Participants in the Madoff investment scandal Stanley Chais, a philanthropist who invested heavily with Mr. Madoff, and Carl J. Shapiro, one of the money manager's oldest friends, are among at least eight Madoff investors and associates being scrutinized by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. Prosecutors are continuing to probe Madoff family members and employees. Others include: Frank Avellino, a Florida accountant who ran an investment fund that invested client money; Noel Levine, a real-estate investor who works out of a two-room office on the 17th floor, next door to Madoff's fraudulent investment operation, and Palm Beach investor Robert Jaffe, a son-in-law of Mr. Shapiro who
Caritas (Ponzi scheme) An estimate of Romanian newspaper "România Liberă" gives the amount of money involved as 1.4 trillion lei or about 20% of the 1993 expenditures of the Romanian government of 6.6 trillion. "The New York Times" estimated the scheme attracted between $1 billion and $5 billion. The Romanian government banned pyramid schemes only after Caritas went bankrupt. The government received warnings about the scheme from several sources, included the Romanian Intelligence Service, which wrote a report in early 1993 (leaked to the press) and from Daniel Dăianu, the chief economist at the National Bank, who called it a fraud. As president