Review: Madoff and the Scamming of America – do you want to get a glimpse at the biggest #Ponzi scheme ever? A fun video to watch (in an obtuse way) – Book Review

Ponzi schemes, it appears, can pop out of anywhere. From the owner of a baseball team, perhaps? The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged the Chattanooga Lookouts baseball team owner with “running a massive … Owner of Chattanooga Lookouts accused of running ‘massive Ponzi scheme’ Read More »

In January 1920, an Italian American businessman in Boston started a new company. In order to raise money, he took $100 investments from 18 people and offered them a fabulous return on their money in only 45 days, and he delivered on his promise. Soon people were lining up to give him their money and everything worked great…. …until it didn’t. Learn more about Charles Ponzi, the man whose name is synonymous with fraud, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Zach Horwitz came to Los Angeles hoping to make it in the movies. He ended up running a seven-hundred-million-dollar scam, defrauding a sprawling group of investors, starting with his best friends. Evan Osnos reports.

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A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam where existing investors generate returns via money collected from new investors. The scam was named after Charles Ponzi, an Italian con artist who promised a 50% return within 45 days or a 100% return within 90 days on postal coupons in the 1920s. When something changes hands without a core underlying product or service, it might fall under a Ponzi scheme, thus requiring caution from potential investors.

The office door bore an impressive name—the Securities Exchange Company—and during the first seven months of 1920, it made the Niles Building at 27 School Street one of the busiest addresses in Bos…

What is a Ponzi scheme? It's an investment scam that pays returns to investors using their own money or money supplied by later participants, rather than profit produced by the person or company executing the program. Ponzis are called after Charles Ponzi, who made a reputation for himself in the 1920s by employing the method.