MR. OXLEY, I believe we were talking about implications when we last met,” Loughman began. “I would like to discuss one of yours. You implied that Mr. Ruskjer had to be lying when he -- on numerous occasions -- told lenders and prospective lenders that his strategy required no speculation. Is that not correct?”

     “That’s totally correct,” Oxley replied. “And any bonafide broker will back me up on that,” he added.

     “Would you be so kind as simply as possible, to elucidate what Ruskjer’s strategy was?”

     “I think Mr. Wong would be better qualified to answer that,” Oxley said.

     “Mr. Wong?” Loughman nodded.

     “He sold calls,” Wong said.

     “Let me back up for a moment,” Loughman said. “Inasmuch as we have the benefit of one of he government’s most highly acclaimed CPAs at our disposal, could you give me a working definition of the term speculation -- as it pertains to the stock market?”

     “I would say," Wong said, “that any time someone thinks he knows which way the market, or a particular stock, is going to move, but doesn’t know for sure, he’s engaging in speculation.”

     “So the idea has to do with being able to -- or thinking one is able to -- accurately guess which way the proverbial wind is blowing, figuratively speaking?” Loughman rephrased.

     “That would be another way of putting it,” Wong said.

     “If someone knew -- without a doubt -- not guessing?” Loughman stipulated, "that would not involve speculation?”

     “That would involve insider trading,” Wong said. He looked at the mirror as he spoke.

     “And if it didn’t matter which way the market moved?” Loughman asked.

     “Then no speculation would be involved,” Wong concluded.

     “Thank you. I always like to be clear on my definitions,” Loughman said.

     “Back to resolving inferences. Let me read to you Ruskjer’s description of his strategy:

     “Let me stop there for a moment. Do you see any speculation so far?”

     “No, not really,” Wong said. “He’s hoping deals that look good from his data from the night before will still be good the next morning. But because he’s able to nail those down by looking them up before he commits to a deal, he’s eliminated even the need for hope, let alone speculation.”

     “Very good,” Loughman said. “Let’s continue:"

     This doesn’t mean I get to keep the money.

     “Mr. Wong, do you see any speculation in this balancing act?”

     Oxley was nodding his head vigorously up and down.

     Wong looked at him, slowly shaking his head back and forth.

     “No. It’s not speculating to set a buy or sell point. His outcome is based on his ability to actually consummate the purchase or sale at that specific price. This would fall more into the category of luck, not speculation.”

     Oxley slumped down in his chair.

     “Mr. Oxley? Did you have something you wanted to add?” Loughman asked innocently.

     “Ruskjer couldn’t guarantee that he would make five percent,” Oxley offered. “He had to speculate in order to guarantee his investors a five-percent return.”

     “I thought we covered lenders versus investors already,” Loughman said.

    “Ruskjer promised a return on loaned money. I see nowhere where he promised a return on his own private investments.” Loughman looked sharply over his glasses at Oxley.

     “Well,” Oxley responded, “he told lenders he averaged more than five percent a month on his own private investments, when, according to the Modified Dietz analysis, he actually lost more than five percent a month!”

     “I thought we already covered that as well,” Loughman countered.

    “The Modified Dietz analysis includes contingent liabilities like the now infamous $5,400 as losses, which we eventually ascertained were not losses at all.

     “That’s $10 million that has to be added back into the Ruskjer side of the ledger, which means all of your numbers, Mr. Oxley, are basically bogus at best and fraudulent at worst.” Loughman held his gaze throughout this diatribe.

     “So to wrap up the discussion on speculation then,” Loughman said, looking back at his notes, “if I’m understanding everything that’s been said so far, your own government CPA doesn’t agree with your assertion, Mr. Oxley, that Ruskjer used any speculation in the implementation of his strategy, or -- as you would prefer to characterize it -- his scheme.

     “So am I to assume that your implication that the very idea that Ruskjer would say that his is the only strategy he knows of that does not require speculation is then not an implicit example of deceit?

     “Mr. Oxley?”

     “You’ll never convince me he wasn’t running a Ponzi scheme,” Oxley said.

     “That’s not answering my question, Mr. Oxley.”

     “OK. So maybe I overstated the facts with that assertion. But, at the time, I was relying on the information Mr. Wong and the rest of my staff provided. At the time that I said it, I believed it.”

     “To recap: Ruskjer never promised to make five percent. He only promised to pay five percent.” Loughman looked up to see if anyone objected to his last statement.

     “Which nicely segues into my final area of concern. Is it your belief, Mr. Oxley, that Ruskjer told his lenders he would only use loan proceeds to trade?”

     “He always showed them his Ameritrade account,” Oxley said. “They had every right to expect that that’s what he was raising money to do.”

     “That’s an interesting word you chose -- ‘right.’ Had you said, ‘They had every reason to believe,’ I might not quibble with you. But in the trial, one of your main planks was that lenders had a ‘right’ to say how Ruskjer used their money -- and that somehow they approved Ruskjer to use their money only to trade -- which happens to be the only thing he specifically told them he could not do for them. But according to you, they did not approve his use of their money to fund a language learning program.

     “Mr. Oxley, could you explain to me what, exactly, a promissory note is?”

     “It’s a legal instrument that quantifies the basic characteristics of a loan,” Oxley said.

     “And now I, too, can say we’re in agreement on something,” Loughman said.

     “Can a promissory note specify what the money being loaned is to be used for?” Loughman asked.

     “Of course,” Oxley replied.

     “So if it doesn’t specify what the loan is for  … ” Loughman prompted.

     “What?” Oxley said.

     “When you loan a bank money -- either via a savings or checking account deposit or by buying a CD -- is it your thought that you somehow have the right to dictate what they can do with your money?” Loughman pressed.

     “No, of course not,” Oxley said.

     “Then how do you defend your position that Ruskjer’s lenders somehow have that right?”

     “I didn’t say that. I said he never told them he was going to use their money for anything other than his stock program,” Oxley said.

     “But you did assert that he had some obligation to,” Loughman clarified.

     “I did at the time because I firmly believed -- and still do for that matter -- that he had the fiduciary duty to be transparent with their funds,” Oxley argued.

     “There you go again! Someone has a fiduciary duty if he's an officer of a company reporting to its owners, i.e., stockholders. Ruskjer never held himself out to be a brokerage firm. Quite the contrary, he specifically said he couldn’t be a broker because he didn’t have a license. Am I missing something here?” Loughman asked.

     “You may be technically correct,” Oxley acknowledged. “But he was effectively performing the same functions of a hedge fund or brokerage firm.”

     “If that were true,” Loughman said, “then his lenders would effectively be functioning as investors--”

     “Exactly my point!” Oxley chimed in.

     “And would suffer the same losses or benefits from the same gains Ruskjer did from his trades,” Loughman said. “Only they didn’t. They got five percent a month, regardless of Ruskjer’s trading performance.”

     “But Ruskjer couldn’t maintain that,” Oxley countered.

     “Perhaps you’d like to share your crystal ball with the rest of us,” Loughman suggested. “His language program had several interested parties.”

     “It never made a dime,” Oxley sneered.

     “Neither did Henry Ford -- right up until he started actually selling something. Would it surprise you to learn that the University of Phoenix was seriously interested? Ruskjer rewrote almost all of the code based on their spec and added Spanish solely as a response to their demands.

     “University of Phoenix’s parent company, Apollo, was seriously considering buying Ruskjer’s company outright, as is, for $20 million.

     “China Mobile was on board for services, in the form of one-minute English-learning podcasts to be delivered over the phone to bill out at US$1 a month, for which Ruskjer would get US$.43,” Loughman itemized.

     “All hype,” Oxley said. “You don’t know that.”

     “But we do. Apparently we did what you didn’t -- we checked,” Loughman said.

     “Fine. So he could get 43 cents a month. Big whoop,” Oxley said dismissively.

     “Well,” Loughman replied, “when you consider that China Mobile is the largest cell phone company in the world with more than half a billion paying customers -- and when you consider that more than seven percent of those surveyed said they would be willing to pay to learn English over their phones --

     “Let's see now -- seven percent of five hundred million is 35 million subscribers -- at $0.43 apiece?  Well that means the dollar value of your ‘big whoop’ comes out to roughly $15 million each and every month -- or, if you would prefer, more than $180 million a year.

     “If Ruskjer knew that when he said he was doing pretty good to your final witness, I would think the only thing you could accurately accuse him of was engaging in understatement,” Loughman taunted.

     “His own sales director said the program never worked,” Oxley retorted.

    “That would be the same witness that borrowed $150,000 from Ruskjer to buy an existing and presumably successful laundromat for his wife to run into the ground in less than a year, or, in the words of your business-savvy witness, ‘it didn’t work out.’

     “The same person who ran through another $100,000 in less than six months on one trip to China, ostensibly marketing this worthless wonder? But more to the point, the same person who, for more than three years, was actively marketing this failed product, presumably in good faith. That’s the witness you’re referring to?

     “But even if he was correct in his assertion that the program wasn’t viable -- which he’s not. Again, we checked -- the China Mobile deal did not rely on the website. It required Ruskjer to write copy and have it translated into Mandarin, then have a Mandarin voice read the final product. China Mobile was responsible for the computer end of things,” Loughman said.

     “And if you successfully demonstrated that Ruskjer did not have enough cash on hand to pay all his lenders all their money if they all called in their loans at the same time, he had more than enough equity in his language programs to pay everyone what they had loaned him every month -- just from one contract with China Mobile -- without ever having to market or sell his website or company.

     “I might add, if that’s your litmus test as to the viability of a company -- that it has, on hand, sufficient cash to pay all of its obligations on a moment’s notice -- virtually every bank in America would fail, as would most corporations, sole proprietorships and partnerships,” Loughman concluded.

     “Unless you can point to some other area we haven’t covered, I’d have to say my leanings would be to recommend to the president that he grant Mr. Ruskjer a full and unconditional pardon.

     “In not a single instance can I see even an innuendo of where Ruskjer attempted to deceive any lender or potential lender throughout the entire four plus years.”

     Both Oxley and Wong sat there in total silence.

     “And for the record,” Loughman said, “every person who served on the jury has written the president unanimously stating they too think that you, Mr. Oxley, lied to them, asking him to grant an immediate and unconditional pardon.”