ac5cfc3f   
   XPost: alt.religion.christian.hypocrisy, alt.religion.christian.last-days,   
   alt.politics.economics   
   XPost: alt.politics.bush   
   From: perryneheum@hotmail.com   
      
   And you thought these secretive religi-freaks were honest brokers of   
   God's grace!   
      
   Wonder if Amish teen females wear thongs?   
      
   --------------------- "In an Amish village, the SEC alleges a Madoff-   
   like fraud"   
   By David S. Hilzenrath Washington Post Staff Writer   
   Thursday, February 17, 2011   
      
   The personal assets of Monroe L. Beachy, a 77-year-old Amish man,   
   included a horse, buggy and harness.   
      
   According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, his skills   
   included financial fraud. Beachy spent a quarter-century raising $33   
   million from more than 2,600 investors, the overwhelming majority of   
   them fellow members of the Amish community, which often shuns modern   
   conveniences such as automobiles.   
      
   But Beachy's investment approach allegedly had more in common with the   
   timeless methods of Charles Ponzi and Bernard Madoff than with the   
   sheltered village of Sugarcreek, Ohio, where he lived. When the SEC   
   charged him with fraud on Tuesday, it said he had lost nearly half of   
   his investors' money.   
      
   In a telephone call Wednesday, Beachy declined to comment in any   
   detail, saying, "My attorney advised me not to discuss it with   
   anyone." When pressed, he added, "Of course it was not intentional."   
      
   Beachy's lawyer did not return a call.   
      
   According to the SEC, Beachy started raising money as early as 1986.   
   He assured investors that they were earning money from safe U.S.   
   government securities, while enticing them with higher returns than   
   they could get from banks.   
      
   In an echo of Madoff's infamous Ponzi scheme, Beachy issued periodic   
   statements to investors showing the funds purportedly available to   
   them, including accrued interest, according to a court filing.   
      
   Starting with a 10th-grade education and some classes from H&R Block,   
   the tax-preparation company, Beachy built up such trust that Amish   
   parents encouraged their children to invest, too. The investors   
   included a school cookbook fund, a school capital fund and a Mennonite   
   church.   
      
   Along the way, Beachy became treasurer of the Amish Helping Fund, a   
   nonprofit that takes in money from investors and makes real estate   
   loans "in an effort to preserve the Amish way of life," the group said   
   in a court filing. Beachy put some money in the Amish Helping Fund,   
   which entrusted him with an even larger sum of $2.6 million.   
      
   Bankruptcy's revelations It all collapsed in the middle of last year   
   when Beachy filed for personal bankruptcy. It turned out that he had   
   been running a Ponzi scheme, a bankruptcy trustee alleged, and that he   
   had put the money into speculative investments such as stocks, mutual   
   funds and junk bonds.   
      
   As early as July 1998, Beachy was insolvent, but he continued to   
   solicit investments from new investors to repay earlier ones, the   
   trustee said. Though many Amish steer clear of modern technology, some   
   of the money Beachy raised ended up in dot-coms, which crashed in   
   2000.   
      
   In his bankruptcy testimony, he said that in hindsight, it was   
   possible that he "should have . . . shut down at that point." He said   
   a broker made the dot-com investments without his permission, but he   
   kept doing business with the broker. In trying to reconstruct what   
   happened, a bankruptcy trustee said that the records Beachy turned   
   over were "mutilated as a result of the removal or destruction of   
   discrete portions of the records dating to around the time of the   
   initial insolvency." When members of the community learned of Beachy's   
   insolvency, "everybody sort of stopped in their tracks and was sort of   
   shaken and taken aback," because the news was so at odds with Amish   
   tradition, said Emery E. Miller, a 51-year-old chicken and dairy   
   farmer who invested with Beachy.   
      
   But the more Miller talked about it, the more it became clear that his   
   dismay was not primarily over the loss of money or the allegation that   
   Beachy cheated members of his community. Miller worried about how the   
   "Plain Community," as the Amish call themselves, might be viewed by   
   outsiders.   
      
    And he lamented "that somehow the church community also failed in not   
   realizing what actually [was] going on." "I'm not hurting for my   
   money," Miller said. "I'm hurting for the fact that . . . what we as a   
   church are called to be, you know, has been tarnished."   
      
   For some investors, the collapse of the alleged Ponzi scheme has   
   brought hardship. A 76-year-old widow from Pleasantville, Tenn., sent   
   a handwritten letter to an ad hoc committee of Amish creditors, saying   
   she had been working hard to make a living without taking any money   
   from the government.   
      
   "I was putting what I could spare in the Amish Bank of Monroe Beachy,"   
   she wrote. Members of the Amish community have responded by making   
   charitable contributions for victims, and the Tennessee widow, who   
   said she had invested $4,327.80 with Beachy, expressed thanks for a   
   gift that was " greatly needed."   
      
   In another handwritten note, an investor from Baltic, Ohio, told the   
   creditors' group to use any money left in his account "for the people   
   who need it desperately." Church vs. court Much of the sour taste in   
   Sugarcreek over the scandal has resulted because Beachy took the   
   matter to bankruptcy court, contrary to religious precepts, instead of   
   resolving it within the community.   
      
   In piles of form letters, investors have asked the court to let them   
   address Beachy's debts in their own way because "participation as a   
   creditor is abhorrent to deeply held spiritual principles." The   
   committee of creditors, whose leaders include Miller, the dairy   
   farmer, has argued that forcing them to pursue claims through the   
   court would be a violation of religious freedom.   
      
   Bankruptcy officials have argued that it would be unconstitutional to   
   transfer the work of the court to Amish church leaders, noting that   
   some of the investors, who came from 29 states, are not Amish.   
      
   The SEC allowed Beachy to settle its complaint without admitting or   
   denying the allegations, and without paying a penalty. That was based   
   on his financial condition, the agency said. In a handout to investors   
   last year, the Amish creditors group said, "Members of the Plain   
   Community love and trust one another in all their relationships,   
   without the fear and suspicion commonly exercised to protect ones self   
   from being taken advantage of, financially or otherwise."   
      
   If the SEC is correct, that might have been what Beachy was banking   
   on.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)