Romney Family Investment Group Partnered With Alleged Perpetrators Of $8 Billion Ponzi Scheme

Thinkprogress is a source I have usually found reliable.
Recent research indicates that having wealth tends to decrease people's empathy and ethics. And it is obvious from many examples that lack of empathy and ethics can facilitate the accumulation of wealth.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/01/316040/romney-solamere-ponzi/?mobile=nc

By Lee Fang on Nov 1, 2011 at 9:30 am

Mitt Romney, his son Tagg, and Romney’s chief fundraiser, Spencer Zwick, have extensive financial and political ties to three men who allegedly participated in an $8.5 billion Ponzi scheme. A few months after the Ponzi scheme collapsed, a firm financed by Mitt Romney and run by his son and chief fundraiser partnered with the three men and created a new “wealth management business” as a subsidiary.

In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress, Tagg Romney confirmed their business relationship, but falsely claimed that the men were cleared of any wrongdoing associated with the Ponzi scheme. Tagg Romney told ThinkProgress that his three partners collected about $15,000 from their involvement in the Ponzi scheme. Court documents obtained by ThinkProgress show that the legal proceedings are ongoing and the men made over $1.6 million selling fraudulent CDs to investors.

.....

The revelation about Romney’s ties to the Stanford ponzi scheme unmask the risks associated with removing new investor protections. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law, a reform Romney says he will repeal if he wins the presidency, attempts to address future Ponzi schemes by enacting new protections for whistleblowers to alert authorities when they find evidence of fraud. The law also creates a new Investor Advocate and Investor Advisory Committee within the Securities and Exchange Commission to detect and investigate future Ponzi schemes.

Mike Hudson, a reporter with iWatch News and author of a new book about how predatory Wall Street practices created the financial crisis, told ThinkProgress that Dodd-Frank “could be a game changer that helps the SEC identify and shut down Ponzis and Ponzi-like schemes.” But on the campaign trail, Romney, a fierce critic of efforts to reign in Wall Street practices, has called new investor protections like Dodd-Frank “extraordinarily burdensome.”