In Belbridge, Massachusetts, Eddie Maranjian is on trial for conning his victims using a Ponzi scheme, while most of his victims attend it. However, due to the lack of evidence (since the money was never recovered), Eddie is sentenced to 18 months in prison at Fort Walton Beach prison under the custody of the U.S. Marshal Service, much to everyone's displeasure. One of the victims, Ronald, intends to murder Eddie until Nate stops him. But before Nate takes Ronald outside, Ronald confronts Eddie and punches him in the face.
It turns out that the crew is supposed to find the missing money worth $400,000 that suddenly disappeared before the trial and return that money to all Eddie's victims, including Ronald's late sister. While the team tries to figure out how to stop Eddie from taking his flight, which leaves in an hour, Nate notices the bottle of antibacterial hand sanitizer that Eddie left behind. He figures out a way to stop Eddie using his fears. Outside, while Parker is sneaking inside the duct-work to plant a liquid into his bottle, Eddie talks to the Marshals Bob and Charlie about his "life lessons" in regards to hedge funds.
Parker manages to plant the liquid rohypnol just as Eddie drinks the water. The roofies kick in as Eddie collapses on the floor. Nate, disguised as a doctor, comes to check on him as Eddie wakes up, and claims that the collapse was due to head trauma caused by Ronald's punch. Nate insists that he needs to be transferred to the nearest hospital for an MRI before he's clear to fly.
In the hospital, Parker, dressed as a nurse, sprays something on a wheelchair, while Eddie waits for his handcuffs to be removed for the MRI test. Parker takes Eddie to the MRI room, only for Nate, while checking on him, to notice rashes on Eddie's hand (reacting to Parker's chemical spray) and ask Parker to send him to the eighth floor. Meanwhile, Eliot and Hardison are tasked to distract the Marshals as long as possible, posing as officers from Belbridge P.D.
Eddie is in a patients' room with a "sick" Sophie. A special report on TV announces something about an "Order 23". Nate's plan is to use neurolinguistic programming on Eddie to "sell" him fear, and push him over the edge. Their plan has to be pushed forward when the Marshals realize that Eddie's missing. Hardison and Eliot manage to stall them by asking them to not call for backup yet as Eddie might be in the building, and they ask them to check the security cameras. On the eighth floor, Sophie fakes her death. As Sophie is pulled away, Eddie panics, demanding to know what's going on.
On his way down back to the Marshals, Eliot notices Randy Trent and his father, in the ward to treat Randy for a "skateboard accident". Eliot switches off his earbud and confronts Trent, knowing his bruises are not from an accident. Eliot swipes Trent's ID, as the man mocks Eliot, claiming that it's better for a kid to have a father that is strong rather than not having one at all.
Meanwhile, Eddie is still frightened, panicking, yelling for answers, and even giving himself a nosebleed out of the blue, at which both Parker and Sophie are amazed on the last part. Just then they see a guard entering the floor, so Sophie stalls him by wearing a Hazmat suit, lying that the guard's been exposed to an antigen. So as instructed, the guard keeps washing himself in the shower until further notice.
As Eliot heads back to the morgue with Charlie, Hardison checks Charlie's car only to find out that his car is a rental car. After further inspection, Hardison realizes that Charlie is a hitman for the Armenian mob and was about to kill Eddie on the way to the airport based on the numbers of 'deadly items' in the car's trunk. Eddie's light sentence is partially due to his agreeing to testify against them. Hardison tries to warn Eliot but Eliot forget to turn back his earbuds. Charlie, on the other hand, also realizes that Hardison and Eliot are fakes just before Eliot meets up with him and plans to kill him. Luckily, Hardison hacks into the P.A. and gives a hint to Eliot that danger is near, and Eliot manages to take down Charlie and put him inside a vacant morgue drawer. As Eliot puts his earbud back in, he hears Hardison yelling at him for taking them out, before realizing the real Marshal is heading upstairs.
Back in the room, Nate pretends to fall sick in front of Eddie as Eddie freaks out. When Nate is placed on the bed, Parker cuffs him to the bed, attempting to bail out. Out of fear, Eddie tells her he's not sick and makes a deal with her to release him for $400,000 that he has hidden away. Parker "reluctantly" releases Eddie as both make their escape. As they leave, Nate manages to free himself, and Eddie passes by the guard who's still taking a shower. Bob enters the room that Eddie was in, and notices Eddie's tie and calls for help to track Eddie down. Before meeting back with the crew, Eliot finds young Randy. Trent is friends with the police, so the boy can't turn his father in. In the basement, Parker tells Eddie how they'll need to outsmart the security camera. He zaps her using the showering guard's stolen taser and leaves.
Eddie makes his escape and heads back to the courthouse, ducking into a utility room where he hid his cash up in the vent. As he's about to leave, Parker surprises him and punches him in the face. What happened was Parker was already wearing a vest inside and pretended to be tasered. As the crew takes the stolen money from him and confronts Eddie, Eddie suddenly laughs that he's going to report them to the police for all the crimes they've committed. Confidently, he claims he's good with faces and they'll have much higher sentences than him.
As soon he hears the police sirens, he rushes out of the courtroom but as soon he stops the police car, the police immediately arrest Eddie, despite his protests. One of the officers tells him that 1) he assaulted a security guard (the guard mistook Eddie for the one who tricked him), 2) he tasered a nurse (as the police caught him tasering Parker on camera), and 3) he's escaping federal custody. After the police have left the scene, Nate explains to the crew that Eddie wouldn't have been arrested if he was the hostage of a jailbreak, but due to his actions and situation, no one would believe he lacks a 'guilty mind'.
Back at the hospital, Marshal Bob, Eliot, and Hardison are retrieving the hitman when Hardison receives a call from the cops about Eddie being taken into custody and having a mental breakdown about a plague "or something." Once they find Charlie, he panics and tries to take out Hardison before Eliot knocks him cold. Bob is a bit put out that he got duped by a fake Marshal and let a prisoner escape, but Eliot lets him know that in his report, Bob gets all the credit. Bob thanks him and offers to repay him in any way possible. Eliot gives him Trent's ID card. That night, Bob visits Trent's home and asks Randy not to be afraid to step outside to talk to him. Eliot watches them from afar.
Tropes stolen in this job:
- Abusive Parents: Throughout the episode, Eliot keeps getting distracted by an injured boy. His father makes all the stereotypical excuses. When Eliot confronts the man and threatens him, he's unfazed, spouting bullshit about not being a deadbeat and providing discipline. When Eliot tries to get the kid to open up, he says his father has more than one Friend on the Force who come over for beers. Eliot is stymied... until US Marshal Bob ends up owing him a favor...
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The episode shows us the Monster of the Week practically fondling his bottle of antiseptic handwash multiple times before it ever shows us his face.
- Eddie's sentence is substantially reduced due to him offering to assist the government in other prosecutions. We're also told that he used his Armenian ethnicity to gain the trust of several of his fellow Armenian-Americans in order to fleece them. Turns out that Eddie had agreed to help the government with its case against the Armenian mob.
- At the start of the episode, Eddie notes that the one marshal isn't like others Eddie has had to deal with, earning a slight chuckle from the man. As it turns out, Eddie is right. The man is a hitman for the Armenian mob to kill Eddie.
- The Federal Courthouse that Eddie is tried in lacks certain security features to prevent a man from bringing a loaded gun into the building. The reason for this lapse in security would be addressed in "The Three Strikes Job" when the team returns to Belbridge.
- The car Eddie finds and escapes in is the same one the fake marshal rents to get to around town. The body-disposing contents in the trunk adds to the story of his planned escape.
- Corrupt Cop: Trent is very close with several police officers who help hide or look the other way when he brings his son to the hospital in with injuries.
- Fatal Flaw: Eddie's greed is what finally destroys him. He thinks he can bribe his way to freedom after he has been exposed to some viral contagion that the government is clamping down on. Then he flees to find his money, leading the team to it.
- Gaslighting: How they work the mark. Granted, most of their cons involve some gaslighting to convince the marks to follow the plan, but in this episode they pump it up to 11. Fortunately the mark is, like almost always in this series, an Jerkass Victim.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Marshal Bob is, at the end of the day, a good cop doing his job. He tries to follow the book to call in Eddie's vanishing from the MRI, he accepts credit for Eliot's version of events, and helps rescue a kid from an abusive home.
- Smug Snake: Eddie is an utterly unrepentant smug bastard who doesn't care that he's being sentenced to 18 months in prison. His smugness vanishes once he thinks he's been exposed to a deadly virus.
- You Owe Me: A quick turn-around version. Not a minute after Marshal Bob notes he owes Eliot's alias a favor, Eliot realizes this is a chance to save an abused child from his father and asks for Bob to intervene.
