What Ponzi scheme?

This is nothing new on Wall Street or at home. Since Ponzi released human nature from the cage, endless greed of human nature has been performing one Ponzi farce after another for those unrealistic high returns.

Of course, because Ponzi defrauded an astronomical sum at that time and influenced almost all financial scams in later generations, he was notorious and called the king of scams.

So, what is the Ponzi scheme? Why can you attract so many people to participate? Why can't people see through this scam? We need to find the answer from Ponzi's story.

Here I want to mention a book-The King of Fraud, which is about the life of Charles Ponzi, the initiator of Ponzi scheme.

The most famous investment fraudster in history also told his story in The King of Fraud.

So through these stories, we can see what role human nature played in the scam. What are the financial secrets of Ponzi scheme? How can we prevent all kinds of dazzling Ponzi schemes from taking away our property?

Now let's talk about this book. 1903, Ponzi just graduated from an Italian university, in order to seize every opportunity of the apprentice. He came to America alone. When he got off the boat for the first time, he wore an expensive suit, like a young gentleman who lived comfortably and richly, but he only had $2.50 in his pocket. Before coming, he thought that arachis duranensis, USA, all he had to do was bend down and pick up the money. Of course, such a thing is not a fantasy for Ponzi, because after 1920, gold kept running into his pocket, and it was still a large piece of gold that could only be scooped up with a steam shovel. Of course, these are all stories. In fact, when Ponzi got off the boat, all he saw was sticky black mud, nothing but flying dust and broken dreams of getting rich overnight.

Then he needed to go to Pittsburgh to visit relatives by train, and everything was not satisfactory.

At that time, Italians had just immigrated to the United States, and they were basically not doing well. When he arrived in America, he was penniless. To make matters worse, Ponzi knew nothing about English and had no better skills, so he almost made ends meet in the first four years in the United States. Then he went to Montreal, Canada, and found his first satisfactory job in four years, working in an Italian bank called Chalos. Later, Charles had financial problems, the banker went bankrupt, and Ponzi was cheated by his old classmates. After serving a few years in prison, he got the opportunity of early release through serious work. Later, he came to America from Canada. Because he helped his classmates look after five Italians, he was inexplicably misunderstood by the US border police as the snakehead who smuggled foreigners to the United States and was sent to prison again. This time he was released after serving two years in prison.

What would you do if you were beaten twice by fate for no reason? Will it be cynical about society? Let's see how Ponzi did it.

After these two imprisonments, Ponzi was in charge of laying pipelines and lines in the local area and set up an electrical equipment company. Unexpectedly, in a hospital of a mining company, a nurse was cooking for a patient with a gasoline stove. The stove exploded and the nurse's whole left arm, shoulder and chest were severely burned.

The doctor needed a healthy person to transplant her skin, but almost everyone was asked, but they were all rejected.

Ponzi asked the doctor: How many inches of skin do you always need?

The doctor replied: forty or fifty inches, but in a community of more than two thousand people, I can't even find ten inches of skin.

Ponzi said fearlessly, you are wrong. You've found it. I will donate all the skin you need.

After the operation, Ponzi's ass was covered with bandages from knee to knee, which was extremely painful, but he saved the nurse's life.

Seeing this, you may not be able to connect this Ponzi scheme with the insatiable Ponzi scheme afterwards. In fact, these three extremely important things happened in Ponzi's life-twice being framed and imprisoned, and once donating almost all the skin on his leg without a nurse. These experiences gradually blurred his moral boundaries.

It can be seen from here that he is still kind to society after being hit by fate several times.

But perhaps he didn't think that in a few years, in the face of the temptation of money, he would ruthlessly deceive others, let too many people go to the dead end, and let many families fall apart.

What the hell is going on? Let's look at Ponzi's next experience.

After many twists and turns, Ponzi went to Birmingham. In a mining town, he tried to provide running water and electricity for the community, but he didn't have any assets or resources to do it. So he thought of a clever way, put forward a plan to raise money from the residents of the town, and then used the money raised to borrow money to build a waterworks. Because of an accident in the mining area, the plan of this power plant went up in smoke, but from this incident, we can clearly feel that Ponzi is such a bold, daring and innovative person.

He is basically a white wolf with empty gloves. Later, Pang Si moved from Birmingham to Mobile, Alabama, and worked in different jobs, such as painter and medical school librarian. After some things, Ponzi left Birmingham and went to New Orleans, where he returned to his old job and became a painter. Because of the frequent murders in this city, city residents are so worried that some people sell their houses to buy cemeteries. Seriously affecting the normal life of citizens, it happened that he met a priest in a place with too many similarities with him, and they decided to do something to change the status quo. Finally, they deceived the murderer by publishing an article in the newspaper, saying that a mysterious organization founded by Italian immigrants was tracking down the murderer.

In the end, the two of them succeeded in deceiving everyone in the town. Of course, this is just a white lie. Things finally got out of hand. They realized their recklessness and had to go their separate ways. Later, in Wichita, Ponzi found his first decent job as a foreign trade salesman and correspondent, working in an import and export trading company, translating and filling out forms in various languages because he was proficient in many languages. In this job, he learned

By 19 19, the house felt that the remuneration was not enough to cover the daily expenses, and others were tired of making money for their employers all day, so it was better to start their own company. So Ponzi started a company to run advertising business. He initially wanted to advertise in foreign trade magazines, but found that there were not many resources covered. Later, when he was trying to make a free business guide, he had an epiphany and discovered a business mystery.

His specific algorithm is like this. This strange piece of paper is actually called an international reply certificate, which belongs to the Universal Postal Union to help transnational communication. So the price of this international reply coupon is five cents in the United States and 0.3 lira in Italy. At present, 1 lira can be exchanged for 5 cents, so if Ponzi has 1 dollar in his hand, he will exchange it for 20 lira, and then he will go to Italy to buy 60 vouchers. When he returns to the United States, he can exchange these 60 vouchers for 3 dollars, so 1 dollar will magically become 3 dollars when he goes abroad. So Ponzi began to raise funds according to this project and set up a company called Securities Trading Company. He used the money he raised to buy international reply coupons, promising investors 50% profits within 90 days. In fact, he pays 50% interest every 45 days.