Happy because, in that mysterious office, he was carrying on the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. It was simplicity itself. The money sent to him by new investors was used to pay existing investors, as well as any redemptions (which he honoured in full and promptly).
開心是因為,在那間神秘的辦公室里,他正在實施史上最大的龐氏騙局。這場騙局很簡單。拿新投資者的錢支付給之前的投資者,以及進行任何形式的贖回(他立即全額兌現)。
Some was also diverted into beach houses for him and the family in Long Island and Cap d’Antibes, and into trips to Las Vegas for the accounts manager. The money flowed round and round in a delightfully circular way.
他挪用部分資金為家人購置了位于長島(Long Island)和昂蒂布海角(Cap d’antibes)的海濱別墅,以及支付客戶經理往返拉斯維加斯的開銷。資金流以一種令人愉快的方式循環起來。
And there was plenty of it: by 2001 he was managing billions, and his clients included Tufts and Yeshiva universities (he was a trustee of Yeshiva), hsbc, Nomura, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Steven Spielberg, John Malkovich and several Jewish charities.
他的客戶包括塔夫茨大學和葉史瓦大學(他是葉史瓦大學的受托人)、匯豐銀行、野村證券、蘇格蘭皇家銀行、史蒂文·斯皮爾伯格、約翰·馬爾科維奇和幾個猶太慈善機構。
As a Jewish boy from Queens, he had a special interest in helping such causes, as he told Elie Wiesel, the Nobel peace prizewinner, over dinner once.
作為一個來自皇后區的猶太男孩,他對幫助這些事業有著特殊的興趣,他在與諾貝爾和平獎得主埃利·威塞爾(Elie Wiesel)共進晚餐時提到過這一點。
Wiesel’s foundation invested $15.2m with him, and lost it all—as did almost 5,000 other investors, most of them ordinary elderly folk, who lost a total of $64.8bn on paper and around $20bn in hard, and hard-earned, cash. That money was still being recovered on the day he died.
威塞爾基金一共投資了1520萬美元,結果血本無歸——其他近5000名投資者(多數為普通的老年人)的賬面損失總計為648億美元,而辛苦賺來的現金損失約為200億美元。那筆錢在他去世的那天還在追回。
No trades were ever made with it. It went straight to him and to the scheme. Meanwhile he trusted a tiny band of employees to insert fake trades into customer statements, based on his own best calculations of how share prices had moved. If inspectors asked for records he could not immediately produce, these too would be fresh-made and, if too suspiciously warm from the printer, cooled in the office fridge.
這些資金并未用來進行交易。而是直接流進了他的口袋和騙局。與此同時,他指示一小群員工,根據他對股價走勢的最佳計算,在客戶的報表中插入虛假交易。如果檢查人員要求他出示一些無法立即出示的記錄時,這些記錄也可以現場打印出來,如果怕被人發現記錄還熱乎著,可以放在辦公室的冰箱里冷卻一下。