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Charles Ponzi is a man you may hear a lot more about over the next few days. In 1918, the broke Italian immigrant noticed a loophole in a Spanish international postal reply coupon that would allow him to make a lot of money, very quickly.

80 years later, after the Great Depression and the dot com boom, after several destabilising cycles of economic fluctuation – “boom and bust” – in the midst of looming recession, the Spanish have once again been had.

Santander has amazed analysts by keeping its nose relatively clean as other banks get theirs smeared across the bricks of Wall Street. It had not only appeared to withstand the toxic shocks of America’s sub prime mortgage market, but it has actually expanded its asset base, swallowing up British banks Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley.

Yesterday we found out that Santander was doing the dirty on its savers all the while.

It was not the only bank to have been sucked into the calamitous pyramid scheme, brainchild of ‘mega fraudstar’ Bernard Madoff. He cajoled the greed and avarice of the rich and power drunk into investing in a financial black hole. Madoff by name…

A story with this level of embarrasment could be a metaphor for the whole global 150px-ponzi1economic crisis. Maddof, former head of the Nasdaq - how terrifying is that? – is now completely vanquished. His respectability and reputation are shattered.

But apart from him and Jerome Kerviel, who else has been prosecuted. Many bankers, traders, brokers and fund directors are guilty of criminal mismanagement and incompetence. The threat of job bonus losses are not sufficient to stop companies getting excessively leveraged. Is prosecution?

Don’t count on it. Madoff might end up in prison. The only difference between him and the hundreds of others who recklessly gamble with savers’ money is that he got caught. For that, we thank him.