Seeking input on international wire transfers in 1992

mreilly19 · Apr 9, 2012

Hi all,

I am looking for some input from someone who has familiarity with international wire transfers and the way they operated in California in 1992, since that is where my story is set.

One of my protagonists is framed by her coworkers at the financial aid office of a university. Basically, they stole her identity (she was a supervisor who had performed bank transfers before) and pulled off a wire transfer from the university to a Swiss Bank Account, in the amount of 1 million. The "smoking gun" part of the frameup is that they used a computer to splice together voice clips they had of her in order to engineer this over the phone. They also forged her signature, stole her password, etc. to change the figures in the computer. The goal being to keep the money and leave her holding the bag of course.

My bad guy gets the same idea and decides to take the MC hostage to force him to transfer his 2.5 mil to a Grand Cayman account. The idea here is that the bad guy has the MC call his (the MC's) bank to authorize the transfer, as meanwhile the bad guy has a gun to his head.

My question is, are these depictions of wire transfers reasonable? Were they able to be done over the phone back then? I can work in a faxing-of-signature arrangement but it's going to be tough if these wire transfers had to be done in person since the plot depends on these two being innocent victims of theft.

Thanks for any advice - I'd really appreciate it!

rsiquet · Apr 12, 2012

mreilly19 said:
Hi all,

I am looking for some input from someone who has familiarity with international wire transfers and the way they operated in California in 1992, since that is where my story is set.

One of my protagonists is framed by her coworkers at the financial aid office of a university. Basically, they stole her identity (she was a supervisor who had performed bank transfers before) and pulled off a wire transfer from the university to a Swiss Bank Account, in the amount of 1 million. The "smoking gun" part of the frameup is that they used a computer to splice together voice clips they had of her in order to engineer this over the phone. They also forged her signature, stole her password, etc. to change the figures in the computer. The goal being to keep the money and leave her holding the bag of course.

My bad guy gets the same idea and decides to take the MC hostage to force him to transfer his 2.5 mil to a Grand Cayman account. The idea here is that the bad guy has the MC call his (the MC's) bank to authorize the transfer, as meanwhile the bad guy has a gun to his head.

My question is, are these depictions of wire transfers reasonable? Were they able to be done over the phone back then? I can work in a faxing-of-signature arrangement but it's going to be tough if these wire transfers had to be done in person since the plot depends on these two being innocent victims of theft.

Thanks for any advice - I'd really appreciate it!

Hiya Mreilly,

I found a case from 1993 that might help you with some technical information, or whatever.

You need to Google this:

"23 F.3d 670"

That should take you to some court records related to a case where some guys all conspired (with an inside man) to pull off a heist via wire transfer. You might be able to glean all the technical bits out of that - not sure, didn't read the whole thing, but it seemed like it was providing a lot of specifics about the heist.

Hope this helps.

mreilly19 · Apr 12, 2012

Awesome! This is a gold mine for me not just in the procedures but in the charges and punishment involved. Thanks for the assist.

If I can assist in any way with computer/networking/email (that's my boring day job when I'm not writing) or parenting questions (just in case anyone has any exciting story ideas about choosing pre-schools...) I'll be happy to reciprocate.

recurry said:
Hiya Mreilly,

I found a case from 1993 that might help you with some technical information, or whatever.

You need to Google this:

"23 F.3d 670"

That should take you to some court records related to a case where some guys all conspired (with an inside man) to pull off a heist via wire transfer. You might be able to glean all the technical bits out of that - not sure, didn't read the whole thing, but it seemed like it was providing a lot of specifics about the heist.

Hope this helps.

rsiquet · Apr 12, 2012

mreilly19 said:
Awesome! This is a gold mine for me not just in the procedures but in the charges and punishment involved. Thanks for the assist. If I can assist in any way with computer/networking/email (that's my boring day job when I'm not writing) or parenting questions (just in case anyone has any exciting story ideas about choosing pre-schools...) I'll be happy to reciprocate.

Thanks, happy to help!

Prophetsnake · Apr 15, 2012

I can tell you this, and it may be of soome help to you. Banks often took a considerable amount of time to pass the funds from one country to another, citing "procedural delays" as the cause. In reality, they would keep the money for say, a five day period, and register the transfer at the point in time where the exchange rate was worst for you and best for them. make sense? Let's say the rate for dollars to swiss franks was $1=SWF2 on the Monday. they take the $ form the sender and sit on them until Friday. Let's say on Wednesday the rate was at it's lowest, say SWF1.96 to a dollar. They give the money to the receiver's bank on the friday and register the xfer on Wednesday, each bank making an extra 1% profit. It was common practice in those days. There was little or nothing you could do about it. If you were well heeled and had the banks by the short and curlies they didn't do it, but if you were making one time xfers they would gouge you in this way every time.
It might be useful to embellish your story and as a plot device, for exmple to explain a gap in time during transfer.

mreilly19 · Apr 16, 2012

Thanks - this will help my plot quite a bit because I'll factor in the bad guy figuring this and deciding he'll have to keep the MC hostage somewhere for a few days to ensure the transfer takes place. That in turn will fuel some speculation on the part of the MC as to whether the bad guy is really just going to kill him when the transfer's done. Thanks again!

Prophetsnake said:
I can tell you this, and it may be of soome help to you. Banks often took a considerable amount of time to pass the funds from one country to another, citing "procedural delays" as the cause. In reality, they would keep the money for say, a five day period, and register the transfer at the point in time where the exchange rate was worst for you and best for them. make sense? Let's say the rate for dollars to swiss franks was $1=SWF2 on the Monday. they take the $ form the sender and sit on them until Friday. Let's say on Wednesday the rate was at it's lowest, say SWF1.96 to a dollar. They give the money to the receiver's bank on the friday and register the xfer on Wednesday, each bank making an extra 1% profit. It was common practice in those days. There was little or nothing you could do about it. If you were well heeled and had the banks by the short and curlies they didn't do it, but if you were making one time xfers they would gouge you in this way every time.
It might be useful to embellish your story and as a plot device, for exmple to explain a gap in time during transfer.

Seeking input on international wire transfers in 1992

mreilly19

rsiquet

practical experience, FTW

mreilly19

rsiquet

practical experience, FTW

Prophetsnake

mreilly19