The ultimate grift

[seriph]

I took one last sip of my express and signalled to a waiter I wanted a bill. He came back, I looked at the bill and whistled, absent mindedly patting my breast pocket, eyes widening in surprise.

“So sorry signor I have misplaced my wallet. I must of left it in the apartments, I will fetch it if you can take my flute as howtusay… collateral.” I said confidently, a thick Spanish accent that I had taken years perfecting. I had a grey hat pulled down shading my eyes and I wore patched clothing, traditional looking Musician down on his luck. I had carefully made sure that I had a silver tobacco case sticking out of my top breast pocket, everything about my look was carefully planned, I didn’t want to look like a tramp, just slightly down on my luck.

“I am sure you will be fine said the waiter.” Even he had been picked carefully, he was French orrigionly but had been drawn to London because of slightly higher wages, if only he could of seen the weather. For the last five months we had had perpetual rain laying siege to the city, he had been working in the bar for the last decade, and was notoriously gullible. The perfect mark.

I stepped out the shop and walked around the block a few times, knowing full well that inside the shop Benny, my assistant on this con would be explaining to the waiter just how valuable this flute was, and how he would pay £6000 for it, if the waiter bought it off me. Usually I wouldn’t be bought so low, but as crime had evolved so had the government. High tech heists were taking place, and while they were untraceable who the money was going to, the bank accounts the money were resting in could be frozen, this had happened to us twice in a week. We needed money to get back into the swing of things, and after playing a few hands of poker I had £1500, easily enough to buy a flute and a nice meal, and the required suits. We were back in business.

As I re-entered the shp, wallet in pocket I saw Benny sitting down, a subtle smile on his face saying “We did it, we are in the clear.” His clothes too had been picked with care. He wore a suit and allot of expensive jewellery, it showed that he was rich as hell, but most of this shit was just tacky. It was of coarse fake, but it was well faked and pretty cheep.

“Monsieur, I collect instruments, and I recently noticed the flute of yours was of fair value. I would be willing to give you £3000 for such a nice flute, it would be a wonderful asset to my collection.” The waiter said, not bothering with any pleasantries such as hi and how are you, and even did you find your wallet, they say an honest man cant be conned, and this man was money hungry and bent as hell, easy money.

“Three thousand.” I whistled, “I am poor, and that flute is my source of income, I need it.”

“But sir, with the money you could but a new flute… a better flute.”

He had paid me strait from the till, and I left, leaving Benny to explain that he would be back with his six grand.

Ten minutes later he was out, he came from a back alley where him and the waiter had been smoking to celebrate there achievement, he stank but I couldn’t care. We had the money and we were on our way to meet up with Suzy near by, she had been buying £2000 worth of coke from various different bank accounts, from one of the younger coke dealers, our plan was simple, muscle in and steel the money and resell the coke. More easy money.


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This is a slightly post modden day rp, you are a member of a small well connected group of grifters, who make money anyway possible, there is more technology, there will be allot of npcs to play with for the various different hiests i have planned, and it should be a bit of fun, enjoy.

[iason]

My name is Matthews. No last name. Just Matthews. Too much detail is bad for business, you know? Keep it simple, eh?

As you may or may not know, my life is money. My income is gun running in foreign countries. But not just any countries. Fucked up shit like Africa. Where you walk down the street and get shot up by a kid.

So, there you go. This is the shit you need to not get confused. This is me.

[seriph]

We arrived in the agreed area, me and Benny. Suzy was there talking to our mark, he was just eight but already he was a nasty piece of work. He was Argentinean, and was fat, remarkably fat as he had lived on the streets all his life, he had got buy reselling drugs, and using he charm on adults, making them do as he wanted.

We had carefully made sure that Suzy would be standing so that she could see us but our mark couldn’t. Our eyes met and she flicked her hair, our signal to say back of, this isn’t going well. The boy pulled out the coke, revealing a gun hidden under his shirt. I went back around the corner cursing quietly.

“That little shit has a gun, did you see it.” I whispered at Benny. He nodded silently. “I say we do a two way pickpocket, you knock him over by mistake, easy because he is so small then I take his gun, you take the money, and maybe that nice watch of his while I help him up?”

“I am not sure, this kid has a reputation for violence, not often towards adults… but with a gun?”

“I say we do it, I am confident I can get the gun, and even if he realises then we still have the gun putting us ahead of him.”

Benny looked uncomfortable, but didn’t complain, we just waited for Suzy to come out, this didn’t take long.

“That basterd is so damn rude, he was seriously asking to get all his money taken, pity about the gun, I figured it would be safer to just take the coke and go.” She said, she was perfectly calm as always, but hey hair looked a bit out of place, she seemed like she was trying to conceal the fact that she was shook up.

“Yeah me and Benny are going to do a two person pickpocket, I am going for the gun, and Benny for the money and his gold watch.” I said quickly not giving either time to complain, I knew Benny wanted out and Suzy wanted in but the boy might recognise her, and that could all to easily jeopardise our plans.

We entered the alley, the boy was not here, “I guess he went round the back.” I muttered, not really towards Benny, and jogged off towards a corner, the boy was just round it lighting up a fag. He disgusted me, so young and already in the dirty side of crime, unplanned thievery, drugs dealing, he was a very disturbed individual.

Benny wasn’t far behind as I charged into him, trying to knock him off his feet while looking like it was a mistake, it was made easier by the fact he was only just round the corner, I slammed him to the ground, and a package flew out of his pocket, I didn’t waste time checking out what was in it, instantly I was up apologising quickly slipping my hand into his pocket and withdrawing the gun. I could see Benny doing likewise.

The kid yelled a bit, then realised we were bigger then him and sort of wondered off, I ran back to Suzy.

[Archangel]

Suzy suddenly felt a jangle against her waist, and heard a soft beeping. Cell. She grabbed the tiny device, flipped it open, and brought it up to her ear.

"Got anything for us, handsome?"

A voice spoke from the other end.

"Cut the bullshit, you flirty bitch. Get to Memorial Square in exactly thirteen minutes. I've arranged for a little surprise for you three. Put your cell phones on, and I'll give you more info as you go. And remember my number this time, damn it. I'm wasting fucking minutes here."

The voice cut off abruptly, and Suzy returned her cell to her belt and told the others what he had said.

*******************************************************

His name was Jack Crance. Resident techie and all-around computer nerd. At age 13 he was caught hacking into foreign diplomatic documents on isolated APC computers and rewriting them to include strange clauses. For example, on the trans-Iraqi temporary peace agreement final form, clause 47A Line 32 said "And we pledge, as a country, to completely divulge all our highly restricted goverment information to Cats, because all our base are belong to him." The British government had not been happy when they traced the hacking to a 13 year old boy, but they could not prosecute him as an adult, and technically he did nothing that affected anyone in real life. Given three years of community service, and sent off to a boarding school in Kent, was the most punishment he received. Good thing they hadn't traced his illicit funds transfers from various government agencies around the world.

At age 18, Jack was still a nerd, and was supposedly clean. That was far from the truth. He now worked with Benny, Suzy, and the others, setting up heists and researching every detail they'd need to pull off another one. He worked from his little apartment in a suburb of London, but with the amazing quality of cell phones and the Internet nowadays, there was nowhere that Jack Crance had not gone. And now, he had a surprise waiting for the other three. He sat in his chair, his three monitors arrayed around his desk, and waited for them to get to Memorial Square. This should be fun....

[seriph]

Ooc: damn talking in first person is hard…. Now on my third post I need to think of a name for myself.

I walked with Suzy to Memorial square, I was wondering what jack wanted. All hacking was tagged by the government in recent years so you either had to scam a fool or pull money from nowhere, you cant strait steal money from someone or you get arrested fast. In recent years the hacking scene had been on the up, for a while the government had been having so much trouble tracking hackers that they would merely seize all the money in the bank account. They soon found that not to work well when innocents where getting all there money taken. Now the tracking was on the up, so Jack was limited in what he could do.

What Jack could do was almost frightening. He made a program to take three pence from each bank account in the world, then realised everyone else that had tried it before had been caught, he then sold it for a few hundred thousand pounds and blew it all on army computers and advanced gadgets. I used to play with computers a bit, but the string of advanced nerd talk that flew out of his mouth at times could confuse bill gates.

“What do you think this is about?” I asked Suzy, we hadn’t talked most of the way there.

“I don’t know, that kid probably found a new hard drive that’s slightly larger but like one million pounds and he wants us to take it, I guess, you know what he is like Kane.” I nodded. Just another fun trip to Jackland.

[Archangel]

Kane's cell rang. He picked it up even as they walked towards the Square.

"Hey, buddy boy. How's it hanging? Don't answer that...only Suzy wants to know." Kane could almost hear Jack smiling. He continued, his voice low.

Back at his house, Jack was munching furiously on a sack of potato chips. Being a junk-food junkie, he pretty much ate whenever he felt like it, and damn the consequences. He had his own fridge, but it was stocked with beer and bags of beef jerky, and that was the way he liked it.

"Listen, Kane. When you get to the Square, head towards the Library. There will be a man standing there. Big overcoat, red hair, wearing a cricket cap. Walk up to him, very casually, and say "Looks like rain today." He should respond "It certainly does." Even if the sky doesn't have a fucking cloud. Got it? He'll be giving you a little something special. You and Suzy enjoy, ok?"

He flipped off the phone, and sat staring at his screen. On it was the GPS positions of both Kane's and Suzy's phones, telling Jack exactly where they were. On another screen, he watched a live satellite feed from the area of Memorial Square. It was fairly crowded, which was good. Crowds gave anonymity.

Kane was SURE to like the Mac-10s the man had in a bag across his back! Those things were worth a good £1200 each, and the man had three of them. Pay off for a hack job he did in the States. An extra £3600 wouldn't be bad at all, right about now.