Chapter 13 - The Deposition
Three weeks later, the civil forfeiture proceedings began in the conference room of Harrison Grant’s law firm. Since Camille was locked away in federal detention without bail, she was brought in wearing hand chains and a standard-issue prison jumpsuit, flanked by two U.S. Marshals.
Her attorney, Vance, sat beside her, looking visibly miserable. He knew he was fighting a losing battle against a mountain of forensic evidence, but he was legally obligated to try and poke holes in our asset seizure claims.
Vance slid a complex financial spreadsheet across the table toward me. "Ms. Sterling, isn't it true that during the fiscal year of 2024, you had administrative access to the same offshore clearing accounts that you now claim your sister used to siphon funds?"
"I had administrative server access as the chief systems analyst, yes," I replied calmly, my voice being recorded by the court reporter’s microphone. "That is how I maintain the network security for the entire corporation."
"So, theoretically," Vance said, leaning back with a smug expression, "you could have initiated those wire transfers yourself, using your sister’s login credentials, in order to frame her and seize controlling interest of your father’s company after his death?"
I smiled. I had been waiting for this exact, desperate legal theory.
"Theoretically, Mr. Vance, anyone with a keyboard could type a login name," I said, reaching into my briefcase with my left hand to pull out a thick, bound technical report. "However, what you clearly fail to understand about enterprise-level network architecture is digital fingerprinting."
I slid the report across the table directly in front of Vance and Camille. "Every time a wire transfer was authorized from Camille’s terminal, our internal security software logged the MAC address of the physical hardware, the local Wi-Fi router BSSID, and the biometric facial recognition scan required by our two-factor banking authentication protocol."
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I tapped the open page of the report. "Page forty-two shows the biometric confirmation photo taken by the laptop camera for the three-million-dollar transfer made three hours after my father’s funeral. Take a good look, Mr. Vance. That isn't me typing on a keyboard. That is Camille sitting in her bedroom, wearing her black funeral dress, sipping a martini while she robbed our father’s estate."
Camille looked down at the high-resolution photograph of herself on the page, her face twisting in silent, helpless rage. Vance closed his eyes, let out a long, defeated sigh, and slowly slid the spreadsheet back into his briefcase. He was completely out of ammunition.
