The two latest scandals involving the ultra-rich could be dubbed "billionaires behaving badly,"if they weren't so serious. Cheating among the financial elite, in one form or another, is the focus of two investigations — one by a congressional subcommittee and one by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Each is exposing serious financial crimes that deserve equally serious punishment.

In Washington, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is focusing congressional attention on abusive — and illegal — tax shelters used by some of the wealthiest Americans. The schemes are so complicated that Levin said his staff has worked for more than a year to unravel the scams that generally involve sham companies based in notorious offshore tax havens and ficticious stock transactions.

The typical scenario involves a real company or real person in the United States making real profits and a strong desire to pay little or no taxes. Enter a slick financial tax adviser who creates shell companies, usually based in a Caribbean tax haven like Nevis, which sell stock to each other and then through further stock transactions claim huge financial losses. The fake stock-sale losses are used to offset the real profits — and the billionaires avoid millions of dollars in tax payments to the U.S. Treasury.

Hopefully, not any more. Levin hopes to shut down these bogus tax-avoidance schemes, which are estimated to cost the Treasury as much as $100 billion a year.

Naturally, most of those billionaires caught in these schemes claim to be innocent victims of slick tax-shelter promoters. But, clearly, these people with multimillion-dollar annual incomes are intelligent enough to understand the old expression that "when something seems too good to be true, it probably is." They must have known that these schemes probably were illegal — and certainly immoral.

Those caught cheating the Treasury — and thus shifting a greater burden on all honest U.S. taxpayers — deserve to be hit hard with penalties, fines and prison. News of their legal battles, financial penalties and prison sentences should make headlines, thus serving as a reminder to other ultra-rich Americans that cheating on their taxes using these fraudulent offshore tax-shelter schemes is not worth the risk.

Another group in the white-collar-crime spotlight includes corporate CEOs and other high-ranking executives who receive stock options as part of their compensation. Stock options themselves are not a problem; they can be a legitimate incentive to executives to perform because they link the person's compensation to the performance of the company's stock. If the stock price goes up, the executive gains — but so do all the other shareholders.

In some cases, however, corporate CEOs, already the beneficiaries of multimillion-dollar salaries and lucrative perk packages, are being given stock options that were backdated to a time when the stock was at a lower price. This practice, which according to some investigations has taken place at more than 2,000 companies, is another form of executive- compensation abuse. And as such, it currently is being investigated by the SEC.

Several academic studies found what has been called "suspiciously fortuitous timing of option grants." In other words, the stock price in many cases took a remarkable jump up in price right after the option date. Occurring too often to be accidental, the research unearthed the practice of backdating stock options. The practice is cheating, plain and simple.

According to published reports, the scandal will impact many high-technology companies in California's Silicon Valley and elsewhere, where granting stock options has for years been a common practice to attract top talent. The SEC probe is looking at options issued by such well-known companies as Microsoft, Apple and Home Depot.

Harvey Pitt, a former chairman of the SEC, characterized the practice of backdating stock options as "greed, slovenliness and unlawful conduct."

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., correctly noted why average taxpayers should care about this issue, saying "Let's be clear:The abuse of offshore tax havens raises the amount of taxes for you and me."

And at $100 billion, between wealthy individuals and corporations, that's a huge tax burden to shift to honest taxpayers. These tax cheats can more easily afford to pay their fair share than millions of middle-class Americans struggling to make ends meet while playing by the rules.

Criminal charges are expected soon. This story might not make Enron-type headlines, but if the practice is as widespread as believed, it represents widespread cheating in some of America's top boardrooms. And, as such, it deserves high-profile prosecutions and severe penalties, including pain-inflicting financial penalties — and jail time too.

Most Americans live in a different world than these ultra-rich cheats. But the attitude that their financial wealth elevates them above everyone else in terms of playing by the rules — and paying their fair share of taxes — must be changed. A parade of wealthy individuals and top executives paying massive fines and heading off to jail will go a long way toward that end.