For every Ponzi scheme that blows up and is all over the news, there are dozens more that are able to fly under the radar long enough for the perpetrators to disappear. There is a lot of get-rich-quick style fraud out there and very few government resources to tackle all of it. The trick to running a successful Ponzi scheme is really to make sure to not get big enough for the real authorities (like SEC) to care. Grandma complaining to the police that a local swindler cheated her out of a couple hundred bucks is going to be met with a shrug.