U.S. Government Arrested in Massive Ponzi Scheme Bust

WASHINGTON – Following the uncovering of what investigators termed “the largest Ponzi scheme ever perpetrated,“ the government of the United States of America was arrested and charged with over 130 counts of criminal fraud.

In a nationwide late-night sweep by local law enforcement, all 100 members of the U.S. Senate, 435 congressmen, and more than two million employees of the Federal goverment’s Executive branch were rounded up and taken in handcuffs to makeshift temporary detention facilities, where they now await arraignment on charges ranging from mail fraud to bank fraud to governing with the intent to commit fraud.

The arrests followed a 45-year-long investigation which revealed that the nation’s affluent lifestyle of lavish military spending and popular social “entitlement“ programs, as orchestrated by its government, was in fact based entirely on a sophisticated pyramid scheme involving a complicated system of insufficiently leveraged debt obligations.

“It was a classic bait and switch operation,“ said Special Agent Clarence Mitchell of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who led the crackdown which also led to the arrest of some 26,000 of his FBI colleagues, all government employees, as co-conspirators in the pyramid scheme.

According to Agent Mitchell, the government had been luring participants into the scheme for decades with an intoxicating promise of national and social security completely paid for by low taxes. Even as the scheme finally started to unravel this year, unsuspecting investors were still pouring money into it through the purchase of so-called “Federally-secured long-term U.S. Treasury bonds.“

“It’s hard to believe that someone could fall for such a blatant swindle for such a long time without noticing that the numbers just couldn’t possibly add up,“ said Agent Mitchell. “Yet, by the time we finally had enough firm evidence to bring charges, the accused had already racked up an incredible $13 trillion in unsecured debt, and was still pumping out billions daily in these toxic T-bonds to gullible fools who actually believed the guarantee of an enticing 3.5 percent annual return on their 20-year investment.“

“These guys make Bernie Madoff look like a shoplifter,“ Agent Mitchell commented.

Authorities have begun an inventory of the government’s vast possessions in the hopes that at least some of the missing trillions can be recovered to help compensate victims of the scheme. Among the treasure trove of luxuries so far uncovered are a fleet of Virginia-class submarines which the accused reportedly purchased for a whopping $1.8 billion each and a new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with a price tag of $132 million. “That’s $132 million for just one airplane,” Agent Mitchell noted. “Tragically, before their arrest, they had already ordered more than 2,400 of them.”

Agent Mitchell noted that the government’s duplicity in the scheme was equaled by its bravado. “They even went so far as to put a pyramid right on the back of their most traded currency,“ he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “That must have given them a good laugh every time they saw it.“

– Steve Fisher