«Русский Горизонт» is invented, but the structure Zhorik describes, a chekovyi investitsionnyi fond («check investment fund,» CIF) accepting privatization vouchers or cash in exchange for shares promising absurd dividend rates, was a real and staggeringly common feature of the Russian financial landscape in 1993. Hundreds of such funds sprang up during the voucher privatization period, most of them functioning as textbook Ponzi schemes: early investors paid out of later investors’ deposits, no underlying business generating anything close to the promised returns. The most infamous example, Sergei Mavrodi’s MMM, wouldn’t launch its television advertising blitz until 1994, but by the summer of 1993 the underlying mechanics, dividend guarantees in the hundreds of percent, deliberately obstructive withdrawal procedures, figurehead directors insulated from liability, were already common knowledge among anyone paying attention, exactly the playbook Zhorik is running here almost a year ahead of the country’s most notorious version of it.