204 Calculated Risk

Nobody’s perfect is not just an expression …


Summary: A whistle-blower in a federal fraud case is murdered and the only witness may be the dead woman’s son.


Original air date
: October 14, 2005 (US)

Written by: J David Harden

 

Directed by:  Bill Eagles

Opening numbers:
12 Billion: Lost
6374: Pink slips
9: Indictments
1: Witness

Family Concepts: (character development)

  • Larry lost $175,000 investing in Syntel.
  • Larry is also invested in Google
  • Don has never really shown any emotion regarding his mother’s death
  • First use of Larry-vision

Episode Quotes:

  • Colby: No one expects Martha Stewart to go down in a hail of bullets.
  • Colby: We should see if we can get the whiz kid in here to give us a hand.
  • Charlie: I have a way with children … I’ve been told I do.
  • Don: I’m assuming you all have permits for those bulges in your jackets.
  • Megan: You’re a bigger something!
  • Alan: My hope for grandchildren has been rekindled.

Episode Synopsis:

Lucinda Shay is murdered in the vestibule of her home.  Her eleven year old son Daniel is upstairs at the time and finds her body.  By the time the FBI arrives Daniel has basically shut down and can’t talk about what happened to his mother.  Don’s team knows she is a whistle-blower in a federal case against a now defunct company called Syntel; the company’s CEO, Thomas Galway along with several other Syntel executives are being tried for the fraud that left some 6,000 people without a job or savings.

David, Colby and Megan start weeding through the employees of the company looking for someone who could kill, and find several people who wrote threatening letters to the execs.  Charlie also offers to help look for a suspect by recreating the original fraud to see where the money went.

Don talks some more with Daniel and after no other options suit, he takes the boy home to Alan.  Daniel remembers seeing a car drive away from his home, and Don has him look through a bock on cars to see if he recognizes the vehicle.

Both Charlie’s early analysis and Megan’s profiling come up with a name, Morton Standbury who might have something to do with Shay’s death.  The FBI arrest him at a motel, but he refuses to talk to anyone except Don.  When he does talk to Don the only thing he says is he didn’t kill Shay and that the FBI would never find the people responsible for the fraud, they are looking in the wrong place.

Charlie discovers an anomaly in his data, there seems to be several perfect investors in energy futures within the company.  Digging further he uncovers an even bigger fraud, to the tune of $312 million dollars hidden within the other fraud case the federal government is prosecuting Syntel for.

Before Don can due much with the information Alan calls him to say Daniel is missing.  Don finds him back at his house looking out a window. Daniel remembers the car, a black Mercedes.  David and Colby come to the house with information on the perfect investors, people that don’t exist but were supposedly hired by Malcolm Galway, Thomas Galway’s son.  He was mad at hi father for not giving him a higher position in the company so he stole the $312 million as a way to prove his worth.  He killed Lucinda Shay because she found out about the even larger fraud.