DEAN Rees, the former attorney who helped Barry Tannenbaum run SA’s biggest Ponzi scheme to date, must pay nearly R159m to Mr Tannenbaum’s insolvent estate, the High Court ordered on Friday.The money is just a drop in the ocean of the billion rand scheme, which drew in 880 investors — some of them top business people such as former Pick n Pay head Sean Summers and former chairman of the JSC Norman Lowenthal.But the scathing judgment by Johannesburg High Court Judge Boissie Mbha will help tighten the net around Mr Rees — who relocated to Switzerland months before the Ponzi scheme came crashing down in 2009 and is still fighting extradition.The judge found "beyond any doubt" that Mr Rees knew he was colluding in a Ponzi scheme, something he has vociferously denied all along.A Ponzi scheme lures investors in by promises of unusually high returns but pays them from their own money or from money paid by subsequent investors instead of from profits from a legitimate underlying business — ...
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