FBI: Crackdown on The Chicago Boys

An undercover FBI sting rounds up evidence of widespread fraud in the city's freewheeling commodities markets

In the controlled chaos of Chicago's commodities pits, there is no time to reflect, only time to react, to buy when the market heads north, to sell the instant it flounders. Thus the busy traders never really stopped to wonder about the unusual behavior of several new colleagues who regularly lost thousands of dollars but kept coming back for more, day after day for two years. Tom Hicks, a trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, remembers one in particular named Peter Vogel: "He was real clean-cut -- wing tips, clipped hair, tie always knotted tightly. He didn't dress like the rest...

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