Jack Crawley was a fraudster, con artist, and proxy murderer. He acted as the chief financial officer of Mattawin Corporation, a company involved in the selling of land and water rights.
History[]
According to his coworker and girlfriend, Karyn Milner, Crawley "built Mattawin into a winner" with his own hard work and business-oriented intellect. At a certain point, he concocted a scheme to increase his wealth by obtaining bonuses through illegally overestimating the value of Mattawin's shares. This was done through illicit accounting operations, which primarily involved special purpose partnerships, such as the Tuxedo Hill Group. These entities were, in reality, fabricated by Mattawin board members in order to simulate credits benefiting the company, thus simulating profits. As the scheme would have caused the company to collapse, Crawley planned to sell his shares off the books. He was assisted in his scheme by several Mattawin executives, including Walter Troy and auditor Michael Gergen.
Eventually, Elizabeth Dawson, Mattawin Vice President of Corporate Finance, informed Crawley of the accounting irregularities, refusing to sign the company earnings estimate without further explanations. As a means to silence her and obtain her approval of the estimate, Crawley and other executives hired two hitmen from Memphis to kill Dawson's boyfriend, Rob Palnick, and make it look like a crime of passion committed by Elizabeth, who was left amnesiac in a simulated car accident. The entire plot was eventually uncovered by Detective Goren, who was able to make Milner, who invested her savings and those of her parents in the company, confess to her part in the framing of Dawson, by informing her that Crawley had sold all of his shares, which he knew were soon to be highly devalued. He was later arrested for his crimes, even after frantically pleading to strike a deal and provide the detectives with more information on the corruption. (CI: "Tuxedo Hill")