The canny cleaner was one of a number of people in Croatia, Germany and America to buy into Reebok days ahead of its takeover by rival Adidas.

But their winning streak came to an abrupt end after the American authorities had their accounts frozen and launched an investigation into suspicious trading in the firms’ shares.

Last week the authorities claimed to have solved the mystery of the smelly trainer trades when they arrested employees at two of the world’s most prestigious banks.

They said it was one of the most extraordinary insider-dealing scams of all time.

As well as high-flying bankers and Croatian cleaners, the scam involved forklift-truck drivers from Wisconsin, an exotic dancer from New York and even a film script written by one of the alleged perpetrators that spookily parallels the charges against them.

“This is one of the most brazen and pervasive insider-trading cases we have ever seen,” said David Markowitz at the New York office of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In court papers the SEC and FBI claim that Anticevic’s nephew, David Pajcin, a 29-year-old former Goldman Sachs bond research analyst, was the person really responsible for her sudden fortune.

The authorities claim Pajcin and fellow Goldman Sachs employee Eugene Plotkin, 26, made more than $6.7m after conspiring with Stanislav Shpigelman, an analyst in Merrill Lynch’s mergers and acquisitions department, on a series of insider trades.

Shpigelman, a friend of Plotkin’s from college, was introduced to Pajcin in November 2004 at a Russian bathhouse in lower Manhattan called Spa 88.

The authorities claim that the 23-year-old banker agreed to pass on advance information about deals that Merrill was working on in return for a percentage of any profits made by trading on the information.

The trio traded illegally in at least 25 stocks in one year and tipped off several individuals in America and Europe in return for a share of their profits, claim the authorities.

Monika Vujovic, 23, an exotic dancer from New York, was among those named. She, like Anticevic, allegedly had an account set up in her name by the defendants.

Shpigelman and Plotkin were suspended from their jobs last week and spent the weekend in jail. Bail has been set at $3m each. Pajcin was arrested and released on bail in November last year. He is co-operating with the authorities.

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