Not the donors demanding their money back, who would recover, and not the politicians distancing themselves, who would find new causes to lend their names to.

I thought of the inner-city children in whose name the Vances had raised all that money, the children the foundation had claimed, for twenty years, to be lifting up, and who had never received a fraction of what was gathered under their banner, because the money meant for their education had been washed clean and funneled into offshore accounts and diamond necklaces and a mansion in the hills.

That was the true crime, underneath all the financial complexity, and it was the thing I made sure the prosecutors never lost sight of.

The Vances had not merely stolen money.