Ponzi Nation!

Do bad things really happen in threes? If so, maybe we'll be done with the emergence of Ponzi schemes for the time being.

Thursday brought news of not one but TWO new Ponzi schemes. The Securities and Exchange Commission, perhaps eager to get its reputation back on track after missing the Madoff affair, charged Joseph Forte, a Philadelphia fund manager, with operating a $50 million fraud.

Forte was a mini-Madoff, according to the S.E.C.'s complaint. He allegedly promised to invest money on behalf of investors, including friends and acquaintances, and instead he produced false statements showing consistent returns for ten years and gave their money to older investors. Sounds familiar!

The second Ponzi discovery of the day is even smaller, at $17 million, but the victims were mostly priests and other members of Catholic organizations. Richard Piccoli, an 82-year old "investor" from upstate New York, was charged by the U.S. attorney's office for operating a Ponzi scheme since 2004.

Of course, if bad things do indeed happen in threes, we will almost certainly have many more threesomes to report in the future. The S.E.C.'s enforcement division has uncovered many Ponzi schemes in recent years (just look at all the returns from a site search for Ponzi last year!).

We only seem to care now that it missed the biggest one ever.

by Megan Barnett