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Authors: Haggai Carmon
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room’s high-speed Internet connection and sent Esther the efficient office admin an encrypted
e-mail:
Please check with the New York State Banking Department whether McHanna Associates need a license to act as a liaison for
a Swiss bank in currency transactions for U.S. citizens. If such a license is necessary, please see if one was issued to McHanna.
Also, ask the FBI field office in Manhattan whether there’s an ongoing investigation regarding that company’s possible involvement
in money laundering. Finally, check if McHanna ever filed any tax returns listing Harrington T. Whitney-Davis as an employee,
or engaged him as an in de pen dent contractor.
The latter two questions were legitimate, but the chances that the FBI would discuss the first question, even though we were
both agencies of the U.S. government, were slim to none. As to the tax returns, the IRS could not, under federal law, share
that information without a court order. Neither the FBI nor the IRS were the bad guys in this bureaucratic nightmare. They
had to maintain a stringent procedure for information exchange. But maybe Esther, with her quiet demeanor, could achieve what
I couldn’t with my big mouth and aggressive attitude.
I had a free evening. But Zürich at night is as exciting as having a warm beer with an overly talkative blind date you agreed
to meet during a temporary moment of insanity. Swiss TV isn’t any better. I called my children and went to sleep.
In the morning, I had barely shaken myself awake when I turned on my laptop computer. There was an incoming encrypted e-mail
from Esther:
There’s no need for a license from the New York State Banking Department if the company isn’t doing any banking activities
in New York, such as taking deposits or making loans to the public. Providing liaison services alone requires no license.
As for the FBI, I received an evasive answer regarding any investigation of McHanna Associates. The IRS says officially that
they can’t help us, but unofficially I was led to understand that Harrington T. Whitney-Davis’s name never appeared on McHanna
Associates’ tax filings, although it’s possible that an alias was used. Please let me know if you need anything else. Esther.
I returned to New York. Unenthusiastically, I pulled out the files again. I checked the names of the perpetrators in the remaining
eight cases. By now, what I found didn’t surprise me; it was all so obvious that I almost expected it. All eight men had left
the U.S. in 1980 or 1981. Their respective names had resurfaced briefly, one with each of the banking or other scams perpetrated.
Then each had vanished again. Since I discovered that the name of Whitney-Davis resurfaced, I ran a check on all other names
to see if we had a wholesale revival. But the answer came as expected. No. No resurgence of any other name.
I had a hunch that the suspected perpetrators’ disappearances weren’t coincidental. There was a clear pattern. Since none
of the men had any meaningful criminal record, or a troubled past, I didn’t suspect that they had cooperated with the thefts
of their identities, although I couldn’t rule that out altogether. I had to decide on a direction. But I had no idea which
way to turn.
C HAPTER S EVEN
There were additional questions I wanted to ask McHanna about his contacts with Whitney-Davis, but I decided against it. The
information I had received in Switzerland was, at best, just raw intelligence, and confronting McHanna before I had hard evidence
could be damaging.
I called David Stone. He had always been a good sounding board for my queries. David’s physical appearance as a typical absentminded
university professor with profuse white hair and eyeglasses slipping to the tip of his nose was misleading. Although nearing
retirement, he was very alert, and all brain. He was always the first to come to the office and the last to leave, the exact
opposite of a
e-mail:
Please check with the New York State Banking Department whether McHanna Associates need a license to act as a liaison for
a Swiss bank in currency transactions for U.S. citizens. If such a license is necessary, please see if one was issued to McHanna.
Also, ask the FBI field office in Manhattan whether there’s an ongoing investigation regarding that company’s possible involvement
in money laundering. Finally, check if McHanna ever filed any tax returns listing Harrington T. Whitney-Davis as an employee,
or engaged him as an in de pen dent contractor.
The latter two questions were legitimate, but the chances that the FBI would discuss the first question, even though we were
both agencies of the U.S. government, were slim to none. As to the tax returns, the IRS could not, under federal law, share
that information without a court order. Neither the FBI nor the IRS were the bad guys in this bureaucratic nightmare. They
had to maintain a stringent procedure for information exchange. But maybe Esther, with her quiet demeanor, could achieve what
I couldn’t with my big mouth and aggressive attitude.
I had a free evening. But Zürich at night is as exciting as having a warm beer with an overly talkative blind date you agreed
to meet during a temporary moment of insanity. Swiss TV isn’t any better. I called my children and went to sleep.
In the morning, I had barely shaken myself awake when I turned on my laptop computer. There was an incoming encrypted e-mail
from Esther:
There’s no need for a license from the New York State Banking Department if the company isn’t doing any banking activities
in New York, such as taking deposits or making loans to the public. Providing liaison services alone requires no license.
As for the FBI, I received an evasive answer regarding any investigation of McHanna Associates. The IRS says officially that
they can’t help us, but unofficially I was led to understand that Harrington T. Whitney-Davis’s name never appeared on McHanna
Associates’ tax filings, although it’s possible that an alias was used. Please let me know if you need anything else. Esther.
I returned to New York. Unenthusiastically, I pulled out the files again. I checked the names of the perpetrators in the remaining
eight cases. By now, what I found didn’t surprise me; it was all so obvious that I almost expected it. All eight men had left
the U.S. in 1980 or 1981. Their respective names had resurfaced briefly, one with each of the banking or other scams perpetrated.
Then each had vanished again. Since I discovered that the name of Whitney-Davis resurfaced, I ran a check on all other names
to see if we had a wholesale revival. But the answer came as expected. No. No resurgence of any other name.
I had a hunch that the suspected perpetrators’ disappearances weren’t coincidental. There was a clear pattern. Since none
of the men had any meaningful criminal record, or a troubled past, I didn’t suspect that they had cooperated with the thefts
of their identities, although I couldn’t rule that out altogether. I had to decide on a direction. But I had no idea which
way to turn.
C HAPTER S EVEN
There were additional questions I wanted to ask McHanna about his contacts with Whitney-Davis, but I decided against it. The
information I had received in Switzerland was, at best, just raw intelligence, and confronting McHanna before I had hard evidence
could be damaging.
I called David Stone. He had always been a good sounding board for my queries. David’s physical appearance as a typical absentminded
university professor with profuse white hair and eyeglasses slipping to the tip of his nose was misleading. Although nearing
retirement, he was very alert, and all brain. He was always the first to come to the office and the last to leave, the exact
opposite of a
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