What a fantastic week for cheating. Let's start with the big boys...

Bernard Madoff was arrested for running a Ponzi scheme which wiped out over $50 billion from Austria to West Palm Beach. (Hey, West Palm remember when you voted for Buchanan? Paybacks a byatch).
Taking advantage of the elderly? Classic cheating maneuver.

NOTE: A Ponzi scheme should not be confused with a Fonzi scheme, which is when you hang around Arnold's drive-in with Ralph Malph and Richie Cunningham. (A Fonzi scheme, in turn, shouldn't be confused with a Chachi situation or a Mr. C. scenario). It's a pyramid racket where investors make money from subsequent investors with no real product. Before Madoff, a famous case was Refco, whose futures division was forced to declare bankruptcy.
That's a beautiful metaphor for our time: The future is bankrupt, the past is fleeting, and the present is imaginary.

Rod Blagojevich is a classic Great Cheater. He's got the attitude (arrogant, aggressive, demanding, and two-faced), he dared the Feds to come after him with blatant disregard for mounting evidence, over-valued intangible items, traded power for money, implicated his wife, and, of course, had The Hair. While we're distracted, wondering how it survives (Rogaine's douche enhancing formula?), the rest of him steals our wallet.

Of course, Obama said an internal investigation cleared his people of any Blago related misdeeds. Haven't seen an internal investigation since, well, the Pentagon, Major League Baseball, Merck, Apple Computer, every company ever in the history of time. Remarkably, they all found nothing wrong.
"It's okay officer, I looked into it, and I was not, in fact, speeding."

In other cheating news...
* Biotech firms are asking for tax credits in exchange for promises not to take them if they become profitable. Yes, let's believe corporate financial reporting.
Really, once biotech companies perfect the mind control serum, we won't care what our masters do.

* A lawyer brought was caught up in a $100 million hedge fund fraud, basically selling phony debt.
Taking advantage of desperate people during crisis? Classic cheat.

* GMAC took a step closer to becoming a bank holding company, making it eligible for the original bailout package.
If at first (second and third) you don't succeed, become a bank.

* Jan Kemp - an instructor at Georgia who exposed the preferential treatment given to college athletes who sacrifice their futures so that graduates can brag at the country club and coaches can leave for more money elsewhere - passed away.
And stay out! Snitch.

* Former executives testified that Fannie and Freddie engaged in "an orgy of junk mortgage development."
Mmmm? So hot. Orgy. Stimulus package. Inject capital. Prop up markets. Screw the working class.

There were also railroads, Iraqi reconstruction scams, Wyeth writing journal articles about its own drugs, National Lampoon's CEO inflating company value, tough-guy/investigator/problem-eraser Anthony Pellicano getting 15 years; Caroline Kennedy using the family name for a Senate Seat; and OPEC cutting output to increase prices to pay for their indoor ski slopes.

Oh, what glorious, cheating, shoe-throwing days. I can't wait for next week.

Jeff Kreisler's first book, "Get Rich Cheating," will be published by Harper Collins in 2009.