Remember Andrey Hicks?

One aspect of good salesmanship is that you have to offer an attractive proposition not merely to the abstract entity that is your nominal client - El Paso, Italy, Greece - but also to the specific human being who is your contact at that client. Telling a corporate treasurer who is five years from retirement that a trade will have a significantly positive NPV due to huge cash flows in years 11-15 is not always as effective a sales technique as buying him a nice steak and an evening of unclothed entertainment. I suspect, though, that the latter strategy is more highly correlated with whatever you're selling ending up on the front page/op-ed page/sec.gov. Anyway, I definitely admire these guys for this particular con*: The SEC alleges that Argyll Investments LLC’s purported stock-collateralized loan business is merely a fraud perpetrated by James T. Miceli and Douglas A. McClain, Jr. to acquire publicly traded stock from corporate officers and directors at a discounted price from market value, separately sell the shares for full market value in order to fund the loan, and use the remaining proceeds from the sale of the collateral for their own personal benefit. Miceli, McClain, and Argyll typically lied to borrowers by explicitly telling them that their collateral would not be sold unless a default occurred. However, since Argyll had no independent source of funds other than the borrowers’ collateral, Argyll often sold the collateral prior to closing the loan and then used the proceeds to fund it. Got it? Argyll gave corporate executives margin loans at 50-70% loan-to-value based on the market price of their stock (based on the volume weighted average price over five days leading up to the closing of the loan). They took the stock as "collateral." They then trousered the stock and sold it for, y'know, 100% of the market value, with 50-70% of that funding the loan and the remaining 30-50% funding miscellaneous expenses that presumably included unclothed entertainment for themselves. The loans had three-year terms and were not prepayable for 12-18 months, so the expected life of the scam was at least 12 months (but see below).

You know what has got to suck? When you decide to start charging stuff that doesn't fall under "business expenses" to your corporate card and engage in a few other amateur hours scams that probably wouldn't have been found out (or, if discovered, not taken to the authorities because your boss had high tolerance for fraud) but then they are because the CEO of your firm had to go and engage in the largest Ponzi scheme on record, which shone an uncomfortable light on company personnel and all of the cheese, popcorn, and salsa of the month clubs you joined (for example).  Craig Kugel knows what we're talking about. The son of a longtime trader for convicted Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy and other criminal charges Tuesday, but denied any involvement in the decades-long fraud. Craig Kugel, the son of David L. Kugel, a former supervisory trader in Madoff's proprietary-trading operation, admitted to filing false forms that claimed people were on the Madoff payroll when they didn't actually work for the firm and to not declaring as income personal expenses charged to the firm's corporate credit card. Those individuals were paid salary and benefits, but weren't actual employees, he said. "I am sorry for my lapses in judgment in committing these federal crimes, but I want to make clear I had nothing to do with the Madoff Ponzi scheme and I was never involved in the Madoff trading operation," Craig Kugel said at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan. Ex-Madoff Employee Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy [WSJ]