Bathroom Monologue: Paying Villains

More people anticipated the economic collapse than expected. For instance, The Silent Friends group hacked the accounts of Lehman Brothers and plundered millions of dollars two years out from the mortgage-backed securities scandal. They were considered hacktivists or general net-terrorists for decades afterward, unable to be caught, and after the collapse, no one much wanted to catch them anyway. It wasn’t until the 2040’s when the money from those hacked accounts reappeared, in the forms of electronic deposits to the grandchildren of brokerage employees who’d been screwed out of retirement funds. All came addressed from The Silent Friends, with the explanation that their elders hadn’t know what they were doing. It paid for quite a few educations.