Ponzi scheme

(pŏn'zē)
n.
A fraud disguised as an investment opportunity, in which initial investors and the perpetrators of the fraud are paid out of funds raised from later investors, and the later investors lose all funds invested.

[After Charles Ponzi (1882?-1949), Italian-born speculator who organized such a scheme (1919-1920).]

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Any false investment opportunity where the promoter uses money from new investors to pay interest and principal redemptions of existing investors. The scheme collapses when required redemptions exceed new investment. Named after Charles Ponzi who perpetuated such a scheme in the 1920s under the pretense of his opportunities to make money through international currency transactions.

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A fraudulent investment plan in which the investments of later investors are used to pay earlier investors, giving the appearance that the investments of the initial participants dramatically increase in value in a short amount of time.

A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment fraud that promises investors exorbitant interest if they loan their money. As more investors participate, the money contributed by later investors is paid to the initial investors, purportedly as the promised interest on their loans. A Ponzi scheme works in its initial stages but inevitably collapses as more investors participate.

A Ponzi scheme is a variation of illegal pyramid sales schemes. In a pyramid sales plan, a person pays a fee to become a distributor. Once the person becomes a distributor, he receives commissions not only for the products he sells but also for products sold by individuals that he brings into the business. These new distributors are beneath the person who brought them into the pyramid scheme, so they are "under the pyramid." In illegal pyramid schemes, only the people at the top of the pyramid make substantial money because they get a commission from the products sold by everyone below them. As more people become distributors, the persons lower in the pyramid have less chance to make money.

A Ponzi scheme was once was called a "bubble," but it was renamed in 1920 after Charles Ponzi and his Boston-based company had collected almost $10 million from ten thousand investors by selling promissory notes that claimed to pay 50 percent profit in forty-five days. When the scheme was exposed, a Boston bank collapsed, and investors lost most of their money.

Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, thought of profiting from the widely varying currency exchange rates for International Postal Reply Coupons (IPRCs), which were redeemed for stamps. IPRCs were intended to facilitate the sending of international mail. The sender put an IPRC, rather than a stamp, on a piece of mail going to another country, and the recipient exchanged the IPRC for the appropriate stamp in her country.

Ponzi contended that he could pay a small amount for IPRCs in weak-currency countries and then redeem them at a substantial profit in the United States. He correctly noted that a stamp transaction might yield a 400 percent profit, but the amount of profit in real terms was very small. Nevertheless, he promoted his idea through his Boston-based Securities Exchange Company. In March 1920 he began soliciting funds for purchasing the IPRCs with a promised 40 percent return in ninety days. Bank interest rates at the time were just five percent. Investors started loaning Ponzi their money, and within a short time he increased the promised return on forty-five-day notes to 50 percent. He also promised a 100 percent return on funds loaned to him for ninety days. He pledged to refund money on demand to any investor before the loan period was up.

Money soon flooded Ponzi's offices. By July 1920 he was taking in $1 million a week. Ponzi made an arrangement with the Hanover Trust Company of Boston to deposit his funds. Hanover officials soon realized that Ponzi was not paying his initial investors with interest income but with the deposits of the new investors. Nevertheless, the bank eagerly sold Ponzi a large amount of its stock.

On August 2, 1920, a Boston newspaper revealed the fraud and reported that Ponzi was hopelessly insolvent. Thousands of victims immediately demanded refunds. Ponzi paid as many as he could but exhausted his funds in a week. He then declared bankruptcy. In bankruptcy, the court ordered all of the persons who had been paid by Ponzi during the life of the scheme to return the proceeds to the bankruptcy trustee, who distributed the money on a pro rata basis to all of the other victims. Ponzi was eventually convicted of fraud in both state and federal court and imprisoned for several years.

The Ponzi scheme did not end with Charles Ponzi. It has proved to be a reliable scam in which persons are lured into giving their money to con artists who promise enormous financial returns. The early cycle of a Ponzi scheme appears to confirm the reliability of the investment, as some investors are paid the promised returns. The scheme is doomed to collapse when not enough new money exists to pay old obligations.

Gullible individuals are not the only victims of Ponzi schemes. In the early 1990s, John G. Bennett, Jr., and his Foundation for New Era Philanthropy lured many U.S. universities and nonprofit groups into investing millions of dollars in the foundation. Bennett promised these organizations that they would double their money in six months with the help of anonymous philanthropists. In May 1995 Prudential Securities, Inc., where most of the funds were deposited, discovered that New Era was under federal investigation and froze its accounts.

The action triggered New Era's bankruptcy. Bennett was later charged with eighty-two counts of fraud, money laundering, and income tax evasion. As with the original Ponzi scheme, defrauded investors agreed to be reimbursed for up to 65 percent of their losses, with the money coming from groups that had deposited money with New Era early in the scheme and made a profit.

Internationally, the nation of Albania was plunged into civil unrest in 1997 when a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme collapsed. Many Albanians had invested large amounts of their savings in the scheme, which allegedly had the backing of Albanian government officials. Faced with economic ruin, citizens rioted against the government.

A fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. The Ponzi scheme generates returns for older investors by acquiring new investors. This scam actually yields the promised returns to earlier investors, as long as there are more new investors. These schemes usually collapse on themselves when the new investments stop.

Investopedia Says:
The Ponzi scam is named after Charles Ponzi, a clerk in Boston who first orchestrated such a scheme in 1919. 

A Ponzi scheme is similar to a pyramid scheme in that both are based on using new investors' funds to pay the earlier backers. One difference between the two schemes is that the Ponzi mastermind gathers all relevant funds from new investors and then distributes them. Pyramid schemes, on the other hand, allow each investor to directly benefit depending on how many new investors are recruited. In this case, the person on the top of the pyramid does not at any point have access to all the money in the system. 

For both schemes, however, eventually there isn't enough money to go around and the schemes unravel.

Related Links:
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Due diligence does work, but the loose reporting standards for hedge funds make extra care and attention necessary. How To Avoid Falling Prey To The Next Madoff Scam
Learn about some of the creepiest cases of fraud and the characters behind them. The Ghouls And Monsters On Wall Street
What is the difference between a Ponzi and a pyramid scheme?

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