Over at TPMmuckraker we've been digging into these public pension investment scandals in which an overlapping group of players have been scamming (or perhaps better to say, skimming) money out of public pension plans in several states. So we got curious why something very similar seemed to be going on in Illinois but with a very distinct group of villains. The upshot seems to be that Chicago and Illinois had enough native grown corruption just not to need any help from outside -- or to let outsiders take their cut.