Lehman stood to earn a hefty fee for advising Dynegy to buy Enron, until Dynegy withdrew its offer.

Dynegy Inc., which once tried to buy Enron and is now trying to withstand its own wave of scandals, has been more forthcoming than most.

We sent our money to Wall Street stockbrokers we'd never met, believed everything they told us, bought Enron at $80, and now it's worth nothing.

Dynegy said it was owed about $75 million on trades, $25 million more than two weeks ago, when it agreed to buy Enron.

Some investors would say none of that matters now, that the only important fact is that Dynegy is buying Enron anyway.

And it may end up buying Enron, too.

The small internal domestic equity fund also bought Enron, raising its stake from zero at midyear 1999 to 710,740 shares worth $32.8 million a year later.

"There is a willful cognitive dissonance with investors buying Enron knowing full well that they have no idea what's behind those numbers," he said.

Its shares are trading below their levels of early November, when speculation that Dynegy might buy Enron began.

Last month, ChevronTexaco injected $1.5 billion into Dynegy as part of Dynegy's failed effort to buy Enron.