Restitution after a Ponzi scheme collapses

We’re continuing to play around with some questions in the law of restitution, which is the subject of a new book I’ve written. Here’s another. A Ponzi schemer takes $10,000 of my money and $10,000 of yours. Then he is caught. We gave him our money in cash, and he kept it separate. My money has all been spent. Your money is still sitting in a briefcase (or envelope) on his desk. Do you get all of your money back, or do we share it? The older rule was that you took all of your money back. The schemer never got good title to it (his title was “voidable”); so until your money gets mixed with someone else’s so that it can’t be identified, you can always reclaim it. This isn’t a question of what’s fair to me. The money is yours, and did not stop being yours when you were tricked into handing it over. More in the Washington Post here.