Chapter 10 - The Digital Footprint
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Back at the Whitmore Freight headquarters, Naomi and a team of forensic cyber-analysts worked through the night in the war room.
Multiple coffee cups littered the large glass table alongside glowing monitors displaying complex lines of server code, wire transfers, and IP routing logs.
"We found the entry point," announced David, our head of IT security, tapping his keyboard frantically. "The nine-million-dollar transfer wasn't authorized through Evan's office computer. It was executed using an administrative back-door created twenty-five years ago."
I leaned over his shoulder. "Twenty-five years ago? That was before the company went digital."
"Exactly," Naomi said, zooming in on an old system schematic. "When your father digitized the company’s core records in 1999, he installed a secret override protocol. It required two biometric security keys to transfer funds out of the reserve account."
"One key belonged to my father," I realized. "Where was the second key?"
"The second key was assigned to a silent co-founder," David revealed, pulling up an encrypted registry file. "Designated as Founder B. When your father died, Founder B's access remained active in the system architecture."
"Victor," I whispered. "My father never deleted Victor's access because Victor held the blackmail papers over his head."
"And here’s the kicker," David added, clicking a red link on his screen. "Victor didn't try to steal the nine million dollars to put it in his pocket. Look at the destination account."
The screen flashed with the name of a federal holding firm: United States Department of the Treasury.
I frowned, bewildered. "He was trying to send my company's reserve funds to the Treasury?"
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"Not send," Naomi clarified, her eyes widening as she read the code. "It was an automated penalty whistle-blower payout. If the nine million had landed in that account, it would have automatically triggered an immediate federal seizure of all Whitmore Freight assets worldwide!"
"He wasn't trying to steal our money," I gasped, the terrifying truth dawning on me. "He was trying to trigger an automatic federal shutdown so he could buy our bankrupt assets for pennies on the dollar at a bankruptcy auction!"
