My Sunday column explored the ordeal of Denise Martineau and Mark Bufkin, a couple who gave up on their condo in the Villa on Bassett Creek after a tussle with their homeowner’s association. It will be interesting to see whether the new owner, the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (a state agency), does any mold remediation before putting it on the market again.

Tom Campbell, 57, is a retired bus mechanic who lives in Minneapolis. To get control of his spending, Campbell decided to put away the credit card and take out his long-neglected checkbook. He recently paid a visit to Southtown Center in Bloomington to buy a wedding present, an $80 place setting. When he wrote out his check at a prominent retailer, the clerk put it through the little scanning device linked to the vast computers of a company called Certegy. The machine spit the check out. Rejected.

Situations like that always make me feel nervous. The few times in my life that a clerk has rejected my method of payment, I expected to leave the store in handcuffs.

Campbell knew he had enough money in the bank. So he went to another retailer where the bride and groom were also registered. Once again, the machine refused his check. He tried to get the clerk to explain what was going on, but it was clear she didn’t know. He talked to someone on the phone at Certegy, who said he could fill out an application. Finally he paid by credit card, and called Whistleblower.

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My colleague Chris Serres, one of the authors of the “Lenders Gone Wild” series that has stirred up state lawmakers, alerted me this week to the demise of JetAmerica, a startup airline he reported on, with a dose of skepticism, in May. Back then, it intended to offer flights between Minneapolis and Toledo starting Aug. 14, even though it hadn’t even cleared that plan with the Metropolitan Airports Commission. So Chris wasn’t shocked when the company made this announcement, less than two months later:

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Last year Whistleblower told the story of Advanced Health Scan, an investment deal that consumed millions of investors’ dollars without opening the promised body imaging clinic in southern California. Now comes word from Alabama that one of the former top dogs of the company, Daniel A. Caterino, will be returning to familiar quarters - behind bars. My conversation with this fast-talking gentleman last year was memorable, not only for its many tangents, but for Caterino’s assertion that he had found God and therefore his criminal past had no relevance to the current furor over what looks like a scam at worst, entrepreneurial incompetence at best. In a video for investors last year, Caterino held up a Bible as he counseled angry investors to just give him more time to make the business work. After pleading guilty in May, Caterino will have 30 months in an Alabama prison to brush up on his Scripture. For my more complete story, click here.