This video about the recent Wirecard scandal is from Tom Nash.
This video about money laundering via casinos, particularly in Macau, is from Economies Explained.
The Wirecard fraud is deceptively simple. It is alleged that the top brass at Wirecard lied about their source of income. About $2 billion on their books had no basis in reality. The bank accounts where the money was held didn't exist, neither did their so-called business partners. So far, so Enron, but the part I especially like is at 12.22, where the hack-for-hire group Dark Basin enters the picture. According to the video, Dark Basin swiped journalists' emails (among many other things) and posted them, carefully edited, publicly on a leaks website. The intent was to make it look as if those journalists were blackguarding Wirecard to benefit short sellers of Wirecard stock - turning an accounting scandal into an insider trading scandal.
What puzzles me are the actions of the regulator and auditor, both of which did their best to enable Wirecard. Which isn't completely unheard of - auditors and regulators can be dazzled by massive profits and smiling, spreadsheet-wielding execs. It's just so bizarre that it's Germany's regulator doing it, that it's EY - Ernst and frocking Young - caught in the middle. The Germans are the original Sober Business Brains. How did they get it so wrong? EY ought to have learned from its dealings with Lehmans - but I suppose the idea of an auditor learning from its mistakes is a bit utopian sci-fi.
The Economies Explained video details what, on its face, is also a simple fraud. China wants its money kept in China. That's why it doesn't allow tourists to leave the country with more than a paltry sum. So Chinese billionaires buy travel packages to Macau for ludicrously expensive prices, which include an eye-watering sum in poker chips. The gamblers play a little at the tables, maybe they win, maybe they lose. It doesn't matter, because when they stop they still have most of their chips, which they then exchange for US$. Bingo, cash smuggled out of China.
Incidentally if you're a long-term reader then you'll remember an important point about those travel agencies: they're Triads. They operate what amounts to a loan sharking service masquerading as a travel agency. Debts don't cross borders, and it's impossible for a Macau casino to collect on gambling losses when the gamblers are tucked away in China. Macau's Triads cooperate with mainland Triads to recover debts that would otherwise vanish along with the debtor. However in this instance what's happening is the Triad travel agency stands in the middle as a kind of financial broker, no doubt collecting a very nice commission for letting Chinese billionaires change their Renminbi for dollars.
What does all this mean for Night's Black Agents?
Well for one thing it puts the bagman in a whole new light. Traditionally that lonely figure is imagined as a sneak with a briefcase full of cash, shuttling from one mysterious rendezvous to another. Sure, maybe in the 1970s, or when the amounts concerned can be counted in the thousands - chicken feed, really. But in this happy-go-lucky modern world in which we live billions are in play and electronic currency is the order of the day, which means a bagman is much more likely to be sat behind a computer as creeping across the border. In the main book Data Recovery is listed as an alternate investigative ability; I'd be inclined to make it a starting ability, with Intimidation as the alternate. I'd also be inclined to swap the Digital Intrusion and Sense Trouble starting loadout, so Digital Intrusion starts at 6 and Sense Trouble at 3.
For another it gives us several new potential plots and Nodes. Dark Basin alone is a Node unto itself, potentially a freelance one at that. Not officially part of the Conspiracy, but brought in for dirty tricks campaigns and discarded as expendables. Maybe it ranks at the International level, given its reach, but its resources are paltry.
Operating from a small room above a shuttered tea stall at a west-Delhi retail complex, BellTroX bombarded its targets with tens of thousands of malicious emails, according to data reviewed by Reuters. Some messages would imitate colleagues or relatives; others posed as Facebook login requests or graphic notifications to unsubscribe from pornography websites.
Just the sort of thing you want on your work machine. In a spy thriller the agents often have to infiltrate heavily-armed compounds to get what they're after. Imagine breaking into a stuffy little office above a decommissioned tea stall. It's a pretty good excuse to dig out Looking Glass Mumbai, at that.
Closing out, let's have a story seed.
A Three Hour Tour
A Macau Triad boss, Tong Sang-koi, is on the run. Tong, formerly a big noise in the 14K Triad, ran a travel agency at the Casino Babylon where until recently he regularly sold incredibly expensive tour packages to mainland Chinese gamblers. However something went wrong, and nobody's entirely sure what - at least, nobody outside the insular world of Macau organized crime. China wants Tong badly, and if that wasn't bad enough the CIA would also like a quiet word with the former 14K big shot. The investigators pick up on this when gossip suggests that Tong was attempting to sell important vampire-related intel to China's Room 452. Nobody knows where Tong is now, but everybody wants his data.
Not just his data. Digging a little deeper (Streetwise, Tradecraft or similar) discovers that Tong went missing shortly after a Chinese high-roller bought one of his $100 million special packages. This high-roller, Robin Yonghau, was later found insensible in his Macau hotel room with no coherent explanation for his condition. Nobody knows where the $100 million went either.
The investigators will need to find out where Tong Sang-koi is, what's his connection with Room 452, and what Robin Yonghau has to do with any of this. This will mean going to Macau in the first instance, but Tong could easily have run to pretty much anywhere after that, so if as Director you'd prefer to reset the action to, say, Vancouver, feel free.
Possible answers:
- Tong Sang-koi found himself in the middle of a dangerous deal. The Conspiracy wanted to move a billion dollars out of China and found itself a willing mule, Robin Yonghau. Tong discovered the vampire connection, and as luck would have it knew enough about vampires to have means of contacting Room 452. However the USA's Find Forever got wind of it, and muscled in at the 11th hour to snatch the prize - one Chinese Jin-Gui, acting as Robin Yonghai's controller. Things got messy, the Jin-Gui got dusted, and nobody but Tong knows where the money went. That paints a very bright and glowing target on Tong's back, so he's keeping his head as far down as possible.
- Tong Sang-koi is a CIA asset. The CIA put the bite on him back in 2009, when he tried to relocate his ill-gotten gains outside of Macau. Ever since the CIA has been using him to monitor Chinese organized crime, and to encourage Chinese billionaires to relocate their cash out of China. After all, every Renminbi that leaves via Macau is a Renminbi the Chinese government can't use to prop up its economy. However Tong got tired of this arrangement and wanted out, so he made a deal with the Conspiracy: if I help you get $100 million, get me out of this. The Conspiracy obliged ... but it's an open question as to whether Tong Sang-koi is living the high life or down at the bottom of the harbour.
- Tong Sang-koi is a Chinese asset. He let himself be 'recruited' by the CIA so he could feed false intel to the Americans, but he's been working with Room 452. The Chinese want to get their hands on the CIA's home-grown vampire, so they dangled a very tempting $100 million target knowing that in order to grab it the CIA would deploy its prize possession. It did, Room 452 moved in - and then things went South. Nobody's sure where the money went, where Tong is, and most importantly where the American Vampire ended up. Was this all an elaborate bluff somehow orchestrated by the American Vampire to escape with $100 million in stolen, untraceable cash?
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