Reuters has a big report out this week on how couples are now teaming up in scam operations. The focus of the investigation is a couple who moved to Tokyo to set up a new fund after being investigated by the SEC.
 
Legal charges aside, the couple sounds like a lot of fun.
They're trying really hard to escape charges from few years ago, when the SEC investigated Janette and Jeff Stone for a "pump and dump" penny stock scheme that made the Stones around a million dollars.

The Stones, while living in Greenwich, operated a fund, the Crescent Fund, out of a "virtual office" on Wall Street. Basically, they paid $100 a month to have a company answer phone calls and collect mail for them .

The SEC investigated the Stones for earning $1 million by selling shares of WebSky, a tiny San Francisco broadband company, after first "pumping" up the stock price by sending mass emails entice investors.

"We did nothing wrong," Stone told Reuters. "We took profits and I would do it again, for crying out loud." He's funny. He told reporter Matt Goldstein that the SEC investigators are "an expletive involving mothers."
 
He has no plans to cooperate with the investigation.
"They'll have to beat it out of me," he says. And he's not letting the "expletive involving mothers" deter him. He and his wife, Janette, moved to Tokyo a few years ago so that they could start a new fund. The couple runs the Wakabayashi Fund (worth visiting just for the site's background music), out of their home in Tokyo. The top two floors are their living quarters and the first floor is a glass-encased trading floor. Stone works there with around four young men.

He says it's perfectly legitimate."We're not underwriting securities. We're not going out and handling private placements. We're not out there pounding 1,000 shares up Uncle Joe's ass.""That's not what we do."What they do is very interesting. He is brash and unapologetic, and doesn't take crap from anyone.Janette's been on the cover of "Being A Broad" magazine and she's a compulsive blog-starter.

They say their business is successful."It's what I know," says Jeff. "And we're very effective at what we do."

Find the stories of more lovable couples on Reuters.