This episode of White Collar will make you run to the bank faster than cashing in your check after pay day, as a hacker cracks into Manhattan Mutual Bank, causing the bank to lose control of its server and draining all of their clients’ accounts including Sara’s. The cyber thief makes off with $125 million within an hour’s time.
The hacker is revealed to be someone named Cameron Duponte, who doesn’t really exist as he is an alias used by the perpetrator. Neal, Sara, and Mozzie then try to access the $125 million, later spending about $90 million of it on various things like clothes, statues, helicopters, and paintings, by having Sara hack into the bank’s system and change the answers to the security questions that Duponte had set up. Neal also pretends to be Duponte so that he can get a debit card issued to him. Mozzie runs interference in the bank lobby as someone from the Federal Comptroller, yelling and screaming about the court issuance from Watergate.
Peter later finds out about Neal’s plan to draw out the hacker (whom the FBI assumes is someone named Vulture) after Neal spends the stolen money. He confronts Neal at his apartment, saying that everything that he had purchased will be going back to the stores once the case is closed. Peter then takes Neal back to his house to help figure out if Vulture is the one who took the $125 million; however, it is out of Neal’s area of expertise, so Mozzie was called in to help locate Vulture, courtesy of Mrs. Elizabeth Burke.
Mozzie manages to find Vulture, but proclaims that he is innocent in all of this. Peter has a hard time believing him when the resident conspirator doesn’t know who the Vulture is given that the world of hacking is based on anonymity where real names do not matter. However, Mozzie is able to set up a meeting with the Vulture, so things are looking up in terms of solving the case.
It was revealed that the Vulture wasn’t a he, but a she when Team Burke went to the meeting location to make the arrest. The woman stated her name as Sally, which Mozzie thought was short for Salieri, and told Peter in the interrogation room that she built the code that brought down Manhattan Mutual with another person named Kurt Brauer. Hmm, the plot, she thickens.
Later in the episode, Mozzie goes over to Sally’s to “protect her,” but his natural urges take control and he spends the night with the female hacker. *Singsongy* Mozzie has a girlfriend! Mozzie has a girlfriend! Ahem, back to the case. Diana isn’t able to track down Brauer when the FBI sets up a P.O. box, making him think that Neal, under the alias of Duponte, will go to pick up an order. However, a flash drive is sent to them via a delivery service.
The flash drive contains another anonymous video from Brauer, but this time, it has a virus embedded in it, infecting every computer in the FBI office. Someone call the CSI: Cyber people STAT! Turns out that Brauer was trying to reinstate his identity at the bank, which Neal stole from him in order to lure him out. The cameras at the bank caught a glimpse of Brauer coming and leaving, which then leads Team Burke to track him down at the biggest port in the Eastern Seaboard, thanks to Sally and Mozzie’s help in putting Brauer’s picture on every technological device in the city of New York. I’m very jealous that Sally can text without looking at her phone, and it makes me wonder how she is able to achieve this particular skill. That, and the way that Neal is able to deduce Sara’s PIN number. Make me feel more paranoid, now why don’t you White Collar?! Oh, and the way that the show added up the amount of money that Neal and Sara spent reminded me of the graphics used in Sherlock.
In the end, Brauer is arrested and everyone, including Sara, gets their money back. I was surprised to discover that Peter didn’t know that Neal was staying at the Palazzo Sasso in Ravello after the Corsica heist and that the good Agent had bluffed when he said that he had Europol closing in on the ex-con. Seems like our Agent Burke knows how to be sneaky, too. Kudos. It also looks like Neal and Sara’s relationship is about to get tense as the latter opens up Neal’s laptop and opens a password protected file (which she got from the reflection off of Neal’s gold-plated guitar) that contains a live video feed of the treasure. I wonder how Neal is going to explain his way out of this one. Next episode, please!
[Photo via USA Network]
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