Simon’s Warehouse
11:15 am
Nikki and Simon were working through the data they had from the case so far. Simon had responded quickly enough to the 4th site that he was able to install his own tracking software onto the worm program to try and track where the data was being moved. The worm program was only active long enough to copy the data and then it would shut down. Simon had asked the head of security for the project’s field locations to remove some key data from the servers so that if they were hacked, the hackers wouldn’t get all of the data to recreate the system. Initially he had refused, but after the 4th site was hacked, he had his programmers remove some of the critical code from the 5th site and store it off site at an undisclosed location that only he knew. If that data was compromised, they knew the source of the leak. Simon was busy trying to track where the data was moving when Nikki looked over at him,
“Simon, come check this out. I found something interesting. I have been pouring over the backgrounds of all of the site personnel and didn’t come up with anything so I started running checks on everyone at Global Shield who own the project. Initially, I didn’t find anything there either so I used the program you gave me access to and I found that one of the 3 partners at Global Shield, Mitch Gifford, has an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. Gifford is the company’s CFO. I haven’t been able to access the account information yet, but the fact that he has one is suspicious.” She looked up at Simon who had come over and was standing next to her looking at the monitor. Simon leaned down to the keyboard and after several keystrokes, Gifford’s account information came up on Nikki’s monitor. She already had Global Shield’s accounting information accessed and after several minutes comparing the deposits into Gifford’s account against the company’s expenses she found invoices matching the deposits exactly. Gifford had created a dummy company that was billing Global Shield monthly for cyber security and over the last 3 years, he had billed, and deposited into his own account, 3.9 million dollars. Simon leaned down and kissed Nikki on the cheek and went back to his computer and started doing his own checking.
40 minutes later Simon looked up at Nikki and said, “I couldn’t figure out how he was able to bill for cyber security if they didn’t actually have any programs running, but it turns out that Gifford has a tech background and he actually developed cyber security systems before he formed Global Shield with the other 2 partners. The question that is nagging at me is why would he steal the technology his own company is developing?” He was pacing while he was speaking with Nikki and he came to a sudden stop right in front of her,
“Unless someone found out he was embezzling money from his own company and they are blackmailing him into helping steal the missile defense system.” He looked at Nikki as a dangerous smile appeared on the side of his mouth, “I know just the guy to help us get to the bottom of this mystery.”