Monroe Beachy, 'Amish Madoff,' charged with bilking church members out of $15 million in fraud

The New York Daily News reports:

A Madoff-esque fraudster in an Ohio Amish community bilked fellow church members out of millions in a vast 25-year-long investment swindle, according to a U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission complaint.

Monroe Beachy, 77, sold $33 million in investment contracts to more than 2,600 investors - most of them from his Amish community in Sugarcreek, Ohio - but lost nearly half of it in a massive fraud that echoed fallen Manhattan financier Bernard Madoff's infamous Ponzi scheme, the SEC said.