I think Zec had his own team. The real shooter was already on his payroll as a hired assassin. So no extra money there. All they needed was a fall guy & a police officer. The fall guy was a loner who frequented the only long range shooting range nearby. So befriending him would be easy. Once befriended it would be easy to drug him & lift his fingerprints. The black cop said he didn't have a choice. So they probably blackmailed him. So it was probably inexpensive to set dude up. Maybe a couple million. But to receive hundreds of millions it's worth it to Zec.

In the book, the couple are killed exactly because of that - they were making waves. Zec's company bribed their waves into government contracts, causing the couple's company to lose contracts they should have won. The husband started asking questions, so they killed him. The wife continued, so they offed her, too.
Fighting a religious war is like fighting over whose imaginary friend is better.

You have no idea how much money is on the table for a large contractor. Lebendauer was trying to move into Pittsburgh, which is an industrial city currently trying to reinvent themselves as a service-oriented city.
That means cleaning up industrial parks, building new roads, building bridges & overpasses, putting up new office buildings, possibly putting in a new light rail system How much do you think it would cost to convert Pittsburgh to Seattle?
We're talking billions of dollars.
For a large, established government contractor, these contracts can be pretty easy to win - take a few officials out for a nice dinner, put together some impressive looking presentations, hire some local companies to do some early work (to show money flowing into the city) and voila - nine-figure contracts just fall from the sky.
Unless there's a small, local construction company that is capable of making waves. They challenge every public hearing, they demand studies on things that the big contractor was hoping nobody would notice, and if the big contractor does win the contract, then they are constantly pestering the city council to ask for audits, performance reports, and so on.
It can increase the costs of doing business by a factor of ten or more.
As taxpayers, we should appreciate this and embrace it. But the big money people hate it. Of course in the real world they don't go around assassinating business owners - but you can bet they've thought about it.
Philo's Law: To learn from your mistakes, you have to realize you're making mistakes.

That was my thought too.

Guessing it had lucrative government contracts and established connexions.

The town of New London took an old lady all the way to the Supreme Court to get her property because it was blocking the way for a new mall.
Consider the amount of work needed to bring the suit in the first place and then ride it all the way to the Supreme Court. If you don't value human life, killing five people seems pretty efficient comparatively.
Philo's Law: To learn from your mistakes, you have to realize you're making mistakes.

REAL LIFE BUDDY. HAPPENS ALL THE TIME
Nice to see something real..not lame big conspiracies AMERICANS need to believe in to buy guns , hate blacks and believe in the bible.
lol
Americans.so stupid.
" ALL MEN MUST DIE "
" UNITE THE SEVEN "
" We get the world we deserve "

They wanted to pin her death on Reacher. As she was seemingly the reason for bar fight, she also made a plausible victim for Reacher, especially after he visited her at work.

also why did they need to kill Sandy? a guy knocks her out then they suffocate her. what was the point of that?
Because she knew too much, and they could also frame Reacher for her murder to get him out of the way.

also why did they need to kill Sandy? a guy knocks her out then they suffocate her. what was the point of that?

You can't defend the absurdity of the bad guys plan. It was extremely complicated for what they needed.

They take what can be taken that is what they do.
Checkmate!
Deutschland hat die Weltmeisterschaft zum vierten Mal gewonnen!

It should be obvious that only one person was the intended target. The shooter knew that the woman was going to court that morning to fight for her construction company. It wouldn't have been possible for the shooter to know who else would be in front of the building that day. It was completely random except for one target.
And it's not like he would care if that man and woman were having an affair, lol.

isnt it more realistic though? they just want to take her construction company. its called GREED. people are greedy, sometimes they are that greedy. i dont remember if the shooter was aware at all who the other people he killed were (i dont think he was aware who they were at all) but i do remember a couple of them were cheating on their spouse, so if he was aware maybe it was all bad people although i guess there was a young girl shot to so it probably was all random. pretty messed up but ya ill go with my first opinion, greed.

They'd already gotten rid of her husband. Her dying would raise suspicions. They covered it up as a random mass shooting.
Fighting a religious war is like fighting over whose imaginary friend is better.

I was only addressing your question as to how much money could they make.
Would a suicide be suspicious since she was wealthy and willing to fight for her company? Maybe a car wreck or such would have been better than a suicide.
But, don't forget, they had the cop working for them as well. He could keep the focus directed at the "shooter" and away from the real reason for the shooting. He could muddy the waters enough that no one could see.

but my point is to go through all this and kill 5 innocent people in the process? never mind finding then befriending a loner to set up as a patsy? why not just kill the wife and like i said make it look suicide

Heck how much money can they even get from that.
Millions, and done so in a way that looks legit.
Remember, they didn't just do that in this town, they did that in multiple cities. They'd over-bill for construction and such, thus pocketing millions. And, unless someone audits them, no one will know.
Most likely, they'd have paid off someone in the auditor's office to not audit the company.

Has anybody calculated how much it cost him to take over the construction company? I mean outlay of money to pay off all of the people they paid off, hire an assassin, hire the goons to beat him up.
How much would it take to hire an assassin to kill 5 people. Or would that guy do it for free? Room and board?
Sig, you want a sig, here's a SIG-sauer!

Yeah, they did all that to take over one little construction company in one little sh!t town.
You're right. F this movie.