Who is Raphael Garza? Pt. 06

"There were transfers from another FBB account every few weeks that ranged from $15,000 to a high of just over $25,000. In addition to those transfers, Montoya made several deposits each month that in total would be more than $75,000 between May of last year and July this year. Once a quarter, there was a fund transfer of $50,000 from the account to an account at Bank of America. The last activity in the account was on Friday, July 3rd, when Montoya transferred all but $5.53 to the Cayman National Bank."

"That was the day before he planned to take $750,000 of cartel money from Monty and Farrell."

"I would guess that the deposits made by transfer from another FBB account were how Montoya got his share from the laundry business. All of those smaller deposits are checks from individuals, some checks coming from the same individuals multiple times."

"I think I know the source of those checks. Go back to the Documents folder and open the file named Business," I said.

Kathy opened the file and spent less than two minutes looking at it. "That makes sense," She said. I have seen this kind of thing before, but not in a nice spreadsheet like this. When I was working for the state Attorney General, I was involved in a usury investigation of a mob boss. So, in addition to being a money-laundering drug dealer, Mr. Montoya was a loan shark."

"Are you sure?"

"While it is unusual for a loan shark to have clients pay by check rather than cash and then track it all on a spreadsheet rather than in a notebook, everything else fits. The spreadsheet tracks each account. The amount borrowed, the payments, and the balance," Kathy said. "If you look at the reduction in principal after each payment, you can see that the interest rate is extremely high. The APR on these loans looks like it's around twenty-five to thirty percent compounded daily."

"Let's look at his Bank of America account," Kathy said and then opened the account.

"This one is listed under Jay Morgan Investments. This is not an investment account; other than that, it appears normal. There is a lot of activity in the checking account, which looks like mostly debit card transactions at grocery stores, gas stations and clothing stores, and automatic payments for mortgage, insurance and such. The account beginning balance eighteen months ago was $1,267, and as of today is $1,142. There are monthly transfers of $8,000 from the savings account into the checking account, which he would use to pay the monthly bills. There are no charges after the twenty-fifth, nothing unusual there. The savings account started the same period, with a balance of $37,127. In 2014, $50,000 was transferred quarterly from FBB. The current balance in the savings is $141,513."

"Open the Cayman National Bank account as see what he has there," I said.

Kathy opened the account and looked at the current balance. "Oh Jesus, there's almost six million dollars here."

"Really? When was the last transaction?"

"On July 3rd, 2015, Montoya deposited $183,460."

"So between this account, his Bank of America account, the $750,000 in our attic and the 50,000 in cash and 240,000 in bearer bonds in his safe, we are talking more like seven million dollars."

"Where did all this money come from?" Kathy said. "I am going to see how far back I can go into these accounts."

With Kathy working on the laptop, I went and opened the safe and started looking through the Pendaflex folder. It contained the kind of routine stuff you would expect would be locked in a safe, the titles to his house and his car, insurance policies, and his mortgage papers. There were two US Passports in the folder. Both passports were in Jorge Montoya's name. One was issued in 2000, and the home address was in Phoenix. The second passport was issued in 2010 with the Rydal address. Both passports show that Montoya had traveled extensively throughout the Caribbean.

I was looking at Montoya's 2000 passport and had a thought. "Kathy, does that laptop have Google Maps on it?"

"Yes it does, why?"

I stood behind Kathy and said, "Open it," Then I waited while she opened the app. "Now type in this address. 1017 West Holly Street, Phoenix, Arizona.

Kathy typed in the address and asked, "Who's address is that?"

"It is where Montoya wrote that address in the passport he got in 2000. Zoom in on the location and go to street view."

"What are we looking at?"

I studied the picture for a minute. Holy shit. Montoya's house in Phoenix was next door to Alex Gomez's house."

"So, what does that mean?"

"I'll bet that is how Gomez escaped from Phoenix. I read about the police going to Alex Gomez's house to arrest him and he wasn't there, even though they had unmarked police cars in front and back of his house. The police had no idea how he got away. The article I read had a picture of Gomez standing in front of his house, that house," I said and pointed to the house to the left of 1017 West Holly Street. Somehow Gomez slipped over to the other house without being seen. Then he changed his appearance and became Jorge Montoya, then just walked away. He was one slick son-of-a-bitch."

"When was that?"

"August 2006. Shortly after that, Montoya showed up as Frank Lewis and got a part-time job at the Four Seasons as a bellman and started acting at the Broad Street Theater as Franklin Hawthorn.

"How can one person do all that?"

"I don't know; I just hope we are the only two people that ever know all of this."

While Kathy got busy with the bank accounts, I managed to unlock Montoya's phone using information on his PW spreadsheet. I looked at his contacts list. There were only ten contacts on the list, and most of them were restaurants.

"Are you hungry?" I said. "I was thinking of pizza."

Kathy agreed that a pizza sounded good.

I used Montoya's phone to call the pizzeria he had in his contacts list. I ordered a large pepperoni pizza.

"Will that be on your debit card ending in 9647?" The guy on the phone asked.

"Yes, and add a five-dollar tip," I said.

Five minutes later, Kathy said, "A new charge for $24.95 just hit this checking account."

"That's the pizza I just ordered."

"You used Montoya's debit card to pay for it?"

"Why not let him pay to feed us. Anyway, I thought of it as a kind of proof of life thing. Now the pizzeria thinks Montoya ordered a pizza today, so he must still be alive, right? You'll have to answer the door when it comes because the delivery guy might know what Montoya looks like."

A half-hour later, Kathy said, "My God! Montoya had a Ponzi scheme going."

"You found something?"

Before she could answer me, the doorbell rang, and Kathy went down to get the pizza. We sat at the kitchen table, ate the pizza and drank another of Montoya's beers, while Kathy told me what she found.

"I was able to dig back six years in the CNB account. Montoya set up an investment business, called J&M Investments, and opened a numbered account at the bank. The account already had a balance of over 1.5 million dollars when this started. Starting in April of 2009, Montoya was frequently making deposits of more than $20,000 into the account. These frequent deposits continued until July, then they slowed. In September 2009, Montoya sent out checks of $1,500 each to twenty different people. After that, the pace of the deposits increased again. In December, Montoya sent out checks again; this time, the checks were for $2,500 each. It looks to me like a typical Ponzi scheme. You get a lot of people to invest with you for the promise of a great payback. Then quarterly, you send them a dividend check and a bogus statement telling them how great the investment is doing. Encouraged by the dividends they received, the victims invest even more of their money, and word of mouth draws in more victims. By the time he pulled the plug on the scheme in 2011, Montoya had added $2.7 million to his account."

"How could he get away with that? Take all that money from his victims and just walk away," I said

"It's complicated. First, some of the victims will not come forward because they are embarrassed to admit that they fell for the scam. Also, by the time they realized what happened, Montoya would have gotten rid of any trace of J&M investment. Knowing what we know about him now, do you think any of his victims ever met Jorge Montoya? Without knowing who Montoya was, there would be no way to trace where the money went."

"With Montoya gone, what will happen to all of this money?" I said.

When there is no more activity in his accounts, Bank of America will try to contact Montoya, and when they can't, the accounts will be declared dormant. They will continue to try and contact him for a set period of time and then issue a final warning. A month later, the money will roll over to the state. I don't know how CNB will handle it, but I assume the process will be similar."

"Would they look for next of kin?"

"That would be part of the process of trying to contact Montoya."

"Let's lock everything up and go home, and bring that laptop with you. We don't want to leave that lying around where someone else might get their hands on it."

When we got home, I poured myself a double Jim Beam, and when Kathy saw me, she asked me to fix one for her, too. We went into the living room and sat on the sofa together. Neither of us spoke for a while. Later, Kathy said, "What are we going to do about the money?"

"When I brought that duffle bag home from Montgomery's house and found all that money, I wanted no part of it. I had no idea what to do with it and decided that I would give it away to charities a little at a time. But now, after what we have been through, I have changed my mind. I say we keep the $750,000 in the attic and the $50,000 we found in the safe."

I expected Kathy to disagree with me, so I waited for the argument to start.

Kathy sounded angry when she finally spoke. "What about the bearer bonds? That would give us just over one million dollars. We probably would have gotten an even bigger settlement from First Bank of Brodricksburg if we could have sued them for the pain and suffering they caused. I agree with you. Let's keep the money and the bonds."

Then, Kathy held out her glass as a toast to our decision to keep the money."

Sunday October, 4^th

Sunday morning after breakfast, Kathy and I got busy doing our regular weekend chores around the house that we had neglected for the last two weeks. With our work done and lunch finished, I retired to the home office to destroy Montoya's seduction videos. Before I started the DVDs, I opened the email account that Montoya used to communicate with La Morte to see if they tried to contact him again. There were no new emails there, so I checked the account he used to send out his headshot to see if he had gotten a response. There was a new email in his inbox, but it wasn't from the Paducah Community Theater. The note came from Margaret Robertson.

J,

All settled in Paducah. My house is small but very comfortable.

I need to go shopping for things for the house and get some groceries.

How soon will you be able to get here? Have you got a buyer for your house yet? I miss you. Let me know if there is anything special you want me to have in the house for when you arrive.

Love, Marg

It was 2:27 PM Saturday when the note arrived in Montoya's email account. When Kathy read the email, she did something she seldom does, she cursed. "Oh shit, what the fuck do we do now? We will have to answer the note, what will we tell her?"

I clicked reply and typed the following note.

M,

Miss you too. I still have a few things to do, but I will be there in two weeks.

Love you, J

I showed the note to Kathy, and she shrugged her shoulders, and I said, "It's a bit of a risk because we have no idea what her expectations are. Will this note look like one he would send her?" I hit send. "I wonder if she knows the real Jorge Montoya."

"Let me look at something." Kathy said and pulled the laptop over in front of her. Kathy opened Montoya's BOA account and found three debit card charges that hadn't been there when we looked at the account on Saturday afternoon. "Shit, she has a debit card for the account. That can complicate things."

"Apparently she thinks he is selling the house and planning to move to Paducah to be with her," I said. "You know, in all the stuff we have looked at, I haven't seen anything that would indicate that Montoya was trying to sell it. Was he planning to keep the house? How long do you think she will wait before she comes looking for Montoya?"

"You're the problem solver," Kathy said. "What are we going to do?"

"Let me think about it. The solution may be as simple as just doing nothing. If you have any ideas, let me know."

Kathy shook her head and headed out of the room, leaving me staring at Montoya's BOA checking account activity. I logged out of the account and closed the session then turned to the task I originally planned. I picked up the box of DVDs and dumped them out on the desk. With my thoughts focusing on the problem of Margaret Robertson, I absentmindedly began putting the DVDs in chronological order, starting with the oldest. The first video was from 2003. The videos were all labeled with a woman's name and the month, day, and year with two exceptions. One DVD marked with an 'M' and the date March 6, 2004, and the other exception again labeled 'M' with the date September 14, 2006. I was curious about those two DVDs, so I loaded DVD from 2004 into the computer and hit play.

The first few seconds of the video showed an empty bedroom, and then a naked woman walked into the room. The woman looked to be average height and a slim build. She had dark brown, shoulder-length hair and a very sexy ass. As she approached the bed, Montoya came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her and started kissing her neck. The woman leaned back against Montoya as he moved his hands down to cup her breasts. The woman turned to face him, and they kissed. After the kiss, the woman pulled away from Montoya and climbed on the bed, and I was able to see her face for the first time.

As soon as I saw her, a knot started to form in my stomach. My anger was building as I continued to watch the lovers. The only sounds they made were the sounds of sexual activity. I didn't need to see them fucking, so I fast-forwarded to see if I could catch any conversation when they finished. The video ended abruptly, and another video started. It was the same woman but obviously on a different day, because in this video, she started fully dressed. In this second video, while Montoya was undressing her, he said, "What does your husband think you're doing right now?"

"He thinks I am out shopping." She said and grabbed Montoya's erect cock, "Wait till he sees what I bought." With that, she dropped to her knees and took Montoya's cock into her mouth. I speed through the rest of that video and found another. In all, there were six different videos of the pair.

The anger I felt after watching that DVD made my jaw ache and my back so stiff it was painful. I ejected that DVD and loaded the one from September 2006. It was the same woman with Montoya, and I knew her, "That fucking lying bitch."

I didn't realize how loud I had said that until Kathy came into the office and asked me what was wrong.

I looked at Kathy, and I could tell by her reaction to the expression on my face that I scared her. I held up the two DVD cases and showed Kathy the dates on both.

"Who is M?" Kathy said.

I hit play again and said, "Watch."

"Oh my God! That's Marge Robinson."

"She lied to everyone. She was in this from the beginning with Montoya. I wondered how he could have pulled this off by himself. Well, he had help. She was probably the one recording your romp with Raphael Garza. Somehow, that bitch convinced the FBI that they should put her in witness protection. And you know what? I think that Margaret Robertson maybe her new name. Close enough to her old name to be easy to remember but different enough to not be obvious. When I was talking to Marge she let the name George slip, but it never occurred to me that it was Jorge that she was thinking of when she made that slip."

Kathy stood next to me, shaking her head, and her face flushed red. "We can't let that bitch get away with this."

My head was spinning with all kinds of revenge scenarios, most too crazy to consider. Then one of the ideas took hold. "What if Jorge Montoya disappeared and left Marge on her own?"

"What do you mean? Montoya is already gone?" Kathy said.

"Marge doesn't know that. I want to make her, and anyone else that might look for him think that he has left the country."

"What are you proposing we do?"

I laid out the idea that I was quickly forming. "Acting as Jorge Montoya, I will contact a real estate agent and put his house on the market. I will give the agent power of attorney to handle everything. Then we will hire a moving and storage company to come and pack up all of Montoya's furniture and other positions and put them into storage. We can pay for that using his debit card and set up monthly payments for the storage. Sometime this week, I will need to rent a truck so that we can get the safe out of the house and take it to the barn."

Kathy sat, looking at me, and I was getting the feeling that she was getting ready to argue against my idea.

"How do we keep Marge from seeing what we are doing?" Kathy said.

"Marge thinks Montoya is in the process of selling the house, so that part shouldn't raise any suspicion. We need to get this done in the next two weeks before I go to San Jose on the 19th.

"Now, what else do we need to do?" I said as I looked at Kathy.

"How do you plan to make it look like Montoya left the country?"

"Do you think you could use Montoya's makeup studio to make me look enough like the picture in his passport that I could pass through customs in another country?

"Are you serious? Wouldn't that be too dangerous?"

"We are about the same size; I'll need to darken my hair a little, then add a mustache and a little makeup.

"I guess we could try to make you look like him, but if I don't think you can pass, we don't do it, okay? Then what?"

"I fly to Grand Cayman Island and spend one night there. The next day, I'll fly back to Philadelphia using my passport. I'll pay cash for a Visa gift card to cover the cost of my ticket home. It'll look like Montoya left the US and didn't come back."

"You're scaring me. Is this necessary?" Kathy said.

"We need people to believe that Montoya has left the country. That will end any possible trail back to us."

Monday, October 5th Preparations Begin

During my lunch break on Monday, I went out and bought two Tracfones, one for Kathy and one for me, using Montoya's debit card. I then used Montoya's phone to call a real estate broker in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. I identified myself as Jorge Montoya and arranged to have an agent meet me at Montoya's house Tuesday evening at seven o'clock. I told the person on the phone that I needed the agent to represent me so that I would not have to be present at the closing because I would be out of the country. "That will be no problem; we'll just need your power of attorney to act as your agent in this matter." After that call, I arranged to pick up a rental truck after work.

I left work a half-hour early and picked Kathy up at her office. From there, we went to the rental agency to pick up the truck. I followed Kathy home to drop off the car, and then we headed for Rydal, arriving there just after six o'clock. We started in the master bedroom by packing up the clothes in his dresser drawers and his closet, then packed up the contents of Montoya's makeup studio and loaded all of those boxes on the front of the truck. Next, we emptied the refrigerator and pantry, putting the perishables in trash bags and put all of that on the truck.