MR. WONG, I want to be very clear about this.” Loughman was doing that peer-over-the-glasses thing again.

     “We’ve been talking a lot about this $5,400 potential loss that, now -- I believe it’s safe to say -- never happened. Can the same be said for each contingent liability on each of the subsequent statements?”

     “No,” Wong stated flatly.

     “Why not?” Loughman asked.

     “There are instances where Ruskjer actually did buy back calls that he sold,” Wong explained.

     And how prolific might that be?” Loughman queried.

     Without doing a thorough analysis of each and every transaction he conducted over the course of more than four years of trading,” Wong said, “there would be no way to tell.”

     “Would it surprise you to know,” Loughman said, leafing through his notes, “based on a thorough analysis of each and every transaction over the course of more than four years of trading, that the dollar amount of all buybacks was less than 15 percent?”

     "It wouldn’t matter one way or the other,” Wong said.

     “It wouldn’t matter that at your direction, the prosecutor took $10 million in legitimate gains off the table?” Loughman continued to stare at him over his glasses.

     “We used state-of-the-art, standard procedure, best-practice formulas to determine his account value,” Wong said. “Those formulas do not distinguish between someone who buys back calls or doesn’t. It seems you want to sweep all that under the rug and only consider what a third grader would take into consideration. That’s your prerogative. The numbers are there. He chose to ignore them -- at his own peril.”

     “I shouldn't have to remind you, Mr Wong,” Loughman said, “that our laws are based on what the common man could be presumed to understand. The reason I’m asking you these questions instead of the prosecutor is that he pled ignorance, implying that only a CPA such as yourself could be expected to answer questions about such things as contingent liabilities.

     “Suffice it to say, that if your charts were predicated on including contingent liabilities as actual losses, then absent those losses, your conclusions would be significantly different. Is that a fair statement?”

     "Perhaps,” Wong allowed, albeit begrudgingly.

     “So,” Loughman pursued, “when Ruskjer says he made 33 percent during his first day of trading and you say he lost 22 percent, can we safely assume the discrepancy is due to these artificial losses?”

     “If you’re not going to take into consideration contingent liabilities,” Wong qualified, “then a 33-percent gain would be logical.”

     “So if Ruskjer did not consider the need to include artificial losses in his calculations,” Loughman continued, “and told someone he made 33 percent on his first day of trading, that would not, then, be a lie?”

     “Just because he didn’t take them into consideration,” Wong pointed out, “doesn’t mean they’re not used in determining the value of an account.”

     “Let me rephrase,” Loughman was beginning to smell blood.

     “If you yourself had no understanding of what a contingent liability was, you just knew your cash balance started out at $10,000 and ended up at $13,305, you would or would not think that you were 33 percent ahead of the game?”

     “It doesn’t really matter what I think or would think,” Wong said. “I’m not the one on trial. He got statements from Ameritrade that told him his value was $7,800 and change after selling fourteen AGIX calls. It’s right there, plain as day. When Ameritrade tells you your account is worth $7,800 and you tell prospective or existing investors that you’re worth $13,305, what do you call it?”

     “To be fair,” Loughman said calmly, “the statement doesn’t give a value figure. The government arrived at that figure after running statement numbers through a Modified Dietz program designed to measure how hedge fund performances compare. Leaving that aside, I’d have to say, absent any actual loss showing up in the Daily Activity Report, I would tend to disregard contingent liabilities and stick with the facts, which are: I started out with $10,000; gained $3,305; and ended up 33 percent better off than I was.

     “I don’t profess to be a CPA like you, Mr. Wong. Not even a bookkeeper. I suppose I’m more like that common man our laws were designed to serve. What I’m getting at is this,” Loughman zeroed in for the kill. “If Ruskjer dealt strictly with the facts as they are portrayed in the Daily Activity Report, he would be telling the truth when he claimed that he made 33 percent on his first day of trading. Would you agree?”

     “Whatever you say,” Wong said.

     “And when he says he made 77 percent in his first thirty days of trading,” Loughman pushed, “that, too, would be true?”

     “In the absence of contingent liabilities,” Wong said, “I suppose you could say that.”

     “And when he told lenders one of his best trading cycles included one of the worst trading days in the last ten years, specifically at the end of February 2007, that, too, would be true?” Loughman was now in the zone.

     “You don’t need me to rubber stamp your revisionist history,” Wong editorialized.

     “And when he told his largest lender that the last couple months -- specifically July and August of 2008 -- he had done pretty good?” Loughman was rubbing his nose in it now.

     “Look,” Wong said, “if you’re gonna change the rules after the fact, you can expect the conclusions to differ as well.”

     “Well, Mr. Wong, if it’s history we’re talking about, that detail would be found in the Daily Activity Report, now wouldn’t it But I digress.” Loughman couldn’t resist.

     “And when he alleges that he netted more than $1.3 million in one month, just four months before the government froze his accounts?” Loughman asked.

     “How much longer are you gonna beat this poor dead horse?” Wong wondered aloud.

     “Mr. Wong -- or Mr. Oxley -- can either of you point to any lie or distortion of truth that you allege Ruskjer said that doesn’t rely on artificial losses to substantiate?” asked Loughman.

     “What about when he told Sharon Long he was still doing well three months before we closed him down?” Wong took the ball and ran with it.

     “Unless I’m mistaken,” Loughman said “that would have been right after he had his best month of all time -- where he netted $1.3 million in thirty days.”

     “OK then,” Oxley jumped in. “What about when he told this same person that the government took $13.5 million when they seized his Ameritrade account?”

     “I’m glad you brought that up Mr. Oxley.” Loughman actually smiled when he said, “It saves me from having to later. I believe you’ll find your witness’s quote taken directly from the transcript. I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting it for you. Would you like to read it for us?”

     Oxley picked up the page shoved in front of him and read with little enthusiasm: “I believe I even wrote it down. Ruskjer said he owned $12 million in stocks and had a buying power of $1.5 million when the government froze his account.”

     Thank you,” Loughman said. “This pink highlighting is your statement to the jury. Would you read that for us?”

     “He lied when he told Sharon Long that the government took $13.5 million when they closed his account.”

     “Do you see any differences between these statements?” Loughman asked.

     “No,” Oxley said. “They’re both saying exactly the same thing. I just added the $12 million to the $1.5 million in mine.”

     “Where exactly in Sharon Long’s statement does she say Ruskjer told her the government took $13.5 million?” Loughman asked.

     “It’s implied,” Oxley replied, somewhat indignantly. “He said he owned it. The government took everything that he owned when they closed his account. By implication, he’s saying they took $13.5 million -- when he knew, for a fact, that they only took $4.1 million all told.”

     “Are you asserting that on the day that you -- or should I say, the government -- seized his account, that Ruskjer did not own $12 million in stocks and that he did not have a buying power of $1.5 million?” Loughman pursued.

     “I’ve said what I’m saying,” Oxley said. “He implied that the government took $13.5 million, when he knew that they took less than a third of that at the time of this conversation, three months after his account had been closed.”

     “First,” Loughman began, handing Oxley another sheet of paper, “let me direct your attention to Mr. John Hayward’s spreadsheets.

     “You’re familiar with Mr. Hayward, I presume, inasmuch as he was one of your witnesses. The government froze Ruskjer’s account on December 12, 2008,. This is Mr. Hayward’s spreadsheet of December 11, 2008. Would you read the number in the top left corner?”

     “$11,982,431.87,” Oxley read.

     “So roughly $12 million then?” asked Loughman.

     “If you want to round it to the nearest million,” Oxley agreed.

     “And that number represents what?” Loughman asked.

     “Owned stock,” Oxley said, “according to the heading.”

     “So,” Loughman postured, “if I were to ask you -- from what you’ve just read -- how much in stock did Mr. Ruskjer have in his account, rounded to the nearest million, on the day before he was shut down, you would say?”

     Twelve million dollars,” Oxley said dejectedly.

     “Which is what your own witness testified Ruskjer said while she was under oath,” Loughman pointed out. “And yet you said in your closing arguments that this was a lie.

     "Did your office ever contact Mr. Ruskjer to let him know how much the government recovered when they closed his account?”

     "We communicated with his attorney," Oxley responded.

     Who," Loughman began to ask "at the time of the conversation in question -- between Mr. Ruskjer and Sharon Long -- would have been--"

     "Well … " Oxley thought for a second. “Actually, this would have been before the grand jury finished, so maybe he didn’t have an attorney at that time.”

     “Then how would he have known how much the government took?” Loughman innocently sprang his gotcha.

     “Well,” Oxley postulated, “maybe his investors told him. He testified that he talked with several of them during our investigation.”

     “You’re referring, no doubt, to his testimony,” Loughman said, “where he says one lender told him the government said they recovered nothing. 

     "Another said $2 million. 

     "Another $4 million. 

     "And yet another, $6 million? 

     "In that same testimony, he told the lender he had no idea how much was actually recovered. The government locked him out of his own Ameritrade account, so he couldn’t have gotten that information from them. Is this the testimony you’re referring to?”

     “I stand corrected,” Oxley said, as he cleaned his glasses.

     “Then we can conclude,” Loughman summarized, “that he wasn’t lying about how much stock he owned when his account was frozen.

     “And now we can also conclude that he had no reliable source of information as to how much the government actually got when they closed his account. So, in fact, he couldn’t have even implied by his statements that the government took more than he knew they had taken. Is that not so?”

     “I said I stand corrected,” Oxley said. “What more do you want?”