I love this case for several reason but mostly because it exposes how Bachman is either knowingly corrupt, stupid, or both. Sure, its a measely $14,000, but the victims of the largest Ponzi scheme in US History, the Petters Ponzi, will get the money.
This Mother Jones article by Mariah Blake is a very well-written article that reads more like an FBI thriller movie script than the reality that is now disgraced Michelle Bachman.
Michele Bachmann Quietly Returns Campaign Cash From Notorious Ponzi Schemer
At the time, the Petters fraud, which brought in more than $36 billion over the course of a decade, was the largest known Ponzi scheme in US history. Its collapse would turn out to be spectacular.
The fallout from the scam moved through the Twin Cities like a slow-motion tsunami. Businesses went bankrupt. Charities slashed staff and walked away from half-built offices...Countless people also lost their homes or watched their retirement savings dry up. The tight-knit evangelical circles in which Vennes moved were among the most devastated. "If only a few had gotten hit, the faith community could have stepped in to help them," explains Carolyn Anderson, the attorney representing evangelical investors. "But everybody got hit. The safety net was ripped out."
There's no indication Bachmann knew about Vennes's ongoing criminal activity.
The money ex-con Vennes brought into Bachman's first run for Congress helped her win the election back in 2006.
I often wonder why church going people are so easily duped by criminal minds, especially those with prison records. It's as if they want to reward a criminal convert to their faith.
Frank Vennes had a jailhouse conversion and threw himself into studying scripture. After his release, he embedded himself in Minneapolis's evangelical community, with the help of his prison ministry friends. He eventually began soliciting private funding for a firm called Petters Company Inc. (PCI), which ostensibly bought overstocked electronics and resold them to big-box retailers at a profit. And he invited local pastors, churchgoers, and religious charities to invest. Vennes also helped set up a family of hedge funds that funneled more than $1 billion dollars into PCI—which, it turns out, was a Ponzi scheme.
Are they looking for easy money?
Do their pastors forget to remind their flocks that "If it's too good to be true, run the other way?"
In other news, CREW posts its Three Most Corrupt Congress members picks. Yes, Michelle tops the list.
View the most corrupt for 2013 here.
25% are Democrats, 75% Republicans.