The presidential candidate was quite happy looking at the accounts screen. The last five million in dark money from the Russian group had made it into the campaign funds just fine. Using a fake 501c Non-Profit to relay funds to the Super-Pac was a tried and true method for hiding the source. A lot of promises had to be made to the Russian clients to get them to cough the funds up. Those promises would have to be delivered on after the election but all that mattered right now was first winning it. With the additional money and the new poll results a minor celebration broke out. The group was still celebrating an hour later when the finance accountant ran in upset and with a look of worry on his face. Reaching the half drunk presidential candidate he started babbling about the money being moved. Getting him to calm down the accountant started to ask “why did you move the money, why!” “What are you talking about?” said the candidate, “The money” the accounted shouted, “the last five million that came in why did you transfer it?” What do you mean? I didn’t do anything with it”. “But somebody did. You and Frank are the only ones with that account access it had to have been you. The money was moved to your wife’s personal account and then out to a blind account in the Caymans Islands. That’s not private, it’s fully disclosed. Those account movements are public, everyone will see the transfers now. With that they’re going to start digging and find out everything. We can’t hide it, this is a felony, we’re all going to jail.

* * * * *

One problem I needed to deal with first was my immediate money situation. Making money from Hawk’s ability would be easy but doing it in a way my conscious and sense of ethics could accept was harder. Mom and dad had instilled a string sense of ethics in me and spent a lot of time talking about right and wrong and how to know the difference. The view they instilled in me was to basically treat others like I wanted to be treated but also that I could treat people like they treat others. I think the second part was how they justified using stronger measures on some of the causes they supported.

I went through the different ways I thought I might be able to get money. First thought was to find lost treasure like the Florentine Diamond or the steamboat Far West gold shipment. I had read about them and new that seeing what really happened in the past I could find them. That did leave the issues of how to go get them and also how to explain and dispose of the wealth. Showing up with a large diamond or a pile of gold would be pretty hard to explain. Something smaller any maybe lost would be easier. The news was full of stories of people finding forgotten money and works of art. I just had to find some lost treasure in such a way no one could object to my claim or claim it themselves. The news is full of what happens to anyone publically finding buried treasure. Most claims are argued about in court for years before settlement.

A quick search on the web for treasure finders returned numerous stories of people like Mel Fisher, Dennis Parada and Tommy Thompson and all the issues they had trying to keep the treasure they found. I even checked out the admiralty court rulings over the convoluted concept of who had salvage rights to a shipwreck. One person who found a large amount of gold coins later stated they wished they had kept it secret and just melted it all down to sell. After five years of litigation he got 10% of the value as a “finders fee”. That didn’t even cover his legal cost.

Another possibility I thought might be to go for a lottery win. It was a bit of a gray area in my sense of ethics. There was also the issue of how I could get a winning ticket with only historical viewing. A scratch-off type of lottery ticket might be possibility. I could track a high win ticket from the printer to a retail outlet. My conscious did produce a twinge or two about that since I would be denying someone else from winning it if I did. But the big problem was the publicity I would get with a lottery win. Staying under cover was a major tenant I needed to follow and lottery winners are well known.

There was one possibility my conscious had no problem with. That was to just steal the money from criminals. Taking the money from bad guys would probably be the easiest but it did presented two problems. The first was how to find the bad guys to take money from. Hawk could go anywhere and see anywhere but using that ability to track down criminals that were both making money and keeping it in cash would be difficult and somewhat tedious thing to do. I’d first have to try to find robbery victims which was easy; just checking the news for crimes and their locations gave me that info and a quick scan around the time and location listed would show me the crime as it happened. Then having Hawk fast forward following after the criminal would show me where they were now. One problem I thought was I was pretty sure most robberies only resulted in only a small amount of cash now. Those that did manage to get a fair amount of cash usually quickly spent it. Also, even if I did take the money from the robbers I still had the moral quandary that it was the victim’s money and really should be returned to them.

Thinking some more about it I realized that there was one type of crime that the victims were not innocent. The drug trade involved criminals from the users to all the way up to the mastermind. Even better drug dealing was mostly a cash business. And I did not have any moral issue with keeping the money I acquired from people in it. The raiding of a drug dealer’s could work but is also would be dangerous. I would also need to be very careful spending any of that cash. I remember a common legal reason for police to confiscating drug money are traces of illegal narcotics being found on the bills. Of course studies have also found that 80% of all the bills in circulation have testable presence of cocaine on them.

This would require some thought but I had an idea that might work. For the plan I would need to trigger the right type of police response and a suitable drug dealer with a large stash of money as the target. Finding the right dealer, one with a suitable stash seemed like it might be a time consuming process. Using Hawk’s portal to track each dealer to find out if they had any money tucked away would take forever I thought. Instead I decided to be smarter on what kind of dealer I was searching for. Thinking about it I needed a successful dealer, one high enough up in the distribution that they could have a lot of money. They would also have to have been a dealer for a while. To survive in that business for any length of time they would probably have to be smart. Most dealers I assume are short sited, spending their money as quick as it comes in. What I needed was the kind that plan ahead, ready to make a run for it when the police come knocking. After some extensive looking at police meetings in narcotic departments around the country I finally found a suitable target.

His name was Hector Ramirez, a mid level dealer operating out of LA. Like all smart dealers he had a couple of layers between him and the drugs. The actual deals were done by young kids acting as his runners. Two runners were used for every deal, one to take the money away from the buyer and another to deliver the drugs to them. That way the money and drugs were never in the same place and only the runner delivering the drugs would be arrested. Ramirez had lost a few of his runners that way but teen age kids looking to make a quick buck were easy to find. Tracing the runners back lead me to the middle men and through them back to where the drugs and cash were actually stored. Ramirez kept some cash on hand but most of it was buried on a neighbor’s property right behind his. The neighbor was an 80 year old woman who never left the house. When Hector got some extra cash to tuck away he’s wrap it tight in plastic and drop it down what looked like a drainage pipe in the back of her property. The pipe leads to an oil drum he had buried a couple of years before. It was a somewhat smart idea to do it that way. Since it was not technically on his property no search warrant would find it and the pipe made it easy to quickly store the cash. Getting it out would be a problem but that difficulty also kept anyone else from stumbling over it. Of course if he was smarter he would have figured a way to clean the cash or at least got it out of the country into a foreign bank account.

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Officer Susan Hynes was working undercover this week doing the bar rounds. Four years out of the police academy and here she was dressed like a tramp hitting the local raves and night clubs looking for drugs. A four year college degree in law enforcement, six months at the police academy and another four years as a street cop all just to end doing this. Spending all night walking around in high heels, short skirt and showing a lot of cleavage just to catch some penny anti dealers selling Ecstasy and Molly to the yuppie crowd. This was not what she thought being a cop would be like. Where were the investigations, interrogations and car chases she dreamed about watching all those cop shows growing up? If her dad saw her he would be so disappointed. A retired border agent he was so happy when she decided to go into law enforcement. On their weekly phone calls he was always asking questions about how she was doing and what cases she was working on. She really hated lying to him and making stuff up. Just once she wanted something newsworthy that she could tell him about.

Ever since she started this undercover assignment she’d been having headaches from the loud music, flashing lights and smoky air. Tonight it was worse than usual; she had to get off this assignment. Taking a break for a bit she went and sat in a dark corner as far from the band as she could. Sitting at the table with a cool glass pressed to her forehead she heard a couple of men arguing. Susan was not particularly interested in what they were saying until she heard the word “Ramirez”, “drugs” and “shipment” mentioned. Ramirez was a common name but every narcotics cop in town new of one Ramirez, a Hector Ramirez. They had been trying to get something on him for years but he was too slippery. Listening closer, with the glass hiding her face she pretended to be focused down at the table as she pierced together a few more words of the conversation. Something about “Hector”, “upset”, “drugs”, “his house” and “moving them”. This was it she thought, a big time dealer about to be caught with his pants down. With a bust like this on her record she could finally get of the party trolling scene and maybe make detective. She continued to sit with glass pressed to her face so it would not appear that she was listening in. After the conversation stopped she waiting a few more minutes before putting the glass down and subtle looked around for whoever had been talking. Not seeing anyone she gave up the search and headed out to see her lieutenant. With a little luck and some pleading might even let her be in on the raid.

Hector was having his breakfast on the veranda when he was disturbed with a loud banging on the front door. The housekeeper walked over to the foray and opened it all ready to yell at whoever was banging so hard. Instead she was pushed back with a search warrant shoved into her hands. Not knowing what to do, she headed back to the dining room running into her boss heading the other way. From the look on his face Hector was surprised by the raid but also smug being sure there was nothing for them to find. He already had his lawyer on the phone ready to jump in on the warrant. The house was clean; he never brought any drugs here. Even if they checked his safe there was only some innocuous legal papers and a few thousand cash, nothing suspicious. The new shipment that came in last night was safely stored across town at an old rental unit he kept under another name. It was all ready for the cutting and redistribution to the street level dealers. Hector kept his distance from the process as much as possible. Only a couple of trusted lieutenants handled the day to day operations. With the court order in his hands the detective in charge demanded Hector open the safe. With a smug look Hector spun the dials while telling the cops how he was going to sue them for harassment. That smug look quickly turned to shock after he opened his safe. It was now filled with a couple of his kilos of cocaine and a few dozens of baggies of Molly.

Two days later Hector now out on bond snuck into his neighbors backyard with a shovel. In the front of Hector’s house a police car was parked to watch the place. Forensics was still going over everything and no one was allowed entry. Being told this Hector had carefully work his way around and into the backyard. His accounts had been frozen and even the house had to be put up for the bond. With all the evidence the prosecutor was looking at a slam dunk on the conviction. Hector didn’t know who had double crossed him with this. Only a couple of people knew of the rental unit and none of them had access to his house or the safe. He needed to get out of the country fast and then maybe he could figure it out. But first things first, he needed to get to his money cache; it was the only ready cash left. There was plenty enough there to tie him over and help him get setup in business somewhere else. Reaching the pipe just a few feet over the line from his property he carefully looked at the ground and smiled. It was completely untouched with no sign of anyone digging here.

He would have to be very quiet while digging it up, No worries from the old lady who owned this property was death as a doornail but the cops out front were close. It took two hours of digging before he heard a clink from his shovel. Quietly moving the dirt away from the top of the can Hector removed the lid with the pipe sticking out. Grinning he turned on his phone light and shined it down inside of the drum. A scream and loud cursing sent the cops spilling from the car and racing around the back of the house. Catching site of a figure crouched over a pile of dirt cursing they pulled their guns. As the police carefully approached they recognized Hector running his hands through a large can of white powder. As they led him out of the back yard with the powder cocaine till covering his hands. Looking at a second set of drug charges and his bond revoked all he could think about is who double crossed him? And how did they switch his drugs to the safe and cache? But mostly why would they leave that fortune in drugs just to take a few hundred thousand in cash?

Daniel was getting tired with all the counting. Hector was pretty lazy when it came to his money stash. Each wrapped pack had different currency amount in it and nothing marked on the wrapping at all. He had to remove each stack of bills from its wrapper, separate the different denominations then count it all up. After an hour of effort he finally finished the last stack. If his count was right he now had $483,247. Most of it was in small bills making up quite a few large stacks of bills. He still needed to find some explainable way to move it into his bank account but for now all new purchases would be in cash.