China debuts... "Museum Ponzi"

An interesting bit of news from China... Apparently they created a new subcategory of Ponzi... the museum Ponzi.

In LiaoNing, someone related to a local official operated a private museum with what was reputedly a sword that belong to a famous Qing Dynasty emperor Chien-Long, and tons of other artifacts (none of which had been officially authenticated, AFAIK) and they got many locals to invest large amounts of money to acquire even more artifacts, with promise of large profits. Apparently they started having problems paying out the dividends last July, and by November the operator simply disappeared, along with most of the funds and some of more precious artifacts. Locals panicked and summoned provincial level public security, who managed to freeze a few accounts, forced the official to resign, and tracked down some of the money, with 5 arrests.

Link is in Chinese:

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With all the weird and wonderful "opportunities" on offer on the usual suspect HYIP ponzi forums, why not a museum ponzi, I guess.