The Genesis Illusion

Chapter 43

"Paul, I want to thank you for coming in today," Inspector Nara said. "This is Jongjaroen Wu, one of our best money laundering detective agents. I'd like you to work with him to see if your statistical methods can help us track small amounts of money back to their source. We want to find out if it's coming from illegal drug activity."

"I understand Inspector," Paul said. "I'll do what I can."

Nara told Paul that he would make his introduction and then leaving for a meeting so he wasn't surprised when he left them alone. Low partitions filled the office where workers sat at generic desks interacting with the latest computer technology. Wu was a slightly built Asian who spoke excellent English. He undoubtedly was Singaporean, but his family may have emigrated from Thailand or Cambodia.

"Please call me Paul." Paul said.

"My friends call me Jon," Wu said. Wu was friendly but Paul thought he was only following orders.

"Okay, Jon, please go ahead."

"What we have is the payment for the space used for the Arcadia meeting. We also have the rental payment for an office space, room 104, in the Chinatown Center. These are relatively small amounts. We'll try to track them both back to the origin. They both came from a bank account here in Singapore. You can see here, they were both looking at Jon's computer screen, is the bank transaction."

"The payment for both rents came from the same back account?"

"I don't know yet. So, I started with the Arcadia meeting at the hotel."

"Why not start with the room in the Chinatown Center?

"The hotel room payment was a larger amount, and the transaction was more recent."

"There was no name associated with the payment and we found this was a business account. But looking into the funds deposited we cannot find any sales or services associated with those deposits."

"So the business, if you want to call it that, doesn't appear to be selling or providing any services to justify the deposits."

"Yes, that's correct. This is a tip-off, a red flag, it could mean this account is being used to move money from an illegal source into legitimate businesses."

"The money used to pay for rental of a meeting room that was a legitimate use of the money. So the money now is in circulation. What we need to do is to track this money back to find out where it originated."

"Right, if it is coming from the illegal drug sales they most likely have hidden that by moving the money several times before paying for the rental."

"This is like a game of hide and seek. I'm good at games."

"Yes, that's exactly right. If you look at this account, we see several deposits over the last few months. Most of these deposits are coming from offshore locations."

"That means not in Singapore, correct?"

"Correct. This is another red flag. Money coming from outside the country should have documentation that establishes legitimate financial activity. Most of these deposits are relatively modest amounts from an account in Cambodia. This is a technique the money launderers use. They deposit money in many accounts and often in many countries. Then they use that money to buy legitimate products and services. Sometimes these are large purchases that are easier to find, like houses or yachts. More often, they are small purchases that are very hard to identify and track."

Wu continued, "We should pick one of these. Then we can contact the bank in Cambodia. We have agreements with several banks already. They will send us information about this particular transaction. What we will probably see is the same thing. A business account receiving deposits from various places and then buying products and services or like this, depositing small amounts in other bank accounts."

"Wow, this is complex but intriguing."

"I suggest after we receive the Cambodian bank information, we could try to use your statistical analysis method to help us sort through the thousands of transactions we'll find. Then once we find those coming from unusual or undocumented sources, we will probably uncover another account and so on until we reach the final source."

"This is a real mess, but numbers are my thing. I think we can't use the method I developed to sort out the confounding factors for another situation. I must modify of that method for this application."

"This type of investigation often takes months or years. I understand the urgency this time, but I'm not hopeful we can resolve this quickly. It is a very difficult, tedious process with many false leads and dead-ends."

"I'll concentrate on developing an algorithm that can process this data and help us reduce the number of leads we need to follow. Hopefully, we can then track down the source of these funds, legal or illegal."

"When we get something from Cambodia, I'll call you."

Paul's mind was already working on the solution to this complex problem. As he left the office, he walked right into someone waiting for the elevator. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention," Paul said. This was an understatement. His mind attacked the math excluding almost everything else. Upon reaching his hotel and paying the taxi fare Paul stood motionless outside the revolving door entrance, for hours.