The global financial crisis has affected a wide range of investors. It has also exposed major frauds such as Bernie Madoff's alleged US$50 billion Ponzi scheme (Story: NPR).

Whilst the concept of a Ponzi scheme is relatively straightforward ( use new investors' money to repay old investors higher than average returns, keeping some back for lifestyle extravagances), in this case the targets were sophisticated corporate and charitable investors with huge amounts of cash.

In Australia, ASIC has been educating the public about Ponzi schemes for a while.

It will be interesting to see whether the US regulators or the investors were both at fault as well as Madoff.