CRIMES AND MISDEMINORS

摘要

They used to just look like kids, these rogue traders, boiler-room con artists and Internet scamsters possessing just enough knowledge about the stock market to fleece anyone who would listen. Now they really are kids. At 27, Nick Leeson brought down Barings bank with $1.4 billion in fraudulent trades. At 25, Gary Hoke faked a Bloomberg news report linked to a Yahoo bulletin board in a stock scam that cost investors $93,000. At 24, Rafael Shaoulian littered financial bulletin boards with unfounded hype that enabled him to sell a stock and pocket $173,000. At 23, Mark Jakob drove down the stock of Emulex with a phony Internet report. He bought with a vengeance after the decline and made $241,000 when the hoax was discovered and the stock rebounded.