“Yes, ma’am.” This might be sticky, and it could go either way if Neesa got protective of her staff.
“Thank you. It’s important that we figure this out to protect my teams from even the shadow of any illegality. So we need to get to the bottom of this.” Neesa pointed toward Tank. “He came today to see if we had any more counterfeit money in our safe?”
“All the money coming into the United States with your teams is stored there?” Jasper asked.
“The money that’s associated with WorldCares, yes. But we don’t regulate in any way the personal money of our responders.”
“Can you explain why you deal with so much cash?” Jasper asked.
“Oh, for a lot of reasons. We can’t always pack in everything we need, so we either buy from other NGOs or from locals, including cases of water, food, fuel, medicine, and medical equipment. If our people can buy locally, it is preferred because it helps to strengthen the local base economy. Sometimes, wehand out cash to affected people so they have the resources to leave the area and go stay with friends and family somewhere that wasn’t experiencing the disaster. That helps remove some of the population from areas with the greatest need and the least resources. Many foreign groups bring in U.S. dollars because it is widely recognized and flows freely and with trust from hand to hand in the local economy. Of course, if you’re thinking about inserting counterfeit dollars, that would be an easy way to do it. The local people have probably never handled U.S. dollars in person, because why would they? So how would they know they were being swindled? It’s immoral.”
“The money that your team brought in was in hundred-dollar denominations,” Jasper said.
“Otherwise, the money would need its own suitcase. Hundreds are easy enough.”
“How do you protect that?” Dakota asked. “People in dangerous situations and dire straits can do things that are normally outside of their morals and ethics.”
“Agreed,” Neesa said. “Of course they do. This is especially true when it comes to food. Everything and anything becomes precious under such circumstances. How do we protect it? It starts here with recording all the serial numbers and banding the stacks using the tracking system. That’s monitored. We keep the money in a location where a team member is always present. They don’t leave it, even to go to the latrine. They develop a duty roster when they get boots on the ground. Someone has to be awake with the equipment; they take turns.”
Neesa stopped and swiveled toward Jasper, sitting very still with a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m worried about what you’re going to find in the vault,” she said. “I was thinking about it all night.”
“What did you come up with?” Dakota asked.
“That if it were me in the field trying to pull a fast one, I’d put a real bill on top and bottom. In the movies, they just fan through it.” Neesa said. “So people would only see the top and the bottom if they were handling a stack.”
“That’s ten thousand, do you hand out a stack like that?” Dakota asked.
“Absolutely. The price-gauging in these situations is high. Here in the United States, if there’s a hurricane coming through, greedy people jack up the costs of gas, hotels, food, and tarps. If it’s a survival item and there’s a limited supply, the price flies sky high. Same around the world. It’s a get-while-the-getting’s-good mentality. That doesn’t mean we’d be in a position to go without. We pay what we need to pay in order to get the job done. That job is saving lives.” Neesa turned her focus back to Jasper. “There’s the personality of the thief to consider. Who the hell steals from a charity that’s saving people in dire straits?” She pushed back into her chair. “They’re going to hell.”
Sun’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline when she said ‘hell.’
Neesa slapped her palms onto her desk. “But we can’t wait around for karma to kick in. We need to protect WorldCares. So this is where I want to start: I need permission from you to talk to our CEO about getting a public relations crisis team involved here.” She swept her hand through the air. “I want to make a full disclosure of what’s happened. Talk about our commitment to integrity, not just the rule of law, but the rule of doing what’s right for the best for those I need.” Neesa’s voice grew louder as righteous anger rose in her chest.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jasper said. “That’s a strategy. One we’d rather not act on immediately.”
“Kumar Singh, he was at the airport, but he’s not here today,” Sun said. “How does he fit into this picture?”
“Kumar is on our team,” Dakota said. “He’s been developing this case. We’re joining in now that he believes this is a single actor who is working for personal gain, taking advantage of all the aspects of targeting groups such as yours, which move from country to country with unusual but legitimate amounts of cash.”
“You’re just going to go through our safe and remove any counterfeit bills, so we don’t do anything illegal, right?” Neesa asked.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s correct,” Jasper said.
“You don’t have to ma’am me. I feel like we’re all in this together, and saying ma’am kind of makes me an outsider.”
“Thank you,” Jasper said with a smile.
“Can your dog detect all counterfeit money?” Sun asked.
“Tank was trained to find the money that is generated from two different countries,” Dakota said, putting a hand on Tank’s head as he roused after hearing his name.
“From Peru and Colombia?” Neesa asked Jasper.
He didn’t respond.
“I looked up the countries where most of the counterfeit money comes from, and of course, my team was coming from Colombia. We also sent in teams to the recent flooding in Peru. That was team November.” She nodded toward the lawyer. “Sun told me how we had team members stopped at the bank there. Someone really should have told me immediately.”
