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 When the massive corporate bankruptcy of Worldwide
Aviation is filed in Birmingham, Alabama, and assigned
to a corrupt trustee who is an addicted gambler, the
local fraternity of greedy bankruptcy lawyers quickly
lines up at the attorneys' fee feeding trough, knowing
it will be lavishly funded by the trustee in order to
insulate himself from blackmail by the six.
Cynically labeled "Birmingham Boys" by those who
suspect a conspiracy being funded by obscene fee awards,
little can be done so long as the trustee's actions are
ratified by a senile Federal judge who rubber stamps his
decisions. The unique assets of Worldwide enable the
trustee's cronies to abandon any vestige of ethics as
they feast on the bankrupt carcass like the vultures
they have become. Brazenly using one of the corporate
aircraft to import drugs from South America to
Birmingham with the help of a wealthy Arab who covets
the inventory of distressed aircraft and real estate,
the level of bribery and theft attracts attention from
both private and government interests.
But when both an FBI investigator and brilliant female
lawyer independently focus on the millions being
siphoned from the Worldwide bankrupt estate, their
loyalties clash as they become overwhelmed by greed and
worm their way into the thievery. Ultimately forced to
form an involuntary coalition and funded by their
illicit cash flow, a need to launder their money propels
them into the formation of an international Ponzi
scheme, using a failed Bahamian real estate development
as the decoy to attract investors. Unfortunately, the
highly profitable scam entices both legitimate investors
and drug cartel money alike, an inevitable formula for
danger.
After strange events begin to criminalize what has
become the international scope of the Worldwide
bankruptcy, a murder occurs. Jake McCall and John Reed
are ultimately assigned the undercover mission of
investigating the Birmingham Boys and the suspected acts
of one of their own agents, now perceived to be an "off
the farm" rogue. Unknown even to McCall and Reed,
another pair of covert operatives has been secretly
assigned to monitor their investigation, with
instructions from an unidentifiable source to
"neutralize the problem".
As the four intimidating lawmen work side by side to
dissolve the widespread criminal network, they discover
it reaches from Birmingham to the Gulf coast involving
the infamous Dixie Mafia, then to Miami, Mexico and
Nassau. Sworn to preserve the covert status of their
shadowy and dangerous counterparts, even the FBI has
never been able to learn what they really do, or for
whom...officially.
PONZI-THE SHELL GAME
 After an industrious branch bank manager in the
predominately Hispanic community of South Florida recognizes
the beginnings of a Ponzi scheme being masterminded by a
brilliant local lawyer, he uses his insider status and
electronic wizardry to foster the success of the scheme as a
decoy to set up his own bank for liability. After carefully
studying the Madoff and similar cases, he learns that the
inevitable collapse of any Ponzi scheme will produce massive
and unrecoverable losses for legitimate investors.
Similarly, he reasons that the missing link of financial
responsibility can be filled by orchestrating a blueprint
for the undeniable culpability of his own bank. By doing so,
he insures that all who invest in the Ponzi scheme,
including himself, will prosper when their claims for
compensatory and punitive damages are paid by the bank.
The banker has learned that the combination of electronic
banking and bank employees who are fundamentally computer
operators has produced an environment within which an
electronic shell game can be run with multiple accounts
capable of being manipulated at will. By opening
computerized accounts showing fictitious balances, subject
to audit or complaint by no one other than the depositor
himself, the corrupt and psychopathic lawyer, the banker
successfully hides in the electronic shadows of the Ponzi
scheme. He simultaneously discovers that the bank's own
president has been bribed and is conspiring with the lawyer
to use the obscure branch as a repository for the millions
being generated by his scam. Now living in his pathological
world of excess and the celebrity his new wealth has
brought, the crooked lawyer overlooks the possibility that
he will be discovered by an innocuous branch manager. That
is, until one of the Ponzi investors thought to be a Mexican
cartel boss insists that the lawyer return his money. Unable
to do so as his house of cards begins to collapse, the
lawyer flees to Morocco, followed by both the Mexican
investor's enforcer and special agent Jake McCall of the
FBI, now unintended allies in the manhunt.
The intricacies of both the complex Ponzi scheme and the
banker's underlying electronic manipulations are both
profound and frighteningly real, requiring McCall to revert
to his earlier career days as a Miami lawyer in order to
gain access to the seamy and dangerous side of the practice
by those who push the law too far. Through his unique frame
of reference as an attorney and Federal agent, McCall
ultimately observes that the cunning little branch banker
has remarkably outsmarted both today's electronic banking
system and a lawyer who deluded himself into thinking he
could do the same.
Coming soon...
THE LAST DAVINCI
The theft of a newly discovered DaVinci masterpiece,
instantly assigned a value of almost two-hundred million
dollars, becomes the decoy used to distract a group of
sophisticated international terrorists from pursuing the
real prize, a priceless formula for laser technology
which enables computerized molecular replication of all
organic matter, essentially everything on our planet,
from a "warehouse" of free molecules. The technology
represents a quantum leap from our current ability to
"carve" or construct in 3D by computer program since it
selects the necessary formulation of molecules by shape,
size and function as required to "clone" whatever the
object may be and whether living, such as a human organ,
or inert, such as an airplane part.
The trail of the recently unearthed painting, thought by
some experts to be Leonardo's speculative and evasive
twenty-third and by others to be an attribution, takes
FBI special agent Jake McCall from Miami to Venice,
where the Renaissance artist is known to have lived and
perhaps produced his long lost twenty-third work. The
fortuity of a flood tide in Venice's San Marcos Plaza
brings McCall an unforeseeable introduction which,
within hours, leads to an attempted murder in Harry's
Bar and an unexpected extension of the trail from Venice
to Zurich. There the only complete set of specifications
for the molecular replication formula is naively thought
to be safely stored in a Swiss bank vault, still
camouflaged as the DaVinci but subject to the threat of
commercial treason by a trusted career bank employee.
Like all of Leonardo's works, the mysterious
twenty-third brings with it an intrigue which should be
debated by academics within the hallways of notable
museums, not thrashed out in the alleyways of Zermatt or
the canals of Venice by international terrorists who
view the masterpiece as merely a commodity to be used as
barter.
Coming soon...
MOSQUITO
PASS
Obsessed since a teenager by the lure of gold in the
Rockies, Jake McCall's friend and fraternity brother
from college, now a college professor himself, fails to
return for the fall semester following his summer of
prospecting. Concerned that an accident has left his
friend injured and stranded in the mountain wilderness,
or perhaps lost or dead, Jake hears of the problem and
immediately leaves for Colorado where he is met by the
mutual friend who called Jake with the troubling news.
Coincidentally, the mutual friend was the last person to
see or talk to the professor, or so they thought.
As the hunt begins, the two men soon learn that the
professor had finally discovered a small vein of gold on
his un-patented claim high above the tree line and near
the infamous and now abandoned old London mine near
Mosquito Pass. From a frightened bartender in the tiny
village of Alma they also learn that the professor had
hired two brothers from Leadville to assist in removing
and hauling out the gold ore. The bartender also
described a heated argument which he overheard the three
men having the night of the professor's disappearance.
After enlisting the assistance of an attractive Forestry
Service ranger, the three travel deep into the mountains
to begin an arduous search for the professor and the two
suspected claim jumpers who may be the cause of his
disappearance or death. Soon after finding the
professor's abandoned Jeep, they encounter an unexpected
summer blizzard, making it impossible to return to the
ranger's SUV and forcing them to take shelter in a
closed mine shaft far removed from the nearest trail.
Crawling inside to avoid the storm, they stumble upon
evidence which, in the dim light, could explain the
professor's disappearance but, according to the ranger's
inspection, is undeniably related to the unsolved crime
spree from three years prior when young women
mysteriously vanished across Hoosier Pass near
Breckenridge.
In the quest to find his friend, the grisly and
unexpected discovery of human remains above twelve
thousand feet catapults Jake into a cold case crime he
feels compelled to solve, still unsure of whether his
friend was also buried in the tunnel. In doing so he
forges a bond with the other two, producing a pact to
solve the mystery which others had assumed was forever
buried at an altitude where few can even venture or
survive.
And solve it the trio does, while narrowly escaping
death themselves from threats posed by both bad people
and the hostile environment for which Mosquito Pass is
renowned. As the beautiful ranger lady would later
recount,
"These mountains have a will of their own. They tolerate
what they wish, as they wish. Nothing more. Like their
granddaddy, Mount Everest, they take what they want when
they want it, unimpressed by money, power or politics.
They are the ultimate equalizer."
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