Scott Rothstein was a special kind of Ponzi schemer. Unlike Bernie Madoff or Allen Stanford, who mostly hurt individual investors, the 49-year-old Rothstein sucked in a billion dollars from sophisticated investors—including New York hedge funds that employed the well-known detective firm Kroll and an onsite inspector at Rothstein’s Fort Lauderdale law firm, from which he sold discounted legal settlements with annualized returns as high as 437%. Sadly, the settlements didn’t exist. Read more in Barron’s here.
