Squarepants Indicted in Ponzi Scheme Scandal

Spongebob Squarepants, beloved cartoon character and widely marketed merchandise icon, was indicted in New York Second Circuit Superior Court today on twelve charges of conspiracy, fraud, and attempts to perpetrate a confidence swindle in connection with an elaborate Ponzi scheme.  Squarepants, who has charmed millions of viewers worldwide with his inane antics and high-pitched laughter, apparently used his powers of persuasion and celebrity to lure unsuspecting investors into a multi-layered financial deal, soliciting, distributing, and misappropriating an estimated $117 million over an eighteen-month period.  Co-conspirators named in the indictment included Eugene Crabs, Spongebob's avaricious employer at Bikini Bottom's landmark fast-food restaurant, The Crusty Crab, and Plankton, rival restaurateur and known proprietary processes thief.  Plankton was convicted of multiple attempts to steal the secret formula of Crabs's industry-leading sandwich (known as the Crabby Patty) in 2008; in this instance, however, the competitors are alleged to have joined forces under the direction of the scheme's mastermind, Mr. Squarepants.

Squarepants is accused of offering lucrative stock deals to friends and family members and then subsequently drawing in acquaintances and foreign financiers in a complicated series of investments and payouts that allowed initial participants to profit from later ones.  Eventually, the circulating profits of non-existent shadow corporations ended up in the pockets of the Bikini Bottom conspirators, prosecutors say, leaving all those remaining in the venture bereft of hundreds of thousands, and, in some cases, millions of dollars.   District Attorney Lawrence Order informed reporters of the details of the indictment in a lengthy news conference generated by interest in the apparent downfall of the lovable spongeperson and his wilely confederates.  "No one, least of all longtime friends like [fellow Bikini Bottom residents] Patrick Star and Sandy Cheeks, could believe the lengths to which Mr. Squarepants went to amass the huge profits he did by these illegal and immoral means.  Crabs and Plankton they understood; but good old Spongebob?  It is a sad and shocking situation."