評論
打印
Everyone was dumbfounded. His legitimate business had flourished for 36 years, skilfully built up from trading over-the-counter penny stocks to a firm with 200 employees and a glassy Midtown office. He did not need the money. At his trial in 2009 he called his giant fraud a “problem”, something out of his control.
所有人都目瞪口呆。他的“合法生意”如火如荼地開展了36年，從買賣場外的低價股票到擁有200名員工、在市中心擁有一間高檔、氣派的公司，都是通過高深的手段建立起來的。他不需要錢。在2009年的審判中，他稱自己的巨額欺詐是一個“問題”，是他也無法掌控的問題。
But that hardly squared with a scam he had been conducting, in its tiniest details, since the 1960s.
但這與他自20世紀60年代以來一直在實施的騙局(哪怕是最微小的細節)并不相符。
And the scam itself did not fit with the Bernie his employees thought they knew, treating them in his quiet, fussy way like family;
而且，員工也不相信，他們認識的麥道夫會做出這個騙局，他對待員工如何家人一般，和藹又較真。
or whom his wife Ruth thought she knew, after 50 years; or with the industrious, outgoing student who had worked his way through college by installing lawn-sprinklers on the side;
就連相伴50載的妻子露絲也認為丈夫不是這種人；他曾是一個勤奮、開朗的學生，通過安裝草坪灑水器來勤工儉學；
or that affable guy at the country club who would softly suggest, over supper, that his closed fund might have room for just one more.
他還是鄉村俱樂部的那個和藹的家伙，會在晚餐時溫柔地建議，他的封閉式基金也許還能再“招新”。
Not being a man of many words, he said little to explain himself after his arrest. His talk of “torment” and “horrible guilt” was given short shrift by the judge, who sentenced him to the maximum possible, 150 years.
麥道夫話不多，被逮捕后很少為自己開脫。他所說的“內心折磨”和“可怕的罪行”也被法官忽視了，他被判了法律可能的最高刑期——150年。
His sorrow, the judge thought, was mostly for the more than $170bn in assets that were forfeited by court order: for the $7m Manhattan penthouse, the power boats, the private jet.
法官認為，他之所以難過主要是因為法院下令沒收了1700多億美元資產:700萬美元的曼哈頓頂層公寓、汽艇和私人飛機。
The accused himself remarked that the fraud had gone on and on because he could not accept the fact that for once in his life, he had failed. In other words, he could not bear to tell his clients that he was not a magician. So he ruined them instead.
被告自己說，欺詐行為一直在持續，因為他無法接受自己這輩子失敗了一次的事實。換句話說，他不忍心告訴客戶自己不是萬能的魔法師。所以他選擇毀了他們。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
