Beckett set down his fork. “What do you mean?”

“Would you break the law?”

“Depends on the law, I guess.”

“What if I could show you a way to get a lot of money, and no one gets hurt?”

“Somebody always gets hurt when money goes missing.”

“Not necessarily. . not if they don’t miss the money.” Corbin looked around to make sure they couldn’t be overheard. “Every year, credit card companies issue millions of credit cards. The more cards they issue, the more money they make. Of course, the more cards they issue, the greater the chance they’ll extend credit to the wrong people.”

“You’re talking about credit card fraud. They’ll definitely miss the money,” Beckett replied, before finishing his Coke.

“No, they won’t. Hear me out on this. Credit card companies make their money by charging high rates of interest and high fees to high risk cardholders. The trade off is they know lots of those people won’t pay. Sure, they make a cursory effort to collect the debts, but they give up quickly and write them off their taxes. To cover the losses, they buy insurance. Since they have insurance, they won’t miss the money.”

“Then the carrier will miss it,” Beckett retorted.

“Believe it or not, they’ll welcome the theft.”

“Welcome it? How many times were you dropped on your head as a child?”

“I’m serious. Insurance companies make money by selling policies, but they can only sell policies if people fear a potential loss. If no one ever stole from credit card companies, there wouldn’t be a market for insurance. No market for insurance means no premiums. So rather than being upset, insurance companies welcome a bit of theft because it allows them to get rich.”

Beckett scratched his head. Corbin could see Beckett looking for holes in the argument, so he waited quietly for Beckett to formulate a response.