How Can One Million People Be This Dumb?

Ponzi scheme news was everywhere by January 2011.
Bernie Madoff and R. Allen Stanford were behind bars. Regulators had uncovered so many similar financial frauds it was starting to look like a pandemic. Even celebrities, including actor Kevin Bacon and former Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway, were fleeced.
How is it, then, that beginning in January 2011 an old multilevel marketing hack named Paul Burks of Lexington, N.C., was able to lure one million investors into what regulators now call a $600 million Ponzi scheme?
According to a civil fraud complaint that the Securities and Exchange Commission filed on Friday, Mr. Burks was able to accomplish all this in less than 20 months. This is nothing short of mind-blowing in an era when people should have known to keep their guard up.
Mr. Burks, 65 years old, isn't commenting. His Texas-based communications consultant, Clifton Jolley, said he has agreed to settle the charges without admitting nor denying the allegations, and that he is cooperating with a court-appointed receiver of his company's remaining assets.
Mr. Burks, who is alleged to have siphoned off $11 million from the scheme, agreed to relinquish his companies and pay a $4 million penalty. The SEC said Mr. Burks' companies were on the verge of collapse, and that the agency froze all of their assets in hopes of returning money to victims.

How Can One Million People Be This Dumb? | Fox Business