No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller by Harry Markopolos (rainbow fish read aloud .txt) 📗

I knew I wasn’t in any personal danger from the SEC. But the only way that agency could emerge intact from this debacle was to prevent my submissions from being published. I was afraid they would raid my house under some security pretext and confiscate my computers and my documents and then find some flimsy excuse to get rid of them. I knew they had no criminal powers to stage that raid, but I also knew how desperate they must have been feeling.

I loaded a 12-gauge pump shotgun with double-ought buckshot, attached six more rounds to the stock, and draped a bandolier of 20 more rounds on top of my locked gun cabinet. Next I got out my old army gas mask in case they came in using tear gas. If an SEC raid team showed up, I only had to scare them or slow them down long enough for Sergeant Harry Bates and the Whitman police department to show up and take possession of my documents and computers. SEC staff aren’t armed, so while I didn’t think they’d try anything illegal, my military training kicked in and I prepared countermeasures for the worst possible course of action on the SEC’s part.

The Wall Street Journal was my way out. This time they were practically begging me for copies of my documents. I knew Greg Zuckerman by his byline. I’d read some of the stories he’d done. If I couldn’t get hold of John Wilke, Zuckerman would serve my purpose.

My safety lay in providing the Journal with copies of the same documents they’d had for three years. I was fighting an information war with the SEC; the army had taught me that in that kind of warfare it was vital to get out in front, to shape the battlefield for your own benefit. I decided to work with the Journal because I wanted the story to get out my way and by working with only one newspaper I maintained some control. I gave my story to the Journal because it fit my needs. I told Zuckerman that John Wilke had copies of all my documents and speculated that they were still on his computer or on the Journal’s server in Washington. Zuckerman explained that he was in New York and had no access to that material. “I need you to send it to me again,” he said. “Can you do it today?”

I wanted to laugh at him. Today? “You’ve had this material for three years,” I snapped. “I handed you a Pulitzer and you didn’t want it.”

Zuckerman paused. “That wasn’t me,” he said. I accepted that. I didn’t know anything about the internal workings at the Journal. As I had learned through my own work as an investigator, secrecy is absolutely vital. So it made sense that Wilke would not have mentioned the story he was working on to Zuckerman. Greg must have guessed what I was thinking—that the fact that John had dropped the story wasn’t going to look good for him—and he added, somewhat cryptically, “We gotta protect Wilke.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I responded. “I never thought it was him.” I’d stored my Madoff documents in my dead cases filing cabinet so they wouldn’t get mixed up with more active cases. I spent the early evening hours digging them out and trying to put them into some kind of sensible order. I’d known that Madoff was going to blow someday, but I’d decided by the time that happened I would no longer be involved. I was never so happy to be wrong.

The only fax I had in my house wasn’t working. I wasn’t really comfortable using it, anyway. A lot of the documents I received and sent were intended to be secret, and at that time I didn’t have a secure phone line. I’d used the fax machines from different Staples and Kinko’s locations, but by the time I was ready to transmit they were all closed. I decided to go over to my local pizza restaurant, the Venus Cafe, figuring every restaurant must have a fax to receive lunch orders.

It was a miserable New England night. We were in the middle of a rain and ice storm, and power lines were going down in the western part of Massachusetts. That figures, I thought as I trudged through the storm carrying all my papers. I loved the Venus. My family and I spent so much time there that it was almost like our second kitchen. It’s owned and run by the Drosos family, and they knew me well enough to consider me the local eccentric. I was the guy who had been coming in for years telling bad Greek jokes and sitting at a table reading forensic accounting books.

I rushed into the restaurant disheveled, dripping wet, and admittedly very agitated. There was a television set hanging above the bar, and a photo of Bernie Madoff was on the screen. “Elaine,” I said, “Elaine, that’s my case. That’s what I’ve been working on. I’m the whistleblower. Do you have a fax machine? I have to get this to the Wall Street Journal and I don’t want the wrong people to find out about it.”

“Now calm down, Harry,” Elaine Drosos said. “What’s going on?” I blurted out the whole story as quickly as I could. All I wanted to do was get to that fax machine. She listened intently, nodding from time to time, and when I was done she asked, “What’s a Ponzi scheme?”

She had no idea what I was talking about. It didn’t matter; the restaurant didn’t have a working fax machine. Fortunately, sitting at the bar was the owner of a trucking company whose office was about three miles down the highway. “You’re the whistleblower on that thing?” he asked, indicating the television set.

“Yes sir, the SEC screwed it up totally and these papers prove it. I’ve got to send them to