Can you ever trust a criminal? The short answer: No

Tuesday, 4 February 2025

This article first appeared in Ocean Road Magazine
 

There is a well-trodden myth that has been perpetuated since early times. There’s a code of justification criminals would tell themselves to justify their malfeasant behaviours. These codes were well-known throughout history and almost became believable. Take the legend of Robin Hood who “only stole from the rich”: this fable has been used by criminals throughout time to justify their own behaviours. The definition of rich should be replaced by “only stole from others”, because as we know, the butterfly effect of one action, especially a criminal action, has multiple consequences and soon that code is easily knocked down as ridiculous. Just remind yourself of this each time your insurance premiums rise.

My long history of dealing with criminals from my early days as a Police Officer some 30 years ago to my last 20 years dealing with corporate criminals has taught me, you really can’t trust a criminal.

I was interviewing a fraudster about a series of frauds that he had perpetrated within the company that employed him. He was the CFO of a large construction machinery leasing company and unbeknown to him, my team and I had uncovered almost 18 months of fraudulent transactions with a value of over $ 3 million.

Typically, in interviews we travel back in time with the last allegations questioned first and the first last, so we can unravel a timeline with the interview ending on the genesis of the crimes. When we do have time to investigate and then interview, we will have an abundance of information and evidence to rely on and to challenge the subject’s version of events. In this interview, I had 18 months of fraudulent transactions to look at.

This fellow, although very intelligent, was not very smart and really didn’t catch on quickly. After I had shown him the fraudulent transactions of basically diverting legitimate company funds into his shadow company of about $75,000 over two months, evidence of a money trail and the established identity of his shadow company linked to himself, he confessed and started to justify his actions. “I do so much for this massive company, and they withheld my bonuses, they wouldn’t even feel the $75,000, hell I will even pay that back.” I stopped him and said, “Just wait a sec I have a few more documents to show you.” His face showed that expression of fear and wonder, like when you step on a rollercoaster for the first time. I then outlaid another few months of transactions, this time pushing the value over a million dollars, again he confessed, with the comment: “I guess it was more than I first recalled, I am sure they have insurance to cover that.” With this, I said “Is there anything else you want to tell me, any more transactions?” “No, I swear that’s where and when this all started, I was pissed with them so developed this scheme, and took what I deserved.” After this, I then showed the remaining transactions dating back to about two months from his actual employment start date. The genesis was a smallish misappropriation of $1,350, and he had seemingly got away with it, and over time he had criminally transacted to over three million dollars. He simply said, “So what now.” Well, he served a period of just over two years in prison.

Another frustrating lesson was learned in Sri Lanka on assignment, waiting on information from a known criminal who guaranteed information that would help me investigate a post Tsunami related aid fraud of over two hundred million dollars. Ruin Fernando was his name (real or otherwise), but his promise of information was contingent on a number of factors, mostly payment for information, exemption from prosecutions and travel out of Sri Lanka. I had secured these conditions via the Sri Lankan government and said to Ruin that I would need to validate the information before he received his side of the deal. My colleague, Brooke, and I travelled to Colombo to meet Ruin. We had arranged to meet at the iconic Colombo Cricket club, for our first meeting. After three hours of waiting and a few cocktails, it was obvious Ruin was not going to show.  When we arrived back at the hotel, there was a fax from Ruin with new meeting details and a mobile phone number, the meeting was to be at a city mall the next day. Again, we waited and no show, so I called the number and spoke with a man that claimed to be Ruin Fernando. He enticed me again with names, dates and snippets of information that would help our case, and another meeting was arranged, alas no show. I called again, and he claimed he had to leave town for a few days. The few days passed, and I received a couple of messages stringing me along. Brooke knew we were being played as well as I did but I called again, and Ruin guaranteed he would come to the hotel that afternoon, he did not, and the next call I said, “Ruin, are you ever going to show up, can I trust you?” Ruin replied, “Sometimes Matthew in my game trust is a transaction, and I need more money.” There ended my association with Ruin. Every other month for a year I would receive a strange SMS or a fax, never an email, but in the end, I just could not trust Ruin as a reliable source.

Criminals by their very behaviour are not to be trusted and this is because they have already made the choice to bend the rules and break the law. When it comes to the human bond and emotion of trust, this is merely a walk in the park for them too. The best con artists or abusers are those people who gain your trust, like many of the scammers of today. There is a level of trust sort and given, then abuse of this trust to their benefit and to your detriment. What I find is that people are too polite to challenge and too open to the enate human nature to be giving and to open arms to others.

Here too we can use the criminal mind to our advantage, and we can use their own trust and their self-belief that we have been fooled to lure them into our trap for our own benefit, and this is how many of my investigations play out. I seemingly go along with the criminal scheme but have parallel motives to gain information and infiltrate their schemes or organisations.  A couple of years ago I was investigating a shipping fraud where the criminal, who was also a person in a position of trust in a large organisation, had set up a shadow company which was routing shipping transport of fruits to sanctioned countries and to black markets. He was cashing in on both sides of the transactions and embezzling funds from the parent company. I developed a ruse to meet him in Tokyo to sign a new shipping agreement lucrative enough to get his attention. I asked for banking details to send a retainer’s deposit for shipping cargo and arranged for a face-to-face meeting to seal the deal. Once we had the banking details, we were able to get a court injunction to freeze his shadow accounts and by the time of our meeting I had evidence enough to terminate his employment, confiscate his work phone and laptop, then embark on a cooperative prosecution and civil recovery of most of the embezzled funds of about USD12m. He said to me, “Why did you do this, I trusted you.”

So, in this world trust must be earned, and we must all exercise healthy amounts of skepticism and believe that this is not too rude but a necessity to keep the wolves at bay, because you just cannot trust a criminal.

To read other articles Matthew has contributed to Ocean Road Magazine, click here.