Bribery and Corruption Casebook: The View from Under the Table

CHAPTER 6

Kickbacks for Comic Books

RAFAEL A. GARCIA

Carlos Diaz was, by all accounts, an ideal son and employee. When his father broke off his marriage and left the family, Carlos helped support his mother and younger sister by taking a job at a local supermarket; he was only 16 at the time. He kept this job all throughout college until graduation, when he began his vocation in the field of banking. Fresh out of school at 22 years old, Carlos took a job as a bank officer for Stone Bank and moved steadily up the ranks. He ultimately settled into a small business banker position, helping local businesses secure funding through loans or commercial lines of credit.

A Close Team

Stone Bank was a fairly large financial institution with more than $50 billion in assets and branches in several states; because of the bank’s size, security was divided into two distinct groups: internal and external investigations. I was an internal fraud investigator responsible for cases involving employees suspected of wrongdoing. All other investigations were handled by the external fraud investigations team.

The Corporate Security Miami Field Office for Stone Bank was located in a plain white office building a couple floors up from a Stone Bank branch. Aside from me, there was Joe Valdes, another internal fraud investigator, and Maria Gonzalez, an external fraud investigator. We sat in our own cubicles within earshot of one another.

“¿Quisiera un cafecito?” asked Carlos when I first met him in April. ...