Episode Summary: The White Collar division of the FBI gets involved in the murder investigation of Joseph Hayes, a lead R&D specialist in a tech firm that manufactures everything from cell phones to supercomputers. The FBI suspects that the death of the man is part of a corporate espionage. The company Hayes was working for was vying for a defense contract, and the victim had with him a functioning prototype for a next generation quantum microprocessor the night he dropped dead of a heart attack. Moreover, a toxicology report revealed that the man had digitalis in his bloodstream that caused his heart failure. The FBI suspects Wesley Kent, the founder and CEO of Novice Systems, as the person who murdered Hayes and stole the prototype. Agent Peter Burke goes undercover as an accountant from Bainfield Financial whom Kent expects to arrive at Novice Systems for his company’s annual audit. Agent Peter Burke has an accounting degree and was recruited by several Fortune 500 companies before joining the FBI, which makes him the perfect man for the job. Agent Burke arrives at Novice Systems and presents himself as Peter Lassen, the CPA from Bainfield Financial. The firm gives him special treatment from setting him up at a suite in a four star hotel to providing him a spacious corner office.Continue reading...
As per his agreement with Peter after the man found out from Sara that he has possession of the FAA flight recording, Neal arranges a meeting with Mozzie and Diana so the two can work together in investigating the jet explosion that claimed the life of Kate Moreau. Their main goal is to find Agent Fowler whom Mozzie identified as the person Kate called after Peter showed up at the hangar. Neal believes that Fowler is the key in unraveling this mystery.
Although Novice Systems sequestered Peter’s laptop and cell phone as soon as he entered its offices, Peter manages to sneak in a USB drive hidden in his cufflink that will allow Agent Jones to access Novice’s entire database. Agent Jones discovered that someone tried to access Hayes office desktop, but failed. Based on the password variations the person used, it appears that the person had a close relationship with Hayes. Agent Burke rules out upper management for they would not need to crack his password to look into their employee’s office computer, which means the mole would be some junior executive. Agent Peter Burke brings in Neal Caffrey to be his eyes and ears. Knowing that Wesley Kent is doing everything he can to get a clean audit, Peter uses it as leverage to get Neal a marketing job at the firm.
Neal arrives at Novice Systems as George Danbury, and quickly makes friends and enemies. Moreover, he manages to get invited to dinner with his colleagues. Learning of this, Peter instructs Neal to tell everyone that he noticed that the auditor was looking into Hayes’ files making the employees believe that Peter found something on the victim. This they believe will cause the mole to inadvertently reveal himself. Neal goes to work immediately with his new task, and informs his colleagues at dinner that he found Joseph Hayes’ files along with everyone else’s on the auditor’s desk. This seems to have drawn out some fear from his colleagues, and they have every reason to be afraid of an audit. The junior executives as Novice Systems have a habit of having expensive dinners all paid for by their corporate credit cards. In fact, the dinner they just had caused them two thousand dollars, and in true Novice Systems tradition the person who will foot the bill will be determined through a credit card roulette. Everybody throws their credit cards in Neal’s hat before they ask the waitress to pick the card that will be used to pay the bill. Neal having been hassled by Trent the moment he got the marketing job does one of his hat tricks that made Trent’s credit card stick out of the pile. Trent ends up footing the two thousand dollar bill.
Neal insinuating that the auditor has been looking into the junior executives worked like a charm. Later that night, he finds Jessica looking through files in the auditor’s office. Neal immediately goes to Peter’s suite to inform him that Jessica Breslin took the bait. Jessica started working at Novice Systems four months after the firm put in its bid for the defense contract. Moreover, Neal discovered that the woman has been sending out a lot more mail to a P.O. box in White Plains after Hayes died, which is curious since the firm doesn’t do any business in White Plains.
Diana and Mozzie get to work on the jet explosion investigation. Diana shares with him Fowler’s resignation from the FBI. According to her, OPR let him go, but kept his dismissal secret. June interrupts their conversation to ask Diana’s help in figuring out the forms Agent Burke has sent about Neal’s living arrangements; this gave Mozzie an opportunity to take a peek at Diana’s bag where he curiously finds a music sheet for Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in F. He quickly meets Neal to inform him of this discovery especially after learning that the sonata was composed on the same year the music box was made. The more damning information he uncovered is that there is no historical record of what the song the music box is playing, and the only way Diana could have found out is if she heard it.
Meanwhile, Neal is at Novice Systems spying on Jessica’s mail, and learns that the woman is digging into Kent’s travel arrangements. Unfortunately for him, the woman has become suspicious of him after the previous night’s incident, and her noticing that her mail tray is left askew after she returned from lunch prompted her to follow Neal when he went out to meet Mozzie. Having noticed it he accosts the woman who points a gun at him. Neal is forced to reveal that he is working with the FBI in uncovering the person who murdered Hayes, and learns that the woman is doing the same thing. Neal and Agent Burke return to the FBI headquarters to interrogate Jessica whom they learn to be the person Hayes had a relationship with. The woman informs them that Hayes was only close to getting a functioning prototype as opposed to Kent’s claim of the victim already having a working prototype. She confesses to be the one who attempted to hack into Hayes’ office computer, but only after she noticed a change in his behavior. She adds that Kent has been traveling to Eastern Europe and China by himself under the guise of business. Moreover, she accuses Kent of destroying documents.
Agent Burke plans on attaching a remote scanner on Kent’s shredding machine to allow them to make a copy of a document before it gets shred. Unfortunately, Kent’s office is closely guarded, and uses a voice-activated system that responds only to his voice to unlock its doors. Getting a hold of the password from Jessica, Agent Peter Burke plans to secretly record Kent saying his password “Faber est suae quisque fortunae” during their business dinner. Much to his surprise, Kent offers Peter a job at his company, and tells him that working for Novice Systems is more than a job for it is an achievement. This gave Peter the opportunity to insert Latin in their conversation using the etymology of the company’s name as a starting point. Before he knows it, Kent has given Peter his password. Moreover, he informs Peter that the project he is working on will set up the company and everyone in it for life.
With Kent’s password on tape, all they need to do now is have Neal filch Kent’s assistant’s swipe card so he can break into the man’s office and install the scanner on the shredding machine. Neal does his task without a hitch. Soon, the FBI gets a hold of the documents Kent has been shredding, and learns that Kent has been destroying the documents of Hayes’ failed prototype. The prototype was never stolen for Kent only made Hayes death look like corporate espionage to cover the embarrassing truth that Novice Systems has yet to have a breakthrough tool for binary code breaking. Moreover, another document in the shredder implicates Kent in treason for profit. With the prototype still in the works, Novice Systems cannot win the U.S. defense contract in time. This leads Kent to sell the tool to a foreign intelligence agency, one that will provide him enough time to finish building the prototype. Hayes unwilling to take part on the treasonous act paid the price with his life, giving Kent the perfect cover to hide the truth about Novice Systems not having a product to show the defense department and avoiding suspicion after a foreign government gets a hold of the working prototype.
Although they cannot charge Kent with treason, the FBI sure can get him for murder. They, however, need to use Jessica as bait. Agent Burke plans on hinting to Kent that Hayes has divulged his plans to Jessica before he died, which should prompt the man to go after her. Jessica bent on nailing Kent agrees to the dangerous task. Unfortunately, she is out for revenge instead of justice. Neal notices the pen with Kent’s recorded password in Jessica’s bag, and draws out from the woman that she had put digitalis in Kent’s Armagnac. Unfortunately, Peter and Kent have been drinking the poisoned Armagnac in celebration of Novice System’s clean audit. Peter and Kent have started to feel the effects of digitalis. Peter asks Kent for an antidote knowing that he used the same poison to kill Hayes, but the man could offer none. He did, however, inadvertently confess to Peter of murdering Hayes. Both of them pass out before they could call for help. Fortunately, Neal arrives in time for the EMT to revive the two. Agent Burke now conscious makes an arrest as the EMT pulls him up to an ambulance. Unfortunately, another arrest needs to be made for in spite of not knowing that Peter will be drinking the Armagnac with Kent, Jessica did poison the two men. She is charged with attempted murder.
Agent Burke is back at the FBI headquarters, and Neal teases him of missing out on the good life. Agent Burke humors Neal and imagines what his life could have been if he became a hotshot CPA instead of an FBI agent. The alternate life sounded good until he goes to the part where he wasn’t assigned to work on an art gallery scam, which would have meant that he would never have met Elizabeth. This only reaffirmed to him that there are more important things in life than living in luxury like Elizabeth and believe it or not, Neal as well. This prompts Neal to confront Peter about his knowledge that he has the music box in his possession. It seems that Peter has gotten to him for the young man confronts him without any anger. In fact, Neal learned of this secret right before he realized that Peter has been poisoned, and still he saved the man’s life. With the cat out of the bag, Peter shows the music box to Neal. He tells him that he kept the box from him for he is afraid of what having it will do to him. Peter wants to steer Neal away from taking revenge on the people who killed the love of his life. The two agree not to keep secrets from each other. Peter informs Neal that the music box is missing a key, which Neal instantly recognizes as the one Alex gave him. Neal puts the key in the hole, and opens the music box.
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