Italian Charles Ponzi was such a successful con-artist in the 1920s that he has even had a fraud scheme named after him. "The Ponzi Scheme" derives from his business dealings in North America, where he would promise clients a 50 per cent profit within 45 days and 100 per cent within 90 days - by pretending he was buying discounted postal-reply coupons in foreign nations and then redeeming them at face value in the US. In actual fact, Ponzi was simply paying earlier investors with the money given to him by his new clients. He managed to carry on the scheme for more than a year before the whole thing collapsed, forcing his clients to lose approximately $20million. Ponzi spent three-and-a-half years in a federal prison before serving seven years locked up at state level in Massachusetts. He was eventually deported to Italy in 1934. Interestingly, Bernie Madoff's "Ponzi Scheme" was perhaps more impressive though - as he swindled around $50billion from investors' savings between the mid-1980s and 2008. So, the motto of the story is - don't trust those investors. They're always up to no good it seems...
NUFC editor for WhatCulture.com/NUFC. History graduate (University of Edinburgh) and NCTJ-trained journalist. I love sports, hopelessly following Newcastle United and Newcastle Falcons. My pastimes include watching and attending sports matches religiously, reading spy books and sampling ales.