Born in Italy, Charles Ponzi emigrated to America in 1903, where he bounced in and out of prison for a few years. Eventually, he went to work in Boston, where he married and briefly attempted to live on the straight and narrow. But in 1918, Ponzi discovered a loophole that allowed him to profit from international reply coupons (IRCs), which could be bought in one country and exchanged for postage stamps in another. Ponzi realized that stamp prices were different around the world, meaning that IRCs from one country could be sold for a profit in another. He quickly formed a company to do just that, promising huge rewards to investors, who queued up to take advantage of the scheme.
In reality, there were nowhere near enough IRCs to keep up with demand. Ponzi was simply paying old investors with money from newer investors, while raking off just enough to keep himself living the high life. By the time his fraud was uncovered, his gullible investors had lost an estimated $20 million. Ponzi spent the rest of his life flitting from one job to the next, unable to stop scamming people. After twelve years in two state jails, he was deported to Italy where he embezzled money from a government job and offered 100 percent returns for investors in his autobiography. He used a job with a Brazilian airline to become a smuggler, but was again caught and eventually became a poor English teacher, living mostly off unemployment benefits. Ponzi died in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro in 1949, but his name lives on…and probably how he would have wanted it to.
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