The Pernicious Truth About Fraud

Briex was a gold mine in Borneo, and it was just a standard Canadian garden variety of gold mining fraud. Briex's fake 1 million ounces became a fake 180 million ounces. The market cap went to 35 billion, which is more than 100 times my $300 million stock. So if I'd shorted it and stayed shorted, even my one fifth of 1% would have become a 5 or 6% position, and I would have been forced to cover it. But the pernicious thing about frauds is that if you can make up a lot of your ownings with the stroke of a pen, why not? Why not make them?