Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath

by Bill Browder

Yet there was another way to use this data, one that Bill Alpert had come up with. Instead of connecting the dots linearly, following the money from Russia, through all the transit countries, to wherever it ended up, which could take years, he developed a clever data-mining strategy. The Moldovan file contained references to dozens and dozens of shell companies with meaningless names like Dexterson LLP, Green Pot Industrial Corporation, Prevezon Holdings, and Malton International. Bill decided to run these names through every New York property database he could get his hands on, operating on the idea that one or more of the thieves might have bought Manhattan real estate using some of the $230 million. For many nights, after he was done writing his stock market reports, Bill would stay up late, dutifully slogging through databases and decoding arcane legal jargon in the hope that something would pop up. Now, it seemed, something had. “One of these companies hit,” he told me on the phone that morning. “Prevezon. Whoever it belongs to has been grabbing New York property like candy.”