Featured image by DarkmoonArt_de from Pixabay

“Bobby needs off-shore paper shell companies and brokerage accounts which cannot be tied to him. I set a few up following the information on an NPR podcast. I’ve not made any risky moves with them because I’m not so certain federal investigators aren’t tracking everything those services have done. You and Bobby need to talk about that at some point, especially about the ones he knows about because those obviously weren’t set up well enough. If he could find them so could law enforcement. At least one of the companies needs to be more than a paper shell. It needs to generate revenue of its own. That revenue can be fed into untraceable brokerage accounts and we can make bigger plays on the stock tips you give to him. I’m not saying this to blackmail you or in any way try to squeeze you though it may sound like that. Family is important to me. If the big stinky chunks of your Dark Web world hit the high speed fan Bobby will need liquid assets in other countries as well as an income stream. He should probably own a few homes in countries without U.S. extradition treaties.

There was a strained silence at the table. Finally Gina uttered “You have a very dark view of the world Janet, that’s good. Bobby is my brother and I will help him set such things up. As to places to live in those countries, you can feel free to acquire some but, honestly, I don’t know how many I have anymore. I even own a couple of high end hotels in foreign vacation spots. Don’t ask me where. I’m not trying to be mysterious. Honestly, I would have to look it up. Some of my off-shore businesses have employees and a life of their own. I bought them. I funded them and they generate revenue for me. Most of the places I own via one company or another, I’ve never been to. I set up a foreign REIT with cash from a massive stock move. It has employees, they have guidelines, it’s like any other REIT you will find on our stock market only it’s not publicly traded. They’ve asked about that and I keep shutting it down. Exposing the books might expose how it got started.”

“A REIT? Is that a technical term?” asked Janet.

“A Real-estate Investment Trust. They buy commercial and some residential properties, fix them up and lease them out. Hotels, strip malls, condo buildings. Last I heard they started buying homes in tech hubs to fix up and rent out to traveling business people via various corporate housing Web sites. From time to time I do well with an otherwise shady trade and dump half the profits into the REIT as a cash injection. My advisers got me good people to run it. If everything went to shit tomorrow that business alone could support the entire family in the lifestyle Bobby used to lead.”

“As long as nobody could trace the seed money” stated Bobby.

“Wouldn’t matter now. They could fork it all over. Might have to sell one of the hotels, but, it would still be a very profitable business.”

“I can see why you don’t want to give up the dream business” stated Janet softly.

“Oh, I planned to. At least I planned to once the database reached two trillion dreams. I planned to pull all of the code out of Bobby’s games and the other products my legitimate company sells. Scrub the backups and source code history. With a product of that size the Dark Web business could be self sustaining. It is cordoned off and the money laundered well enough that even if it does get shut down investigators would never manage to get all the way to me. Security is lax at the legitimate company. Any similarities in the code could be attributed to an undetected hack. If the investigation happened after I sold the company it would be the new owners problem. I just didn’t plan on you” finished Gina looking Janet directly in the eyes.

“Hold on sis” cautioned Bobby.

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