THE list of individuals brought to trial for their part in the financial crisis is short. The list of big shots is non-existent. So it is the odd fate of Fabrice Tourre, once a mid-level employee at Goldman Sachs and now known as “the fabulous Fab”, to be a symbol of Wall Street greed.

Mr Tourre’s civil trial on charges of defrauding investors began on July 15th. There is no dispute that, in exchange for a $15m fee to Goldman, Mr Tourre helped Paulson & Co, a hedge fund, create a complex security named Abacus out of mortgage-backed bonds in order for the fund to profit from an anticipated collapse in the housing market. For Paulson it was a spectacular success; for those on the other side of the trade, not so much.

The legal issue at the heart of the case, which is being brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is whether the three investors that suffered losses—two banks and a mortgage-evaluation firm—understood the role Paulson played in the construction of a security it hoped would implode. The nine jurors will not be told that Goldman paid $550m to settle all charges related to Abacus in 2010. Their task is to judge whether fault lies with Mr Tourre.

Mr Tourre’s attorney, Pamela Chepiga, quickly tried to set aside the infamous e-mail that gave Mr Tourre his nickname. The message, written in English and French to a girlfriend, referred to the fragility of financial markets, and to the “seul survivant potentiel, the fabulous Fab…standing in the middle of all these complex, highly levered, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of those monstruosities [sic]!!!” That e-mail had no direct connection to the Abacus transaction, argued Ms Chepiga. Its redacted form leaves out several disclaimers, notably the parenthetical phrase “even though there is nothing fabulous [about] me”.

The early testimony contained few surprises. A former Paulson employee, Paolo Pellegrini, testified that even getting a meeting with a firm willing to take the other side of a bearish trade on the housing market was hard. Paulson failed to enlist several banks before Goldman was able to line up clients. Even then an independent “portfolio selection agent” had to be included in the deal to reassure buyers about the value of the securities being used. Ultimately a company named ACA agreed not only to vet the selection of securities but to invest in Abacus as well. The SEC contends that ACA was misled about Paulson’s involvement. Nonsense, says Ms Chepiga.

Watching on is Mr Tourre, now a graduate student in economics at the University of Chicago. Having seen first-hand how markets work in practice, he presumably now wants to know how they work in theory.