Not all that blitters is eGold.

[George at Orwellian.Org]

[snipped]

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/business/03PONZ.html?pagewanted=1
#    
#    July 3, 2001
#    
#    U.S. Charges Internet Operation Was a Huge Scam
#    
#    By KURT EICHENWALD
#    
#    OKLAHOMA CITY - By last September, life was getting rough for 
#    Donald A. English.
#    
#    An unemployed single father, Mr. English was almost out of cash. 
#    His family was threatened with eviction. Collection agencies 
#    were at the door. His credit cards were mostly tapped out.
#    
#    With the walls closing in, Mr. English, 53, decided to grab for 
#    a distinctly modern solution to his crumbling finances: He started 
#    his own dot-com.
#    
#    But this was no ordinary Internet company. Instead, government 
#    investigators said, it was the centerpiece of a huge scam. With 
#    it, they said, this down-and-outer from Midwest City, Okla., 
#    established one of history's fastest frauds, conning tens of 
#    thousands of small investors out of as much as $50 million in 
#    a matter of weeks, until the scheme collapsed early this year 
#    in scandal.
#    
[snip]
#    
#    Investigators have stumbled across imaginary banks hawking 
#    nonexistent "digital" certificates of deposit, illusory 
#    trillion-dollar government obligations and bogus business deals 
#    to "lease" millions of dollars in cash.
#    
[snip]
#    
#    In the case of EE-Biz, court records show, investors who signed 
#    up opened an account with a legitimate company that functioned 
#    like a bank, using an Internet currency known as e-gold. Then, 
#    they transferred dollars in e-gold - a transaction known as a 
#    spend, involving as little as $20 or as much as several thousand 
#    - to an e-gold account, controlled by someone else. The early 
#    investors received double their money back, with no explanation 
#    of how it was done. As word spread of the payouts, investors 
#    flocked to the site to participate.
#    
#    Mr. English himself had been a victim of a number of similar 
#    schemes and decided to open up his own, according to transcripts 
#    of chat room conversations. Those transcripts indicate that Mr. 
#    English himself may not have completely understood the bogus 
#    nature of the plan.
#    
[snip]