I can't agree with this. I tried to deposit with Vescudero and he only accepted around 1/4 of my offer as deposit. After he increased the total limit, he put a per-deposit limit.
Madoff made people jump through hoops to invest with him. This is typical Ponzi behavior.
Another borrower, chungenhung recently returned all deposits with interest and shut down operation. I'm not sure he's the first one to do that either. How would you explain these phenomena?
I'd say chungenhung was probably investing the funds in a ponzi and managed to cash out before the ponzi he was investing in collapsed. It's also possible he was really an extremely high risk investment that just happened to pan out by sheer luck. I don't know. Do you know? And if you don't know, how can you rationally evaluate the risk? And if you can't rationally evaluate the risk, why invest?