A disgraced Democratic fundraiser, Norman Hsu, has been charged with concocting a $60 million “Ponzi” fraud scheme and related federal campaign finance crimes, federal prosecutors said yesterday.

Beginning in 2003, Hsu was the managing director of two short-term financing companies that lured investors by promising high rates of return, the prosecution’s complaint said. Hsu then allegedly used his investors’ money to operate a pyramid scheme in which he would pay back the companies’ newer shareholders with money obtained from older ones. Hsu also would ask his investors to donate money to various political campaigns in their own names and then reimburse them, a violation of the Federal Elections Campaign Act, the complaint said.

“This case is about self-promotion and greed,” the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michael Garcia, said at a news conference. “In committing acts of campaign finance fraud, he corrupted a system in which transparency is paramount in order to purchase a place on the celebrity campaign circuit.”

Hsu is charged with one count each of wire and mail fraud, and one count of violating the Federal Election Campaign Act. If convicted, Hsu faces up to 45 years in prison for the fraud charges, a $250,000 maximum fine for the campaign finance charge, and as much as twice the gross gain or loss from the financial fraud charges.

When FBI investigators searched items seized from Hsu at the time of his initial arrest in early September, they discovered a briefcase containing: thousands of dollars in cash; checkbooks for bank accounts used in the scheme; hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of checks from investors; bank receipts tracking millions of dollars of Hsu’s transactions; handwritten ledgers detailing specific amounts of campaign contributions made by specific investors, and expensive jewelry, Mr. Garcia said.

A spokesman for Hsu, Robert Emmers, declined to comment on the charges.

After evading authorities in the years since, Hsu recently emerged as a generous donor and fundraiser for the Democratic Party, raising tens of thousands of dollars for presidential and congressional campaigns, including that of presidential front-runner Senator Clinton, who said she would return the $850,000 that Hsu raised for her presidential bid.

Yesterday, Mrs. Clinton told a CNN reporter that she was not concerned the charges would have a negative impact on her campaign. “Unfortunately, none of us caught the problem,” she said. “This happened to a lot of campaigns, a lot of investors who made investments that unfortunately don’t look like they were treated appropriately.”

Mrs. Clinton is fully cooperating with the investigation, Mr. Garcia said.

In 1992, Hsu was convicted of fraud in California for a business scheme that brought in $1 million from investors for a company importing latex gloves from China, the complaint said.

On September 6, Hsu was arrested in Colorado for fleeing his sentencing date in the case.