万花筒 2011-08-22&08-24 黑客送你10亿美元

 Otelo Vizcaino got this surprise of his life when every penny to his name and every bit of credit he had was suddenly frozen. 

 

On the way to work, I stopped to put gas in my car and my card didn't work. 

 

Vizcaino was the webmaster for "Ripley's Believe it or Not" and has seen some pretty unbelievable things. But what happened to his SunTrust checking account was truly beyond belief,

 

It was one penny short of a billion dollars that had been wire transferred into the account and then of course the next transaction was the withdrawal¹ of that money. 

 

Vizcaino's bank record shows that someone hacked² into his account and made an almost one-billion-dollar deposit which they quickly tried to withdraw. The large sum triggered the bank's fraud alert, which is why all of Vizcaino's assets were frozen and the FBI called in. For a dad of six kids to lose all access to his money was a big problem. 

 

So this is, you know, you can't access anything, everything is, you know, frozen. You can't get to any money, you can't write any checks. 

 

Fortunately, after several days of investigating, Vizcaino has been told his accounts will soon be unfrozen. But meantime, his banker had to sign an affidavit³ assuring the FBI that Vizcaino was not involved in Russian money laundering⁴. 

 

Meantime his co-workers find it ironic⁵ that a man who specializes in the unbelievable was a billionaire for a minute. 

 

We should tell the PR department, you know, it is a believe it or not. You are a Ripley's Believe It or Not employee.

1 withdrawal   

n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销

参考例句：

• The police were forced to make a tactical withdrawal.警方被迫进行战术撤退。
• They insisted upon a withdrawal of the statement and a public apology.他们坚持要收回那些话并公开道歉。

2 hacked   

生气

参考例句：

• I hacked the dead branches off. 我把枯树枝砍掉了。
• I'm really hacked off. 我真是很恼火。

3 affidavit   

n.宣誓书

参考例句：

• I gave an affidavit to the judge about the accident I witnessed.我向法官提交了一份关于我目击的事故的证词。
• The affidavit was formally read to the court.书面证词正式向出席法庭的人宣读了。

4 laundering   

n.洗涤（衣等），洗烫（衣等）；洗（钱）v.洗（衣服等），洗烫（衣服等）( launder的现在分词 )；洗（黑钱）（把非法收入改头换面，变为貌似合法的收入）

参考例句：

• Separate the white clothes from the dark clothes before laundering. 洗衣前应当把浅色衣服和深色衣服分开。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He was charged with laundering money. 他被指控洗钱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 ironic   

adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的

参考例句：

• That is a summary and ironic end.那是一个具有概括性和讽刺意味的结局。
• People used to call me Mr Popularity at high school,but they were being ironic.人们中学时常把我称作“万人迷先生”，但他们是在挖苦我。