The New York Times reports on a member of an Amish community in Ohio accused of running a Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme involving numerous fellow believers that wiped out 16 million dollars in savings:
But the most intriguing aspect of Monroe Beachy’s story is how different it seems from Bernie Madoff’s – and from almost every other story with a “Ponzi scheme” headline over the years.
While victims of Mr. Madoff’s fraud, like most Ponzi victims, condemned their accused betrayer in court as a monster, many of Mr. Beachy’s investors have said in court that it is more important to forgive him than to recover their money.
While the Madoff case and others like it have inevitably created conflict between longtime investors fighting to keep their fictional profits and more recent investors trying to recover lost principal, some Beachy investors urged that their own share of his estate should be given to those in greater need.
And while Mr. Madoff’s wife and sons instantly became social pariahs in Manhattan, Mr. Beachy’s wife and children remain at his farmstead here, living peacefully with their neighbors.
Read the article here.