Free An Endless Stream of Lies by Don Rabon Page A

deteriorated to the point it has become necessary to have meetings in order to retain clients and, more especially, their monies. Alex has previously been submitting false financial statements, keeping both the clients and his partner in the dark. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Decisions have to be made. Actions have to be taken. For Alex, navigation is becoming increasingly difficult.
    SOMETHING MUST BE DONE
    In June of 2006, Alex made the decision to speak with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was shortly after that meeting with the federal representatives that Alex made his initial request to meet with me for lunch. He had charted his course most carefully, as he said in his testimony at Noel’s trial:
    Q. Directing your attention to June of 2006, specifically June 30th, did something significant happen that day?
    A. Yes, it did.
    Q. And what’s that?
    A. I had my first meeting with the FBI.
    Q. What do you mean by that?
    A. I had — in about May of 2006, it was getting to the point where the funds had dwindled, there were so many lies that were going on with CEP and Pinnacle and Titan and everything else, and I could not keep up the show game, so I realized that something had to be done. And then my wife also told me at that time if we don’t do —
    Q. Don’t tell us what your wife said. Just talk about what you did.
    A. That we would need to do something because the ultimate result would be that everything would fall upon me. So I searched out attorneys and, ultimately, in June of 2006 had my first meeting with the FBI on June 30th.
    Q. I don’t want you to talk about anything you talked about with your attorneys. How was it that you ended up at the FBI offices?
    A. There was one that — one particular attorney that knew somebody that had contact, and that’s how I ended up getting in there.
    Q. So you didn’t just, like, wander in one day.
    A. No, I did not just wander in.
    Q. Did you have an appointment?
    A. Yes, I did.
    Q. Who did you meet with?
    A. I met with Drew Grafton.
    Q. What was the date of that meeting?
    A. The date of that meeting was June 30, 2006.
    Q. What did you do during that meeting?
    A. During that meeting I started to outline some of what had happened with him and give him the story about CEP.
    Q. And when you say “him,” who are you referring to?
    A. To Drew Grafton.
    Why had Alex reached a point wherein he decided the verbs “searched,” “knew,” and “had contact” were necessary? Had he had a change of heart? Was there, for him, a crisis of conscience, a realization that his past acts—falsifying reports, deceiving and taking what did not belong to him—were wrong? In the dead of the night, did some still, small voice whisper convincingly to him? Did he ever indicate he was motivated by a feeling of remorse to finally do the right thing? Certainly, that mindset does not appear to be the case.
    Remember, Alex testified:
    A. That we would need to do something because the ultimate result would be that everything would fall upon me.
    A close examination of Alex’s choice of words proves most revealing. Each of Alex’s words is a subjective choice. Subjective word choice is a form of behavior, and that behavior is a function of the premeditated goal of the speaker (or writer in the case of a written narrative or account). By our examination of Alex’s word choice, we gain insight into Alex’s cognitions and consequently, his ultimate goal:
    A. I had — in about May of 2006, it was getting to the point where the funds had dwindled, there were so many lies that were going on with CEP and Pinnacle and Titan and everything else, and I could not keep up the show game, so I realized that something had to be done.
    First, what was it about the “dwindled” funds specifically at this point? As far back as June of 2002, Alex’s stock trading endeavors were resulting in a loss (dwindling) of funds. By his own admission, Alex testified that he