Bernard Madoff (right) and his massive $50 billion scam certainly isn't the only game in town, and it looks like Fresno's not the only place at the center of a suspected Ponzi scheme here in the Golden State.

(Associated Press photo by David Karp, March 2009)

While the FBI investigates the late John Otto and HL Leasing for allegedly bilking investors of more than $138 million by promising a 9% return on loans supposedly backed by equipment leases, a Bay Area attorney has filed a class-action suit on behalf of potential victims.

But elsewhere in the state, Attorney General Jerry Brown is going after a trio of men who are accused of scamming about $200 million from victims in a decade-long real-esate Ponzi setup in northern California.

Brown's office filed nearly 80 criminal counts last week against James Stanley Koenig of Redding; Gary T. Armitage of Healdsburg, and Jeffery A. Guidi of Santa Rosa, alleging securities fraud and residential burglary.

The three men are accused of peddling interest in a number of failed business enterprises dating back to 1997. Starting in 2001, the attorney general's office reports, the trio began funneling investments into the purchase of nursing homes throughout the state, including the Fresno area, with the revenues used to repay earlier investors.

Also last week, our colleagues at the Sacramento Bee reported that the FBI arrested two men in connection with a $40 million Ponzi scheme that surfaced after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued one of the ringleaders.

Ponzi schemes typically "rob Peter to pay Paul," using money from newer investors to pay earlier investors, sometimes running for years before the wheels fall off the scam. They're garnering particular attention lately thanks to Madoff, the Wall Street whiz and former NASDAQ chief who allegedly took investors for $50 billion before his Ponzi scheme fell apart last fall.

Fresno's HL Leasing case is complicated because Otto, the company's 67-year-old chief executive, committed suicide by reportedly shooting himself in the head in a Palm Desert parking lot on the afternoon of May 11, just a few miles from his home.

And his death adds to the consternation of Otto's investors, many of whom are expressing their anger, frustration and hopelessness on a blog set up by one anonymous investor.

Stay tuned ... we'll be following the story as it unfolds.