Chapter 342: This Is Not Magic!

"This is not magic."

Wesley, who had been silent for a long time, finally spoke.

His voice carried a near-stubborn certainty that he rarely displayed in meetings: "This is financial crime. No matter how exquisite his methods are, no matter how stunning his stage effects are, it is essentially an unauthorized transfer of funds. I believe the bank will recover this money. The money that reached those people's accounts will likely be frozen as well. I just want to know, why would he do this?"

After he finished speaking, the conference room fell silent again.

Wesley threw the marker in his hand onto the table.

The marker bounced twice on the tabletop and rolled into a pile of documents, where it stopped.

He braced his hands on the edge of the table, head slightly lowered, like a bull gathering its strength.

Liu Xuemin's gaze shifted away from Wesley and landed on the four squares on the whiteboard.

The White Horse Knight, the Red Horse Knight. French Bank, British Museum. The Arc de Triomphe on the 100-euro banknote, the looted cultural relics.

These symbols had been spinning in his mind for a long time, but a thread was still missing to string them all together.

Could this thing Chu Chen did at the Metropolitan Opera House be that thread?

"Lin." Li Changyu's voice was not loud, but the moment that name was spoken, everyone's gaze turned toward him.

This leading authority on criminal investigation of Chinese descent sat in the center position of the conference room; from the start of the meeting until now, he had spoken fewer than five times.

But every time he spoke, it was because the direction of the discussion needed to be corrected.

"What is it, Dr. Li?"

"Please organize the public information on UnitedHealth Group. News, litigation records, regulatory reports. The more detailed, the better."

The very second Li Changyu spoke, Lin's hands had already begun tapping the keyboard.

His fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard, and search pages and PDF files popped up on the screen one after another.

The conference room was quiet for about half a minute, with only the clacking of the keyboard and the subtle sound of Lin occasionally dragging the mouse.

"Found quite a lot." While organizing the data, Lin said: "This company has operations in all fifty states of the United States. Over the past five years, there have been a large number of complaints and lawsuits regarding claim denials."

He turned the laptop around, screen facing the long table.

On the screen was a spreadsheet, densely listing years, state names, case numbers, causes of action, and current status.

In the "cause of action" column of every row, one could see the same word appearing repeatedly: denial of claim.

Zhou Yun leaned in to take a look, his brow furrowing: "With so many lawsuits, can it still keep operating?"

"This is nothing; for the insurance industry, these disputes are completely normal. Because these denials are legally compliant." Lin turned the computer back and tapped the keyboard a few more times, pulling up another document—an annual report from the Insurance Industry Association, which contained statistical data and commentary on industry-wide loss ratios.

"They have a professional legal team; if they deliberately deny claims, the nature of the act changes, and that would be insurance fraud, which the regulatory authorities would not sit idly by and watch. What UnitedHealth does is—rationally utilize the rules. Insurance contract terms are designed by the insurance companies themselves; they know where the loopholes are, where the gray areas are, and where things can be interpreted to their own advantage. If a claim application submitted by a patient happens to get stuck on the fuzzy boundary of a certain clause, the insurance company has the right to make an interpretation favorable to themselves. This is not illegal; this is a business strategy."

Chen Zijin pushed up his glasses and took over the conversation.

Because he worked in the publishing industry, he often dealt with insurance companies, and he had a certain understanding of the ins and outs.

He took the computer from Lin, flipped the industry association report down a few more pages, and stopped at a line chart.

The horizontal axis of the chart was the year, the vertical axis was the loss ratio, and several lines of different colors were drawn on it, representing different insurance companies.

"UnitedHealth's business model is very clever."

Chen Zijin's voice was unhurried: "They don't rely on 'collecting more premiums' to make money. Their core logic is—using the lowest cost to serve the most customers, and then pressing the loss ratio below the industry average. And that extra portion of premiums is the profit."

He pointed to the line for UnitedHealth on the chart; this line had remained between 83% and 84% for the past few years, two to three percentage points lower than the industry average.

These two percentage points didn't sound like much, but multiplied by UnitedHealth's annual premium income of over one hundred billion, it was a very considerable net profit.

"How do they do it?" Chen Xiong asked.

Chen Zijin placed the computer on the table and leaned back:

"Very simple. AI audit system. Standardized payment process. Strict execution according to contract terms. All processes are compliant; there is not a single illegal one. But the result of the compliance is—tens of thousands of claim applications are rejected every year. It's not that the system is malfunctioning; it's that the system's design goal is exactly that. Its design goal is not 'to pay out as much as possible,' but 'to execute contract terms as accurately as possible.'"

Just then, Liu Xuemin finally spoke.

His voice was not loud, but in the quiet conference room, every word was clear.

"So, Chu Chen choosing this company is not random."

Everyone's gaze turned to him.

"What he stole at the British Museum were looted cultural relics. Those things legally belong to the British Museum—after all, more than a hundred years have passed, the statute of limitations has long expired, and international law has no mandatory repatriation clauses. But everyone knows those things shouldn't be there. What Chu Chen did is not right in terms of law, but in terms of reason—many people feel it is right."

He stood up, walked to the front of the whiteboard, and wrote a term under the Red Horse Knight: War Looting.

Then he wrote another term under the White Horse Knight: Financial Harvesting.

"French Bank, UnitedHealth. One harvests the wealth of ordinary people, the other harvests the health of ordinary people. The two targets Chu Chen chose, on the surface, one is the financial industry and one is the insurance industry, but the core is the same—using legal rules to take away from ordinary people what should not be taken from them."

"This guy really thinks of himself as Robin Hood..." Zhou Yun said irritably.

Wesley put down his pipe and gathered the scattered documents on the table into a stack:

"Lin, pack up all the data on UnitedHealth. David, contact New York immediately, have them deploy officers at once and bring the Metropolitan Opera House under control! Chen Xiong, Zhou Yun, Zhuang Yan, Teacher Liu, prepare your gear for departure. Dr. Li—" He turned to Li Changyu, his voice pausing.

Li Changyu nodded; he knew what Wesley was going to say, and he also knew that he was the most suitable person to handle this matter.

"I will contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Li Changyu said, taking a black mobile phone from his pocket and flipping through a few pages of the address book, "The head of the FBI is a junior of mine from many years ago when I was at the Connecticut State Police; I will coordinate with him personally on this matter."

"Good, then let's split up. I'll go ask the higher-ups to say a word to the airlines and see if they can prepare a private jet for us to fly directly to the United States!"

After the communication was finished, the conference room became lively again.

Everyone began their own work!

Wesley pulled open the door of the conference room.

The lights in the corridor were still on, the pale light shining on the floor, reflecting a cold texture.

Outside the window, the rain had stopped.

But the Wind was still blowing.

The late-night Wind of London snuck in through the door crack, as cold as a knife.

When Wesley pushed open the side door, that gust of Wind hit him head-on, flipping up the hem of his overcoat.

He did not dodge, and walked out into the Wind.

Three black sedans were parked outside the door.

The engines were already running, and the white mist spewing from the exhaust pipes flickered in the red glow of the taillights.