It's a Saturday afternoon in January and I'm standing here at the corner of Myrtle and Classen Avenue in Brooklyn at a Sitco gas station.

It's very cold outside, about 23 degrees, Fahrenheit. There's a lot of snow piled up around and it's pretty busy now.

There's one, two, three, four, I think five cars getting gas. Zico is the brand that's known for the sign with the bright red triangle.

I'm looking at one right now. Next to ads for the New York Lottery and Nathan's famous hot dogs.

There's about 4,000 of these Sitgo gas stations across the U.S.

While these stations are run by independent owners, the brand is part of an even larger business that includes three major refineries in Louisiana, Texas, and Illinois.

Now, the reason I'm here is because Sitgo is in the middle of being taken over by a hedge fund.

The fund hopes this $8 billion deal will be a massive windfall.

But there's a big hitch.

Sitko's owner is Venezuela.

And if you've been following the news recently, it means that things are likely to be very complicated.

I'm Mikala Tendera from The Financial Times.

Today on Behind the Money, how Elliott Management's $8 billion oil bet became entangled in U.S. Venezuela geopolitics. So Elliot is a hedge fund unlike any other.

That's my colleague Kostas Morcellus, who covers hedge funds for the FT.

He's talking about Elliott management, the firm at the center of this story.

Elliot basically say when everyone else is running away from a situation, we run towards it because that means that there's opportunity.

It's about getting in there, becoming an important party that has a seat at the table,

and controlling situations so that you eventually make money out of it.

Control. That's a key part of Elliott's strategy.

And a lot of where that comes from is the fund's founder, Paul Singer.

Singer began his career as a lawyer.

After attending Harvard Law School, he spent a handful of years practicing the law before he decided to pivot to investing full-time.

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