What convicted fraudster's underpants were auctioned in 2011 for $200, with other belongings, to compensate victims of his $65m Ponzi scheme swindle?
Charles Ponzi receiving less than 30 cents to the dollar. Ponzi's investors saw their financial pictures all but destroyed; they lost about $20 million in 1920 dollars (225 million in 2011 dollars). By comparison, Bernard Madoff's similar scheme that collapsed in 2008 cost his investors about $18 billion, 53 times the losses of Ponzi's scheme. In two federal indictments, Ponzi was charged with 86 counts of mail fraud, and faced a lifetime in prison. At the urging of his wife, Ponzi pleaded guilty on November 1, 1920, to a single count before Judge Clarence Hale, who declared before sentencing, "Here was a
Ponzi scheme theory. As with the Ponzi scheme, the price exceeds the intrinsic value of the item, but unlike the Ponzi scheme: Ponzi scheme A Ponzi scheme (; also a Ponzi game) is a form of fraud which lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors by using funds obtained from more recent investors. The victims are led to believe that the profits are coming from product sales or other means, and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of profits. A Ponzi scheme is able to maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as there continue to