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Type of financial fraud From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒnzi/, Italian: [ˈpontsi]) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.[1] Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, this type of scheme misleads investors by either falsely suggesting that profits are derived from legitimate business activities (whereas the business activities are non-existent), or by exaggerating the extent and profitability of the legitimate business activities, leveraging new investments to fabricate or supplement these profits. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as investors continue to contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment or lose faith in the non-existent assets they are purported to own.
Some of the first recorded incidents to meet the modern definition of the Ponzi scheme were carried out from 1869 to 1872 by Adele Spitzeder in Germany and by Sarah Howe in the United States in the 1880s through the "Ladies' Deposit". Howe offered a solely female clientele an 8% monthly interest rate and then stole the money that the women had invested. She was eventually discovered and served three years in prison.[2] The Ponzi scheme was also previously described in novels; Charles Dickens's 1844 novel Martin Chuzzlewit and his 1857 novel Little Dorrit both feature such a scheme.[3]
In the 1920s, Charles Ponzi carried out this scheme and became well known throughout the United States because of the huge amount of money that he took in.[4] His original scheme was purportedly based on the legitimate arbitrage of international reply coupons for postage stamps, but he soon began diverting new investors' money to make payments to earlier investors and to himself.[5] Unlike earlier similar schemes, Ponzi's gained considerable press coverage both within the United States and internationally both while it was being perpetrated and after it collapsed – this notoriety eventually led to the type of scheme being named after him.[6]
In a Ponzi scheme, a con artist offers investments that promise very high returns with little or no risk to an investor. The returns are said to originate from a business or a secret idea run by the con artist. In reality, the business does not exist or the idea does not work in the way it is described or the extent of returns is made up or exaggerated. The con artist pays the high returns promised to their earlier investors by using the money obtained from later investors. Instead of engaging in a legitimate business activity, the con artist attempts to attract new investors to make the payments that were promised to earlier investors.[7][8][9][10] The operator of the scheme also diverts clients' funds for the operator's personal use.[9][10]
With little or no legitimate earnings, Ponzi schemes require a constant flow of new money to survive. When it becomes hard to recruit new investors, or when large numbers of existing investors cash out, these schemes collapse.[lower-alpha 1][1][11][12] As a result, most investors end up losing much or all of the money they invested.[11] In some cases, the operator of the scheme may simply disappear with the money.[13]
According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), many Ponzi schemes share characteristics that should be "red flags" for investors.[1]
According to criminologist Marie Springer, the following red flags can also be of relevance:[20]
Typically, Ponzi schemes require an initial investment and promise above-average returns.[21] They use vague verbal guises such as "hedge futures trading", "high-yield investment programs", or "offshore investment" to describe their income strategy. It is common for the operator to take advantage of a lack of investor knowledge or competence, or sometimes claim to use a proprietary, secret investment strategy to avoid giving information about the scheme.
The basic premise of a Ponzi scheme is "to rob Peter to pay Paul". Initially, the operator pays high returns to attract investors and entice current investors to invest more money. When other investors begin to participate, a cascade effect begins. The schemer pays a "return" to initial investors from the investments of new participants, rather than from genuine profits.
Often, high returns encourage investors to leave their money in the scheme, so that the operator does not actually have to pay very much to investors. The operator simply sends statements showing how much they have earned, which maintains the deception that the scheme is an investment with high returns. Investors within a Ponzi scheme may face difficulties when trying to get their money out of the investment.
Operators also try to minimize withdrawals by offering new plans to investors where money cannot be withdrawn for a certain period of time in exchange for higher returns. The operator sees new cash flows as investors cannot transfer money. If a few investors do wish to withdraw their money in accordance with the terms allowed, their requests are usually promptly processed, which gives the illusion to all other investors that the fund is solvent and financially sound.
Ponzi schemes sometimes begin as legitimate investment vehicles, such as hedge funds that can easily degenerate into a Ponzi-type scheme if they unexpectedly lose money or fail to legitimately earn the returns expected. The operators fabricate false returns or produce fraudulent audit reports instead of admitting their failure to meet expectations, from which point on the operation can be considered a Ponzi scheme.
A wide variety of investment vehicles and strategies, typically legitimate, have become the basis of Ponzi schemes. For instance, Allen Stanford used bank certificates of deposit to defraud tens of thousands of people. Certificates of deposit are usually low-risk and insured instruments, but the Stanford certificates of deposit were fraudulent.[22]
Theoretically, it is possible for certain Ponzi schemes to ultimately "succeed" financially, at least so long as a Ponzi scheme was not what the promoters were initially intending to operate. For example, a failing hedge fund reporting fraudulent returns could conceivably "make good" its reported numbers, for example by making a successful high-risk investment. Moreover, if the operators of such a scheme are facing the likelihood of imminent collapse accompanied by criminal charges, they may see little additional "risk" to themselves in attempting to cover their tracks by engaging in further illegal acts to try and make good the shortfall (for example, by engaging in insider trading). Especially with investment vehicles like hedge funds that are regulated and monitored less heavily than other investment vehicles such as mutual funds,[23] in the absence of a whistleblower or accompanying illegal acts, any fraudulent content in reports is often difficult to detect unless and until the investment vehicles ultimately collapse.
Typically, however, if a Ponzi scheme is not stopped by authorities it usually falls apart for one or more of the following reasons:[5]
In some cases, two or more of the aforementioned factors may be at play. For example, news of a police investigation into a Ponzi scheme may cause investors to immediately demand their money, and in turn cause the promoters to flee the jurisdiction sooner than planned (assuming they intended to eventually abscond in the first place), thus causing the scheme to collapse much faster than if the police investigation had simply been permitted to run its course.
Actual losses are extremely difficult to calculate. The amounts that investors thought they had were never attainable in the first place. The wide gap between "money in" and "fictitious gains" make it virtually impossible to know how much was lost in any Ponzi scheme.[citation needed]
A pyramid scheme is a form of fraud similar in some ways to a Ponzi scheme, relying as it does on a mistaken belief in a nonexistent financial reality, including the hope of an extremely high rate of return. However, several characteristics distinguish these schemes from Ponzi schemes:[5]
Cryptocurrencies have been employed by scammers attempting a new generation of Ponzi schemes. For example, misuse of initial coin offerings, or "ICOs", has been one such method,[25][26] known as "smart Ponzis" per the Financial Times.[27] Most schemes have a low recovery rate with investors losing their funds permanently.[28]
The novelty of ICOs means that there is currently a lack of regulatory clarity on the classification of these financial devices, allowing scammers wide leeway to develop Ponzi schemes using these pseudo-assets.[29] Also, the pseudonymity of cryptocurrency transactions and their international nature involving countless jurisdictions in many different countries can make it much more difficult to identify and take legal action (whether civil or criminal) against perpetrators.[30][31]
The May 2022 collapse of TerraUSD, a stablecoin propped up by a complex algorithmic mechanism offering 20% yields, was described as "Ponzinomics" by Wired.[32] Another example of a well known ponzi scheme involving cryptoassets was the ICO of AriseBank or AriseCoin, involving claims about founding the world's first "decentralized bank". The SEC successfully recovered the funds stolen in the ICO.[33] A similar scheme was perpetrated by the founders of the fraudulent cryptocurrency Bitconnect.[34][35]
In September 2022, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, described cryptocurrencies as "Decentralised Ponzi Schemes".[36]
Economic bubbles are also similar to a Ponzi scheme in that one participant gets paid by contributions from a subsequent participant until inevitable collapse. A bubble involves ever-rising prices in an open market (for example stock, housing, cryptocurrency,[37][clarification needed] tulip bulbs, or the Mississippi Company) where prices rise because buyers bid more, and buyers bid more because prices are rising. Bubbles are often said to be based on the "greater fool" theory. As with the Ponzi scheme, the price exceeds the intrinsic value of the item, but unlike the Ponzi scheme:
A Ponzi scheme which ultimately terminates with the operator absconding is similar to an exit scam. The main difference is that an exit scam does not involve any sort of investment vehicle with the accompanying promised returns. Instead, exit scammers either accept payment for product which they never ship (usually after gaining a reputation for reliably shipping product) or steal funds held in escrow on behalf of third parties (the latter often involves the operators of illegal darknet markets that facilitate the sale of illicit goods and services).
The term "ponzi finance" generally designates non-sustainable patterns of finance, such as borrowers who can only meet their debt commitment if they continuously obtain new sources of financing, often at an accelerating pace and/or ever-increasing interest rates until the borrower cannot secure more financing at any interest rate and becomes insolvent. The term was first coined by economist Hyman Minsky.[38][39]
In economics, the term "ponzi game" designates a hypothesis where a government continuously defers the repayment of its public debt by issuing new debt: each time its existing debt arrives at maturity, it borrows funds from new and/or existing lenders in order to repay its existing debt.[40][41][42]
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