The caper took a month to plan, and just 64 minutes to execute. On Friday, May 13 -- a date chosen in a spirit of mischief -- an $18,000-a-year clerk at First National Bank of Chicago set in motion a simple scheme that nearly bilked his employer out of $68.7 million. Aided by a gang of accomplices and his knowledge of a few secret codes, Gabriel Taylor, 27, electronically transferred the money from accounts belonging to Merrill Lynch, United Airlines and Brown-Forman distillers to accounts that some of the conspirators had set up under assumed names at two banks in Vienna. Before the gang could collect its loot, First Chicago discovered the fraud and alerted the FBI, which last week located the money and arrested Taylor and six alleged coconspirators on charges connected with illegal wire transfers. But the embezzlers came tantalizingly close to succeeding and showed how vulnerable banks and their vast computerized cash-movement networks can be to a dishonest insider.
In this scheme, though, the apparent mastermind was an outsider: Armand Moore, 33, a burly ex-con from Detroit who called himself "the Chairman." Moore was paroled from Minnesota's Sandstone federal prison in 1986 after serving four years of an eleven-year term for fraud. In 1982 he created a Chicago "bank," actually a telephone answering service, and issued himself letters of personal credit. So convincing were these documents that ten air- charter companies leased planes to Moore, who used them to take off on cross- country shopping sprees. By the time he was caught, he owed $180,000 to the charter firms.
After his release, Moore apparently began eyeing a much bigger target: First Chicago. His contact was a cousin, Herschel Bailey, 30, who knew Otis Wilson, 30, a clerk at the bank. Wilson introduced Taylor to Moore and by last month the group included Neal Jackson, 31, Leonard Strickland, 49, and Ronald Carson, 40. They plotted their scam at meetings in a Quality Inn on Chicago's west side.
Taylor had worked for First Chicago for eight years, and was employed in its wire-transfer section, which dispatches multimillion-dollar sums around the world via computers and phone lines. The bank's biggest customers routinely call this department to transfer funds, often paying money directly into suppliers' accounts. As at most banks, transfers require that a First Chicago employee call back another executive at the customer's offices to reconfirm the order, using various code numbers. All such calls are automatically taped. Taylor had access to the codes and knew the names of the appropriate executives at various corporations. The gang's original plan called for stealing $232 million from the accounts of quite a few companies, including Hilton, but the group eventually settled on taking the $68.7 million from United, Brown-Forman and Merrill Lynch. The Chairman was able to recruit Taylor, who had no previous police record or employment problems, by offering him a cut of $28 million.