Account 88888

What actually happened

Leeson's reported profits made him a star; the reality accumulated in 88888, papered over with forged confirmations and funding requests London kept wiring. The Kobe earthquake in January 1995 moved markets against his doubled-down positions faster than the fiction could absorb. Final losses reached about £827 million.

He fled, faxed his resignation ('my sincere apologies for the predicament that I have left you in'), and was arrested in Frankfurt. The Bank of England's report read less like a fraud story than a controls autopsy: nobody had ever separated the man who made the trades from the man who reported them.

ING bought Barings for £1. Leeson served four and a half years in Changi and has spent the decades since as the cautionary tale on the conference circuit.

The play to remember

Whoever reconciles their own trades has no supervisor, only a delay. Segregation of duties is boring right up until it's £827 million.