About 2,000 investors were scammed out of almost $1.8 billion by private equity firm GPB Capital, Ascendant Capital, their affiliates and several others who were named as defendants in an amended class action complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. Many of the victims in what the suit alleges was a Ponzi scheme were retirees concentrated in Arizona, Florida and Texas, according to law firm Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane & Conway, which filed the suit on behalf of plaintiffs Millicent Barasch of Florida and Loretta DeHay of Austin, Texas.