Where Madoff leads, others follow

Just when you thought all the rats had left the sinking financial ship, along comes another (at time of writing unconfirmed) fraud. That being said, this case is truly amateurish in scale compared to Herr Madoff, at a mere $8Bln. Why, that's a rounding error on Turbotax Tim's never-ending wave of bailout plans.

Step forward Sir (!) Allen Stanford, who is alleged by the SEC to have committed a multi-billion dollar investment scheme fraud. The US marshalls swooped in on Stanford Financial Group, and assets are being frozen.

Strange, as Stanford himself was relatively low profile until he decided to splash some cash in world cricket. A couple of english players were hired for million dollar rates - I hope they took it in advance.