HARRISBURG -- They were seniors hoping to supplement their retirement income, families trying to save for college, Mennonites from Lancaster. There were hundreds of them, and they all fell for the same scam.

Someone -- maybe a fast-talking stranger, but often a trusted friend -- asked them if they'd like to invest in a new securities program called Eagle Cash. They were guaranteed a 24 percent annual return on their investment.

And when a deal sounds that good, fast cash trumps suspicion.

"Sometimes these people aren't sophisticated investors," said Michael Byrne, chief counsel for the Pennsylvania Securities Commission, which has been investigating the scam for five years. "That doesn't mean they aren't intelligent. But most people just aren't very savvy about the stock market or securities."

Three-hundred victims -- 96 of them from Pennsylvania, more than half of those from Lancaster County -- invested nearly $12 million collectively. Some lost a few thousand dollars, while others lost what was tantamount to their life savings, more than $100,000.

Normally, that's where a Ponzi scheme, also known as a pyramid scheme or a "high-yield" investment program, ends. The scam artist solicits money from initial investors, promising a big return. Then, money from a second wave of investors pays the promised interest yield to the first wave, affirming the program's legitimacy and encouraging additional investment.

Eventually, the ringleader makes off with the cash and the pyramid collapses.

Unless, of course, the ringleader dies just as the cash starts rolling in.

His name was Wayne Hawke, and he was from Montgomery County. A heart attack killed him just as the investigation into Eagle Cash Management Account System, operated by his U.S. Estate Group LLC, was getting under way, Byrne said.

Normally, when your top suspect dies during the course of an investigation, that's bad news. But in this rare case, the news couldn't have been better.

"Had he lived, the money would have been transferred elsewhere," Byrne said. Securities Commissioner Thomas Michlovic, a former state legislator from North Braddock, said money taken in through a so-called Ponzi scheme normally "is gone. It's out of country, in the islands somewhere.

"That's a break investors can't count on in most cases," Byrne said. "We knew exactly what was invested. We had his computer."

And they also had his money.

It was being kept in a bank in suburban Philadelphia, and because the money was still in Pennsylvania, it was under the securities commission's jurisdiction. So in February 2000, a judge acting on an injunction request from the securities commission ordered $6 million seized from a Montgomery County bank.

Over the next four-plus years, the $6 million in seized money was complemented by about $4 million that had been diverted to a Texas company called Collins Financial Services. The securities commission negotiated the return of that money, putting it in a trust fund set up in 2000.

Investigators also tracked down the ground-level salesmen who were pushing the illegal, unregistered securities. The sales agents who had earned a commission by selling the securities, including several agents from Lancaster County, were forced to forfeit their earnings.

And five years after it started, the wide-ranging investigation is concluding, with hundreds of defrauded investors about to receive the final payment from the $10.6 million that was recovered for them.

"It is extremely unusual for anyone to recover funds for investors in Ponzi schemes because the scam artists try as fast as they can to get the money beyond the reach of the law," commission Chairman A. Richard Gerber said last week.

One of the sales agents, Philip Mehl Sr., of Florida, has been jailed for his involvement in the Eagle scheme. Other Pennsylvania sales agents are still being investigated.

Part of the $10.6 million in recovered assets has been disbursed to the victims. On Dec. 1, a Montgomery County judge authorized the repayment of the remainder of the trust, said lawyer Fred Wentz, who supervised the trust. This second round of checks will be sent out in coming weeks, he said.