Friday, May 06, 2005

The worst I ever did was take a fork from the dining hall

Who says college students aren't ambitious anymore? When he could have been involved in illegal file sharing or building offensive snow sculptures in front of his frat house, Hakan Yalincak was allegedly depositing $43 million in bogus cashier's checks and shuffling them between accounts in Switzerland and Greenwich. A lot of college students can't even spell Switzerland.

Yalincak also apparently faces civil charges that he charmed Connecticut investors into sinking $2.8 million into a nonexistent hedge fund ("Dudes, this hedge fund rocks!") and spent the money on luxury items. Unless college has changed drastically since I was there, showing up at the dorm with $2.8 million in luxury items is usually a good tipoff that something is afoot -- the most luxurious item I can recall anyone having in college was a 5-year-old Nissan Sentra. (And if the Sentra was rockin', don't bother knockin'! Actually, I'm not even really sure what that means. )

Meanwhile, if you think depositing $43 million in bogus cashier's checks is bad, I went to school with a guy who'd put all the restaurant bills on his father's credit card, but collect cash from everybody there anyway. That ain't right.

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