Opinion
Around about now, Leo Gao is discovering the downside of living with - and off - a fortune of ill-gotten gains: you are condemned to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.
If gangsters and career criminals sleep well at night, it's because they employ well-armed and
broad-shouldered fellows in suits and dark glasses to protect their wealth. But Gao, who became an instant multi-millionaire when some (now very embarrassed) Westpac employee tapped the zero key two times too often while loading an overdraft, will be finding that sleep doesn't come quite as easily as it used to.
Of course, this may not have occurred to him at the time. The arrival of an unexpected $10 million in your bank account would presumably have a slightly compromising effect on your ability to make rational decisions (this is a supposition, of course; finding someone to confirm what it actually feels like would be a challenge).
Which of us has not fantasised about what we would do if we won one of those lotteries - they always seem to be in New York or Spain - where the prize is so big that they will only pay it out in $20m instalments? But then we come back down to earth.
Leo Gao will have to do the same thing, sooner rather than later, probably. The people looking for him are not going to give up. And he will come down to earth with rather a nasty bump.
