With all the money shenanigans going on at Haystack, I'm puzzled as to why it is taking so long to trickle out.
Interesting point. Maybe some of it is that the operation quickly became too big to fail. Other than Mt. Snow the Wilmington/Dover area really hasn't had too many successful businesses in recent times and here is one that employed a lot of people, demonstrated rapid growth and promised to deliver significant tax revenue. Also, the Jay Peak scam involved the EB-5 program which is a Federal program attracting national attention. Additionally, EB-5 programs look like scams even when they work properly.
As pointed out by some comments above, The Hermitage probably didn't extend into true Ponzi territory until you add in the real estate sales as alleged in the law suit. It it's just a matter of squandering membership initiation fees and dues then I don't know if that qualifies as there's no asset or expected return. People are paying for an experience and it seems as if they've been mostly satisfied. But they should have been concerned about whether or not the club was being run in a sustainable way. Clearly it hasn't been. And this should have been evident from it's rapid expansion, acquisitions, building and development along with the marketing materials and emails that seemed to always be focused on the next big thing. Clearly it was all designed to chase the next group of members and home buyers but this should have alarmed existing members. If the club is doing so much to attract new members, then it's doing that much less to nurture the existing operations. Whether or not it's a Ponzi scheme, it's similar behavior and it's not sustainable.