He read the abstract, the roadmap graphic, and the team page, where four of the six headshots were plainly the same stock man photographed from different angles. Sixty-one, orthodontist, Bethesda, a practice with his name on the door since 1994. He told his wife over dinner that he had done the research. The document was thirty-two pages. His scroll position, had he checked, sat at four percent.

He wired $180,000 on a Saturday and later called that due diligence, because he had waited a full week to do it. What convinced him was not the math, which he could not follow, but the fact that he could not follow it and had been let in regardless. He forwarded the whitepaper to his brother-in-law with the note "read this." Neither of them ever did.