EconomicGreenfield

The Wall Street Journal has recently had two more articles concerning alleged Ponzi schemes.

The first is titled “Our Ponzi Nation: Florida Entrepreneur Hit With Charges.”

The second is titled “Alleged Ponzi In Colorado Has Shades of Madoff Affair.”

Also, there was an interesting story from April 17 titled “Report Says SEC Missed Many Shots At Stanford.”

I have been intermittently commenting about the growing number of investment frauds being uncovered.  Ponzi Schemes, although seemingly common, are just one form of investment fraud.

The main question remains how much investment fraud is still undiscovered?  As I commented in the March 7 post, “…I would say that there is much investment fraud still “out there” (i.e. yet to be uncovered) and the true figure will likely prove to be eye-popping.”

As well, I believe there are significant amounts of other fraud types still undiscovered, such as that at the corporate level.  This corporate fraud includes corporate accounting misrepresentation.  Of course, Enron remains the most famous example of corporate accounting fraud.

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SPX at 1186.69 as this post is written

I have been intermittently commenting upon the growing number of investment frauds being uncovered.   Those posts can be found under the “investment frauds” tag.

Here is yet another alleged Ponzi scheme as seen in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal article titled “SEC Charges Couple in Florida Ponzi Scheme.”

As seen in the article, this alleged scheme is stated at $135 million.

It is difficult to say how widespread investment frauds are and how much investment fraud is yet to be uncovered.

However, based upon a variety of factors I would say that there is much investment fraud still “out there” (i.e. yet to be uncovered) and the true figure will likely prove to be eye-popping.

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SPX at 1138.70 as this post is written

Occasionally I have written about investment frauds.  My last post on this topic was on November 27 and is found here:

http://www.economicgreenfield.com/2009/11/27/investment-frauds/

Here is a story from December 28 titled “Ponzi collapses nearly quadrupled in ’09″:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AP-Ponzi-collapses-nearly-apf-898755198.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode

While I find this article’s statistics to be of interest, I do not necessarily agree with some of its commentary.

Of course, there are many types and permutations of investment frauds, of which Ponzi schemes are just one type.

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SPX at 1132.99 as this post is written