YARS is right about what the wording tries to say. In “He and his pals have taken off with the cash.”, the word “the” was a poor choice. Grammatically, the word “the” refers to something in the previous paragraph, most reasonably “approx $25bn on those stock purchases”. But the “approx $25bn” is a loss, not a pile of cash available for taking off with. So, the word “the” is a reference without a target. It makes @AndyM’s meaning muddy. If @AndyM had said “their” instead, the wording would have been safer from the nitpickers. At least that is this software engineer’s view. Maybe an editor would have a more authoritative evaluation.