True Story #19: Illegal business and 4 a.m.

In early 2001 while spending a year abroad in France as a elementary school English teacher, Steven met an American man in the south of France trying to open a business.  An unprompted introduction at a café because the server accidentally mixed up their orders turned into an on-the-spot job interview resulted in Steven being offered a position on the ground floor of the business venture. To top it off, the company would provide Steven with working papers!  The endeavour seemed too good to be true.  Steven eagerly signed the contract and three months later threw himself into a 15 hours a day, 6 days a week work schedule to get the business off the ground and up and running, and within a few weeks the company was already turning an extraordinary profit!

Steven’s transition from public school English teacher to businessman responsible for market research analysis and public relations was challenging but he attacked the job with fervour.

"A month and a half later, I hadn’t yet received the official documents from home office, based in Malaysia, which I needed to officially register the company with the French authorities and to obtain my work visa.  Everytime I emailed the company about the important documents they gave me some dubious email promising that “this procedure is normal and that the situation is being dealt with…”

Now two months into the venture with an expired visa, a dispondent headquarters, and an increasingly sketchy business model, Steven started getting suspicious.

One night after work, now approaching three months after his first day of work, and still no closer to a working visa than the first day he had is fateful job interview, Steven started doing some online investigating.

Several hours later, at 4:00 in the morning, drunk and fatigued from lack of sleep,  as Steven sat in the office with a candy bar, his twelfth bottle of beer, and the glow of the computer screen illuminating the dark room, Steven had his answer:

"The ‘headquarters’ was actually a shell company that lead to a P.O. box located somewhere in the mid-west United States, all accessible business credentials and certifications either eventually faded off into a deleted/expired webpage or simply did not exist, and the 1000’s of internet advertisements and blog posts under a handful of other names all lead back to the same P.O. Box, website, and email address."

Steven had successfully helped open a profitable and illegal business!

“I couldn’t believe what I was reading!  The operation crossed so many international borders, and protected itself by so many layers of ‘credible sources’ and ‘guinea pigs (such as yours truly),’ that, although illegal in nature, it was virtually untouchable juristically.  Furthermore, if this illegal business were raided by the police, “The Man” had meticulously set it up so he could deny any association, leaving me to take the fall.  It was diabolical, really.  “The Man” had left no stone unturned. I had no other option but to delete all traces of my existence and involvement with the operation and abandon! Immediately!”

In the next three hours Steven deleted the company hard-drive, burned all incriminating papers with his name on it, and even wiped the office and company vehicule down to erase his fingerprints, and at 7:00 in the morning was standing at the train station with blood shot eyes, a hangover, and a cup of coffee looking up at the arrivals and departures board.

“At this point my only goal was to get as far away from this city as possible, and even leave the country. I just had to get the hell away from this!”

The train sitting at platform 1 was giving its final boarding call for Spain, and I boarded.

"At this point returning to the United States was out of the question, and Europe was big enough that I could find a job somewhere else, but how was I going to become legal again, and will this come back to haunt me?"

True Story.