Word: scheme
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...Kerviel had yet to answer publicly some of the scheme's most intriguing questions: Did he personally sock away millions from his fictitious trading? And if not, what made a quiet trader - whose Facebook page had just 11 friends - engage in a gargantuan con job and risk years in jail? Those answers might have to wait for Kerviel's trial. Or perhaps for another movie along the lines of the 1999 film Rogue Trader, which portrayed Leeson's extraordinary operation. And should you wish to try and make some money yourself, Leeson has been quoted by one British bookie...
Zhou Shuguang's brief but spectacular career as China's first roving citizen reporter on the Internet ended abruptly last December after he was punched in the throat by an angry policeman in the northeastern city of Shenyang. Zhou's offense: investigating a bizarre pyramid scheme involving ants and aphrodisiacs. The assault took place during a short stint in jail, after which plainclothes cops escorted Zhou to the airport and put him on a plane home, with dire warnings about what would happen to him if he returned. The small, bespectacled 26-year-old took heed. "I will keep silent...
...familiar with the techniques Chinese bloggers use to evade the authorities and managed to have his blog reappear on the Internet almost immediately by using proxy servers and mirror sites outside China. But Zhou's luck ran out when he traveled to Shenyang to interview victims of a pyramid scheme involving a supposed aphrodisiac powder made from crushed ants. Victims handed over cash and were told they would get a guaranteed 30% annual return if they kept supplying the ants. Eventually, the scheme collapsed and hundreds of defrauded investors demonstrated repeatedly outside local government headquarters. After talking with some...
...like a heroin dealer trying to sell methadone, think again. Virtually alone among its Persian Gulf neighbors, Abu Dhabi has embarked on a serious program in alternative energy research, backed with oil money. In 2006 it launched the Masdar Initiative (the name means "source" in Arabic), a multi-pronged scheme that includes a collaborative research institute with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, support for solar and other kinds of green power within the city itself and a clean energy investment fund worth $250 million. The idea behind Masdar - which organized the Future Energy Summit - is a radical one: prepare...
...portray Sark as a rural idyll untouched by modernity would be inaccurate, however. In the 1990s, British newspapers reported that up to 40% of Sark's inhabitants held directorships of companies. In a scheme dubbed the "Sark Lark", many residents sold their names or addresses to companies eager to take advantage of Sark's zero taxes and regulation-free environment. Sark is now regulated by a financial-services authority based on the nearby island of Guernsey...