get-along-little-doggy virtuosity needed to rustle a herd that size in Albanian traffic. “No, no, no,” said Elmaz. “They could never steal so many cows in 1997.” “How come?” “Because they were all stolen in 1992 when communism ended.” How could mere confidence games lead to total havoc? And why did pyramid schemes run completely out of control in Albania? It took about an hour to find out. Elmaz drove me to see Ilir Nishku, editor of the country’s only English language newspaper, The Albanian Daily News. “Why were the pyramids so popular in Albania?” I asked Nishku. “Were people just unsophisticated about money after all those years of communist isolation?” “No,” said Nishku, “there had been pyramid schemes already elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and they had collapsed before the Albanian ones were started. People in Albania knew about such things as the failure of the MMM scheme in Russia.” “Then how did so many Albanians get suckered in?” I asked. And the answer was simple. “People did not believe these were real pyramid schemes,” Nishku said. “They knew so much money could not be made honestly. They thought there was smuggling and money laundering involved to make these great profits.” The Albanians didn’t believe they were the victims of a scam. They believed they were the perpetrators—this being so different from the beliefs of certain Wall Street bull-market investors in the United States. “My family had two thousand dollars in the pyramid schemes,” said Elmaz. It was their entire savings. Nishku told me the first Albanian pyramid scheme was started in 1991 by Hadjim Sijdia. Sijdia Holdings offered 5 percent or 6 percent interest per month, 60 percent to 72 percent a year—way too much, especially considering that Albania was then in a period of low inflation. But Sijdia Holdings had some real investments, and although Hadjim Sijdia was jailed in Switzerland for fraud, he managed to get out and somehow repay his debts. Following Sijdia Holdings, however, came schemes with a primary business of scheming. There were about nine large pyramids in Albania. Three of them—
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