Mark and Maryann were the most conspicuous consumers I've ever met. They spent money like water -- traveling everywhere in limos, staying in fancy hotels for $500+ per night, hiring private jets to fly them to parties in Las Vegas and dinners in LA, throwing extravagant raves in Ibiza. Their house was beautiful and full of expensive paintings and art objects ["objets", more like]. Where did their money come from, we wondered? My friend Beth knew it was not inherited, and there was no obvious source. But soon enough it became clear, when the Arizona attorney general issued a restraining order against them selling more stock in their company and then seized their assets to pay off their creditors. Unfortunately, Beth was both employed by them to home-school their children and living in their old and about-to-be-seized house, and so she got the hell out and moved back to LA. Now, the couple, the government, and the defrauded investors are fighting the case out in the post-modern way -- through propaganda battles on the Internet, of course.