“This is what I have. I’ll explain what I’m still missing.”
She picked up a dry-erase marker, walked to a white board behind her desk, and drew a diagram.
“The money flows like this. On one end, you have the source.” She wrote “source” and drew a black circle around it.
“On the other end, you have the operations.” She wrote “operations” in red and drew a circle around it.
“In the middle, you have the wire transfers connecting them.” She drew a green line between “source” and “operations” and wrote “wire transfers” above it.
She tapped the left side of the diagram. “The source is the shell companies in Delaware. There are multiple names, and registered agents, but they all trace back to one entity. Ashcroft Holdings.” She wrote that above the word “source” on her diagram.
“The President and CEO is Victor Ashcroft.” She opened one of the folders and pulled out a glossy photograph, dropping it on the desk in front of them.
It was a man in his sixties with silver hair, wearing an expensive suit. “He comes from old money. Real estate, defense contracts, private equity. His net worth is somewhere north of two billion.”
“He’s the top-level funding for the Crown Mountain operations?” Siren asked, studying his face.
“I can’t prove it yet. But his holding company is at the center of every shell I’ve traced.”
Diana tapped the middle of her diagram that she’d labeled “wire transfers.”
“I have the wire transfers we subpoenaed before the FBI case was shut down.” She pulled out the printouts of banking documents. “My case got shut down before I could trace how the money moved.”
She tapped the right side of the diagram she’d labeled “operations.”
“This is my problem. I don’t know who runs Teton Resource Group.”
She pulled out another set of papers. “The registered agent is a law firm in Cheyenne that won’t return calls. The officer names are clearly pseudonyms. The annual filings are minimal.”
“The operation arm is the private military contractors who do the dirty work. But you can’t connect them to Ashcroft,” Siren said, following Diana’s logic.
“Exactly.” Diana was visibly frustrated. “I can prove that Ashcroft owns the shells that sent the money. I can prove Teton Resource Group received the money, but I can’t find who owns it. Or what Ashcroft is paying for.”
“These corporate filings. Do you have the original PDFs?” Reed asked, speaking for the first time.
Diana looked at him. “Yes. Why?”
“I’m curious about the metadata.”
She studied him for a moment and then woke up her monitor, pulling up the original files. She invited him behind her desk,and he took a seat, taking the mouse. Siren stood and watched over his shoulder as he clicked through.
“Let’s take a look at the Delaware shell filings.” He right clicked, opening the document properties.
The window showed the creation date, software used, and a string of characters. “See that string?” Reed asked, pointing. “That’s the system identifier. It’s a unique fingerprint from the machine that created the document.”
“Okay,” Diana said.
He opened a Delaware filing and found the same system identifier. “These were created on the same computer.” He looked through all the Delaware shells and found the same string.
“That confirms central coordination, but I already traced those to Ashcroft,” Diana said, disappointed.
“Let’s check Teton Resource Group filings,” he said.
Diana opened a different folder, and Reed began to look through the documents. He looked at the properties.
“It’s the same string,” he said.
“Oh my God,” Diana breathed. “This connects both sides of the financial pipeline. One source set created all of it.”
