Chapter 7 - The Financial Carpet-Bombing
By 6:00 p.m., the full weight of the "Code Black" authorization struck the Sinclair financial empire like a kinetic orbital strike.
In the corporate headquarters of Sinclair Global Logistics in downtown Atlanta, alarms were blaring. The company's chief financial officer was frantically trying to access their primary liquidity accounts, only to be met with a red, unyielding screen:
ACCOUNT FROZEN BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES TREASURY DEPARTMENT & IRS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DIVISION.
"What is happening?!" the CFO screamed into his phone to their bank in Zurich.
"I'm sorry, sir," the Swiss banker replied, his voice tense. "A federal court order under the Patriot Act has flagged all Sinclair family trusts as suspected conduits for money laundering and domestic racketeering. All credit lines, wire transfers, and asset sales have been permanently frozen. The Federal Reserve has just recalled your three-hundred-million-dollar commercial bond issuance."
Within forty-five minutes, the stock price of Sinclair Global plummeted eighty-two percent in after-hours trading.
Three major institutional investment funds announced they were terminating their partnerships with the Sinclair family, citing "catastrophic reputational and governance risks."
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Simultaneously, twelve federal agents from the Securities and Exchange Commission, flanked by armed IRS investigators, kicked open the glass doors of the corporate headquarters, serving twenty-four search warrants and seizing every hard drive, server rack, and executive ledger in the building.
The empire that Richard had boasted would protect him was being dismantled, brick by brick, before the sun had even set on Easter Sunday.
