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> and the investors who lost out were big equity market players who really should have known better.

Why do you believe there are no mom-and-pop investors in Australia? What gave you that idea?

> He wasn't defrauding members of the public, all the relevant information is in the balance sheets

The balance sheets were cooked... as explained in the blog post! The strategy was to do whatever was necessary to show good numbers at a single moment in time (a balance sheet is a snapshot in time). To do this, they had to basically destroy future profitability while making it look like the forecast was exceptional. This wasn't incidental... this was a deliberate strategy to mislead the Australian public and con them into thinking that the company had a bright future.