Mark Small

Travel 2 cities relevant 2 targets: marginally > complicated. Real pain? Place fr which 2 the info. White vans w/o rear windows were cliche, but cliches usu R true. Plus: targets lived far outside his home state. 7/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

1st thing he’d learned in his research: 1st vic usu lived close 2 perpetrator of serial crime. He chuckled: “research” was fr movie “Silence of the Lambs.” 1st target: 2,000, mi away. He distanced himself in other ways. 8/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

His employer was in same bldg as home office of big car rental company. To every1 he played techno-stupid. Reality? Under fake name he took boot camp in cyber security. He’d easily slipped into car rental company’s offices & hacked system. 9/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

He used car rental records 2 pick targets. Surveillance cams outside the type of business targets frequented? Numerous. He needed 2 cams in place - 1 for license plates & 1 for targets’ faces. 10/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

Problems: placement & later removal + possible discovery of the cams. At ✓-out @ Target 1 day was display of mini-drones size of a quarter. > research & he fd places w/mini-drones w/cams. He’d practiced flying them inside his house. 11/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

Problems w/extortion R many-fold, but 2 at the top: (1) target’s belief the culprit only will come back 4 “more” and (2) Collection of the $ - at time of payment or tracking marked bills later. 12/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

1st problem was addressed in the recording by his Voice: “This is the only time we’ll seek payment from you - too much greed is bad for our business. We’ve not had to tell a person’s secrets - as of yet.” 13/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

2nd problem was resolved via pmt w/a relatively primitive but still untraceable form of crypto currency. + he only sought, roughly, $10K from each target, an amt ea target easily could afford & could hide from that target’s wife. 14/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

Ea target pd w/in the 5 hrs given them by his Voice: $10K x 47 targets. He’d made enough $ to augment the pension, fr job he hated, set to fully vest in a little > 2 yrs from now. He’d sat back for 3 yrs, ready 2 retire. 15/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

But w/the $5 for ea $1 in the “sure” investment, w/his pension, he’d retire to Costa Rica a rich man. Greed got him - long after he’d “retired” from his game & the $ accumulated interest in offshore accounts. 16/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

COVID hit, he’d lost his entire investment & worse, he was cashiered fr his damn job. He’d done what he’d promised all 47 targets what they’d never face again. He had to go back to the trough & w/o $ sufficient to prep as he had B4. 17/19 c. 2020 by mark small.

The burners: bought not so far away. He’d worried the stored info on targets was stale. He’d made 5 calls & got 3 transfers of $10K in reply. He still had 2 to go. No 1 had yet called him on what, he hoped in his mind really was, his bluff. 18/19 c. 2020 by mark small.