The Amigito Insurance Agency Jason Winters had just finished celebrating his 15th year with the firm when a scruffy middle-aged man ap- peared in the doorway of his office carrying a brown paper grocery bag. The man had dirt splashed onto parts of his navy-blue trousers and tan sports coat. "You are Jason Winters?" the man asked. Caught by surprise, Jason took a moment to gather his thoughts. Then he asked, "How did you get in here without an appointment?" Jason felt uncomfortable as he realized that he wasn't wearing his coat and tie and was caught with a half- empty martini sitting on his desk. The man smiled, "I don't take no for an answer." In a flash, Jason grabbed the martini and nonchalantly lowered it to the floor, setting it down next to his chair. He then grabbed the phone and buzzed the front desk receptionist. No answer. "The front desk was empty when I came in." said the man. "She's probably in the party that I saw as I passed a conference room full of people." Jason gathered his composure and picked up his thick, black plastic glasses from his desk. With his left foot he nudged his new alligator skin valise, which contained copies of documents that he needed to return to a previous client. He removed an embroidered silk handkerchief from his back pocket and began wiping the lenses of his glasses. Fully comfortable, Jason looked up at the man. "All the construction here was complete a month ago. If there's an issue with the billing..." "It's an emergency" interjected the man. Jason stood and grabbed his jacket from the corner coatrack to the left of his desk. He reached into the outer pocket and pulled out his new gold-threaded clip-on tie. "You have my attention," he said. The man began to talk, but Jason waived a hand for him to wait as he stood in front of the mirror next to the coatrack and adjusted his tie with perfect precision. He was pleased to see gray streaks forming in the hair above his ears. It gave him the refined look of a senior partner, although he was now only an associate with very uncertain hopes of ever making partner or even keeping his current position. The man spoke again, in a raspy voice that must have come from smoking too much. "Are you going to listen to my story?" he asked, hugging the paper bag under one arm. "Or are you going to just stand there admiring yourself in the mirror?" "Shoot," said Jason. The man stepped forward. Jason retreated behind his desk, accidentally kicking over his martini. He regret- ted not having the opportunity to finish it. "I'm being taken to the cleaners," said the man. "Yeah, it looks like you haven't arrived there yet." The man's hands were trembling, Jason noticed dried blood on the side of his face, below his right ear. "I bought an insurance agency from this guy in Boca Raton. Two million dollars in cash, most of the money that my father left me when he passed away last year." "I'm sorry for your loss," said Jason. "Don't be," replied the man. "He was a terrible person." Jason began to imagine what type of client this man would make. Sometimes, clients were more trouble than they were worth. Just a week before, a construction industry client with a lot of money insisted on having lunch at the Governor's Club. The client was so rude that he would drink like crazy and speak so loudly that the maitre d' practically begged them to accept a table in a separate room. But working with nasty people was part of the job. The man continued as the smell of the spilled martini wafted through the air. "I could use a drink," he said watching for Jason's reaction. "A few months ago, I bought this insurance agency and got robbed every which way imaginable, and I've got the proof with me in this bag." Jason sat again and then sank into his leather swivel chair. He was totally in his comfort zone. The man stepped forward holding the bag in front of him with both hands. The bag could have had anything in it, may even a gun or a bomb. "Whoa" yelled Jason. "Let's slow down a bit." Jason introduced himself and asked the man his name. He then remembered that the man had spent most, but not all, of his inheritance on buying the business. That probably meant that the man had more money that he could bill against. "I apologize," said the man with an almost begging look on his face. "My name is Castro Perdido." Before Jason could speak, Perdido emptied the contents of the bag onto Jason's desk, knocking over a photo of Jason's second wife. The problems with dissolving his marriage had introduced him to the area of matrimonial forensics. She was now somewhere in South America with all the money that she and her dirty lawyer had stolen from him. So, he kept her picture as a constant reminder of the dangers of bad marriages. In front of Jason was a large pile of bank statements, cancelled checks, and pages ripped from an old-style paper ledger. "Please keep these for me," said Perdido. He reeked of tobacco and cologne. "These people are going to ruin me, and you've got the only proof to bring them down." As Perdido spoke, Gretta Cleaver appeared in the doorway with Hector, the firm's uniformed security guard, standing quietly behind her. Gretta was the firm's senior partner. She was a tall, steely woman with short gray hair and a constant implacable look that reminded him of a character from a James Bond movie. Unaware that anyone was behind him. Perdido continued. "They know that I'm on to them, and this morn- ing I think I saw one of them following me as I approached the building." Perdido was still unaware of Gretta's presence. She was shaking her head. Greta had a strict policy of reviewing and approving all new clients, and she wouldn't tolerate Jason going around her. No one in the firm questioned her authority, and Jason never felt comfortable in her presence. "I need to see you in my office now," she said. "You have exactly five minutes to finish your meeting with this gentleman." Jason knew he was in trouble. It looked bad for him, with the documents spread out all over his desk. They shouldn't be there, the man shouldn't be in his office, and Gretta was the type of person who accepted no excuses. She was already biased against him anyway. Only a week before, Jason had heard a rumor that she was thinking about firing him because some were saying that he lacked the requisite professional demeanor of a forensic ac- countant. "I'm sorry" Jason said to Perdido. "But you will need to make an appointment, and then we can listen to your story Realizing that his time was short, Perdido got right to the point. "Sitting in front of you is the proof of a mas- sive business brokerage scam involving billions of dollars being run by a United States senator. My case is just the tip of the iceberg." Jason thought about how much such a high-profile case could boost his career. With a case like that he wouldn't even need Cleaver and Associates anymore. He would be welcomed as a partner in just about any firm in the country. "How do I know you are on the level?" Jason asked. The man reached in and removed a stack of bills from his inside coat pocket. And then he reached in a front pocket and pulled out a second stack of bills. They appeared to be fresh one-hundred-dollar bills held together by the typical cigar-type paper bands used in banks. "Here's \($20,000\) in cash," said Perdido, throwing the two packets of bills onto Jason's desk. Each stack was about a half inch thick. "And don't worry, it's all clean money. My father was a survivalist and always kept money in a safe. One of the last things he did before he died was to scribble the combination on a scrap of paper." The firm's policies permitted Jason to accept retainer fees. But this man was not an approved client, and ac- cepting the retainer could cost Jason his job, especially if Perdido turned out to be some kind of crook "I can't accept your money. It's against our policy, and I don't understand your case. We don't accept cases that we don't understand." Perdido remained silent for a moment, as they both listened to the sound of footsteps in the hallway. "I'm desperate, and I don't have much time. I'm afraid they are going to destroy me, and I need to at least get this case in motion so my daughter will have something if I'm gone. Just look over the documents, and if you don't like the case you can return the money to me or my estate. But there's no way that you or your firm won't want this case." Jason had a gut feeling that the case might be worth pursuing. After all, Perdido was an insurance broker and not a drug trafficker. That made him a low-risk client. So, Jason took the money and gave Perdido a hand-written receipt on a sheet of his office stationary. Gretta Cleaver wouldn't dare fire him and risk losing a case like this. Jason took a deep breath and said, "At this point, this is all very unofficial, just between you and I, until I've had a chance to review the documents." "Except to my attorney, I won't say a word. And I promise you that if you help me out of this bad situation, I'll give you a bonus so large that it will change your whole life." Jason winced at the thought of an attorney already being involved. Another wild card. "With your help, I'll convince my attorney that we have a case," said Perdido. Jason then shooed Perdido out of his office after the two had exchanged cell phone numbers. He then checked himself in the mirror again to see if his face would betray to Gretta Clever what he had just done. Jason knew that Gretta Cleaver wasn't going to be easy. Everyone knew that she was one of the best forensic accountants in the county. She was frequently a guest on major talk shows, she was on a first-name basis with many in Congress, and she had personally taken down some of the biggest scammers of the decade. She was always a perfect professional and well-liked by everyone. But she could destroy anyone who crossed her. Her corner office was a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows that yielded an expansive view of the city below and the ocean in the distance. The walls were completely bare, and the only furniture in the room was her L-shaped mahogany desk faced by two lavishly-upholstered swivel chairs. She closed her laptop and motioned for Jason to sit in the chair to his right. "I'm under a lot of pressure," she said, checking her watch. "We will need to get through this quickly. I'm afraid that we are on the verge of having one of my very best clients stolen from us." Jason nodded, but he ignored her hand signal and sat in the chair to his left. His experience with interviews and interrogations had taught him to maintain a degree of control. And he knew that he was facing a clever and skilled opponent who would probably just love to have an excuse to fire him. Lucky for him that she seemed distracted and hurried. Gretta smiled from ear to ear. "You thought you could pull one on me," she said. Jason maintained his composure. She couldn't possibly know that he had taken the money and documents from Perdido, and he could see from the look on her face that she was not referring to anything to do with Perdido. She just stared at him for a moment in silence, as though she were expecting something to happen. Then, Jason began to feel something wet in his seat. "I just cleaned that chair a while ago. My secretary spilled coffee all over it. The darned thing is like a sponge, and now it's full of water." Jason had just lost round one. "I would have stopped you from sitting there," she said, "But I could see right through your little maneuver, and so you got what you deserved." Jason pretended not to be bothered as he felt the water seep in through his underwear and down his legs. He needed to gain control of the conversation, so he quickly took the offense: "The guy has a lot of money, and it looks like this could be a really big case for Cleaver and Associates" "Well," she said. "As you know, we at Cleaver and Associates love wealthy clients and money. But what were all those documents on your desk?" Jason wasn't going lie to her. So, he instead tried to change the subject. "Everyone was in the party, and so he managed to get past the front desk and make his way to my office." She just stared at him, waiting for more. Distracting her wasn't going to work. "He just dumped them on my desk and said he badly needed a forensic accountant. I told him that we don't accept cases that we don't understand. And then you and Hector showed up. So, I gave him my cell number and told him that we would need to talk another time." Gretta looked at her watch and frowned. "I trust you wouldn't even think about violating our client acquisi- tion policies," she said. "Why would I do that?" he said. "Be assured, I very much value my relationship with the firm." "I'm sure you do," she replied. Jason left the office early so that he could go home and put on dry clothes. After stopping on Las Olas Boulevard for a quick coffee run, he let his silver sports car auto-pilot him straight towards his beach condo. He couldn't get Castro Perdido out of his mind. "What if it turns to be a really big case?" he wondered. Gretta would probably assign it to one of the partners, and he would be left with nothing but a pat on the back. Not a good outcome. Regardless, he was sitting on \($20,000\) cash, a ticking time bomb. He either had to very quickly get Perdido to take it back or turn it in to the firm. But he couldn't turn it into the firm without putting Perdido through the normal client review procedures. Luckily it was Friday, so he had the weekend to investigate and work out a game plan. At his condo, he walked pensively past the security desk, returning the guard's greeting with a half-hearted wave. Then, as the elevator slowly ascended to his 24th floor apartment, he realized what he need to do next. He loved his spacious corner apartment. Its panoramic windows and patio-style balconies made him feel like he was a part of the ocean below. It was in the newest and tallest high-rise along the beach. Its original construction had been fraught with legal battles over contract disputes. In fact, his initial interest in the building arose when he had to testify as an expert witness for the construction company. In preparing his testimony he had become intimately familiar with the company's private financial statements and valuation reports. One of those reports contained highly confidential information that took into consideration future construction in the area and helped him select one of the best apartments in the building at pre-construction prices. Only he knew, at the time, that a famous actor had purchased six adjoining apartments next to his. His apartment was now worth over three times what he had paid for it only two years before. After taking a quick shower and changing into his favorite designer button-down baseball jersey, beach shorts, and leather sandals, he sat at his transparent glass desk and took a few deep breaths as he watched a cruise liner in the distance steaming away from land. "Perhaps the cruise was on its way to Colombia," he thought. He was almost sure that his ex-wife had absconded to Colombia. Eventually, he would gather the resources and time to pursue her. It wasn't going to be easy because she was very smart and well aware of his investigative capabilities. He popped open his laptop and began by googling Castro Perdido. He spent the next four hours browsing various public and private databases, beginning with public property records, corporate records with the Secretary of State, the Department of Vital Statistics, arrest records, court records, UCC filings, and licensing databases. The Broward County probate records showed that a few months ago, Perdido had inherited \($2.25\) million from his father, meaning that he should have plenty of money to pay forensic accounting and legal fees. But strangely enough the public records showed no current or past real estate in his name. And he was completely absent in all news stories and on social media. However, Jason did see an interesting reference to a Cook Island trust in one of his company's corporate filings. However, in total, Castro Perdido was a completely clean, although somewhat mysterious, person. "Game on," he thought. 

Required

a. Discuss arguments for and against Jason accepting the \($20,000\) from Castro Perdido.

b. Should Jason have immediately told Gretta Cleaver the whole story? Why or why not? 

c. What should Jason do next?