The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

3. Adelphia Goes from Bad to Wirth

As the Adelphia Communications fraud and conspiracy trial winds down, we've got some alarming news for you.

In addition to the alleged conspiracy perpetrated by four top executives on trial in New York City, it turns out there was a whole other conspiracy of people defrauding Adelphia.

Not only that, but they were part of a psychic friends' network. Seriously.

This second conspiracy is a long, bizarre and complicated story, but we'll keep it as simple as possible.

Last month, a man named Josepf Steven Horvath pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Adelphia Communications, according to The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa.

Well, we think his name is Josepf Steven Horvath. Around Adelphia, he was known as John Wayne Truelove -- a false identity previously used by Daniel Wirth, a confessed co-conspirator who has also pleaded guilty to conspiracy, according The Morning Call.

The men were accused of bilking Adelphia out of $2.1 million through computer service contracts that Horvath supposedly funneled to Wirth while Horvath served as an information technology manager at the now-bankrupt Adelphia.

The Horvath-Wirth conspiracy is an odd little footnote to the higher-profile New York conspiracy trial, in which three members of the Rigas family, which once controlled Adelphia, are accused of fraud along with a fourth executive.

But the little footnote gets a little odder. It turns out, as we learned from this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, that Wirth has another claim to fame.