Matt Levine, Columnist

A Scam That Made the Mark Feel Extra-Special

This Dutch shipping tycoon got totally swindled, but hey, at least it was magical.

June 28, 2018 at 7:00 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

Imagine a world where Jay Powell parties with the pope every weekend.
Photographer: Tamara Merino/Bloomberg

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This post originally appeared in Money Stuff.

My favorite scam is the “prime bank scam,” which combines conspiracy theory and financial gibberish and world-building worthy of “The Sting” into a grand scam that doesn’t just take your money but alters your perception of reality. And here is a delightful John Gapper story about a prime bank scam that some people ran on a Dutch shipping tycoon: