by GIDEON GINRACHMANJINJa-VITUS, Alternate Reality News Service Economics Writer
According to his lawyer, Harunder Majrenkoi, CEO of International Local Industries Unlimited Ltd., is not responsible for the stock losing 99.347 per cent of its value over the last 11 quarters.
"Harunder couldn't have been responsible," Samantha Meerkat said. "He's been dead for six years."
DNA tests of skeletal remains accidentally found in the legal department of the corporation (apparently nobody in management ever went into the legal department and the lawyers who worked there were used to much worse smells) confirmed that they belonged to Harunder Majrenkoi.
Of course, this begs the question - well, not so much begs as gently pleads or perhaps quietly and in a dignified manner asks for consideration of - yes, that's it - of course, this quietly and in a dignified manner asks for consideration of the question: who has been running International Local Industries Unlimited Ltd. for the past six years? And, this begs - well, not so much begs, but there isn't a term that captures the urgent neediness of the attitude with which the question needs to be posed, so we will have to settle for that word - the further question: what did that person do with Majrenkoi's substantial earnings during this period?
The answer to the first question: Majrenkoi's personal secretary, Marianas Tranche. "I don't deny that I've been running the company, pretending to be Harunder Majrenkoi," Tranche stated in a written...document. "And, I was getting an average return of over 30%, almost twice what Majrenkoi had gotten in the previous decade. Everybody was happy. I could have kept going for years if I hadn't invested so much of our cash reserves in AIG - bastards!"
Tranche got away with it for as long as he did because Majrenkoi communicated almost entirely by Twitter; he was a well known agoraphobic who only appeared in public for weddings, bar mitzvahs and Jimmy Buffett concerts. Tranche motion captured actors making speeches at shareholders meetings, then added Majrenkoi's face and voice.
"James Cameron was a consultant," Tranche proudly explained. "I had to scale back some of his most...excessive CGI plans. Still, it was good enough to fool the shareholders - thank goodness none of them had ever seen Terminator 2!"
Tranche's ruse was nearly exposed three and a half years ago thanks to a strange sequence of events involving seven hairy llamas, the world's largest hot tub and the entire cast of the Des Moines Dinner Theatre's production of Annie Get Your Gun. However, the events are so unlikely that readers wouldn't likely believe them, so they will not be described in this article.
Tranche is not suspected of foul play. The Coroner's report said Majrenkoi died of a massive brain hemorrhage brought on by trying too hard to make sense of David Lynch's Inland Empire. However, Tranche has been charged with 1,278,456 counts of xtreme identity theft.
As for the question with the urgent neediness that is close enough to begging without actually being begging? According to Florentine accountant (just as good as a forensic accountant, but also able to make a mean fettuccini) Bradford Queal, Tranche did not keep the money for himself.
"Tranche got himself a few small trinkets," Queal stated. "A basso harmonium, a lifetime subscription to the Girls with Eyepatches Web site, that sort of thing. Kinky with an odd taste in music, but not terribly extravagant."
So, where did the money go? Don't make me beg the question, because -
"Tranche gave it to people who had lost their jobs," Queal said. "Over 200 jobless people were each given $20,000 a year for the six years he was in charge of the company."
"I had always heard these stories of people whose grandmothers had died, but they hid the death so they could keep collecting pensions or social security or whatever," Tranche explained. "And, I thought, helping only one person in this way? Really? Don't you people have any ambition? Of course, this was when the market was booming and everybody was encouraged to think big."
Police are not releasing the names of the people who received the money, but one, Tajuana Izetta, has come forward. "I'm a single mother with three children," Izetta told a world weary but teary eyed group of reporters. "I had just lost my job as a waitress in the shipping department of Toys 'R Us. So, when Marianas told me I had just won a sweepstakes, I didn't question him too closely. The fact that he had trouble naming the sweepstakes? Or, that I didn't remember ever entering a sweepstakes? I really didn't question him. Let's just leave it at that, okay?"
Police issued a hasty statement calling on people not to romanticize Tranche's actions. In part, the statement read: "Marianas Tranche is not a hero. Don't imagine Johnny Depp playing him in a movie about his life. Don't imagine the thrills of the times he almost gets caught. Don't imagine his doomed love for a single mother he helps, or the relationship he forges with her precocious but ultimately loveable children or...or...
"Umm...excuse me. I have to call my agent."