A few weeks ago, a friend, who works in finance, told me a story. A Lebanese banker had come to see him and, very excitedly, told him about a great deal he was about to close. An Indonesian banker had approached the Lebanese via e-mail seeking help with a transaction, in which the Indonesian had converted a huge amount of gold into cash through a Dutch bank and now wanted to deposit that money — hundreds of millions of dollars — in a Lebanese bank. As proof, the Indonesian sent certificates that had the kind of flowery design many associate with South-East Asia. The Lebanese banker was very excited and had already started to plan where and how he and his partners would invest all this money. Sound familiar? Of course, it was a scam. The e-mail was written in bad English, the certificates looked spurious, the Dutch bank had
