Quote from rufus_4000:
The more I think about my theory, the more it makese sense. Naturally, after more than 12 years on the street, I have become a fan of conspiracy theories since I have seen what people are willing to do for a little gain. Here is my conspiracy theory of the day on Refco.
'98 was a tough year for trading in general with all the financial blow-ups. So it is entirely conceivable that Refco (controlled by Bennett) lost the money trading. Considering that Refco only have >$600M operating cash today, it is likely that Refco would have <$430M back in '98. Bennett would be keenly aware (as the former CFO) that if the losses was reflected on the income statement, then Refco would have to borrow substantially just to keep the operations running. Therefore in '98, Refco is technically insolvent (aka bankrupt) as a company, so Bennett and Maggio (maybe others) conspired to cover up the losses as a "customer" loss, an uncollectible one at that.
Joe Murphy joined in '99 (after '98), so he won't know anything about the cover-up. Sexton was running technology back then, so he probably won't know anything about the account shuffle.
This is very scary if my conspiracy theory has some shred of truth. I need to get some old-war-stories (from ex-Refco and a few current Refco people), doing that now.
Rufus
Conspiracy? Here they are in late 90s cooking a loss to beat reporting it. NOTE, this is a fact that was not material to the outcome of the case. Also it was only 28M.
"Now it is true that for reasons having to do
with reporting requirements imposed by the
commodities exchanges, Refco did not want to
reveal the debit in Eastern's account, and that
is why it funded it with a loan from its
affiliate, with which it has a complete identity
of interest by virtue of the fact that both Refco
corporations are wholly owned by a third
corporation. Eastern points us to nothing
indicating that what Refco did was illegal,
however, and the jury was not required to find,
and did not find, that it was a fraud against
Eastern... ."
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=7th&navby=case&no=992362
Lo and behold this cockroach let Hillary run her comod trade over margin and paid a fine for it too.
I could maybe find some more but I only had 5 minutes to look.
Geo.