- •It was Alex Vandervoort who said, “We`re obviously here to celebrate.” He motioned with his sherry glass. “The question is - what?”
- •In the center of this last area, a new large building and the steelwork of a second stood out against the skyline.
- •It was while they were having coffee that a waitress brought a message to their table.
- •It was from Juanita Nunez`s cash drawer that the money was missing.
- •It was then that Tottenhoe had telephoned Edwina.
- •In due course Mr. Rosselli, for whom counsel appeared in court, was fined heavily for reckless driving and awarded three demerit points, to be recorded on his license. He was exceedingly angry.
- •It was obvious he meant it and the banker snapped, "I don't respond to threats."
- •Vandervoort said, "I see the difference, though I wouldn't have without the glass. How do the counterfeits look under ultraviolet?"
- •Vandervoort whistled softly. A single plastic sheet would produce sixty-six Keycharge credit cards. That meant, potentially, almost twenty thousand fraudulent cards.
- •Vandervoort looked surprised. "You think you can get someone?"
- •Vandervoort said drily, "We prefer to speak of it in percentages. That way it doesn't sound as much, and the directors don't get alarmed."
- •In other circumstances, she realized, she might not have believed herself.
- •In one way it was her memory which had added to her troubles.
- •It was a three-block walk from the bus to the nursery school where she had left Estela this morning on her way to work. Juanita hurried, knowing she was late.
- •It was obvious from the stillness that the other children were all gone.
- •It had been a month and a half since Alex had seen Celia and, though he had been expecting some deterioration, her present appearance chilled him.
- •It was during that time - the thought of it shamed him now - he had suggested they divorce. Celia had seemed shattered and he let the subject drop, hoping things would get better, but they hadn't.
- •It was close to midnight. A log fire, blazing earlier, had burned low in the hearth of the snug room in the small, sumptuous bachelor suite.
- •If not Nunez, who?
- •It was like pricking a bubble. The audit chief flushed crimson as he admitted, "Yes, it is. But even we miss things occasionally when a thief has covered his tracks well."
- •Innes grunted understanding. "If you could show that, any reasonable judge would send him straight to jail. But can you?"
- •Innes glanced toward his colleague who shrugged.
- •If the phone had been answered, Wainwright would have made an excuse about a wrong number and revised his plans. As it was, he now headed for his car, parked in the headquarters' basement garage.
- •Immediately ahead was an elevator which he ignored. He saw a stairway to the right and went up it, two stairs at a time, to the second floor.
- •In the end he compromised. Instead of arresting and charging Wainwright he took him, the same night, to the police gym and, in Bufflehead's own words, "beat the b' jesus out of him" in a boxing ring.
- •It was possible that the security chief dozed off, but a key inserted in the apartment lock alerted him. Cautiously he sat up. His illuminated watch dial showed it was shortly after midnight.
- •In the row ahead of Alex were Jerome Patterton, the vice-chairman, and his wife.
- •It was the director with the longest service, the Honorable Harold Austin, who announced the board's decision.
- •It was like a fencing match with shadows. He said in exasperation, "I'll never understand you."
- •It was the second such offer she had had in the past few days. "Maybe."
Vandervoort said, "I see the difference, though I wouldn't have without the glass. How do the counterfeits look under ultraviolet?"
"Exactly the same as real ones."
"That's bad."
Several months earlier, following an example set by American Express, a hidden insignia had been imprinted on the face of all authentic Keycharge credit cards. It became visible only under ultraviolet light. The intention was to provide a quick, simple check of any card's genuineness. Now that safeguard, too, had been outflanked.
"It's bad, all right," Nolan Wainwright agreed. "And these are only samples. I've four dozen more, intercepted after they'd been used successfully in retail outlets, restaurants, for airline tickets, liquor, other things. And all of them are the best counterfeits which have ever shown up."
"Arrests?"
"None so far. When people sense a phony card is being queried they walk out of a store, away from an airline counter, or whatever, just as happened a few minutes ago." He motioned toward the authorization room. "Besides, even when we do arrest some users it doesn't follow we'll be near the source of the cards; usually they're sold and resold carefully enough to cover a trail."
Alex Vandervoort picked up one of the fraudulent blue, green, and gold cards and turned it over. "The plastic seems an exact match too."
"They're made from authentic plastic blanks that are stolen. They have to be, to be that good." The security chief went on, "We think we've traced the source of the cards themselves. Four months ago one of our suppliers had a break-in. The thieves got into the strong room where finished plastic sheets are stored. Three hundred sheets were missing."
Vandervoort whistled softly. A single plastic sheet would produce sixty-six Keycharge credit cards. That meant, potentially, almost twenty thousand fraudulent cards.
Wainwright said, "I did the arithmetic too." He motioned to the counterfeits on the desk. "This is the tip of an iceberg. Okay, so the phony cards we know about, or think we do, can mean ten million dollars' loss in charges before we pull them out of circulation. But what about others we haven't heard of yet? There could be ten times as many more."
"I get the picture."
Alex Vandervoort paced the small office as his thoughts took shape.
He reflected: Ever since bank credit cards were introduced, all banks issuing them had been plagued by heavy loss through fraud. At first, entire mailbags of cards were stolen, their contents used for spending sprees by thieves - at bank expense. Some mail shipments were hijacked and held for ransom. Banks paid the ransom money, knowing the cost would be far greater if cards were distributed through the underworld, and used. Ironically, in 1974 Pan American Airways was castigated by press and public after admitting it paid money to criminals for the return of large quantities of stolen ticket blanks. The airline's objective was to avoid enormous losses through misuse of the tickets. Yet unknown to Pan Am's critics, some of the nation's biggest banks had quietly been doing the same thing for years.
Eventually, mail theft of credit cards was reduced, but by then criminals had moved on to other, more ingenious schemes. Counterfeiting was one. The early counterfeit cards were crude and easily recognizable, but quality improved until now - as Wainwright had shown - it took an expert to detect the difference.
As fast as any credit card security measure was devised, criminal cleverness would circumvent it or attack a vulnerability elsewhere. As an example, a new type credit card now being marketed used a "scrambled" photograph of the cardholder. To ordinary eyes the photo was an indistinguishable blur, but placed in a descrambling device it could be viewed clearly and the cardholder identified. At the moment the scheme looked promising, but Alex had not the least doubt that organized crime would soon find a way to duplicate the scrambled photos.
Periodically, arrests and convictions of those using stolen or bogus credit cards were made, but these represented a small portion only of the total traffic. The main problem, so far as banks were concerned, was a lack of investigative and enforcement people. There simply were not enough.
Alex ceased his pacing.
"These latest counterfeits," he queried, "is it likely that there's some kind of ring behind them?"
"It's not only likely, it's a certainty. For the end product to be this good there has to be an organization. And it's got money behind it, machinery, specialist know-how, a distribution system. Besides, there are other signs pointing the same way."
"Such as?"
"As you know," Wainwright said, "I keep in touch with law agencies. Recently there's been a big increase through the whole Midwest in counterfeit currency, travelers checks, credit cards - other cards as well as our own. There's also a lot more traffic than usual in stolen and counterfeit securities, stolen and forged checks."
"And you believe all this, and our Keycharge fraud losses, are linked?"
"Let's say it's possible."
"What's Security doing?"
"As much as we can. Every lost or missing Keycharge card that turns fraudulent is being checked out and, where possible, tracked down. Recovered cards and fraud prosecutions have increased every month this year; you've had the figures in reports. But something like this needs a fullscale investigation and I don't have either staff or budget to handle it."
Alex Vandervoort smiled ruefully. "I thought we'd get around to budget."
He surmised what was coming next. He knew of the problems under which Nolan Wainwright labored.
Wainwright, as a vice-president of First Mercantile American, was in charge of all security matters in the Headquarters Tower and at branches. The credit-card security division was only one of his responsibilities. In recent years the status of Security within the bank had been advanced, its operating funds increased, though the amount of money allotted was still inadequate. Everyone in management knew it. Yet because Security was a non-revenue producing function, its position on the priority list for additional funds was low.
"You've got proposals and figures, I presume. You always have, Nolan."
Wainwright produced a manila folder which he had brought with him. "It's all there. The most urgent need is two more full-time investigators for the credit-card division. I'm also asking for funds for an undercover agent whose assignment would be to locate the source of these counterfeit cards, also to find out where the leakage is occurring inside the bank."