A
Ponzi scheme is a
fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors, not from any actual profit earned by the organization, but from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering returns other investments cannot guarantee, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors to keep the scheme going.
The system is destined to collapse because the earnings, if any, are less than the payments to investors. Usually, the scheme is interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses because a Ponzi scheme is suspected or because the promoter is selling unregistered
securities. As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases.
The scheme is named after
Charles Ponzi[1] who became notorious for using the technique in early 1920.
[2] Ponzi did not invent the scheme (for example Charles Dickens's 1844 novel
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit described such a scheme decades before Ponzi was born),
[3] but his operation took in so much money that it was the first to become known throughout the United States. Ponzi's original scheme was based on the
arbitrage of
international reply coupons for postage stamps; however, he soon diverted investors' money to support payments to earlier investors and himself. (Wikipedia.)
