Chapter 6 - The Financial Audit
Five days later, the rain was pouring over downtown Denver, beating a rhythmic tattoo against the tall glass windows of Brenda Vance's law office.
Sitting across from Brenda and me was an elderly man with sharp grey eyes and a thick leather ledger—Arthur Pendelton, a top forensic accountant whom Brenda had retained to conduct a complete financial audit of my marriage with Diego.
"Ms. Miller," Pendelton said, adjusting his reading glasses as he laid out a series of complex flowcharts across the conference table. "I’ve completed the preliminary examination of the joint accounts, as well as the subpoenaed personal accounts belonging to Diego Vance and his family’s primary holding company."
I leaned forward, my head wound now healing into a faint pink line near my hairline. "What did you find?"
"What we found," Pendelton said, tapping a red pen against a transaction line, "is that your husband was not merely financially irresponsible. He was actively engaging in systemic fraud against you for over two years."
Brenda sat up straight, her eyes narrowing. "Explain."
"When Ms. Miller married Mr. Vance three years ago, they established a shared checking account for domestic expenses," Pendelton detailed. "Ms. Miller deposited eight thousand dollars a month into that account from her architectural salary. Mr. Vance was supposed to match that amount from his executive salary at his father's firm."
"Supposed to?" I asked.
"He never did," Pendelton revealed, sliding a bank statement toward me. "Diego deposited less than fifteen hundred dollars a month. Meanwhile, he was secretly transferring between three to five thousand dollars every month out of your joint account into an offshore secondary account registered under his mother’s name—Victoria Vance."
I stared at the numbers in disbelief. "He was stealing my salary and funneling it to his mother?!"
"Precisely," Pendelton nodded. "Over a thirty-month period, Diego secretly transferred approximately one hundred and twelve thousand dollars of your personal earnings directly into Victoria Vance’s account. Furthermore, we discovered that three months ago, Diego took out a secondary personal loan for sixty thousand dollars, fraudulently listing your Capitol Hill condominium as collateral asset security by forging your digital signature on an online credit application."
A cold, heavy wave of anger washed over me.
They hadn't just tried to intimidate me into giving up my condo at that dinner party. They were trying to cover up the fact that they were already illegally siphoning my wealth behind my back, and when they realized I was close to discovering the forged loan, they tried to force me to transfer the title voluntarily to erase the paper trail of their forgery!
"Brenda," I looked at my attorney, my hands clenching into tight fists on the table. "That’s bank fraud and identity theft."
"It’s far more than that, Valerie," Brenda’s eyes burned with cold triumph. "Forging a signature on a real estate security application is a Federal financial crime. It involves interstate wire transfers. This takes the case completely out of local magistrate court and places it directly under the jurisdiction of the State Attorney General’s Financial Crimes Division and the federal prosecutors."
Brenda picked up her office telephone and pressed a speed-dial button.
May you like
"Who are you calling?" I asked.
"I’m calling Special Agent Marcus Thorne at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation," Brenda replied, a lethal smile touching her lips. "Arthur Vance thought he was going to buy off a local district judge to save his son from a domestic violence charge. Let’s see how many judges he can buy off when the State Attorney General freezes every single corporate bank account tied to the Vance family for wire fraud."
