THE TAINTED TRUST (Volume 2 of The King Trilogy)

CHAPTER 51

        Toronto. Monday, April 2, 1990

Mike traversed the slush-covered parking lot on his way to the door of his office. The warmth of the sunshine and the continued strength of his business and marriage to Karen contributed to his buoyant frame of mind. He whistled as he entered the building and walked down the hallway leading to the open office area. "Hi Margaret," he greeted one of his two secretaries.

She looked up and smiled. "Morning Mike...Chris Lippert's waiting for you in your office. You're not going to like what he has to say."

His smile disappeared. "What is it? Tell me before I go in there?"

"I think I should let him tell you."

Mike hurried to his office, closed the door and faced Terry Lippert, his most experienced representative and responsible for the supervision of Mike's Toronto area retail gasoline outlets. Now thirty-two years of age, Lippert had been hired by Mike as a station manager, eight years earlier. Acknowledging Lippert's commitment to the business and tireless efforts, Mike had rewarded him with generous salary increases and advancing levels of responsibility.

Lippert's worried facial expression spoke volumes. "Did Margaret tell you why I'm here?" he asked.

"No, but she told me I'm not going to like what you're going to tell me."

"She was right about that...I think you should sit down."

"Terry, just do it!" Mike demanded.

"We uncovered a credit card kiting scam...It's an in-house deal." Lippert paused and looked away, wishing he could just stop talking. "Phillip's in on it."

Mike walked slowly behind his desk and sat in his brown velour covered swivel chair. "You sure?" he asked, his eyes locked on Lippert's.

Lippert nodded. "I wish I wasn't. Phillip and Gary Matheson have been doing it for some time. If Phillip hadn't been greedy, we probably wouldn't have known about his involvement. He tried to recruit some of the other managers, but they refused and told me the whole story."

"Were you aware of the scam before they told you?"

Lippert nodded. "It started when one of our customers phoned to complain about an overcharge on his credit card statement. According to his records, he bought twenty dollars worth of gasoline on February twenty-sixth. His statement showed he bought thirty dollars worth. If that was an isolated occurrence, we probably would have told the customer it was impossible to substantiate his claim. It was simply our word against his."

"There were more?"

"A lot more. We audited all the credit card drafts for February and March and found a ton of them."

"How did they do it?"

"Suppose you bought twenty dollars worth of gasoline and used your credit card to pay for it. Now, suppose the attendant takes your signed credit card draft and changes the twenty to a thirty. He puts the thirty dollar draft in his cash drawer and takes out ten dollars, cash. That maneuver balances his cash. Then he puts the ten in his pocket, and you get charged for thirty instead of twenty."

Mike winced and shook his head. "Dammit, Chris, I've heard of a lot of ill- conceived scams in my career, but this is the dumbest. Those kids had to know that eventually some customers would reconcile their purchases with their statements."

Lippert chuckled. You'll love this one. "The latest complaint we got was from a woman who got a fifty-six dollar charge on her statement. It bothered her because she said her car won't hold any more than fifty dollars worth."

"How much money are we talking about?"

"So far, we've paid out eight hundred and seventy dollars in claims, but we know there's more. I wonder how many people were ripped off and just blindly paid without checking their statements."

"Has Matheson ever been caught with his hand in the cookie jar before?"

"He's clean. In fact he's a damn good manager...What do you want me to do with them?"

"Haul both of them in here tomorrow morning. I'll talk to them."