1920 Charles Ponzi. “I went looking for trouble, and I found it.” Did he intentionally defraud his investors? Or did he believe he could return his investor’s money? His scheme involved scamming investors by promising them a bigger return on their investments than was actually possible. Every investor’s money would just be put into a large pool to pay back past investors, and while Ponzi was hardly the first person to engage in such a scheme, the 1920s were ripe for this kind of financial conning. “His debts approached three thousand dollars and, as Ponzi liked to say, his only assets were his hopes.” “In the remarkable seven months since it had opened for business, Ponzi’s firm, the Securities Exchange Company, had amassed thirty thousand investors and $9.6 million. All Ponzi had to do to keep them satisfied was to pay them nearly $15 million in return.”
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