General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Mitt and Tagg Romney implicated in a $8.5 billion Ponzi scheme [View all]On the Road
(20,783 posts)it sounded like an attempt to drum up some kind of innocent "connection," but it looks like this news might have legs.
The big question is: at what point did Mitt or Tagg Romney know that the fund was a pyramid scheme, whether legal or illegal?
One would think that investing in a pyramid scheme is in itself incriminating, but this is not necessarily true. Early investors often make money on pyramid schemes. Some but not all are in on it beforehand. It would appear that Tagg Romney put in $10M and took out $11M (including the original principal) before the fund collapsed. This is not what one would expect from an accomplice in a scheme where $7B went missing. On the other hand, if it was a good long-term investment vehicle, why take the money out at all?
Stanford International Bank sounds like it might have worked the same as Bernie Madoff's fund, which reported high investments even though there were no actual investments -- Madoff simply wrote dividend checks off the principal. As far as I know, Madoff kept the illegality of his fund very close to the vest -- for example, there is debate about how much even his wife knew.
This particular article is not well written but there is ample room for questioning and investigation here. A lot more has to be established. Regardless of what happened, it is the kind of story that reinforces the view of Romney as a predatory capitalist.