Scumdog Billionaires: 2 More Hedge Fund Ponzi Schemes This Week

Chant with me, y’all:

 Pon-ZI! Pon-ZI! Pon-ZI! Pon-ZI!

Wait til you hear what these Pillars of Society were up to!

Prince Charming #1: Westgate Capital Management’s James Nicholson, had a fake accounting firm since 2004.  He set up a “virtual office” and had calls to this phantom auditor forwarded to himself!  In the meantime, he’d been preparing his own statements indicating to investors that he had up to $900 million under management.  The Department of Justice thinks he’s probably raised around $100 million from investors.   Here’s the punchline:  Nicholson hired Madoff‘s defense lawyer, Ira Sorkin, who’s fast becoming the Johnny Cochrane of Ponzi Schemes.

Prince Charming #2 & #3:  Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh were the owners of an institutional broker/dealer called WG Trading that had a knack for ripping off university endowments and charities like University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon.  Also nabbed yesterday was their alleged protege, Mark Bloom, who’s since set up his own baby ponzi called North Hills. Basically, this was a skim job complete with investments in a commodities trading pool and a luxury Manhattan apartment bought with OPM.  This one’s been ongoing since ’96 and may be as big as $550 million.

Welcome to Greenwich.  Check your common sense at the door and don’t worry about the lack of transparency or third party administrators.  What’s not to trust?

These guys are geniuses!  They have MBAs!  And it’s Connecticut!

Here’s the whole disgusting story on Bloomberg.  Read it and then go take a shower.

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