Deadly Ruse by E. Michael Helms

Author:E. Michael Helms
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616140779
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

After giving Frank the update, I called Dakota’s number but got no answer then or the next morning. It looked like my little visit would have to wait until mystery girl was ready to make herself available again.

Over the next two days I spent several hours searching the Internet for any info I could dig up on Alice Spence. In particular, I wanted a good up-to-date color photo. I found her listed on LinkedIn and Facebook, but the photos were not much use for what I needed. I could’ve tried “friending” Alice on Facebook to obtain access to her photo page, but I figured that might appear just a wee bit suspicious.

In order to gain access to Alice’s LinkedIn page, I created my own account with LinkedIn, listing myself minimally as a retired Marine and an investigative consultant. When I clicked onto Alice’s profile I struck pay dirt. She not only held an MBA from Georgia Tech but was also a certified massage therapist and certified personal fitness trainer. Both of these degrees she’d earned from Gwinnett College’s Atlanta-area campus. That would help explain Alice’s great figure and the exercise outfit she was wearing the day of my visit.

There was a link to a web page next to her massage and fitness trainer listings. I clicked on it and learned that Alice offered scheduled in-house massage and fitness training sessions only; call such-and-such number for an appointment. Living in Atlanta’s Buckhead area, I figured she must cater to a real upper-crust clientele. Just for the hell of it I jotted down the number in my notebook. You never know.

There was something even more interesting on Alice’s LinkedIn site. She was listed as president and manager of Spence-Ramey Investments, a private investment partnership. I had no idea what a “PIP” was, but it jumped right to the top of my “to find out” list. I immediately searched on Google for “private investment partnerships” and came up with some interesting info. A lot of what I found was legalese Greek to me, but this much seemed clear enough: At the most basic level, a private investment partnership is simply a hedge fund—investors put their money in a fund to be managed, for a fee, by a full-time professional. In the case of Spence-Ramey Investments, that was Alice.

Unlike mutual funds, in exchange for less regulation and oversight from the Securities and Exchange Commission, PIPs aren’t allowed to advertise or market themselves to the general public. Instead, they solicit what’s known as “accredited investors,” which in most cases means having up to ninety-nine investors with a net worth of at least a million bucks each.

I also learned that it’s common and generally expected that the manager of a PIP have a substantial amount of his or her own net worth in the fund alongside their investors’ money. That’s a powerful safeguard against any shenanigans and also a nice incentive for the manager to make sound decisions. The one or two percent management fee and

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