Two days later, I sat across a desk from Diane Ferris.
Diane has practiced trust and estate litigation in Denver for nineteen years. Her office looks exactly like a litigation office should look. Stacked with files. Short on decoration. Nobody pretending the work is anything other than what it is.
She spent forty-five minutes going through everything I’d brought her before she said one word.
I trusted that silence. It wasn’t discomfort. It was analysis.
“This is a breach of fiduciary duty, at minimum,” she finally said. “Potentially fraud. Depending on what documentation they used to authorize the transfers.”
“There’s a consent memo,” I said. “My parents told the bank I gave verbal consent. My name is on the authorization.”
Diane’s face didn’t change. But something behind her eyes did.
“Did you give verbal consent?”
“I didn’t know these transfers existed until four days ago.”
“Then the memo is forged,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
She set down her pen.
“I want to be direct with you about what a criminal fraud case requires,” she said. “The forged memo is your best evidence. But it’s a verbal consent document. Your signature isn’t on it. Your parents will say you agreed out loud and they just wrote it down. Proving they’re lying, to a criminal standard, means depositions. Discovery. Expert witnesses. Probably eighteen months at minimum.”
She looked at me over her glasses.
“During which time your sister’s wedding will happen. The money will get harder to recover. And your family will have every single day to build an alternative story.”
“What about a civil case?”
“Faster. More likely to get your money back. But it still gives them time to move assets around if they want to fight.”
“What’s the fastest version?”
She thought about that.
“The fastest version,” Diane said, “requires them to be afraid of something more immediate than a lawsuit. Something with a shorter timeline than a courtroom.”
I thanked her.
And I drove straight to Beckett’s office.
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