BY RON ENCRYPT, BANKRUPTCY CORRESPONDENT

“DUDE, NO ONE looks for profit now. It’s all about growth. You just keep growing the business and the share price will follow the growth: and that’s where the money is. Profit is yesterday’s honey.”

Sam Rentfree-Hype, who is serving fifteen life sentences for fraud, spoke to us from his cell in Michigan, while he drew up plans for his latest on-line business venture. “Prison is no longer an impediment to wealth,” he commented. “I make more money in here than I ever did with my other interests. Soon I’ll own the company that runs this facility. Prisons are a growth industry, believe me.”

Rentfree-Hype made his name and his original fortune with a crypto hedge fund named F U, that went spectacularly bankrupt when a college basketball game he had placed the company’s entire holdings on failed to end in the fashion he had predicted.

“One of the competition had gotten in ahead of F U and after the defeat, investors began to demand their money, which, of course, was no longer there,” says Dermot Fineprynt an investigative journalist who followed Rentfree-Hype from a small Caribbean island to an even smaller jail cell during the entrepreneur’s descent. “Hero to zero in five years.”

The fate of Sam Rentfree-Hype is increasingly becoming the fate of American business. “Profit is secondary,” insists Fineprynt, “if it even matters any more. The key to success now is in the share price. You do whatever it takes to get that up, then you sell out and leave the last row of suckers to explain the empty hole. With online companies, this means subscribers. You could be losing a billion a quarter but if your subscriber numbers are increasing, then your share price will rise.”

“Sure, it makes no sense,” admits Rentfree-Hype. “Get rich quick schemes hardly ever do. But they’ve never been more popular. I just meet the demand that’s out there. I guess people want a little hope.”

Phil Jordan, a psychologist, agrees with the convicted fraudster. “The sheer disparity in wealth in modern America means that ninety five per cent of the population haven’t a hope in hell of being as rich as the richest five per cent. Fraudulent Ponzi Schemes give them an opportunity, no matter how small, of getting wealthy. Like the lottery. It’s fantasy. But when reality sucks, fantasy is all most people have.”