A Harvard Business Blunder

Graduates duped in a ridiculous Ponzi scheme

“It's a proprietary strategy. I can't go into it in great detail." – Bernie Madoff

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The first lesson that the Harvard Business School should teach is how to spot a Ponzi scheme.

Some graduates apparently had to learn this the hard way – scammed by a fellow alumni in a fraud so preposterous, they should have recognized it on its face.

Vladimir Artamonov, 45, allegedly promised returns as high as 1,000%, according to the New York Attorney General’s office. And he did it with a story that any basket-weaving major from a small community college could have checked out.

Artamonov claimed he could see what stocks Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway was buying before the rest of the market found out. He claimed he could do this by getting state securities filings in advance of the federal filings that other investors followed.

Such research sounded profitable to some because stocks often jump following news of the Oracle of Omaha’s massive market moves. But the story was not only too good to be true, it was too dumb to be true.

“It is really a ridiculous information arbitrage.” (Photo Illustration: AI generated.)

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