What Would You Do For A Thousand Dollars?
A Tale of Light Money Laundering, Some Online Deals, and a Giveaway
Let me tell you a little story of an attorney named — well, for legal purposes, let’s call her Bentley. I know Bentley because I cold-called her a couple years ago with some questions about family law. Not for me, mind you, but for a script I was writing. “Is a goldendoodle a child in the eyes of the court?” I demanded, pen in hand. Bentley gave me the courtesy of not hanging up and patiently explained that, no, in family court, a goldendoodle is more like a suitcase. A divorcing couple can fight over ownership of the doodle, but cannot fight over custody. Then she told me a story about a client of hers whose ex killed their dog so that no one could have him, and another client who buried two kayaks in the forest behind her lake house so her ex would never find them.
There are four important things you need to know about Bentley before I tell you about a little deal Bentley made a few years back. One is she’s brilliant. Two is her office is in a strip mall next to a massage parlor and a nail salon. Three is her favorite drink is Sugar-Free Red Bull, and every time I see her I bring a four-pack in tribute. And four is — and you might have guessed this from the proceeding paragraph — Bentley is an excellent storyteller. You can ask something completely innocuous of Bentley — “How was the traffic downtown?” — and instead of answering she’ll tell you about the time she picked up a backpack full of money from the county jail. In other words, she is a novelist’s dream.
So there I was the other day, sunk into one of Bentley’s extremely deep chairs, trying to get the lay of the land about wills and trusts for a new project (Bentley is a jack lawyer of all trades), when she started telling me about a former client who was currently in federal prison for having — wait for it — 26 kilos of meth in the backseat of her car when she got pulled over for running a stop sign. (How and why this came up when we were talking about estate planning is part of the wonderful mystery of Bentley.) Five years prior to her arrest, this client, who described herself to Bentley as a “courier,” wished to purchase a condo in cash. (Bentley also does real estate law.) The closing date was set, but — oh no! — it turned out that Client was going to be out of town, “traveling” on “business.” Could Bentley do the closing instead? Client will pay Bentley one thousand dollars. Bentley agrees. A thousand bucks for a couple hours! All in all, a very good deal.
Or was it? Before Client “left town,” she showed up at Bentley’s office with a metal suitcase containing — wait for it — two hundred thousand dollars. Bentley drove herself and that metal suitcase down to her bank in bourgeois Edina, walked up to the teller’s office, and said, “I’d like to make a deposit.” The money went into a trust account, and then, two days later, Bentley had a cashier’s check made, and delivered it to the sellers at the closing, minus Bentley’s thousand dollar fee. “I didn’t know where the money came from,” Bentley mused, “and I didn’t want to know.” She informed me this was not breaking the law — Bentley has a strict code of ethics — but neither did it seem, at least to my legally blond ears, like she was, how can I put this, reinforcing it either.
At this point in the story, dear reader, I came to an important realization. As much as I love a good deal — enough to start a whole newsletter about it — and would love to make a thousand dollars in an afternoon instead of actually working, it turns out my inner compass, which is actually just Generalized Anxiety Disorder, cannot abide illegal actions OR even legally dubious actions. Which is too bad, because it means no suitcases full of money are in my future. The only silver lining to this solemn news is that there’s a whole group of people just like me, according to a prescient title in a Little Free Library:
In conclusion, Bentley is a national treasure, but maybe not someone who you should trust with your estate planning. That said, if you ever get into a real scrape, you should definitely call her, because no matter what you did she won’t blink. She gives me a VERY GOOD DEAL on her consulting services, by the way, by which I mean I pay ZERO DOLLARS to ask her ridiculous questions, although I like to think I offered some emotional labor this time around when we were brainstorming what she could do with her slightly creepy basement. (Fitness studio? After-School Club? You got ideas, call me.)
*** AND NOW, ONWARD, TO THE DEALS! ***
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