The China Hustle Movie Script

They're these filings from the State Office of, uh... Oh, my gosh, can't believe I'm blanking on this.

State Office of, uh, Adminis-- State Administrative Office.

Is that right?

The interesting part here was that the filings in China tended to be very accurate or more accurate than the fictions that were filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In China, a company might accurately say they made $10 million, while in the U.S., they could report making $100 million or more.

These SAIC filings were dead reliable.

They showed exactly what was going on.

And this is-- this is the cultural difference, we can't find auditors in China that will help us, because let me tell you something, if we do find those people, the government of China will kill 'em.

I mean, they will take their ass out and shoot them in the f***ing head.

This was, from the beginning, a deception.

The purpose of it was to deceive, from day one, and we'd never really seen that at this scale in the United States market.

And that's probably why it took everyone by surprise.

That included Matt, and his reaction was telling, maybe it says something about human nature, about why we keep getting into these messes.

He realized that hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese reverse mergers that he'd sold were frauds, but he didn't react with shame, just pragmatism.

He wanted to make sure he got a piece of the ride down, so he switched sides and became a short seller, like Dan.

I-- I did it and made 78 percent in... four days.

Eventually LLEN collapsed.

For short sellers like Dan and Matt, the filings were the final piece of the puzzle-- not just evidence from one company or another but data from all the companies.

For the first time, they could see the full scope of the deception.

I don't know what the numbers are, but it's well into the billions of dollars that U.S. investors have lost.

$30 billion, I think the number was $30 billion.

- $20 billion.

- $50 billion.

It's between $20 billion and $50 billion of market capitalization of stock that's listed here in the United States that might be worth zero.

Individual mom-and-pop investors and mutual funds were invested in these Chinese companies, so it really does affect the average person on the street as well.