Recently I have been thinking about the fact that the only way to get more money is to take someone else's. Today I ran across this article.

Clearly, there are plenty of very rich people who dont know a thing about investing. Wall Street is an insiders-game and just having wealth does not make you an insider. Sometime it makes you the patsy for real insiders.

There are plenty of people who have been successful with a business. They know their business but when they stray beyond it, they are just a vulnerable to swindlers and bad decisions as the rest of us.

Debt Crisis Hits a Dynasty

Billionaire Mahers Rack Up Losses In 'Auction' Bonds

By ROBERT FRANK

February 14, 2008

When M. Brian and Basil Maher sold their family's shipping business last July for more than $1 billion, they quickly put the money in a safe place.

Or so they thought.

The two brothers handed much of it to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. with marching orders to make only the most conservative, cashlike investments. Within weeks, however, they had lost access to more than a quarter-billion dollars.

"We didn't think we were taking risks," says Brian Maher, 61 years old. "We read about all the troubles in the credit markets and said, 'I'm glad we're not invested in that stuff.' It turns out, we were."

...

The brothers had no real investing expertise. Brian owned a few mutual funds. One of Basil's rare forays into stock picking left him with a $1,000 loss, "which was a lot for me at the time."

Their plan was to park the money in a safe place until they could hire their own team of wealth managers.

Mr. Liu and the Mahers drew up a basic list of financial objectives. The first one, according to a letter the family sent the banks: "Preserve capital." The second was to "provide sufficient liquidity" and third was "capture a market rate of return based on [the brothers'] investment policy parameters and market conditions."

But when they saw an account summary from Lehman in early August, the Mahers were alarmed. It showed that two thirds of the account -- about $400 million -- had been invested in corporate securities with obscure names like Tortoise TYY I, or INC 2003-2.

Mr. Liu says he came away from his conversation with Lehman unsure of the quality of the bonds' underlying assets. He consulted with the Mahers, and they agreed the bonds should be sold as soon as possible. Mr. Liu told Lehman to "unwind the positions and give the Mahers their money back."

Lehman, however, had trouble selling.

The real kicker though:

Mr. Kim says Lehman may have sold the Mahers a portion of securities from the firm's own balance sheet, thus shifting Lehman's potential losses to the Mahers.

Lehman says it couldn't have foreseen the auction failures in mid-August.

It's unclear what assets are backing the securities purchased by the Mahers.