The blogger Orthodonomics posts to Cross-Currents:
I might be one of the few bloggers who has the tax notes sitting on my nightstand. I would not use insularity as the description to describe the basis for this scheme, but arrogance. The sheer span, depth, and width of this scheme, which evolved as it became more widespread and there were more tracks to cover, involved perpetrators from different subgroups of the Orthodox community, from lawyers to the Spinka Rebbe himself. I believe I have enough of a background with fraud to say that insularity combined with ignorance can bring out the yetzer hara for small crimes, but arrogance combined with desperation is the brainchild behind such complicated schemes as we have been continually witnessing for at least 20 years.
In addition, to the poster who suggested Choshen Mishapat should become standard for men and especially women, I would also like to point out that we as parents need to make sure our daughters believe they are equal partners in the financial dealings of the household. No one should sign on the line of their next 1040 without knowing where the income and where the deductions came from. Every single one of the “victimless crimes” leaves a wife and children as the victims when their families are torn apart.
