Yet Another Senior Citizen Charged In Ponzi Scheme

Is it mere coincidence? Or is “Ponzi scheme operator” so lucrative that people made it a secret career choice years ago and are being outed because of the shrinking economy?

Another senior citizen has been charged in a Ponzi scheme, and this time it’s a woman. Judith Zabalaoui, 71, is accused of an elaborate scheme in which she set up fraudulent investment companies, used UPS stores to trick customers into thinking they were brick-and-mortar firms, created “fictitious employees” and spun a web of deception for years, prosecutors said.

The UPS stores were in Colorado and Delaware, but Zabalaoui ran the scheme out of Alabama and Louisiana, prosecutors said. To pull off the deception, she called UPS mailboxes “suites,” and promised investors “guaranteed” returns of up to 26 percent.

Zabalaoui took in at least $3 million in the scheme. (Read details at Ponzi News.)

Here are the names of several other seniors implicated in recent Ponzi schemes:

• Bernard Madoff, 70.
• Arthur Nadel, 76.
• Richard S. Piccoli, 82.
• Ronald Keith Owens, 73.
• James Blackman Roberts, 71.
• Andy Bowdoin, 74.

Another Ponzi News story you might want to check out involves Robert Miracle. Prosecutors said he dummied up his business résumé, wooing fraud victims by claiming he’d once been employed at NASA and Disney.

Call him a space mouse — one who took in $65 million, prosecutors said.