"This is hilarious... Read that article and see how this guy duped the condo devolopers with a version of Rufu's old "euroclear bonds" story.
"They needed someone who could get a lot of money to get the thing going," Brittain said.
Among the purported source of Atlewa's funds were bonds Woods said he could place with Euroclear, a securities clearinghouse based in Belgium.
Woods played the part of an international investor with deep pockets and a lot of clout, and his stories and paperwork seemed to check out, according to Brittain.
Crazier yet, this is just a scam torn from a 100-year old book, written by the Swedish Match King, Ivar Kreuger, and recently summarized in an Economist article.
(Krueger ran an old roll-up growth story that duped American investors out of hundreds of millions back in the day, but he was paying dividends out of the capital he was collecting. In other words, he was running a Ponzi scheme. In the end, everything allegedly fell back on some Italian bonds, which were, in fact, forgeries in his own hand.)
He shot himself. I imagine there are plenty of people who would think that too kind an end for Woods and Rufus."
