Chapter 17 – Rob’s Online Activity (cont.)

Posted on by Lauren James

@gottiewrites 30/08/14

While we’re all reeling from Rob’s latest ridiculous behaviour in my comments section, I think I’ve made some headway on that Lilly Fielden donation from 2010.

A Beginner’s Guide to Money-Laundering

I did some research, and it seems like this whole complicated thing, but here’s what I’ve learnt. Just in case, like me, you assumed money-laundering was when you put fake printed banknotes into a washing machine to make it look old and worn, before you spent it in the shops.

Sometimes, people do crimes. Sometimes, those crimes make them some money. Sometimes, they spend that money in the shops on nice things using cash. But sometimes, they might earn enough that they want to buy bigger nice things with that money, like mansions and yachts and supercars and jets. Things which you can only buy using a legitimate bank account, and not, say, money from a suitcase kept under your bed.

But if you walk into a bank to deposit a suitcase full of money, they will ask very understandable questions about where you got it from, which is a problem if the answer is ‘a crime’ rather than ‘a good, honest day’s work’ or ‘a gift from my sugar daddy’.

So sometimes, people try to invent ways to pay themselves their own ill-gotten money in ways that look respectable to the government.

Examples of this include:

  • Holding a raffle with a cash prize and making sure you win!
  • Opening a restaurant, and logging high cash profits on your accounts!
  • Setting up a company and then selling it on at a profit (to yourself!)
  • Opening a bank account in a less-vigilant country and depositing your money there!

And, last but not least . . . (drumroll, please) . . .

  • Donating money to yourself using fake names! As gifts!

So. I’m not saying that Rob was money-laundering, but, you know, maybe someone was? Somewhere along this chain of sus financial transactions? Especially since it’s in bitcoin.

This is the end of the line in tracking Lilly Fielden down. There’s no way to trace her transaction from here, if she does in fact exist.

‘So where did Rob’s bitcoin come from?’ I hear you all screaming in the comments. Well, it’s almost impossible to hypothesis about this – there are so many ways he could have made that money, but nearly all of them involve this underground part of the internet. It’s so hard to access the dark web that it requires a special software to even view it.

Did he steal this money? Or earn it somehow? Every idea is more awful than the next, so it’s dangerous to even speculate. To try and work out what exactly he was up to, I downloaded the software that lets you log onto the deep web. (PLEASE DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME, YOU DON’T KNOW ENOUGH AND WILL GET YOUR IDENTITY STOLEN)

Here are some of the retail options available for the average deep web user with Bitcoin to burn:

Rent-a-hacker – DDOS, hacking, social engineering, malware, ethical hacktivism, censored information archive. RUIN PEOPLE.

Executive Outcomes – Contact killer/hitman service, easy to hire using Bitcoin, 100% anonymous, no limits. For crowdfunded political assassinations see the Ethical Assassinations forum.

Shop central – Get wholesale contraband here – guns, ammo, organs, weapons, cloned CCs with high balance/PIN, ID, driver’s licenses and passports (US, UK, CAN, EU, AUS). Quick response, high customer satisfaction.

Grams – High quality original blends, guaranteed! Most trusted vendor in the union. Fast shipping.

Library of the Onion – Download ePubs about poison, lock-picking, chemical weapons, explosives and more.

Finder – Largest encrypted deep net search engine. 1.1 million sites indexed.

Tor Book – Deep net social network, forums, blogs, Minecraft, silliness.

Honestly, Rob has shown such a creepy side recently that I’m not sure any of the things listed above are beyond him. He’s already harassed people online and engaged in suspicious activities that show signs of money-laundering. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything I found here.

The main questions I want answering right now are: where did he get this huge amount of money? If he did acquire it, why did he go to the trouble of creating all these fake accounts to send it to himself? And, finally – what was so terrible about the source of the income that means he still, all these years later, is desperate to keep the truth hidden?

I’m going to find the answers to all of these questions, I promise.

P.S. This week’s People Magazine featured a short interview with Nathan. He’s growing his hair out again! It hasn’t been as long as it is in the picture since July.

PEOPLE: Best date you’ve ever been on?

NATHAN: Picnic on the beach with cold wine and a cheese plate, followed by a moonlight swim.

PEOPLE: What’s your type?

NATHAN: Witty, slightly mean, knows how to put me in my place.

PEOPLE: Guilty pleasure?

NATHAN: Terrace House on Netflix.

PEOPLE: Celebrity crush?

NATHAN: Cate Blanchett, like the rest of the world.

Nathan O’Donnell is currently appearing as FANG in Loch & Ness Season 2, which starts airing on 15th October at 8/9c on NBC

The new season really starts soon, doesn’t it? I’d completely forgotten, in all this excitement. I don’t know how I’m going to even have time to watch it, at this rate.

– gottie

Comments (6456)

Anonymous I was thinking about rob’s anonyrat stuff and I was wondering if you’d considered that he was trying to make you think he broke up with Nathan and was leaving loch & ness? Getting a new role, etc. If he cant come out as gay because of his contract, he might be desperate to make us think that they’ve broken up so he can keep his job. That must at least better than nothing

tinyshaz if they broke up it’s because NBC kept trying to closet them against their will and it tore them apart. They should sue them or something, I don’t understand how it’s legal.

Anonymous i live near rob and nathan’s house and I haven’t seen them for a few days. I think they’re both staying with rob’s parents, trying to heal their relationship. That’s why nathan hasn’t been turning up for work.

Blackbetty I heard that Nathan has been deported back to the UK with visa troubles.

lilithfatale that’s absolute nonsense. As someone else proved in earlier comments, NBC have called for a filming break. They should be back by Monday for the next filming block

lucyisatYALC He’s on twitter and stuff too, I doubt he’d be tweeting if he was in the middle of being deported. See:

@Nathan_ODonnell Only two weeks until the new season starts! Who’s excited? #LochandNess

FantasticBooksAWTFT that’s clearly a PR tweet and cannot be used as evidence of anything except NBC’s publicity budget, soz

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8 thoughts on “Chapter 17 – Rob’s Online Activity (cont.)”

  1. “what was so terrible about the source of the income that means he is still, all these years later, desperate to keep the truth about it hidden?” – And posting about it on the internet on a widely followed blog is definitely the way to go.
    I love the fake tv series and the Marvel film names. XD

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  2. It’s been years since I read serialized online fiction and this has been an amazing read to get me back into it. I rapidfire read through all the posted chapters so far and it was awesome to get that rush of anticipation to see that I’ll be waiting for more! I’m kind of a weenie, but I still think it’s a testament to the subtle but intense building of suspense that I had to read with the lights on. Catch me not sleeping tonight cause I’m busy theorizing about the victim…

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  3. Pingback: Upcoming events in Edinburgh & Birmingham, Chapter 18 of my free online novel | Lauren James – Young Adult Author

  5. Just going to take this moment to mention a few Britishisms that I have noticed so far: The date format on the donation is month-first. Americans do month/day/year. Rob uses the term “takeaway” (Americans say “takeout”).

    Much worse is that in the US, law is not an undergraduate degree. One only goes to law school after a four-year undergrad degree. (This makes no sense, but that’s the way it is). Law firms don’t take undergrad interns.

    Oh, and Google did have reverse image search in 2014. I worked on a puzzle in 2011 that we had to severely alter to prevent reverse image search from making it too easy.

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    1. day/month/year format gets used here in the court docs too

      also noticed gottie uses “-nt” endings in place of “-ned” for some words like “learnt” instead of “learned”

      none of the britishisms are a huge deal imo but it did make me think for a little while that maybe margot was faking being american for whatever reason (until i realized no on in the in-story comments were calling her out on it)

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Published by Lauren James

Lauren James is the Carnegie-longlisted British author of many Young Adult novels, including Green Rising, The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe. She is a RLF Royal Fellow, freelance editor and screenwriter. Lauren is the founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League, and on the board of the Authors & Illustrators Sustainability Working Group through the Society of Authors. Her books have sold over a hundred thousand copies worldwide and been translated into six languages. The Quiet at the End of the World was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize and STEAM Children’s Book Award. Her other novels include The Next Together series, the dyslexia-friendly novella series The Watchmaker and the Duke and serialised online novel An Unauthorised Fan Treatise. She was born in 1992, and has a Masters degree from the University of Nottingham, where she studied Chemistry and Physics. Lauren is a passionate advocate of STEM further education, and many of her books feature female scientists in prominent roles. She sold the rights to her first novel when she was 21, whilst she was still at university. Her writing has been described as ‘gripping romantic sci-fi’ by the Wall Street Journal and ‘a strange, witty, compulsively unpredictable read which blows most of its new YA-suspense brethren out of the water’ by Entertainment Weekly. Lauren lives in the West Midlands and is an Arts Council grant recipient. She has written articles for numerous publications, including the Guardian, Buzzfeed, Den of Geek, The Toast, and the Children’s Writers and Artist’s Yearbook 2022. She has taught creative writing for Coventry University, WriteMentor, and Writing West Midlands.