The Gambit by Allen Longstreet

I can have. So I called the Wells Fargo in Baltimore and told the IT that I was doing some scheduled maintenance on their server. I faxed over my credentials, and I was in. Like I told you, I had a feeling the VP had done this before, because of the camouflaged flags I was getting to my inbox. Not just any thief can do that, it has to be a thief who has stolen before . I accessed a list that showed the accounts with the highest balances down to the lowest. After I scrolled past the multi-millionaires, I found it .
    Grey paused. I held my hands out and shrugged, coaxing him to respond.
    “Fourteen accounts. Fourteen accounts with identical balances, and the serial numbers associated with the accounts are sequential, but all the names on the accounts are different. They have to be squatter accounts, people who are involved that hold the account in their name. It was like these fourteen people never went to the bank to begin with. Someone on the inside opened up the accounts and got the paperwork signed outside of work. Once I isolated the accounts, I looked into the balance history of them. That was when I discovered that seven of the accounts each had one-hundred thousand dollars in them from the day they were opened. The other seven, one by one each had one-hundred thousand dollars wired into them. The time between the first deposit of 100K in the eighth account and the last deposit in the fourteenth account of the same amount was—guess…”
    “Three months?” I blurted.
    “Three months. Exactly the amount of time the VP has been in charge at my bank. The icing on the cake is what I found earlier this week when I went to the bank in person. After crunching the numbers and working around the false profits, the amount that had been stolen was seven-hundred thousand dollars. The same amount that was split and wired into the remaining seven accounts in Baltimore.”
    “No shit…” I mumbled. I was stunned at the level of corruption that was going on. His idea echoed in my mind like a bell being rung. “Grey, are you really thinking of taking it?”
    He sat down on the edge of the bed beside me. He had his glasses on and many papers in his hands, it made him look like a professor. He was intelligent enough to be one.
    “Owen, have you heard of Bitcoin?”
    “Yes, I have. The feds hate it. It’s essentially a currency they can’t control. It’s decentralized.”
    “You’re correct. So, think about this. If I were to hack the main server in Baltimore and get the needed credentials to those fourteen accounts, I could write a script that wipes out the money in each of the accounts and combines it all together. But then, where would we be able to hide 1.4 million dollars? The answer is Bitcoin. We could trade the 1.4 million to a Chinese bank and in exchange get Bitcoin. The great thing about the Coin is essentially it can be stored anywhere…like a flash drive, for example. We could sell the Coin on the Darknet, in increments, and only when we needed the funds on the go.”
    “ On the go ?” I asked, confused. “I am the one on the run, not you.”
    “Dude! Do you not realize the magnitude of what’s going on here?”
    “Of course I do—”
    “No, let me finish. We know the truth, Owen. We are right, and whoever created this lie is wrong . If we expose this and execute it properly, this is going to be the biggest government scandal in history. You are not going to make it on your own, not with just your street bike. They have too many eyes watching and too much power. I am going to help you, and if you don’t take my help, I can promise you that you won’t make it very far after you leave my house.”
    His words sank in. The truth he had just spoken of was undeniable.
    “Well, once you take the money, won’t they come after you too?”
    “Not that it matters anyway, but that is the best part. Once those accounts are wiped out, what can the VP do? Nothing. He is a sitting duck. He can’t report to