AUGUST 27, 2020 – Normally, my law practice doesn’t involve really bad behavior. In other words, I don’t practice family law or criminal defense law. My practice is mostly commercial real estate and business law. (Did I detect a yawn?)
But one day along came a real estate case involving enough skullduggery to pinch over a million bucks from a major home loan lender, two separate subordinate private lenders, and my clients—two out-of-state business guys who’d taken the subject real estate as collateral for interim financing. The “perp” was an impostor who’d used the same property to achieve a five-way swindle.
As is often the case with swindlers, the main litigation isn’t against the perpetrator, who’s squandered his ill-gotten gains, but among the innocent victims to determine who gets the crumbs. See Bernie Madoff.
In my case, I devised an argument to tap an obscure state “assurance fund”—so obscure and secure, only a handful of payouts had been made in 125 years. For two years I channeled my OCD proclivity into what others thought was a quixotic mission. In the end, however, I was able convince the state—by way of arguments to the court—that my clients met squarely the convoluted statutory requirements for a payout.
But what to do about the swindler? Call the police? (Yawn.) Call the county attorney? (Yawn.) Call the attorney general? (“Take a number [872]. Get in line.” (Yawn.)). Okay. Call the FBI!
Weeks later the FBI called back. Or rather, a low-level investigator called back.
“I got a couple questions,” the investigator-in-training asked.
“And I’ve got lots of answers,” I said.
I supplied the investigator-in-training with more information than he wanted—or could absorb. He thanked me for my time, mumbled something about “caseload,” and said he’d get back to me if he had any more questions. That was last October. He never followed up.
I concluded that unless drugs and murder are involved . . . or you’re the president and can declare yourself above the law . . . you can swindle a million bucks out of people and the long arm of the law is pretty short.
Then came yesterday. I received a call not from the FBI but from one of my aforementioned clients. He had ear-smacking news: our favorite swindler had been killed last November by a “bounty hunter” in Las Vegas. My client’s source was a shadowy figure, but the good ol‘ internet confirmed: our guy had died of a “gunshot wound to the chest.” Terse reports said that “police were not investigating the shooting.” My client and I concurred: when the police ran a background check on our guy, they’d decided no “investigation” was required. He was a serial fraudster who’d ultimately swindled the wrong victim. And now I know why the FBI went dark.
Call it swift justice–delayed, not denied, and outsourced in the finest of American traditions.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
