Charles Ponzi: 1920 Scammed investors of $15-$20 million dollars, which
is equivalent to about $222 million dollars today.
Ponzi scammed investors with international reply coupons, which are exchangeable
for postage stamps. These coupons can be bought in one country, and exchanged for
the stamp in another. The way money was supposed to be made was through the
difference in prices of the different countries involved. Ponzi scammed investors by
not having as many reply coupons as he needed to make the amount of money he had
collected. Ponzi actually took the new investor’s money, took a large sum for himself
and gave the rest to older investors (to repay for the lack of coupons.) With this, six
banks collapsed. Investors only received $5 million back.
Bernie Madoff: 2008 Madoff scammed people for about $50 billion
dollars including Kevin Bacon and Steven Spielberg. He committed securities
fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money
laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the United States
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and theft from an employee benefit
plan.
Earl Jones: 2010 Scammed people in a similar fashion to Madoff. He received
over $50.3 million, but did not invest in it and rather spent investors money for
lavish lifestyle. He defrauded many people, including his own family— his brother
and sister-in-law, who did lose $1 million. Jones collected money from individuals
and estates, but returned the same money as monthly interest payments.
Martha Stewart: 2004 –Found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice
and two counts of making false statements in connection with sale of stocks of
a bio-tech company. She had lost 4000 shares of Imclone, which is part of the
company she invested, which had collapsing stocks.
Lou Pearlman: 2006 – Mogul of boy bands such as N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
In 1981 he started Trans Continental Airlines Travel Services, Trans Continental
Airlines Inc and 12 other companies. But they only exited on paper. Shares of
these companies were sold to investors, and he got loans from banks. He invented
a fake accounting firm, and a fake branch in Germany. Tax returns were falsified.
This lasted for 20 years, and cost $300 million.
Reed Slatkin: 2000 – Scientology minister and co-founder of Earthlink, acted as an
investor for Hollywood residents and corporate bosses. He worked out of his
garage and tricked the wealthy out of $ 593 million dollars, with fake statements,
and fake mortgage firms. He was caught in 2000.
Michael Eugene Kelly: 2009– He scammed seniors and retirees of about $428 million
dollars. He let them invest in fake Timeshares in Cancun hotels called “Universal
Leases”. Investors were to get a good fixed rate in return, but they did not, and
Kelly used the money to buy himself yachts and a private jet among other things.
Gerald Payne/Greater Ministries International: 1990’s– Based in Florida,
the church used Bible speak to cheat church goers of $500 million dollars.
Worshippers were able to invest in gold coins. Payne made an investment plan
where the worshippers should have made money, yet he funneled money towards
the church’s fake metals investment and therefore kept the money.
— sources: businesspundit.com, cbc.ca
