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THE 5:17 EMAIL · The Timekeepers Dilemma

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The timekeepers dilemma, true crime tales, workplace crime, passion and running out of time.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus Bell was 34 years old and worked as a senior financial analyst for a rapidly-growing technology company called Meridian Systems.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't the loudest person in the office.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't the most popular, but Marcus had one quality that made him extremely valuable.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: He noticed things, numbers that didn't make sense, invoices that appeared twice.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Payments made to companies that barely seem to exist.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And lately, one particular vendor had been receiving unusually large payments from Meridian.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The vendor was called Norstaur Consulting.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus initially thought it was a bookkeeping mistake.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: North Star's mailing address was a small office suite.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's listed employees were difficult to verify.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And several of its invoices had been a proof by the same senior manager.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus charged digging.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more he looked, the stranger things became.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Money was leaving Meridian every Friday afternoon, always before the weekend.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: always in amounts just below the levels that required additional executive approval.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus created a spreadsheet than another than a third.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: He began staying late, his coworker's noticed.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: One evening, his friend Elena asked him why he was still working.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus looked at the clock, 943 p.m., he smiled.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm close to what Marcus closed the spreadsheet.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something I probably shouldn't have found.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Elena laughed nervously, then stopped looking.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus didn't laugh, I can't.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was Marcus's problem.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: When he became passionate about something, he couldn't let it go.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over the next several days, Marcus became increasingly convinced that the payments were intentional.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: He discovered that North Star had received more than $600,000 from Meridian in less than
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: but the company's services were almost impossible to identify.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: There were no obvious projects.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: No major consulting reports, no presentations.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing that explained where the money had gone.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then Mark has discovered something that changed everything.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Several North Star invoices had been created from the same computer used by a Meridian executive.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: He printed the records.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: He saved everything to an encrypted drive.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then somebody began watching him.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: One morning, Marcus arrived at work and found his desk drawer open.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing was missing.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: At least nothing obvious.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: His notebook was still there.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: His pens were still there.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: His computer was still there.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But one page had been torn from his notebook.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It contained the names of three North Star employees.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus stared at the empty space.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He knew immediately, someone had been looking through his things.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: He reported it to security, security found nothing.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus told Elana, she urged him to go to the police, but Marcus wasn't ready.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I need proof.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You already have proof?
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then came the email at 452 p.m. Marcus discovered a transfer that had occurred earlier that morning.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Another $48,000 had gone to North Star.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this time, Marcus found the name of the person who authorized it.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was someone much closer to him than he expected.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: His department director.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus opened a new email.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: He typed, I know what you did.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: He said it at exactly five, 17 p.m. Then he stood up.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: He grabbed his coat and walked toward the elevator.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: He never made it downstairs.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The missing 23 minutes security footage showed Marcus entering the third floor hallway at five, 19.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then the camera went dark.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Investigators later determined that outage lasted 23 minutes, during that period someone entered Marcus's office.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: His computer was shut down.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: His encrypted drive disappeared, and Marcus was attacked.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first officer who arrived found him shortly after 6pm, there were no obvious signs of forced entry.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The killer hadn't broken into the building.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The investigation immediately focused on the people Marcus worked with, but everyone had an alibi, or almost everyone.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then detectives found something interesting.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus's final email had been opened at 5am, one minute after he sent it.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The message was open from inside the building.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someone had read it, then acted.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nor stark insulting was essentially a shell company.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The director had been secretly diverting company money through it.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus had accidentally discovered the operation.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: His mistake wasn't finding the fraud.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: His mistake was believing he had enough time to expose it.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The director was eventually arrested after investigators connected him to the missing security footage and financial records.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Marcus's encrypted drive was never recovered.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: What investigators did find was enough to establish the motive.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marcus had been right.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The money was being stolen and his final email had told the killer one thing.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: He knew.