I've got a great deal of sympathy for many of those who are about to suffer as a result of Stanford's seeming indiscretions. However, none of that sympathy is reserved for the England Cricket Board. They saw a man waving around absurd amounts of money and surrendered all their critical faculties. No one seemed concerned about why this baseball loving Texan would want to sink so much money into a game he didn't even enjoy or understand, just as no one checked into exactly where all this money had come from. The ECB just saw dollar signs and dived in. It's pretty much a microcosm of the kind of behaviour which has sunk us into this whole financial mess.

"The ECB just saw dollar signs and dived in. It's pretty much a microcosm of the kind of behaviour which has sunk us into this whole financial mess."

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Joachim. Who's more guilty: the person perpetuating the fraud, or the one willfully ignoring it for their own personal gain? You might argue the former, but to deny the culpability of the latter is surely wrong. Too many have prospered from the recent financial jiggery-pokery to be entirely comfortable pointing the finger of blame...

You're quite right Ben. This just isn't cricket. In fact it breaks the rules of just about every game in the book. Thousands of people's lives could be ruined as a result of this man's greed.
I doubt though that he operated in a vacuum. To successfully commit fraud on this scale many others would have had to be involved - either actively or by conveniently ignoring what was going on under their noses. It's only when the good times stop rolling that people start to ask questions. Otherwise they are quite happy to turn a blind eye to fraud, so long as the cash keeps coming in.