Fraud, Murder & Mayhem (eBook)

Ed Shiffman (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
448 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-0318-6 (ISBN)

Infos

A mysterious map and the lure of gold send three friends off on an international spree they might not survive. When Chester and Arnie discover a mysterious map in their new van and are suddenly offered double the worth of the van in exchange for the map, they aren't sure what to do. After some thought, they determine the map is a trail of locations that are hiding a fortune and is linked to an elaborate plan to defraud an insurance company. Deciding to keep the map for themselves, they set off on a journey to find the hidden money. The map leads them to many crossroads, dangerous situations, and trials. Will the three friends be able to live through all the mayhem and find the fortune for themselves? This is a fictional caper based on a few facts, a lot of innuendo and a fertile imagination following a trail of fraud leading to the notorious Cut Toe Gang.

Ed Shiffman has a long professional career in investment management with financial service firms and a Central Coast Indian Tribe. Additionally, he served on the advisory board to the Special Trustee for Native Americans during the Obama Administration. Outside of his financial services, Ed is a captain with a volunteer fire department in Mono County, California, and helped to fight the Eaton fire in Altadena. Additionally, Ed has strong skills working with automobile mechanics, which he gained from working in a gas station during high school. Currently, Ed lives in Santa Ynez Valley with his wife of 30 years, Karen, their horses, and dogs. In his spare time, he enjoys surfing, running, swimming, backpacking, horseshoeing, riding his horses, and playing the trombone with a local R&B group. All his backgrounds come together in his book, 'Fraud, Murder & Mayhem.' Ed has other works, such as 'The First Adventure of the Faxable Man'.

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Chester and Arnie are two car enthusiasts who buy an old Volkswagen Westfalia camper at an impound auction sale in Mendocino, California. Once they get the van home, they begin to disassemble it only to discover a mysterious map hidden within the ceiling. The pair thinks nothing of it until a stranger suddenly appears and offers them twice the amount of money they paid for the van in exchange for the map. Unsure of what to make of this situation, they consult Chester's girlfriend, Erika, who determines the map is a trail of locations that are hiding a fortune and is linked to an elaborate plan to defraud an insurance company. Deciding to keep the map for themselves, they set off on a journey to find the hidden money. The map leads them to many crossroads, dangerous situations, and trials. Will the three friends be able to live through all the mayhem and find the fortune for themselves?This is a fictional caper based on a few facts, a lot of innuendo and a fertile imagination following a trail of fraud leading to the notorious Cut Toe Gang.

Textauszug

Chapter One

The Ad

The newspaper announcement of a pending impound lot sale fairly leaped off the page as Chester Sullivan read the announcement over his morning cup of coffee.

City of Ukiah Impound Lot Auction

January 2, 2025

Auction begins at 10:00 a.m.,

inspection period 8:00–9:30 a.m.

All sales are final.

Chester Sullivan quickly scanned the list of vehicles at the Mendocino County impound lot, looking for something that would pique his interest. Six months had passed since he and his girlfriend Erika and his sidekick Arnie had been embroiled in the securities fraud scheme that had brought down Capital Triangle Properties and assorted brokerage firms. The trio had inadvertently connected the dots to a scheme conducted by the principals of that company to defraud the public via an initial public offering or a real estate investment trust known as Terra Auri. Arnie had benefited financially from a fund started by the Securities and Exchange Commission to award whistle blowers and clamp down on white-collar crime such as the Terra Auri IPO. $250,000 was a large sum, but the reward had come at a cost.

Months of interrogations to clear his name and depositions to help convict Morris Poulsen, John Marking, and the rest of the participants in that fraud had seemed like a huge effort in comparison to the financial award he received from the fund. Still, it was the most money he had ever garnered in his entire life. It would have taken him a lifetime to save such a sum at his former parking lot attendant job. Chester was emotionally fried and was looking for a project to work on while he took a few months off from the working world in order to plot his next career move.

Incredibly, the press and law enforcement remained clueless about how his friend Arnie had used his job as an office machine repairman to access company records after hours and under the noses of Capital Triangle staff under the guise of fixing a printer or copier. Without Arnie’s stealth snooping talents, the securities fraud perpetrated in the Terra Auri IPO would have gone undiscovered. The instigators of the fraud, Morris Poulsen and John Marking would have secured a fortune, and unwitting people would have seen their investments in the security slowly erode over time as the inferior share class they had purchased dropped in value.

“Let’s see,” Chester mused as he scanned down the list of impound vehicles. He was looking for a future project while he decompressed from the recent events and developed a plan for his upcoming career change. His fascination with cars had followed him all of his life. His first love had been a baby-blue, wood-trimmed 1951 Buick Roadmaster station wagon his father had faithfully restored and maintained under a tarp in the Sullivan car collection barn on the family estate. Thereafter, Chester had been the proud owner of a variety of cars during his high school and college years. There had first been a ’69 Volkswagen Beetle with a blown engine that he had fixed and converted to a Baja Buggy. That had been followed by a series of pickup trucks, all Chevrolets, and one AMC Pacer, inspired by the 1992 cult movie Wayne’s World.

Chester viewed the advertisement from the San Francisco Chronicle for the impound auction. “1995 Chevy Astrovan . . . too domestic. 1989 Ford 250 four-wheel-drive, three-quarter-ton truck with utility bed . . . too utilitarian. 1990 Dodge Caravan . . . too plebian.”

Then at the bottom of the list he spied a potential find. “Hmm,” he uttered as he read the vehicle description. “1971 VW Westfalia Campmobile. Now there’s one with potential.” He conjured up a multitude of ways this van could be restored. Surf van to relive his youth on the beaches of Santa Bonita. Perhaps a full-on, frame-off restoration for resale and profit. Maybe just a retro van he could fix up and repaint with some bright metallic colors to tool around the city in or take to the mountains on the weekend. An early spring trip to the Saline Valley in Death Valley would be at his fingertips with a van like this one, he thought. He imagined himself exploring the desert, Erika with her fire-red hair streaming out the window, pointing out all the photo ops and potential hiking excursions as they sped along and breathed in the clean desert air. The Race Track, Scotty’s Castle, maybe the discovery of a long-lost gold mine . . . this was the world that could open to them with the purchase of such a van.

He noted the date and time for the pre-inspection at the impound yard. It would not be as simple as just making the drive to Ukiah and attending the live auction. Erika had convinced Chester to safeguard his reward proceeds by opening a joint account with her so that she could help him conserve his funds and perhaps save for a down payment on a house for the two of them. She was confident their relationship would continue and grow into something permanent. “It’s your money, Chess,” she had cooed when he brought the large check to her. “If you handle it well and only spend the interest, perhaps you can leverage this money into something bigger by way of an investment. Your dad will be so proud of you.” He had readily agreed. After all, it was his naïveté and lack of experience in the first place that had caused the danger to his girlfriend’s life during the Terra Auri affair which had resulted in his large financial windfall. He was indebted to her and was grateful to still have her.

Maybe this van purchase won’t be so hard after all, he thought. Getting a good buy on a classic vehicle and restoring it for a profit was something he could do. If he had failed in the fast-paced arena of IPOs in his recent career as a budding stockbroker, he certainly would not fail in a straightforward car restoration. He knew cars in and out, backwards and forwards. There was no way he could fail. All he had to do was convince Erika that a profit could be made from this wise investment.

His time in his former job at Argus Securities had not been a total waste. While his financial acumen had not grown appreciably during his short tenure at the firm, he had been able to design a basic framework for how to present a product to a potential client and begin a discussion that might eventually lead to a sale. That was all he really needed to do with Erika. A sales job on Erika so that she would support his new van restoration project and agree to let a few dollars from his nest egg be released for the venture.

He immediately launched into sales pitch assessment mode. What would be the grabber for her, he wondered? He methodically began to hone in on the primary sales motivation that would get her to support this purchase. “After I fix it up, we can take it to the beach on weekends or go on vacations to national parks.” He rejected this option as too frivolous. He knew she wanted a home, somewhere to put down some roots. Anything that moved away from the picture of a house with a white picket fence was not going to be supported.

He thought back to his sales calls for the Terra Auri deal. In all cases the major initial selling theme was the chance to get in on the ground floor of this new investment with the goal of making a ton of money. Each prospective client had a subtheme to which he had appealed once he had ferreted out the client’s needs and motivation. Some simply wanted more income in order to improve their lifestyle. Others were trying to provide for a wife or grandchildren once the client was no longer in the picture. Erika was no dummy, though; he would have one chance to broach the subject and he had to make it good. She was not going to be swayed by the chance to have fun driving around in a newly restored classic van. No, Erika was a person of numbers, facts, and reason. This would have to be a financial undertaking where he could combine his mechanical skills and some modest financial investment to show how a profit could be made and how his savings account would grow once he had fixed up the van and sold it.

The sound of footsteps coming up the sidewalk outside of his house broke his train of thought. They echoed louder as they approached the door, stopping so the visitor could knock on the door. Chester answered the door to find Arnie standing before him with a cardboard tray of fresh coffee and croissants.

“Hey, Chess,” Arnie greeted him. “Did you forget we were supposed to have breakfast at Peet’s today?”

“Damn,” replied Chester. He had the familiar sinking feeling that, once again, he had left his friend high and dry while he daydreamed.

Arnie was not at all put out, however. After five minutes of waiting, he had gone ahead and ordered the usual fare for the duo. He had not been completely surprised that Chester had failed to show up. Chester could easily be diverted, and Arnie had long ago become accustomed to adjusting for him instead of becoming angry or simply terminating their friendship.

“No big deal,” he said as he entered Chester’s house. The financial reward of the Terra Auri affair had been equally bestowed upon Arnie. The one substantive change in each of their lifestyles had been the termination of their longtime roommate arrangement. With each of them now in possession of a modest bankroll in the form of the SEC reward money, they had mutually decided that now was the time for them to each get their own living space and progress into adulthood. Arnie had been the natural choice to remain in the old apartment the two had shared for some time. Erika and Chester had decided to take their relationship to the next level and had...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.5.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-0318-6 / 9798317803186