Fraud

I said I was sorry for what I’d done. I said it in front of the judge, I said it to Mom and Dad. I said it to the people whom I worked for and with — lots of them — in individual letters. But of all the lies, that was the biggest one.

They said I had ‘ripped off’ the company I worked for and the people who invested in it and lived the high life on the sweat of their labor. But it wasn’t real, it was all funny money, generated between the zeros and ones in some computer chip. And I didn’t really hurt anyone. It’s not like I took a knife and slashed someone. I’m not that kind of criminal.

What I did do was have a lot of fun, live the high life and brush shoulders with people who know how to enjoy themselves and get the best out of life. I had to make up a few excuses about where the money came from; the big windfall from a distant relative from back in the home country. Yeah, I’d been their favourite and yes, I’d been very, very lucky. People on the high rungs of the ladder don’t worry too much about catching other people out, as long as it’s not their moolah being threatened. My workmates sometimes expressed surprise that I chose to work when I could just be living on the pig’s back with no responsibilities. I told them I liked it because it kept me real, kept my feet on the ground.

I have so many stories now; the people I met, the places, the houses, the things I saw — that I was allowed to see — because I was ‘one of them’. I had no worries to drag me down, to make me careful to be tucked up in bed by a certain time. I saw more sunrises in that…