The $2,000,000 Grudge

Marcel Ermacora, 51, knows how to nurse a grudge. The son of a poverty-stricken Italian family, Ermacora served in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion and later developed a fierce resentment against his adopted country for abandoning its former colony. So when he went to work as an assistant accountant for the prosperous firm of Carel Fouche Languepin, manufacturers of railroad equipment, he decided to take his revenge. As he told a judge in Paris: "My company was a representative of French capitalism and as such responsible for abandoning Algeria."

To punish his firm, and by extension, French capitalism, he embezzled $40,000 his first year and steadily increased his take. In eight years, he relieved the company of about $2,000,000.

The mild-mannered accountant found it childishly easy. One of the company's suppliers was Marcel et Cie. When Marcel Ermacora typed out their checks, he banged hard on the "Marcel," holding back on the "et Cie." When the checks were returned with a company official's signature for payment, he merely typed his last name in and ran laughing all the way to the bank. It was the firm's bank that noticed the ever-mounting number of checks made out to him for large amounts. Realizing the firm was on to something, he fled the scene and hid for two months in a bordello in Paris' 16th Arrondissement before being arrested.

"I didn't take the money for myself," said Ermacora. He lived in a dreary third-floor walkup with his wife and son. "For 25 years," his wife said during his trial, "I have worn this 10-c- metal wedding ring."

Ermacora was less stingy with acquaintances or even strangers. A blind man in the Gare St. Lazare came in for a $10,000 windfall. A prostitute received $30,000 to buy an apartment for herself and her daughter. A tailor got an order for 25 suits, all picked up by men other than Ermacora; most found big-denomination bank notes tucked into the pockets. In all, his munificence came close to $700,000.

To be sure, Ermacora was not entirely altruistic. He readily admitted losing $1,300,000 on the horses. He even invested in a flashy $11,000 Ferrari 330 G.T., explaining that it "was just a condemned man's last cigarette. I knew I'd soon be arrested and would take the subways the rest of my life."

Said his lawyer, Jacques Isorni: "He saw himself as an avenger against a capitalist society that exploited people. [While] his acts were serious, his.motives were loftier." Retorting that swindling is swindling. Judge Max Trouiller saw to it that Ermacora would not ride the subways for a while, much less drive his Ferrari. He sentenced Ermacora to seven years in prison.

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