CHAPTER 3
By ten o'clock that morning, I stepped into the glass-walled conference room of Whitmore & Associates on the forty-first floor of the Capella Tower in downtown Minneapolis.
Daniel Whitmore was a tall man in his early fifties with silver-streaked hair and sharp grey eyes that missed absolutely nothing.
Sitting beside him was Sarah Vance, a top forensic accountant who had spent fifteen years tracking offshore assets for the IRS.
"Let's look at what we're dealing with, Gretchen," Sarah said, spreading out several high-resolution printouts of the bank transfers I had discovered. "Your husband didn't just set up an LLC for his mistress; he used CR Strategic Consulting as a shell entity to funnel money into commercial real estate in Texas."
I leaned over the table, scanning the numbers that represented fourteen years of our shared lives being quietly stolen away.
"Four point five million dollars," Sarah stated, tapping a red pen against a summary sheet. "That is the total amount Joshua has diverted from your marital estate over the last eighteen months."
"And the forged document?" I looked at Daniel.
"We had a forensic document examiner review the screenshot you sent," Daniel explained, leaning back in his leather chair. "It's an electronic copy of a signature he pulled from your 2024 joint tax return, stretched and pasted onto a spousal waiver form."
May you like
"That is felony wire fraud and grand larceny," I whispered, the weight of the realization settling over the room.
"It is," Daniel agreed smoothly. "And because he used interstate bank wires to move the funds to Texas, it falls directly under the jurisdiction of the United States Attorney's Office."
