Halden’s board also engaged another independent forensic accounting firm to repeat our stress tests and verify the findings.
I followed the rules precisely.
But the numbers I had already seen would not leave my mind.
For six months, our investigators had been tracing suspicious payments through Halden’s regional development division.
Millions had been sent to a company called Northstar Strategies.
The invoices described consulting assignments, municipal lobbying, and site assessments.
None of those services appeared to have been performed.
The payment approvals were especially suspicious.
Invoices were submitted, verified, and approved within minutes, bypassing the usual secondary departmental reviews.
Embedded metadata revealed that several documents had originated from a computer connected to a Halden-issued laptop.
Vanessa’s laptop.
Two nights before the wedding, Marcus joined me in our dimly lit conference room.
The servers hummed quietly around us.
Cold coffee sat forgotten on the table.
“Northstar is a complete ghost,” Marcus said, aggressively rubbing his tired eyes. “No physical office, no employee tax records, no legitimate web presence. The registered president is a guy named Thomas Sterling.”
