A few thousand? Try over $20K.
Contrary to common belief, Nian (and the others like him - **P, A****S, W*****m, M********r, etc..) are not manufactors of these raw materials and they do not have unlimited access to quantities from the manufactors they do business with. They are alloted a maximum quantity of raws per quarter. That doesn't mean that they can get XXX amount from Manufactor 1, and then go get XXX amount from Manufactor 2, etc.. they are only allowed to possess a total of XXX amount of each compound per quarter no matter who they use to supply them. When a distributor goes over that quota... well if anyone remembers last summer when Nian set fire to his office after getting hit with that surprise audit.... that should tell you something.
When the remailer ran off with the product, Nian decided to fill all the orders himself. But to do so, he had to make the finished product again that Nian Performance was selling. In order to do that, he had to use his own powders from Nian Labs to make that. So it was a Catch-22. He couldn't sell raw product because he had to use his limited supply that was on hand to make finished product for people that had purchased and were waiting.
Which in the long run was the honorable thing to do, however that doesn't excuse his complete lack of email communications.
