Daniel Hopsicker - March 20 2009

Another owner of the flight school in Venice Florida that trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi to fly is in trouble with the law; current owner Arthur G. Nadel, 75, was arrested recently for running a Ponzi scheme which methodically looted investors in his Sarasota-based hedge funds of more than $300 million.

Nadel’s arrest marks the second time in recent years that the owner of Huffman Aviation, the FBO (fixed base of operations) at the Venice Airport has been involved in crimes traditionally associated with the Mob.

Ponzi schemes, of course, are a trademark Mafia specialty. So, too, is the crime of heroin trafficking in which previous owner Wally Hilliard was implicated.

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Victor Thorn - February 2009

Ponzi scheme financier Bernard Madoff should feel fortunate that he got nabbed when he did. Now under house arrest in his $7 million Manhattan penthouse, he could be lying in a pine box, six feet under if some of the people he crossed got their hands on him.

Former funds manager Harry Markopolos told a House Financial Services subcommittee on Feb. 4 that Madoff had cheated some extremely dangerous figures out of millions of dollars.

“Mr. Madoff was running such a large scheme of unimaginable size and complexity, and he had a lot of dirty money,” Markopolos testified. “Let me describe dirty money to you. When you’re that big and you’re that secretive, you’re going to attract a lot of organized crime money, which we now know came from the Russian mob and the Latin American drug cartel. When you’re zeroing out mobsters, you have a lot of fear. He could not afford to get caught, because once he got caught. . . .”

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