I did the correct thing, the boring and lawful thing.

I raised it.

I filed a formal internal complaint about the missing funds, through the proper channels, creating a record.

I thought, in my innocence, that this was how it worked — that you find the fraud, and you report the fraud, and the system corrects it.

I did not yet understand that I had just told a family of thieves that the one person capable of seeing what they had done had seen it.

My complaint was not the beginning of an investigation, in their minds.