Chapter 6
Robert Fisk's testimony, provided to the assistant United States attorney three weeks after the warrant, was the piece that completed the evidentiary structure. He had been approached by Kyle through a mutual contact in the title company network and had agreed, for a fee, to process the notarization without the rigorous verification the circumstances required. He had not met my mother in person. The signature had been provided to him separately from the signing event. When his own attorney reviewed the exposure he faced and compared it to the exposure Kyle and Vanessa faced, Robert Fisk's cooperation became immediate and complete.
Kyle was indicted on seven counts, including elder financial exploitation, forgery of a legal instrument, wire fraud, and conspiracy. Vanessa was indicted on five. Both were represented by private attorneys who, by the time they reviewed the preservation records and the banking documentation and Robert Fisk's statement, had the specific expression of counsel who understand that their role in a proceeding has been defined before they arrived.
The plea process took four months. I was not in the room for those conversations. I was not in the room for most of what followed, because I was a witness and a complainant's family member and the case was being managed correctly, which meant the appropriate distance was maintained between my role and the roles of the people whose job it was to prosecute.
What I know is what my mother knows, which is what is in the public record.
The house was returned to her through the legal mechanism of unwinding a fraudulent transfer, which the court approved based on the evidentiary record. The proceeds from the sale, less what had already been spent, were subject to a restitution order. The gap between the proceeds and the restitution was a number that I do not discuss in specific terms because the amount is less important than the principle, which is that the house is my mother's again and the garden has been restored, and she sits on the porch on Saturday mornings and supervises the neighborhood boy who maintains it.
Kyle received thirty-eight months. Vanessa received twenty-two, with a supervised release condition that included financial restitution monitoring for five years following her release date. Robert Fisk received an eighteen-month sentence suspended to probation and a permanent revocation of his notary commission.
I attended the sentencing hearing. Not as an agent. As a daughter. I sat in the gallery with my mother on my left and said nothing, because there was nothing I needed to say. The court said what needed to be said.
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My supervisor, who has been in financial crimes for twenty-three years and has the specific view of human behavior that comes from two decades of watching people believe they were the first to think of things that other people have been doing since there were things to take, shook my hand after the sentencing and said: that was a clean case, Bennett.
I said thank you.
