Ponzi

Just who was the man whose name has become synonymous with the classic “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul” scam in which money from new investors is used to reward earlier ones?  In December 1919, he was an unknown thirty-eight-year-old, self-educated Italian immigrant with a borrowed two-hundred dollars in his pocket.  Six months later, he was Boston’s famed “wizard of finance,” lionized by the public and po...