I Took The Money

Leo Scanlan is a highly educated under-achiever. He likes to fix things that appear to be
broken, which gets him into piles and piles of trouble. But he’s proud of his consistency.
He’s also an ordained attorney, but has never actually billed an hour, nor created any
mayhem, as attorneys are so likely to do, as he’s spent his entire legal career working as a
paralegal. The cannon fodder of the legal profession.

Until, that is, he stumbled upon employment at Quality Litigation Services, as an entry
level, minimum-wage document coder, and through equal parts skill and deception, rose
through the company. However, at the pinnacle of that career, through chance and bad luck, he
happened upon the opportunity to steal twenty million dollars from El Diablo, a Mexican drug
cartel.

Leo’s rationale was valid, in the mind of Leo Scanlan. One can not steal money that is
neither reported stolen, nor legitimately owned by the party from which the money was taken,
and thus he settled on that word. Taken. He, in fact, confessed to the FBI that he took the
money, but did not steal it. The money simply changed possession. It went from doing bad
things in the hands of an evil cartel, to doing good things in the hands of Leo Scanlan. As bad
luck would have it, though, the El Diablo cartel disagreed with his interpretation, and did
everything in their power to kill him. In Leo’s world, no good deed went unpunished.

I Took the Money is a funny, charming, exciting, scary, and often mind-numbing
description of Leo’s heroic efforts to stay alive, in the grips of self-created adversity and
discovery. Bullets and pigs fly, things blow up, and the sharks are well fed. But hey, fish gotta
eat, too.