The attorney general's office says as many as 4 million people, looking for an easy payday, may have lost money in the questionable, get-rich deals. Reports show an estimated $1 billion lost in four southern states alone, The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) said.

The scandal has taken its toll on President Alvaro Uribe's political career at a time when he was seeking a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a third term.

A weekend poll on Uribe's governance showed that 77 percent of Colombians surveyed in the country's south believe that things are going badly.

To make matters worse, there was the embarrassing news that the president's two sons are friends of a major figure in one of the schemes, DMG Group Holdings. Uribe declared at a news conference that his sons are not corrupt.

DMG, one of 250 pyramid schemes nationwide, was run by David Murcia, a 28-year-old entrepreneur with an apparently remarkable success story, rising rapidly from traveling salesman to supposedly great wealth.

But, DMG and the others soon collapsed, and Murcia and his associates are in jail. Investigators are now trying to figure out exactly how the moneymaking schemes worked.

Government officials are considering ways to help people who lost their investments.