2019-10-14 Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition

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AdamMurphyshecoulddoit,andbyearly2015,thefirm

invested$10million. (Blavatnik and Cooper declined to com-

ment. Murphy declined interview requests and didn’t respond

to a detailed list of emailed questions. In a statement, he said,

“We are focused on the future, not the past.”)

Pierce’s solution wasn’t complex. It was “so rudimentary,”

she later submitted in court, that it’s shocking nobody caught

the grift sooner.

Pierce scribbled her first forged signatures on contracts

with the Matanuska Telephone Association, which services

south-central Alaskan towns such as Wasilla, in May and June

2015. Although Matanuska CEO Greg Berberich had been
      reluctant to strike a deal, Pierce assured her investors in New
      York in an email that Berberich was “nervous but very com-
      mitted.” The next day she uploaded a contract, worth hun-
      dreds of millions of dollars, with what looked like Berberich’s
      signature to a personal Google Drive account she shared with
      Murphy. Pierce also said she was close to locking in another
      gigantic contract with the nonprofit Arctic Slope Telephone
      Association Cooperative, whose customers include residents
      of remote Inupiat communities and the city of Utqiagvik. Soon

she sent Murphy a contract with a phony version of the Arctic

SlopeCEO’ssignature,too.

Sheperpetratedsimilardeceptionsatleasteighttimes,

andthefraudulentcontractstotaledmorethan$1billion,

according to court filings. Sometimes she completely fab-

ricated deals; other times she negotiated real contracts,

then substituted key pages with ones that had more favor-

able terms. Quintillion’s other 10 or so employees were

kept at arm’s length. “I am the only person at Quintillion to

authorize or otherwise accommodate customer requests or

alleged contract issues,” she wrote in an email to a customer.

She solely controlled the password to her Google Drive and

stored printed contracts in a private filing cabinet, which

she once scolded a subordinate for opening, according to a

former employee. On a team conference call with Murphy,

this person remembers Pierce kicking a Quintillion executive

under the table to stop his report of new accounting data.

Murphy, who became more involved with the business

asPierce’sapparentsalesstreakcontinued,spenttimein

Alaskameetingcustomers,severalsourcessay.Whenhe

inquiredabouta $600million contract thatPiercesaid

she’d struck with another Alaskan telecom, Pierceadmitted DATA: NATIONAL SNOW AND ICE DATA CENTER, NATURAL EARTH, COMPANY REPORTS

Pierce outlined an aggressive plan

Arctic Cable Guys for wiring the Arctic

Kirkenes, Norway London

Teriberka,

Russia

Tokyo

Vladivostok,

Russia

Nome

Kotzebue

Utqiagvik

Anchorage

Wasilla

Fairbanks

CANADA

RUSSIA

CHINA

NedonnaBeach,Ore.

Florence,Ore.

Quintillion

Phase 2

Quintillion

Phase 3

Cinia

Arctic

Connect

2018

sea ice

minimum

1979

seaice

minimum

1980 2019

Arcticseaiceminimum

area,in square miles

Cablelanding

Quintillioncable

Othercable

Quintillionproposedcable

Cinia proposed cable

0

1

2m

Beijing

Seattle

Edmonton

New York

Chicago

Thule

AirBase,

Greenland

Reykjavik,

Iceland

Alaska