Another Ponzi scam - Texas this time

From the NY Times:

U.S. Accuses Texas Financial Firm of $8 Billion Fraud
In Texas, Robert Allen Stanford was just another wealthy financier. But in the breezy money haven of Antigua, he was lord of an influential financial fief, decorated with a knighthood, courted by government officials and basking in the spotlight of sports and charity events on which he generously showered his fortune. On Tuesday, his reign was thrown into turmoil as a caravan of cars and trucks with dark tinted windows carrying federal authorities pulled up to the Houston headquarters of his company, the Stanford Group, to shut down what the regulators described as a �massive ongoing fraud� stretching from the Caribbean to Texas, and around the world.

Unknown is the status of investments in as much as $8 billion in high-yielding certificates of deposit held in the firm�s bank in Antigua, which the Securities and Exchange Commission, in a civil suit, said Mr. Stanford and two colleagues fraudulently peddled to scores of investors.

Also unknown Tuesday were the whereabouts of Mr. Stanford � or Sir Allen, as he became known after the Antiguan prime minister knighted him � whose financial activities on the tiny island had raised eyebrows among American authorities as far back as a decade ago.

It always makes me wonder why people set up Ponzi scams in the first place. #1) - you will be caught as eventually, it will crumble and #2) - it is impossible to gracefully 'unwind' a Ponzi without anyone knowing about it as the majority of the money has already been used to repay early investors and to prime the pump for later ones. In other news, our own Ponzi practitioner, Wes Rhodes was sentenced today to ten years in the pokey with another three years probation. Not long enough for all the financial loss he was directly responsible for but a good start...