The Parmalat Scandal

Some of America's great financial institutions are said to have been behind the scam. And if racketeering allegations contained in civil, criminal, and bankruptcy filings in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are true, court judgments against U.S. banks, U.S. lawyers, and U.S. accountants could run to the tens of billions of dollars -- perhaps even enough to weaken pillars of the global banking system.
...Recent criminal-, civil-, and bankruptcy-court filings in the United States, Italy, the Cayman Islands, and elsewhere allege a vast conspiracy in which U.S. bankers (with the help of allegedly corrupt U.S. accounting firms and lawyers) concocted a financial house of mirrors designed to confuse credit analysts and bewitch investors into pouring billions of dollars into what turned out to be a looting trough.
If many of the alleged villains in the Parmalat debacle are U.S.-based, so are the victims. The list of investors allegedly defrauded by Parmalat-linked bankers prominently includes the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), which had an investment fund that owned Parmalat stock. (How much is not specified in the court filings I've seen.)