But as well as contract padding, Angolans have lost out as officials seize state assets through rigged privatisations or rip off the public treasury in bail-outs of private companies.
We'd already resigned ourselves to getting ripped off on this day out, but at £18 for two Cokes, a sausage, chips and a fish we were already testing our generous budget, and we hadn't even hit any attractions yet. .
We'd already resigned ourselves to getting ripped off on this day out, but at £18 ($28) for two Cokes, a sausage, chips, and a fish, we were already testing our generous budget and we hadn't even hit any attractions yet.
But Mitch lingered for a week over Central America, ripping off roofs, washing out bridges and causing such flooding that mountainsides collapsed, burying whole villages.
There are a ton of rip offs out there.
Suppliers do not set out to "rip off" or "not deliver".
When a storm came, he would rip off his clothes and run out into the torrent in ecstasy.
As the mayor, silent and stoic as he had been throughout the trial, was taken off to the federal detention center in Philadelphia, Robert J. Cleary, the United States attorney, said, "Mayor Milan set out to rip off his constituents, but in the end, he will pay dearly for his crimes".
"It makes you almost want to go out and rip off all the 'Support Your Troops' bumper stickers," says Joe Davis, a spokesman for the 1.5 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars.
The nicknames that Goldman sharks tagged on their marks -- "muppets" and "hunting elephants" -- is reminiscent of Get Shorty and the Star Wars-themed nicknames that Enron crooks used as code for their swindles and "special purpose entities" (whose only "special purpose," it turned out, was to rip off employees, defraud investors and bilk consumers).
