Charles Ponzi
Italian con artistWikipedia
45
MENTIONS
18
EPISODES
15
PODCASTS
Search complete. 45 mentions across 18 episodes found for "Charles Ponzi".
Oct 30, 2026
MikeADVERTISER
flies.
Ordy PackardHOST
And I'm sorry, but if it takes four celebrity deaths to keep, you know, Vincent Charles around, I'm okay with that.
Brad SlagerHOST
Yes, and hopefully Vincent is convalescing well.
Brad SlagerHOST
I mean, he seems to be doing much better after a pretty severe episode, and you had one yourself a couple weeks ago.
Ordy PackardHOST
Well, wait, hang on.
Ordy PackardHOST
Janelle's doing fine.
Ordy PackardHOST
Well, is she though? I mean, relatively speaking, I mean, we almost lost Jeff twice since we've been doing Vince and Charles projects.
Ordy PackardHOST
So.
Patrick BoyleHOST
A hundred years ago in 1920, Charles Ponzi became famous when his investment scheme based on postal reply coupons collapsed.
Patrick BoyleHOST
Ponzi promised to double investors' money in three months.
Patrick BoyleHOST
At his peak, he brought in more than $2 million per week at his offices in downtown Boston.
Patrick BoyleHOST
They work by paying earlier investors out of the money that comes in from more recent ones.
Patrick BoyleHOST
The scheme works as long as there is a constant flow of new investors or if old investors just don't take their money out.
Patrick BoyleHOST
Charles Ponzi did not invent this scheme, but due to the notoriety of his case, this con, which used to be called the Robbing Peter to Pay Paul scheme was renamed the Ponzi scheme.
Patrick BoyleHOST
Around 90 years later, Bernie Madoff was all over the news headlines for the exact same reason.
Patrick BoyleHOST
Madoff had taken Ponzi's scheme and ran it on a much larger scale.
Patrick BoyleHOST
The area that MacGregor called Poyais remains undeveloped to this day.
Patrick BoyleHOST
In his book, The Land That Never Was, I'll link to it in the video description, David Sinclair argues that much like Charles Ponzi a hundred years later, MacGregor possibly actually believed in what he was doing, which often seems to be the case with con men.
Patrick BoyleHOST
A puzzling and disturbing part of this story is that MacGregor was responsible for hundreds of settler debts which were entirely unnecessary.
Patrick BoyleHOST
If all he was after was money, MacGregor had already sold land rights and floated his bonds long before the settlers boarded ships.
Betska K-BurrHOST
But we want to move now into investment fraud, which has existed for centuries in different forms, and sometimes it takes many years to unwind.
Betska K-BurrHOST
So what does history teach us? And In your notes to us, you talked about Charles Ponzi, the Ponzi schemes, the rigged gambling, sunken galleons, identity theft.
Betska K-BurrHOST
So, Jason, what has history been teaching us
Jason CostainGUEST
here? I mean, I think, well, there's a couple of things at play.
CeeHOST
And John should know, he dealt with Enron.
CeeHOST
This week, we're going to cover just who Sam Bankman Freed was, his rise to the top, his subsequent fall, and what others have asked, is he a modern day Charles Ponzi? Or something else? On the podcast that helps keep your family safe from scams, hacks and frauds.
CeeHOST
If you know anyone who's thinking about getting into high-risk investing, like crypto, please share our show with them.
CeeHOST
It really does help us grow and protect more families like yours.
6 MINS LATER
CeeHOST
And remember, over one third of Alameda's holdings were in FTX's own crypto coin.
CeeHOST
They were essentially supporting their value on nothing but hot air.
CeeHOST
That's why people often compare what SBF was doing to a Ponzi scheme.
CeeHOST
As long as people kept putting money into crypto and holding it with FTX, there would be no immediate problem.
LauraHOST
And this is just to kind of clarify what we're going to be talking about today, because we're going to be talking about the dark side of multi-level marketing companies.
LauraHOST
So in the beginning, we had a marvelous con artist named Charles Ponzi.
LauraHOST
And this was way back in like 1920.
LauraHOST
He created a scheme we now call the Ponzi scheme, where investors buy into arbitrary or fake investment pools in which the early investors are paid purely with the new investor's cash instead of a legitimate business profit.
LauraHOST
And of course, it started to unravel and many people who had invested suffered massive losses.
LauraHOST
Needless to say, Ponzi schemes are illegal.
LauraHOST
And Charles Ponzi was tried and served a prison sentence for his crime.
LauraHOST
Somewhere around like a decade of time is what he spent, you know, the state tried him and then federal trial and Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Dan CumminsHOST
While both of those crimes fit the modern definition of a Ponzi scheme, the con didn't yet have that name.
Dan CumminsHOST
That came later in the 1920s when Charles Ponzi, a guy from Italy, carried out a very similar scheme in the U.S. involving international reply coupons, IRCs.
Dan CumminsHOST
I've gone over this in some other episodes, but worth going over again here briefly.
Dan CumminsHOST
By June of 1920, less than a year after starting this scheme and only a few months after it really took off, people had already invested a total of about $2.5 million in Ponzi's scheme, equivalent to over $40 million now.
MichaelAUDIENCE
He's tremendous.
MichaelAUDIENCE
So getting to my side, Dom, this guy I thought of, unfortunately, a little bit negative, but definitely was, I guess, the godfather who created guys like Madoff and all this other stuff we see would be Charles Ponzi and the famous Ponzi schemes coming from Italy and who was notorious and infamous for, God, how much financial fraud.
MichaelAUDIENCE
But that term Ponzi scheme is thrown around so much so often.
MichaelAUDIENCE
In fact, there's TV shows just created.
MichaelAUDIENCE
He's tremendous.
MichaelAUDIENCE
So getting to my side, Dom, this guy I thought of, unfortunately, a little bit negative, but definitely was, I guess, the godfather who created guys like Madoff and all this other stuff we see would be Charles Ponzi and the famous Ponzi schemes coming from Italy and who was notorious and infamous for, God, how much financial fraud.
MichaelAUDIENCE
But that term Ponzi scheme is thrown around so much so often.
MichaelAUDIENCE
In fact, there's TV shows just created.
8 more episodes mention Charles Ponzi.
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