State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) becomes the first victim of Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme to run for public office.  Gov. Jon Corzine is expected to announce his selection of the 74-year-old grandmother as the Democratic nominee for Lt. Governor at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood at 2PM tomorrow.

The Wall Street Journal reported last December that Weinberg lost her life savings - an estimated $1.3 million that she had invested with Stanley Chais, a Los Angeles financial planner.  Weinberg said she had never heard of Madoff until December, when the scandal broke."Irwin had a saying, 'If you made a dollar and a half, you put 75 cents into a savings account and you lived on the other 75 cents,' " the Journal quotes Weinberg, speaking of her late husband, who had his own business building and designing retail stores. "That's how we lived."

In a December interview with PolitickerNJ.com's Max Pizarro, the senator described her husband as a hard-working child of the Depression and said of the news, "This is another road in one's life that one must traverse. I'm a lot better off than a lot of other people who were affected by this.

There is some speculation among Democrats - and most certainly without confirmation from Gov. Jon Corzine's campaign - that State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) might be receiving more than just courteous consideration for Lt. Governor.

The arguments in support of Weinberg:

The Wall Street Journal reports that state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) lost her life savings in Bernard L. Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

According to the Journal, Weinberg had her savings, about $1.3 million, invested with Stanley Chais, a Los Angeles money manager and one of Madoff’s victims.

"Irwin had a saying, 'If you made a dollar and a half, you put 75 cents into a savings account and you lived on the other 75 cents,' " the Journal quotes Weinberg, speaking of her late husband, who had his own business building and designing retail stores. "That's how we lived."

On Monday, the senator described her husband as a hard-working child of the Depression and said of the news, “This is another road in one’s life that one must traverse. I’m a lot better off than a lot of other people who were affected by this.”

The state attorney general should be investigating how the corruption of "money manager" Bernard Madoff has hurt New Jersey residents and groups, espeically the charitable organizations that have become even more critical during the current economic downturn.

Bernard Madoff confessed he bilked investors out of as much as $50 billion, creating the largest private Ponzi scheme in world history that may have lasted as long as three decades.   Madoff’s victims include charities, university endowments, banks, foreign firms, and wealthy Americans.  Ironically, the investors who were defrauded by Mr. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, I suspect, are passionate supporters of the federal government’s Ponzi scheme known as Social Security. 

A Ponzi scheme is in effect a chain letter named after the notorious swindler Charles Ponzi. Initial investors are promised substantial returns, which are achieved by getting more and more individuals in on the scheme whose investments are used to pay off early investors.  Eventually, when there are not enough investors to keep the investment pyramid afloat, or when the whistle is blown on the scheme and investors try to reclaim their money, the Ponzi scheme collapses.   Last week’s confession by Madoff to his two sons unraveled his Ponzi scheme.