Jones
Brendan Woods
991 303 007
October-04-12
SOCS10261G Scams Frauds Identity Theft Crimes of Deception in the Information Age - Term 1129, Class 75036

Earl Jones and the Ponzi Tragedy
Finances affect everyone’s life and the choices they make, increases and decreases of money are happing all around us in all of our everyday lives. There are several ways people make their income and people are satisfied with what they have, so we develop ways in order to gain more income and pleasure this need for money. There are many legal ways to do so, unfortunately for several people Earl Jones did not choose a legal path in obtaining his finances. Mr. Jones used an investment fraud referred to as the Ponzi scheme. It’s a scheme made
Jones said he would never forgive him for what he'd done. To say the least these victims will never get over this and they feel the 11 years in prison punishment for Earl isn’t just. "He ruins 100 lives and he'll be out on the street. I feel stunned. I'm still numb, and the justice system is incomprehensible. That man is a thief.” (Victim, Wendy Nelles, 2010). Criminal Bernard Madoff who used a similar Ponzi scheme to scam thousands of investors out of several billions of dollars, Earl only received a slap on the wrist compared to Madoffs life in prison sentence. The argument the public has with this is, they both ruined many lives and they were well aware of what they were doing so why are punishments different just because Madoff was a little more successful. Earl Jones chose to do this Ponzi scheme on the sociological theory of being an individual against other individuals. Not only did he succeed at gaining millions of dollars for himself, he also very easily took this money from the people who were the closest to him and trusted him the most. Bertram Earl Jones was a bad man who hurt many of the people who were closest to him. He came from a good place with people all around him who loved him, and he used those people for the better of himself. His