulating Mom and Dad, but Mom cut them off with, "There are two more clauses to show you yet. This is the second one."

Mom turned to the second settlement agreement, for the Government losing my body (my being missing wasn't really the Government's fault, but after careful consideration I'd decided not to tell them that). Mom showed Katie and Carol, "The Family to receive $500,000,000 (FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS)."

"You're getting one point five BILLION?" checked Carson, questioning the sanity of everyone involved in this.

"Yes," answered Mom, confirming that everyone was insane. In our case, insane and rich. Mom added, "One more clause to show you: the definition of 'The Family'. The total is being split EVENLY among these people."

While Mom was putting the contract in front of Katie and Carson again, Ava was asking us kids, "Did I hear Dad say 'BILLION'?"

I agreed, "Yeah, it's insane. Look at your parents." I wanted Ava to see the looks on their faces when it hit them

Ava's name was in the penultimate position, so it took a couple of seconds for her parents to get to it. Carson got there first because Katie was receiving quite a lot of painkillers and her faculties were slowed. He asked in surprise, "Ava?"

"Yes," confirmed Mom. "Ava shares equally. We get $125 million each, including Ava, so you don't need to worry about her being able to support herself."

Katie and Carson were having trouble grasping the concept. I thought that was probably because it was insane.

Ava asked, "I don't understand. What's going on?"

Julia beat me to providing the explanation, "Because of what they did to Mark, the Government has agreed to give us $125 million each, including you. For a recent high-school graduate, you're doing very well for yourself."

Ava was too busy struggling with the insanity of the first half to catch Julia's ending joke. She checked, "They're going to give me money?"

I confirmed, "An INSANE amount of money Ava. You're VERY rich now."

"But I haven't done anything."

Julia answered, "You were important to Mark and the Government took him out of your life, so they're paying you $125 million for that."

Ava looked at me, to say, "But that's CRAZY! You're..." then Ava stopped, realizing she shouldn't say any more.

I helped cover her stop by saying, "It certainly is crazy. When you have your Athletic Club races on Saturday mornings, you won't have to run so hard anymore. Just pay everyone else to go slower than you."

She thought I was the crazy one. Apparently I didn't understand the point of running. That was probably true. If you want to get around a circle REALLY fast, why not just stay where you are? (Comments of that nature have no place in conversations about soccer. That's obviously totally different.)

The next couple of minutes were spent convincing the Wests that it truly was real (or "really was true"; take your pick, English is a very flexible language). It wasn't easy to convince them, even after showing them that the contracts were fully signed. We didn't bother trying to convince them that it wasn't insane.

"It's a done deal," said Mom. "They can't back out of it now. The checks will come through in about a week so we're quickly setting up trust funds for the kids and forming some corporations. Think about how you'd like Ava's money handled. It can be banked into a savings account like an ordinary check, put into a trust account, or any other legal entity that you want as the contracts specify 'or nominee'. Tell us what you want in a day or two and we'll add it to the pile of things our lawyers are doing for us. Here's our lawyers' card and you can call them to discuss anything you want, or you might want to deal with your own lawyer."

They still had trouble believing it.

Mom reassured, "It'll be all over the news by dinnertime tomorrow. We'll warn the hospital administrators about it on our way out to make sure they protect you from being disturbed. We'll leave a copy of the contracts with you so you can double-check that you're not dreaming, haha."

We could tell when they started believing it because the Wests started protesting that it was too much, that we were too generous, that Ava shouldn't get the same as Mark's family, etc.

We had a very easy counter to that, something Vanessa had made central to her strategy. Mom explained, "It's not us that's being generous. We decided at the beginning that Steven and I were perfectly happy with $10 million each. We could've asked for lesser amounts for everyone else - maybe $1 million for Ava - but we didn't want to try putting values on everyone's importance to Mark so we simply told the Government that we wanted the twelve of us to get $10 million each. Including Ava and Ron on that list didn't cost us anything; it just meant the Government would have to write a couple more checks. We never asked them to, but every time they gave us a new offer they increased the amount for us personally. It got all the way up to $125 million each before we signed. The Government is very generous with other people's money, but it's worked out rather well for Ava and us."

"But that's crazy," pointed out Katie.

Ava suddenly thought to ask, "Can we give it to the doctors to make Mom and Dad better?"

Mom answered, "I'm afraid not, Ava. We asked the doctors months ago whether more money would help, but there are some things that money cannot buy."

"Even a LOT of money, like $125 million?"

"Sadly not. You can ask them yourself, but they're already doing everything they can."

"It's all right, Ava," said Katie. "We accept it now."

It was a good time for us to leave.

^

Our lawyer arrived about lunchtime the next day. I introduced myself as, "Ron Fisher, the world's highest paid gardener."

"This has worked out remarkably well for you."

"It certainly has! The Andersons are easily the best gardening clients I've had so far this year."

He just shook his head in bemusement. [Later, when I was elsewhere, he queried the parents about my getting an equal share because there was no legal, moral or any other requirement for that. The only explanation he got was, "We have our reasons."]

He checked that the first pair of agreements had been signed correctly, then got the other sets he'd brought with him signed. I'd always thought there were two copies of every contract, one copy for 'us', one copy for 'them', whoever 'us' and 'them' were. Apparently the Government likes paperwork, because there were five sets of our contracts.

When they were all signed, he got all but one of the sets couriered back to his office, keeping one set with him in case the courier plane crashed (or whatever). The rest of the afternoon was spent with him and the parents in Prof and Vanessa's study, going through a lot of the paperwork that he'd brought with him or was being emailed to us during the day. Ideas about our corporate and trust structures, questions for us from the lawyers and accountants back in DC, formation documents to sign, etc.

At 3:30pm he called the Government's lead lawyer, informing him, "I'm with the Andersons now. They've signed both settlement agreements. My office will get the documents tomorrow morning if you want to collect them on Saturday."

Apparently that could wait until Monday.

They spent half an hour discussing various practicalities. One that came up was the Government's lawyer saying, "I've been requested to suggest that it'd be easier for all concerned if the existing owners of the forfeited vehicles retain possession of them, in return for your clients keeping the market value payment that my client has already agreed to pay."

"Hold while I check with my clients."

The way the agreement read, the Government would give us the dollar amount of the vehicles' total market value and we'd use that money to buy the vehicles, which they'd deliver to the Corvallis airport. The Government's lawyer was suggesting we just keep the money and they keep the vehicles. That would be very convenient for all concerned, and Vanessa could easily arrange other ways of flying to DC until her new jet was delivered, but Vanessa immediately turned the alteration down. She wanted the PR value of getting the vehicles in front of the media's camera lenses.

Vanessa had already contacted the airport and had penciled in a long-term rental of an empty hangar large enough to store the jet she was about to buy. She called the airport to confirm she'd need it permanently from now on. The hangar was large enough to store the SUVs and one jet, plus the other jet temporarily on a tie-down nearby. Once they were all delivered, Vanessa intended to get all seven vehicles lined up impressively, then hold a TV interview in front of them to describe how they'd been forfeited by the Government because they'd been used in the commission of a crime. She'd announce the charities the SUVs were being donated to, and that the jets were to be sold. It'd make for Good TV.

Vanessa had emailed the major networks to inform them of an important press conference at 4pm today outside our front gate. So after our lawyer finished talking with his opposite number, the parents - but not the lawyer because including him wasn't the image Vanessa wanted - went out to face the press, carrying the many information packs I'd collated while they were working with the lawyer.