Fraudulent Intention$

Fraudulent Intention$

Based on the true story of a corporate deal gone bad and the internal investigation that exposed a shocking online fraud. For SouthPoint Bank, its purchase of Internet Connections, or ICon, was a risky way to boost its stock price, and the deal was rushed so that the Chairman of SouthPoint could stay in power. For ICon, being acquired by SouthPoint was its last chance to cash in on the Internet boom, but the President of ICon was looking for more than money - he needed a way to escape a secret that ICon had been concealing through a conspiracy of fraud. After an insider's tip, SouthPoint launched a surprise internal investigation of ICon. When the investigators found a connection between ICon and the Russian Mafia, the investigation suddenly turned into a dangerous race against the clock to expose the fraud and to save SouthPoint from financial ruin. From Andorra in the Pyrenees Mountains to Antigua in the Caribbean Sea, Fraudulent Intention$ twists and turns around the shadowy world of online adult entertainment. FRAUDULENT INTENTION$ By Scott P. Hilsen AuthorHouse Copyright © 2011 Scott P. Hilsen All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4567-3704-7 Chapter One Three Months Before The Deal Bill Dixon's fingers trembled on the keypad trying to enter his password as quietly as possible. The offices of ICon were dark and he was alone huddled in his cubicle. The air conditioner had been turned down overnight, and the single story building began to bake inside. He wiped his glistening forehead with the sleeve of his golf shirt and blinked to focus. Although he had spent countless hours at his desk at ICon over the past three years, he never realized how loud he typed until he was the only one in the large room of work stations. Only the hum of sleeping computers interrupted the silence. He glared nervously at jagged shadows that were inching across the walls from his co-workers' screensavers. Bill knew that he was alone, but his eyes were not so sure. He rubbed his tired face and felt his unshaven cheek scuff at his hand. Dark crescents had seeped under his eyes from his recent restless nights. His thinning brown hair was now splashed with silver, and small crevices meandered across his forehead like tiny dry riverbeds. At forty-eight years old, he had expected gravity to catch up sometime. But the weight of the stress he was under over the past few weeks heralded its early arrival. With each key stroke, his chest pounded so loudly that he was sure it amplified outside of his body. His computer, however, was impervious to his anxiety. It seemed to take an eternity to meander through its log on procedures, and all he could do was clench his jaw and wait. Finally, after a series of blips and flashes, a rectangular logo encasing the word ICon emerged onto the screen. A small hourglass turned slowly in the center signaling that the computer was still waking up. He noticed his hurried breathing for the first time, and inhaled deeply to try to calm down. Tiny sparkles of perspiration reemerged and dotted his balding forehead. A moment later, his familiar home page flashed onto the screen with a window waiting for a username and two passwords. He quickly typed in WillD and his first password, Trouper , the name of his first childhood dog. The second password changed every ten seconds and was displayed on his employee identification card. The ID card had an embedded microchip that continually received a different six digit number from a satellite signal. He pulled the ID card out of his pocket and, for a moment, stared at his grinning face looking back. The card read William C. Dixon, Senior Computer Programmer, Internet Connections, Inc. Three years ago when the photo was taken, both his hair and his face had been fuller. He remembered that first day at ICon and the excitement of getting involved in a start-up internet company at the ground level. ICon was an internet payment processor, which connects small websites to large credit card companies like Visa. Similar to PayPal, ICon's computer system operated a secure pay page that customers of the websites accessed to input their credit card information for a transaction. Once entered, ICon processes the credit card information, transmits it to the credit card company to be approved, and then sends the approval to the customer - all in the blink of an eye. He joined ICon after twenty five years of being just another name on a bulging corporate phone list. He had decided that it was time to take a risk. Sixty years old was still twelve years away, but as he sighed over his thinning brokerage account statements he knew that his silver years were approaching quicker than his investments were increasing. So he quit the big company and borrowed against his 401K to buy a piece of hope. As an initial investor and employee in ICon, he might have a last chance at wealth if the start up company grew as big as his dreams. Now, looking down at his grin