I got CURIOUS about the Ponzi Scheme founder.

QUOTE from Josh Billings: "It ain't so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich."

I got CURIOUS. When I heard Rick Perry say that Social Security was nothing but a Ponzi Scheme I got curious. I knew what a Ponzi Scheme was but I didn't know anything about a guy named Ponzi. So I Googled and found a few things about a guy named Ponzi.

Carlo )Charles) Ponzi was born in Lugo, Italy in 1882 and died in Brazil in 1949. Ponzi was an Italian immigrant who bilked millions of dollars out of thousands of hopeful investors in the 1920s, in what has since become known as a Ponzi Scheme. Ponzi arrived in the U.S. in 1903, then made his way to Montreal, Canada by 1908. After a jail term for forgery, Ponzi was arrested for smuggling aliens into the U.S. and ended up in a federal prison in Atlanta, GA. After prison he settled in Boston and worked as a dishwasher for years before coming up with a plan to get rich. In 1919 he formed the Securities Exchange Company promising financial success by converting postage coupons into U.S. currency. Ponzi promised returns too good to be true. And they were: early investors were paid off with money from new investors; there was no real investment going on, just cash distribution. (The approach is also known as a "pyramid scheme.") Beginning in late 1919 and early 1920, Ponzi moved as much as $15 million from thousands of investors; eventually using 35 branch offices. The scheme fell apart eight months later and Ponzi was convicted of embezzlement and sent to prison for five years. His legal troubles dragged on for more than a decade and he was in and out of jail in the U.S. until 1934, when he was deported to Italy. He worked briefly for Benito Mussolini and then landed a job running asn airline in Brazil, where he died destitute in 1949.

I did some more research on Ponzi Schemes and found out the early investors were rewarded as promised but the later investors were the ones who never had a chance to make money as their money was being used to pay the early investors. Another thing I learned is that the early investors were so happy with the interest they were getting paid that most all of them would reinvest the earnings and end up losing it all anyway when the company collapsed. Their have been many of these Ponzi Schemes,the most recent and famous is the Bernie Madoff rip-off. Their were several of Madoff's investors who committed suicide after losing millions.

There is a whole lot of truth in the words, "If it looks too good to be true, it most likely is." MONEY and GREED have screwed up the lives of a lot of people throughout the history of this world.

HUMOR for today: Some people because smile they don't know the heck is going on.