[fuzzfactor]

>Crooked or not I would expect anybody to be able to convince corporate level execs to invest millions would at least be able to sound like they know what they are talking about.

One of the most effective sales techniques is to sell the customer's own dream right back to the customer.

To qualify the prospects you need a marketing strategy that builds a pipeline of potential customers likely to possess the type of dream that you can work with.

Here there was no persuasive salesmanship needed to convince "investors", someone else had already done that in advance, or the customers had built interest on their own.

Sam was just there to use their money, and if a certain amount of losses were inevitable that was supposed to be overcome by greater amounts of gains in the long run. Skimming just a little bit off the top to where it's obscured by the noise of the losses is what lots of financial outfits have done for centuries. The higher-integrity firms have decades of experience carefully disclosing their terms for this activity to their customers, which is one of the reasons why more persuasive sales efforts might be a lot more common.

As soon as Sam started skimming without proper disclosure, that's what made it ordinary theft.