Inventor of the Ponzi scheme Charles Ponzi would have been proud of Monroe Beachy. Armed with classes from H&R Block and a tenth-grade education, 77-year-old Monroe Beachy quietly built up a $33-million-dollar financial empire by taking investments from his fellow Amish, but unfortunately for Beachy his investing skills are not nearly as good as his carpentry and butter-churning skills, and the Securities and Exchange Commission says Beachy was running a scam, using money from new investors to pay the older ones.
Yup, Monroe Beachy is the Amish Bernard Madoff. Sure, Beachy had simple goods, like a buggy, a house, and a horse, but he is just as guilty as the high-living Madoff of fraud. Beachy ended up losing at least half of the money he’d been collecting from individual investors and small churches and schools. Rather than using safe investments like he told contributors, he was putting things into speculative stocks and losing millions, only to turn around and collect money from new investors to keep paying off the old.
Tags: Monroe Beachy, Amish Bernie Madoff, Securities and Exchange Commission, Sugarcreek, Ohio, Ponzi scheme, Amish Ponzi scheme, unusual criminals, financial crimes, Ponzi scheme, Amish investment criminal, Amish man running a fraudulent investment ring, Amish criminals