Part-122

  Ryan, still feeling the drag of a long day, nodded slowly. His shoulders slumped just slightly as he looked at the minated menu, its pages slightly sticky from use. James, despite his own weariness, had a sharper energy about him. "Alright," James said, his voice a low rumble as he cut to the chase, "business first. Anything, anything useful on that online scam?" He tapped his fingers impatiently oable, a nervous habit.

  Ryan sighed, running a hand through his already messy hair in frustration. "Not much, man. Seriously scraping the barrel here. I went deep into online forums, even dug through dusty news archives, but it’s all just…vague. These scammers? They are like digital Houdinis. Vanishing acts after vanishing acts." He slumped further ba his chair, the fluorest lighting of the diner catg the lines of fatigue around his eyes.

  James exhaled audibly, the sound like a defted tire. He finally gave the menu a proper look, though you could tell his mind wasn't on the burgers or fries listed. "There has to be a eg thread somewhere, some pattern we're missing. Think hard. Did any of the victims, even in passing, mention a website they used? Anything specific?"

  Then, Ryan's brow furrowed, and a flicker nition sparked in his tired eyes. "Wait a seow that you’re pressing me… yeah! Actually, weirdly sistent, now that I think about it. Most of them, when they went into the gritty details, they all mentioned buying the, uh, 'goods' from this site called sedowner.." He said the website name a little hesitantly, as if just remembering it from the back of his mind.

  Suddenly, thwack! James smmed his menu down onto the worn Formica table with a decisive cp, making Ryan jump and spill a tiny bit of his water. "sedowner.?!" James excimed, his eyes widening in realization. "That expins everything! I k, there had to be something tangible!"

  Ryan, totally thrown by James's outburst, raised an eyebroicture of fused curiosity. "What in the world are you on about? I told you, I barely eveered the website's name before now."

  James leaned forward, his voice dropping spiratorially but his eyes burning with a focused determination. The diner noise – g cutlery and low chatter – faded away for Ryan as James spoke. "Ryan, listen. sedowner. isn’t just some random online marketpce. It’s practically a notorious bck market, disguised as a sed-hand bazaar! Used items? Sure. But it’s also a digital den for every kind of shady operator you imagine. Remember that whole news report about a massive terfeit eleics ring? The one busted just a few months ago? They were operating right under our noses, selling all their fake stuff through sedowner.."

  Reition finally fully dawned on Ryan’s face. "Yeah…yeah, I remember that now! Those crazy photos of warehouses full of knock-off gadgets… But still… how does dredging up old news reports help us now with this scam?" He gestured vaguely, the question hanging in the air between them.

  "Because it shrinks the pying field, Ryan, massively." James expined, his voiaining its fident edge. A glint of excitement sparkled in his eyes, repg some of the earlier fatigue. "If the majority of these scams – and remember, we're talking about a lot of victims here – are all pointing back to sedowner., then we o stop chasing shadows all over the i and focus our entire iigatiht there." He tapped the table emphatically for each point, solidifying his pn.

  "Okay, I see the logic," Ryan ceded, his initial excitement tempered by a sense of the sheer volume of users on a site like that. "But James, seriously, sedowner.ust have thousands upon thousands of users and listings. How in the world do we even begin to pinpoint one scammer, or even a group, in that o of digital noise?"

  James just smirked, a fident, almost mischievous glint now fully alight in his eyes. He knew he was on to something. "Leave that delicious problem… and the messy part that follows… eo me, my friend. I've got, shall we say, a few ideas already simmering…"

  Just then, their waiter, a young guy with a tray precariously banced on one hand, finally approached their table, notepad iher. James, his mind rag, barely g him. "Hang on," he murmured to Ryan, already pulling his pho of his pocket. Then, to Ryan and almost to himself, "I’m going to… I'm going to p order. On that website. Right now." He said it like a pronou, not a question.

  Ryan’s eyebrows shot upwards again, a mixture of curiosity and genuine creasing his forehead. "James, hold up. Are you positive that's a remotely sensible pn? What if, just for example, you end up getting pletely scammed too in the process? Then where are we?"

  But James just grinned, a wide, fident, almost reckless grin. "Ryan, my dear cautious friend. That's the whole beautifully ironic point, isn’t it? We have to get boots-on-the-ground, so to speak, to really uand their pybook. We o walk a mile, or maybe just an oransa, in their scammer shoes."

  Ryan remained visibly hesitant, but seeing the fire in James’s eyes, he finally nodded, a slow, relut agreement. "Okay, okay, fine. But please, James, just… be careful," he warned, his voice ced with genuine worry.

  James was already immersed in his phone, his fingers flying across the touchs as he logged into sedowner.. The nding page, crammed with fshing banners and tless product images, firmed his assessment – it was indeed a chaotic mess of digital erism. Looking over James’s shoulder at the swirling disarray of listings, Ryan leaned in and suggested, his doubt still lingering, "Maybe… maybe start with something really small, okay? Just in case this spectacurly well-thought-out pn decides to, you know, spontaneously bust."

  James said, "Yeah…yeah!"