Page 145 of False Flag

Freya entered the room with two cups of coffee and gave one to Vicki. “You in?”

“Yes. Look at this.”

Freya looked at the screen. “Wait. What?” After a moment, she said, “Scroll down.”

Vicki did.

“Holy shit.” Freya dropped into the seat next to her, gaze never leaving the screen, as Vicki showed her line after line of text. “How many accounts are there?”

“I don’t have access to all of them—some are just being monitored—but I can access twenty-six of them.”

“That’s not just Osborne’s money.” Freya took a sip of her coffee.

“No. Looks like his tech team was personally managing security for other oligarchs’ financial data. They were tracking everything. Even the accounts they could only view—not move money around—they could see where it came from and where it was going. Skimming data when they couldn’t skim money. But on these twenty-six accounts, the tech team—two humans—were pretending to be automated two-factor authentication.”

Freya scoffed. “Two-factor? Flimsy as that?”

“It came with Osborne’s seal of personal service. The guy who owns internet security created a private vault with servers on his private island. They trusted that, I guess.”

“But it isn’t real two-factor. It’s two-techbros who now have passwords and transaction data.”

Vicki nodded. “No transaction goes through without them as a go-between. This isn’t high-end security. It’s two guys stranded on an island, skimming data and money from billionaires.”

“Osborne is using his special security team to steal from everyone as they move their money around. He’s taking far more than the laundry cut.”

“He’s the bank, the laundry, and the thief. The assets he’s monitoring add up to more than a trillion. The ones he’s managing, two hundred billion.”

Freya touched the lines on the screen that showed dollar amounts for the accessible accounts. “Whose accounts do we have access to? Russian? American? Bratva, Mafia, Yakuza, Triad?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Who owns Casper’s soul?” Freya murmured.

“A better question is, whose souls does he own?” Vicki took a deep breath. “Because here’s the thing. While the account holders use Osborne’s high-end security that’s really two guys in a trench coat, those same two guys set up four-factor authentication to actually move the money. Nothing moves without them going through the 4-F hoops. But at some point, Osborne’s dumbass techs got lazy and created a passkey that fulfills 4-F for everything. And…I have the passkey.”

Freya jolted. “You…what?”

She repeated the words because she could hardly believe them herself. “I’ve got the passkey that bypasses 4-F authentication for twenty-six accounts. I could unleash all the data on the dark web. Let the underworld have at it.”

“But that will just make the crypto bros and other criminals richer.”

“Yeah. There’s that.” She took a sip of coffee and noticed her hands were shaking. “Or I could…change the passkey, then I’d have time to change the four-factor. I can lock everyone out.”

“Can it be traced back to us?”

“No. Even if they find the spiders Staci planted, they’re clean.”

Freya drummed her fingers on the desk. “How long will it take?”

“With the passkey, only a few minutes.”

“What if we did a combination? Dump the data for these accounts”—she pointed to three lines that represented one and a half billion—“on the dark web? Casper’s tech team will have thieves to search for. Then you hide the rest. Lock them out.”

“I’m not giving two hundred billion to the US government,” Vicki said. “They’ll just steal it for themselves and cut health care even more.”

“Oh hell no. We’ll lock it away. No one gets it. Then, when it’s safe, slowly disperse what we can to charities without raising suspicions.”

“Libraries,” Vicki said.