The defense said he knew little about the company's finances, while prosecutors made him out to be a shrewd schemer.
He was a parasite without servility, a sycophant without baseness, a shrewd schemer who was also a blunderer, and a sinner whose errors were, as one close to him observed, "full of wisdom".
Back in 1928, Dr Arthur Cramp was bemoaning fat cures as "shrewd schemes for fooling the overweight", yet even today you can buy slimming hologram bracelets, tights that melt your fat with crystals and fat-burning lipstick.
Far from being victims robbed of their tax dollars, the American public is essentially a winner in the bank rescue scheme – a shrewd investor who (involuntarily) played her cards right.
How do shrewd and sophisticated investors get taken by schemes that, when unearthed, read like utter absurdities?
When they discover that he has left everything to a bunch of monks, young Rinuccio (the appealing tenor Massimo Giordano), urges them to turn to the town's shrewdest citizen, Gianni Schicchi, who comes up with a scheme.
American citizen,' a shrewd manipulator of publicity whose ultimate goal is some scheme containing the most binding elements of Communism and Hitlerism".
He had portrayed himself as a shrewd manager whose investments were outstripping the market, but prosecutors said he was actually running a Ponzi scheme.
A small-time candy distributor in Kennett Square, Pa., he graduated to running a big-time Ponzi scheme in which investors were expecting foolproof returns said to be based on Burry's shrewd purchases of overstocked supplies from Hershey and others.
And the smooth-talking Mr. Leeresh can be just as shrewd as those scheming "Survivor" contestants.
