According to the Wall Street Journal, Lehman Brothers may have been defrauded in a $250 million swindle worthy of The Sting or The Spanish Prisoner. At the center of the swindle are loans that Lehman made to a fund run by a medical consulting company owned by LTT Bio-Pharma Co.-a Japanese bio-tech company. As security for those loans, Lehman believed that it received certificates from Marubeni Corp., one of Japan’s biggest trading companies. Marubeni says otherwise.
“Wait a minute,” says Lehman, “we met several times at Marubeni offices, and Marubeni employees participated in those meetings. How can you now say that you didn’t guarantee the loans . . . unless . . . .” Which is the point at which one suspects that David Mamet is involved. ”If those guys weren’t Marubeni employees, then . . . !” Murabeni says that none of its employees ever participated in such meetings, and that it never issued certificates or any other security for the loans.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that this level of planning is unusual. I have a case in which scam artists used letters supposedly signed by high ranking employees of Citibank to lend credibility to the scam. The documents are very good forgeries.
Back in Japan, both Lehman and Murabeni are cooperating with a police investigation into the swindle. If they’re smart, Lehman and Marubeni will check those badges very carefully. Finding the edges of a financial scam can be challenging. Don’t believe me? Watch The Spanish Prisoner.
