So just how is it that scams like the ones Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford are accused of running are able to run?  Presumably, when you get into the billions of dollars, it has to be harder to assure clients what’s going on with their money than simply picking up the phone and saying, “I got this, don’t worry, we’re not using your money to pay outlandishly high returns to other investors,” as one would expect from a smaller firm.  Here’s a tip from the pros: hire a tiny accounting firm, who will be so eager for your billable hours that they will do literally anything you ask.  The tinier, the better.  Your ideal firm won’t even be a firm, it’ll just be Some Dude, LLC.

Hiring a very small accounting firm to take care of your multibillion-dollar financial dirty work is a lot like Zac Efron (or whoever the kids are a fan of nowadays) taking a homely girl to the prom.  She’s so glad to be there with him that she’s guaranteed to put out.  The difference here is that the homely girl still has self-respect, while the accountants would gleefully commit serious felonies if you asked them to.

No, seriously.  In addition to the troubles with the SEC, Stanford reportedly had a number of large checks on a private plane detained by Mexican authorities.  The checks, naturally, are supposedly connected to the Gulf drug cartel, for whom Stanford may have been laundering money.  If you have bought Mexican drugs in the past twenty or thirty years, there’s a good chance your money have has been laundered by Stanford!

In completely unrelated news that has nothing to do with his alleged association with Mexico’s largest and most violent gang, no one knows where the heck Allen Stanford is right now.