Judith Zabalaoui was no paragon of virtue, despite the name of one of her companies — Paragon Co. — federal prosecutors in Louisiana said.

Zabalaoui, 71, has joined a growing list of senior citizens accused of running Ponzi schemes. Paragon. Co. actually was a “suite” — a fancy name for a mailbox — Zabalaoui rented at a UPS store in Montrose, Colo.

Calling the mailbox number a “suite” number was “further a part of the scheme,” prosecutors said.

And, they added, it was so effective at tricking customers that she did it again. The second bogus company was called Omni Clearing, and Zabalaoui set it up in a UPS store in Dover, Del. She invented “fictitious people,”  claiming they were employees, fabricated emails using the names of fictitious employees, and she set up a phone, fax and email systems to help perpetrate the fraud.

None of it was real, and she collected at least $3 million in the scheme by promising “safe” and “guaranteed” returns ranging from 13 percent to 26 percent, prosecutors said.

For a while, prosecutors said, Zabalaoui ran the scheme out of Birmingham, Ala., after her home in Metairie, Louisiana, was damaged in Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Zabalaoui faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, if convicted. Read the bill of information accusing her of mail fraud.

Recent senior-citizen colleagues implicated in Ponzi schemes include Bernard Madoff, 70; Arthur Nadel, 76,; Richard S. Piccoli, 82; Ronald Keith Owens, 73; James Blackman Roberts, 71; and Andy Bowdoin, 74.