before. It had a separate user login, protected by a password she didn't know. She wanted to find out if she had to send it to the police, or if she could just send it to me. After consulting with an attorney, I told her I didn't think that she was required to do any- thing with it. But given that I couldn't crack it myself, her choices were to contact the U.S. Attorney's office or to keep quiet about it. She chose the former, and I later heard that Thomas Cindric from SOD flew out to her home to retrieve it.

I heard, too, from an accountant in Florida who found my name in a search for Robert McGowan, the Zimbabwean I'd written about. The accountant, who specialized in finding and obtaining lost corporate assets, said he had discovered "unclaimed money related to a former company he registered here in the United States." As the sole director, McGowan would be entitled to re- claim his lost assets. He said the amount was around $50,000. I couldn't locate a journalistic ethics guide that addressed the situa- tion, so I just forwarded the note on to McGowan and left it to him whether to take Le Roux's forgotten money. After all, his name had been listed, without his knowledge, on the incorpora- tion papers. Maybe it was poetic justice.

Before one of my trips to Manila, Joseph Hunter let it be known through an associate that he was concerned about my safety. Be careful, he said. I had trouble processing the idea that the former head of an international kill team was now telling me—out of con- cern for my welfare—to watch my back. Hunter also relayed a request that I pick up some notebooks and mixed martial arts DVDs he'd left behind in Manila with a friend. Worried that I was being set up, I offered to meet the contact in a public place to look at the items. The contact never showed.

In April 2016, an anonymous tipster emailed to say that Lach- lan McConnell had been detained in the Philippines and was fac- ing deportation. For a moment I wondered if it had been my articles that had prompted this, but the truth was much more mundane: Unable to persuade the Philippines to extradite him, the United States had pressured Canadian authorities to cancel his