Watch Out, They Bite!

How hedge funds tied to embattled broker REFCO used "naked short selling" to plunder small companies

Thomas Badian was expecting a package, just not this one. Standing in his doorway, smiling, he opened the envelope a courier handed to him. Then he froze, and the color drained from his face. It was over: after two years overseas, the former New York City hedge-fund operator had been located. Badian slammed the door of his posh Vienna, Austria, apartment in the heart of the city's embassy quarter--but not before being officially served with a civil lawsuit linking him to the beleaguered U.S. commodities firm Refco and tying him and Refco to a type of fraud that some argue has...

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