38

Chapter 0056 Fortune and Christmas Gifts

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Everything went pretty well on this trip to Eastern Europe.

When Ye Ting returned to Charles Murphy's home in New York again, nearly two weeks had passed since Christmas and his holiday was about to end.

The trip had been very rewarding for him; and after witnessing the fall of the Soviet Union with his own eyes, he joined the other Western financial institutions in feasting on the corpse of this giant for good measure.

His operation was not complicated, in the Soviet Union, disguising as Charles, he took out a large loan of rubles, about five million rubles or so, in a Soviet bank, using enough assets as collateral, agreeing to deliver it in dollars and then pay it back in rubles. Of course, in this case, he inevitably used a confusion spell and other special means; otherwise, as an individual, he would not at all be able to compete with those financial institutions in this regard.

Then he received about 5.5 million in cash.

The next step was to wait.

On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation from the presidency of the Soviet Union; on December 26, the Soviet Union was dissolved and the Russian Federation became the sole successor state of the USSR. All property, deposits, diplomatic offices, embassies, and consulates of the former Soviet Union abroad were taken over by Russia.

The Soviet Union broke up into 15 countries: the three Eastern Slavic States, three Baltic countries, three Central Asian countries, three Transcaucasian States, and Moldova.

An era came to an end.

After that, the ruble plummeted four or five times in response in a week, which means that today 5.5 million rubles are equivalent to more than twenty million rubles, and he only needs to take out five million to meet the repayment, leaving the rest as his pure profit.

This is like robbing a bank; no, robbing a bank is not as fast as this.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was left with an empty shell, which was not without reason.

The wealth accumulated by the Soviet Union over the decades was swept away by Western bankers.

If Ye Ting had enough time, he could have waited for a few more months. At that time, the inflation rate in Russia was as high as 2,000%, which meant that the 5.5 million US dollars he had would be equivalent to hundreds of millions of rubles in a few months, which he could have done.

Unfortunately, what he lacks is time.

However, the twenty-fold drop increased his harvest by a quarter, which is equivalent to about one million dollars. Although this money seems like a lot, today he has earned more than four million dollars, which is enough for him to spend for a while. There is no need to spend time and energy learning magic for this extra million.

Then again, he made a sweep through the Russian stores, which were out of money.

Due to the economic crisis, Russian luxury goods, crafts, and other industries are in a depression: people didn't even have money for food, where was the money for spending?

This made it cheaper for Ye Ting. He bought a lot of local items and souvenirs at a low price with his money.

After all, in this case, the dollar is more valuable than the ruble, and merchants would rather lose a little and receive dollars rather than rubles, which can depreciate at any time.

Now, Ye Ting, who returned victoriously, and Orianna cleaned up Charles Murphy's home, made some arrangements, and then poured the de-petrification potion into his mouth.

The poor Charles finally returned to his pre-petrified state, but he still didn't wake up. Before his petrification, he was hit by Ye Ting's coma spell, so it would take a while to wake up from the coma.

Taking advantage of this, Ye Ting fabricated a little memory of a vacation to Eastern Europe and stuffed it into Charles' head.

As these memories were taken from Ye Ting's personal experience, the authenticity was sufficiently enough. Then he cast a confusion spell, and a forgetfulness spell on Charles continuously. In this case, Charles will be confused and will become forgetful within a week, so that he would not have doubts about his memory fragments.

To add credibility, Ye Ting also put half a bottle of vodka and half-burned leaves in the living room, which was easy to get in America. He also left many Eastern European items for Charles.

When Charles wakes up, he will feel his memory is chaotic; with only some memories of traveling in Eastern Europe, combined with souvenirs, vodka, and leaves on his table, he would conclude that he did go to Eastern Europe for vacation. And after returning to New York, he drank alcohol and overdosed on leaves.

If he still wants to verify further, then his plane tickets, consumption records, records of small exchange rubles, etc. can prove that he did go to Eastern Europe - after all, these are the things that Ye Ting did with his face and identity, making it impossible to fake.

As for the mortgage and the shorting of rubles, because it was done completely in Soviet banks, there is no record on the New York side.

And Ye Ting had completely finished when he left Russia, unless Charles himself came to Russia in person, accurately found the bank, and checked the transaction in the bank's records, but all the people involved in the transaction were afterward put under an obliviation spell. So he would never know in his life that he had done such a big operation in Russia.

As for whether he would be targeted by the KGB, held accountable by the Russian government, or denied entry or whatever, it's none of Ye Ting's business.

...

…

When Ye Ting returned to Wool's Orphanage, it was only two days before the end of his vacation.

Returning to the orphanage and entering his familiar room, Ye Ting sighed for a moment.

Four months ago he was an ordinary person, looking forward to becoming a big entrepreneur and the richest man in the world.

But now, four months later, he had entered the other side of the world and became a real wizard.

Orianna looked around his room curiously, wanting to get a good look at the place where her dearest Father had once lived.

Himari, on the other hand, excitedly jumped around on the bed; she too also missed her former home.

Ye Ting found that his room had been filled with Christmas presents, almost all sent to him by his friends he had met at Hogwarts, and of course, his large fanbase.

Since Ye Ting had spent a lot of time reading in the library as well as the library in the Ravenclaw common room during his time at Hogwarts, everyone felt that books were the best gift for Ye Ting.

He had received about sixty books, and even the professors had sent him some advanced magic books, which were neatly stacked on the floor, and then twenty of them were books by Gilderoy Lockhart. It seemed that this guy had a knack for tricking little girls.

Most members of the fan club gave him chocolates and gift cards, which amounted to almost 200 chocolates, enough for him to eat for an entire year, and more than a hundred gift cards.

Of course, Ye Ting would never try to eat these chocolates, because maybe some chocolates had a love potion added to them. When he was injured and in the hospital wing, he received four or five chocolates that had love potions in them, but fortunately he did not eat one.

There are also other gifts, such as Roger gave him a statue of Alasdair Maddock, the ace chaser in the successful league team Montrose Magpies, and Roger's most admired player; Cho Chang sent him a set of Tutshill Tornado posters, she is a big fan of this team; Hermione gave him a shorthand quill; Penelope gave him a hand-knitted scarf, according to her roommate, she started knitting this scarf secretly a month ago; and Dumbledore sent him a packet of disgusting cockroach dumplings.

Seeing this unexpectedly large pile of gifts, Ye Ting is both happy and distressed.

The good thing is that he made a fortune in Russia and he bought enough items and souvenirs, and he would use all of these as a return gift.

In addition, these souvenirs can also be used as proof of his travels. He also found several unanswered letters from Cho Chang, Hermione, and Penelope in the pile of gifts. Thinking of the separation, they agreed to write to each other to keep in contact during the holidays. Ye Ting suddenly had a headache, hoping these souvenirs from Russia could calm their discontent.