Special Guest Blogger: Charles Ponzi

If you looked through some of the greatest cons in history, the name Ponzi stands out and became byword for financial impropriety although it all started out as perfectly legal and then kinda got tangled into a web of deceit and lies which made me very rich, and later, very, very poor.
I arrived in Boston from Italy with $2.50 to my name. i boarded the boat with $200 but lost $197.50 of it while gambling on the boat over.
I gained employment as a waiter in a restaurant although that never lasted very long as i was caught out shortchanging customers so moved to Canada and found work in a bank which again, was pretty short-lived as i was caught forging cheques and served three years in prison.
Unable to now work in Canada, on release i went back to the USA side of the border and got caught in an immigrant-smuggling scheme and ended up serving two years in another prison and so with two prison terms to my name, i tried to go into business for myself and wrote to some European friends with various ideas and when i got the replies, it set into motion the scheme i am known for.
The correspondents in Europe would send an IRC (International Reply Coupon) which was bought for the cost of postage in their country but was exchangeable for the cost of postage in America so with each IRC and the European currencies going down, i could make as much as a 400% profit on each one so i put the word around of this get rich quick scheme and 18 people invested $1,800 to buy the IRC's.
As i was working out how to exchange the IRCs for cash, word spread of this great financial opportunity, things escalated quickly and more investors handed over their money to me because as soon as people see someone else making money, that’s all the proof they need so a month later i paid back the original investors with money from the new investors which attracted even more investors and i was doubling peoples money and word spread and within 6 months i had $2.5 million, enough
to start up my own bank and nobody thought to ask: 'Hey, are you the same Charles Ponzi that spent jail time for forging cheques?, and was able to pay previous investors with the money coming in from new investors.
Since all the interest was paid out from the next wave of investors’ money, the scheme requires more and more investors as it goes on to stay solvent, and since at first glance, everyone’s making money, it was easy to find new investors until it wasn’t.
The Boston Post were suspicious that money was so easy to make so decided to investigate my scheme and the piece caused panic amongst investors and an angry mob descended on my home but i paid out $2 million to the crowds and the panic was over, and even attracted more investors but state examiners nosed around in my accounts and found i had borrowed $7 million from my bank and was charged with 86 counts of larceny.
Looking at a nine years jail sentence, i attempted to skip the country but was caught and imprisoned but on this release i made it back to Italy and then to Brazil where i died in poverty but my biggest crime wasn't ripping off people, it was me giving greed a bad name.