Follow the money

These Are Charity's Most Wanted

Plenty of people wear philanthropy like a mantle of sainthood, but as anyone with a passing familiarity with the business section (or the works of Charles Dickens) knows, good deeds do not a good person make. Before we knew them as criminals, Lance Armstrong, Michael Milken, Jeffrey Epstein, and Bernie Madoff had carefully-cultivated their charitable reputations.

Now a new case has tangled the worlds of bad finance and good works. Last Saturday, Andrew Caspersen, a 39-year-old Wall Streeter, was arrested and charged with securities and wire fraud. (He's pictured above, exiting federal court in Manhattan on March 28.) By the time he was caught by the United States Attorneys office, Caspersen had allegedly reduced a $25 million investment from a philanthropic fund to a ghostly looking bank account with little more than $40,000.