Hotch and Morgan followed Garcia towards her cave while she was telling them that way too many people had touched or moved or worked on all of the evidence. Chelsea could hear her asking them if there was a way to shorten the list of subjects as the moved out of earshot into her office.
Reid helped Chelsea get her laptop set up and plugged in the large conference room. They then asked Rossi, Prentiss, and JJ if they would help them move all of the ledger boxes back from the small room Reid and Chelsea had used last night. This time they decided that working in the same room with all of the other boxes of paperwork and other agents would be an advantage.
After all of the boxes had been returned to the main conference room, Rossi, Prentiss and JJ started shuffling the other boxes around to split them up between them all. Reid helped Chelsea open the ledgers she needed first and get her notes set up. When they were set up, he asked her if she wanted to get a cup of coffee before she started.
He took her hand as they walked to the break room. He realized that he liked touching her, even here at the office and that surprised him. He turned to her as she was pouring herself a cup of coffee. "I'm proud of you. That had to be hard to tell Hotch, knowing that someone in the Bureau tampered with evidence." He started to pour his own coffee as she responded.
"I spent more time than I should have looking at it, but I needed to be VERY sure before I would say something like that. It's hard to believe that someone that took the time and effort to get a job at the FBI and had a security clearance would do something like this."
He nodded, "People do odd things for a lot of different reasons, but I'm sure we'll catch whoever did it."
"It's kind of scary if we are correct that they knew you would be looking at the evidence. Kind of feels like someone is watching us."
"I think right now the only people watching us are JJ and Prentiss." He laughed as he saw them hanging back and watching them holding their coffee cups. "You guys can come in here and get your coffee. We are only taking about the case."
If JJ and Prentiss were at all embarrassed at being caught spying, they didn't show it. "We were just giving you some privacy" JJ explained to Chelsea as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
Spencer shook his head. "Not much privacy when you're staring at us from only 10 feet away." Prentiss had just turned her back to Spencer to fill her cup and had a huge smile on her face.
Chelsea couldn't help but laugh. "All right everyone, lets get back to the conference room and get to work. If we get this case solved soon, I really will get some privacy with Spence when I take him home." Prentiss couldn't help herself any longer and burst out laughing. Then noticing the dirty look that Spencer gave her, she laughed even harder. She put her arm around Chelsea's shoulder and led her back to the conference room as JJ followed close behind smiling with Spencer hanging back still shaking his head. Rossi was watching as the four came back in the room. Prentiss started to tell him something and he put up his hand, "I don't even want to know." But Spencer noticed that even he had a smile on his face.
Spencer's head was spinning. Chelsea had just made him blush at work, called him Spence for the first time, and seemed to be getting along very well, maybe too well, with Prentiss, all in less than 24 hours of meeting the team. He was thankful to have the work to distract them all.
Mostly they all worked quietly looking for anything that could help piece together the real financial history of Mr. Jackson and the Action Brokerage. Occasionally someone would find something they thought might be useful or Chelsea asked them to specifically look for some documents, but mostly all that was heard was shuffling of paper and clicking computer keys. The only other movement was just before 11:00 someone came in and took sandwich orders. They promised to be back at 11:30 with lunch.
With the 2 real sets of books and bank statements from 3 different banks Chelsea was able to piece together a fairly complete account of 2000 – 2003. When they met for lunch, Hotch started by asking Chelsea if she had learned anything new.
Morgan and JJ passed out the sandwiches and drinks as Chelsea began. "I started in 2000 again because that is the year I already had some notes on." Hotch nodded for her to continue. "I made a month by month list of the income and expenditures from the 2 sets of books first. I was able to download the IRS version, which tells me almost all or the ligament income and expenditures and is a great starting point. Everything that is not listed on that set of books is either underreported or not legal. That could be as simple as under the table payments and minimum wage violations to tax evasion or embezzlement. I think once I have most of the data together, it will give you a better idea of where to find the proof of illegal behavior."
"I have tons of bank statements and with everyone's help I was able to find the 2000 through the 2008 records from 3 different banks. The credits and debits of the 2 local banks align with the 2000 through 2003 IRS and or investors books. Just in the last half hour, JJ found the records from a third bank. I'm still working on the first year, but it looks like all of the activity for The Action Brokerage account at the Golden West Bank in Las Vegas, is not reported anywhere. There are not a lot of transactions, but they are all large amounts and it looks like about $300,000 per month is sent out of the US. I can't tell from the statements if it is another business or an off-shore type account."
"Maybe Garcia will have some luck tracking the transactions." Chelsea handed a small stack of paperwork to Hotch. "Here are the statements for the first 10 months of 2000. It should take me less than an hour to enter the rest of 2000 though 2003 now that I see the pattern. These transactions could be what they were hoping you wouldn't find or they are planted as evidence to keep you jumping through hoops. Although, Spencer looked that the statements carefully and if they are fakes, they are very good. I'm assuming they are real and were buried in a box of paperwork. Whomever set up the fake books probably didn't realize these statements were here."
Looking around the room, Chelsea continued, "I've really just started putting everything together, everyone in here has found some interesting financial documents over many different years, but I need to finish my base financial setup before I can figure out where all of that comes into play." Once Hotch had looked over the Golden West bank statements, he passed them over to Garcia. Chelsea popped open her can of Coke and unwrapped her sandwich signifying she had told them everything new she had learned in the last 4 hours.
Hotch went next, first thanking Chelsea for her work and then telling them what he and Morgan had found with Garcia's help. "Garcia dug around the NY computer system and found some deleted pdf files that contained all of the documents that were signed into evidence. It also detailed what files were sent to the DC prosecutor's office back in January when the trial was transferred to the DC courthouse. Many of the financial statements stayed at the FBI office while they continued to put together the paper trail for the trial."
JJ asked "Don't they usually keep the evidence all together?"
Hotch nodded. "Yes, normally. But nothing about this case seems normal. At the time the FBI White Collar accounting department was still going through all of the financial records and prosecutors were willing to wait for that report. The NY prosecutor's office had looked through the evidence, but it was so detailed they wanted professional forensic accountants to make the reports for trial and they left it with the NY Bureau. When the trial was transferred to DC, the DC prosecutor's decided to not start over with the paperwork since they were short on time and let the NY FAs continue working on the financial reports. They asked for all of the other evidence to be sent to their offices to DC. It included witness reports, all SEC complaints, some recorded and video evidence."
"No reports of evidence tampering had surfaced yet. They intended to have the FBI send the evidence logged into the trial directly from NY and call them as witnesses so they didn't ask for it to be transferred to their office."
Morgan picked it up from there. "According to the paperwork that Garcia found, the original financial documents did not include any personal writing journals or hand written financial general journals. It looks like the evidence the both Chelsea and Reid were reviewing was slipped into the mix during the interoffice transfer. The number of boxes that left NY coincides with the number of boxes received here in Quantico, so there was no reason to expect foul play on our end. If Randal Jackson were to get his way, there would be a mistrial because of this mess next week."
Reid stepped in thinking about that they had talked about last night. "Now that we know there have been multiple money transfers out of the country, it does give more credibility to our theory that Mr. Jackson wants a mistrial. The NY judge was clear that he did not want Mr. Jackson held without bail for what he called 'an unreasonable long period of time before the trial.' There is far too much evidence to ever acquit Mr. Jackson and he would be facing most of his life in prison. But if he were able to post bail and flee the country it sounds like he would be financially set from off shore accounts from the evidence we have found."
Hotch nodded, "All he would need to do is travel to a country with no extradition treaty with the US and he could live easily on what he has."
No one had anything else to add except that they were finding lots of financial paper trails and compiling them by year to help Chelsea.
While they were eating lunch, they all discussed the why's, when's and how's the records could have been exchanged in the NY accounting department, but did not have any solid leads in that area yet. When they finished and were getting back to work, Hotch asked everyone to be meet back in the conference room again at 6:30pm.
At 6:00 he came into the conference room "Chelsea, could I see you for a few minutes in my office before we all get together?" Chelsea nodded and followed him up the stairs tso his office.
