Enormously Profitable “Center of Excellence” Just Laundering Money
To be fair, excellence was demonstrated in tax evasion, cybercrime, and cooking the books.
Heavily armed federal agents led by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network descended on the Muncie, IN, headquarters of Farnsworth Tool & Die today to shut down the small business’s astonishingly fraudulent Technology Center of Excellence (CoE).
Rather than adhering to the CoE’s purported mission statement — “Enabling reliable software and hardware solutions to enhance efficiency in the machinist, jig and fixture space” — the team instead funneled hundreds of billions in dirty money for the Cartel of Doom, Crimson Octopus, the Yenta Syndicate, Amalgamated Homicide Ltd., Local 11596 of the Preschool Teachers’ Union, and the Von Trapp “Family,” among scores of other criminal enterprises.
As Securities and Exchange Commission shock troops rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters onto the roof of his family’s modest one-story office, CEO Harlan Farnsworth IV expressed genuine surprise at this turn of events: “This is a genuine surprise.”
Looking on while FBI agents loaded laptops into waiting vans, Chief Operating Officer Vernon Farnsworth explained: “I think this all started because me and Cousin Harlan — he’s my cousin once removed on my mama’s side — each got a text about an online course called ‘Making More Moneys For Farms Worthy Company With Yippee Amazing Technologicals.’ Talk about your targeted marketing!”
Added Chief Financial Officer Melba Farnsworth (who informed everyone nearby that she’d just turned 92 years young), “The boys — they’re such good boys — asked me to take money out of petty cash — I think it was $875,000 — and send it using something called LuciferCoin to a consulting firm in … well, the boys didn’t actually know where they were from. Maybe down in Hancock County?”
The “consultants’” online course promised to transform the Tool & Die’s two-person Technology department — Crandall P. Farnsworth (“Harlan’s second cousin on his pop’s side, but not Crandall M. Farnsworth, who passed ‘bout 11 years back”) and Purdue University-Fort Wayne intern Chloe Farnsworth — into a “bleeding-edge, AI-optimized Center of Excellence which accelerates time-to-market 3x while maximizing real-time manufacturing methodologies.” Said Crandall P.: “Sounded good to me. I mostly use my calculator and a pencil.” Chloe referred all queries to her TikTok account.
After the “consultants” installed their proprietary viruses, malware, Trojan horses, and corruptionware, the company’s switchboard lit up with calls from irate customers demanding back-ordered fishtail gauges and flanged bushings. However, according to INTERPOL, all funds devoted to tool and die production had been redirected to finance two-thirds of the world’s heroin trade.
Said one federal informant who referred to himself as “Ice Pick”: “Those were some nice people. Melba even mailed me and the crew a rhubarb pie. I felt a little bad we decimated their multi-generational small business. Eh, what can you do?”