Charles Ponzi was an Italian swindler and con artist who operated in the U.S. and Canada. His aliases included Charles Ponci, Carlo, and Charles P. Bianchi.
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law or criminal law, or it may cause no loss of money, property, or legal right but still be an element of another civil or criminal wrong. The purpose of fraud may be monetary gain or other benefits, for example by obtaining a passport, travel document, or driver's license, or mortgage fraud, where the perpetrator may attempt to qualify for a mortgage by way of false statements.
Embezzlement is a term commonly used for a type of financial crime, usually involving theft of money from a business or employer. It often involves a trusted individual taking advantage of their position to steal funds or assets, most commonly over a period of time.
Crazy Eddie was a consumer electronics chain in the Northeastern United States. The chain was started in 1971 in Brooklyn, New York, by businessmen Eddie and Sam M. Antar, and was previously named ERS Electronics. The chain rose to prominence throughout the Tri-State area as much for its prices as for its memorable radio and television commercials, featuring a frenetic, "crazy" character played by radio DJ Jerry Carroll. At its peak, Crazy Eddie had 43 stores in four states and reported more than $300 million in sales.
The term "white-collar crime" refers to financially motivated, nonviolent or non-directly violent crime committed by individuals, businesses and government professionals. The crimes are believed to be committed by middle-class individuals for financial gains. It was first defined by the sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation". Typical white-collar crimes could include wage theft, fraud, bribery, Ponzi schemes, insider trading, labor racketeering, embezzlement, cybercrime, copyright infringement, money laundering, identity theft, and forgery. White-collar crime overlaps with corporate crime.
Reed Eliot Slatkin was an initial investor and co-founder of EarthLink and the perpetrator of one of the largest Ponzi schemes in the United States since that conducted by Charles Ponzi himself.
The Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) is a credential awarded by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) since 1989. The ACFE association is a provider of anti-fraud training and education. Founded in 1988 by Dr. Joseph T Wells. The ACFE established and administers the Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) credential.
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) is a professional organization of fraud examiners. Its activities include producing fraud information, training and tools. Based in Austin, Texas, the ACFE was founded in 1988 by Joseph T. Wells. The ACFE grants the professional designation of Certified Fraud Examiner.
Robert Allen Stanford is a convicted financial fraudster, former financier, and sponsor of professional sports. He was convicted of fraud in 2012, having operated an eight billion dollar Ponzi scheme, and is now serving a 110-year federal prison sentence.
Thomas Joseph Petters is a former American businessman and chairman and CEO of Petters Group Worldwide, a company which stole over $2 billion in a Ponzi scheme. He was convicted of massive business fraud in 2009 and is now imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth. Amid mounting criminal investigations, Petters resigned as his company's CEO on September 29, 2008. He was convicted of numerous federal crimes for operating Petters Group Worldwide as a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme and received a 50-year federal sentence.
Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American financial criminal and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, worth an estimated $65 billion. He was at one time chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. Madoff's firm had two basic units: a stock brokerage and an asset management business; the Ponzi scheme was centered in the asset management business.
The Madoff investment scandal was a major case of stock and securities fraud discovered in late 2008. In December of that year, Bernie Madoff, the former Nasdaq chairman and founder of the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, admitted that the wealth management arm of his business was an elaborate multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Shana Diane Madoff, sometimes referred to as Shana Madoff Skoller Swanson, is an American former attorney who is now a yoga teacher.
Leopold Koretz (1879–1925) was an American lawyer who ran an elaborate Ponzi scheme in Chicago, called the "Bayano oil fraud," which garnered an estimated $30 million from dozens of investors in Chicago. The scheme used fraudulent claims of oil interests in Panama in a criminal career that predated and outlasted his contemporary, Charles Ponzi. Koretz was so trusted and admired that after Ponzi's fraud was exposed in 1920, his investors nicknamed him "Our Ponzi," never suspecting they were being duped as well.
DC Solar Solutions Inc., trading as DC Solar, was a Benicia, California solar power supplier company whose owners lived lavishly on ill-gotten gains in Martinez. The company was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2018 after it turned out to be a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Ruja Plamenova Ignatova is a Bulgarian-born German entrepreneur who in 2019 was convicted of fraud. She is best known as the founder of a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme known as OneCoin, which The Times has described as "one of the biggest scams in history". She is the subject of the 2019 BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen and the 2022 book of the same name.
Towers Financial Corporation was a debt collection agency based in Manhattan in New York City. Between 1988 and 1993, Towers Financial ran a Ponzi scheme that was the largest financial fraud in American history prior to Bernie Madoff's being uncovered.
