A Town Betrayed

In Union Point, Ga., Ben Stewart ruled as mayor, and to residents like Ann Frontz, he lived like a southern squire.

"He was the backbone of this town," says Frontz. "He owned just about the whole town, and everyone trusted him."

As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, everyone trusted Stewart until he betrayed that trust and left many Union Point residents in ruins.

The Stewart empire started coming apart the day retired maid Elsie Williams borrowed $200 from Stewart Finance to buy a new couch.

It turns out Williams was paying what amounted to a 95 percent interest on that loan. On another Stewart loan, she was paying for an auto club membership. The trouble is, Williams doesn't drive.

"I hadn't had no car in over 40 years," she says.

"What Stewart Finance was doing was profiting big time off what I call the misery and bad circumstances of our clients," says Adrienne Ashby of Atlanta Legal Aid

Ashby investigated Elsie Williams' case and found scores of others like it. When she alerted the authorities, federal and state investigators started pressuring for answers.

The unraveling had begun, and the people who paid the heaviest price lived in Union Point. They knew Stewart, trusted him and invested in his company. Hundreds of them would lose everything they had.

"We asked him if everything was fine, if the business was safe," says investor Angela Walker. "He said business had never been better.

"He lied to our faces. He took our money away ... $300,000."

Stewart Finance was actually a pyramid scheme. Investors were paying for Stewart's princely lifestyle: the private plane, the dozen country club memberships and the mansion now for sale.

Ann Frontz, and nearly 900 other investors, lost every penny they put in.

"It breaks my heart," says Frontz. "They worked hard for their money, and he betrayed them."

In all, $38 million vanished, although Stewart's lawyer denies criminal intent.

"There were five or six civil suits and criminal investigations waiting in the wings, and it eventually became more than he could withstand," says Stewart's attorney Nick Lotito.

One morning Stewart put himself in the hole he had dug for everyone around him and committed suicide.

Elsie Williams had pulled a thread that unraveled an empire built by friends and neighbors who banked on trust.