A former colleague was engaged in an ugly and contentious negotiation. The counter-party started making personal attacks, but my old colleague needed to close the deal nonetheless; he couldn’t walk away.

So he inked the contract. And he wired the contractually stipulated $100,000. But, in the memo field for the wire, he wrote: “Declare the diamonds at the port.”

For the next year, the recipient was hounded and audited by essentially every finance, banking and customs body in the US government.

Touché.